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lassarina 's review for:
The Queen's Weapons
by Anne Bishop
I am absolutely aware that the Black Jewels books are Problematic as Fuck but they also walk right up to me and knife me in the trope-weak-spot, so here we are. This has honestly been one of my favorite of the latter books in the series. I didn't care much for Queen's Bargain, but this book dug out of a lot of holes left by that one and set up the suggestion of the series sliding back to some of my absolute favorite stuff that it has held before. I am so here for it. I loved Daemonar (what if a Warlord Prince with the SaDiablo honor and not ruined by Dorothea! WHAT. IF.) and Zoey. I loved Jillian again, and I like the compare/contrast between Daemon-as-high-lord and Saetan in the same position. I liked the echoes back to Jaenelle's life.
Things I didn't like: Jaenelle Saetien. I mean. She's incredibly realistically written, and Daemon and Surreal *would* be fucking terrible parents in all honesty, but also I wanted to strangle her for almost any page she was on. I also feel like Bishop has kind of lost her grip on Surreal as a character, which is tragic for how much I love her and how much she's present (although toward the end of this book I felt like maybe it was coming back, so maybe it's meant to be an illustration of how badly the role she's been in has fit her? who the hell knows.) Also not a huge fan of the number of attempted callbacks to short-lived races from the original trilogy, mostly because the time span makes my brain go a bit wonky.
This did kick me into a series re-read though, which is giving me intense delight, so I'm pretty happy with it overall.
Things I didn't like: Jaenelle Saetien. I mean. She's incredibly realistically written, and Daemon and Surreal *would* be fucking terrible parents in all honesty, but also I wanted to strangle her for almost any page she was on. I also feel like Bishop has kind of lost her grip on Surreal as a character, which is tragic for how much I love her and how much she's present (although toward the end of this book I felt like maybe it was coming back, so maybe it's meant to be an illustration of how badly the role she's been in has fit her? who the hell knows.) Also not a huge fan of the number of attempted callbacks to short-lived races from the original trilogy, mostly because the time span makes my brain go a bit wonky.
This did kick me into a series re-read though, which is giving me intense delight, so I'm pretty happy with it overall.