Fantasy and science fiction novels have the unique opportunity to push the envelope both in terms of technology and sociology. As well as devising worlds which operate on very different principles, an author can create societies alien from ours as well, because there are few things more disappointing than the Star Trek syndrome of humans in heavy makeup. One such author is Anne Bishop, and her world is a vivid, gothically dark yet often amusing place. Best of all, as I thought when I read her Black Jewels trilogy (Daughter of the Blood, Heir to the Shadows, Queen of the Darkness), it was a feminist world – and not just the type where the warrior women wear tiny metal G-strings. In the land of the Blood, women rule and men serve; I was intrigued right away, and the memorable characters made the books a pleasure to read. Then I found that the author had written a prequel, The Invisible Ring, so I went out and bought that.
Good feelings down the drain… going… going… gone.
A large cast of characters does not necessarily indicate a poor novel – some authors can paint even minor characters in color, enough that it’s easy to distinguish one from the other. The problem in this novel is that there are just too many characters for that to happen, which means that most of them are talking heads attached to beautiful bodies. And I do mean beautiful. But let’s start with the hero. Jared is a Red-Jeweled Shalador Warlord (yes, every word capitalized) who is a prisoner due to his killing of a Queen who used him as a pleasure slave. The angst is laid on thicker than Tammy Faye Bakker’s makeup during the opening scene, where Jared’s guards torture him in various ways –a ball-gag features prominently, and so does a cock-ring. It’s like a pre-Kabbalah Madonna’s slumber party. The ring in question is a magical one which keeps him obedient by exerting pressure on his penis, which made me think of the movie Free Willy, but when he’s bought by a Queen called the Gray Lady, she removes it and replaces it with a supposedly even more powerful ring which is invisible. If you spotted the startling twist regarding this ring, you’re a lot smarter than Jared is (though that’s not saying much).
As well as buying Jared, the Gray Lady also picks up about another baker’s dozen of slaves. There’s Cathryn, Polli, Corry, Tomas, Blaed, Randolf, Eryk, Brock, Garth and Thera, all of whom have more Jewels than personality. Cathryn, for instance, is frequently referred to as “little Cathryn”, just so we all understand that she’s a child, just in case her constant need for security (which is provided by the protective Corry) doesn’t make that clear. Anyway, the Gray Lady sets off with her traveling circus, intending to transport them to safety in her own land, and out of the clutches of Dorothea SaDiablo, the evil (and I do mean eeeeevil) ruler of the land.
Along the way, the poor victimized one-dimensional slaves swop sob stories, sort of like a maudlin version of the Canterbury Tales, but I still entertained the possibility that the Gray Lady might be an exception, character-wise. She was described as an old yet powerful (and certainly dominating) woman, and since I knew the author was capable of being original, I hoped Jared’s relationship with her would be an unusual and compelling one. She might be more sexually experienced than he was, for instance, and she would certainly be experienced enough to deal with a man who had killed his former owner and might well try the same thing with his current one. In any case, it would be interesting to see an older woman in the heroine’s role.
I’m sure you can guess where this is going, but in case (like me) you were optimistic to the bitter end, the Gray Lady turned out to be not so gray after all, because perish the thought that the studly young hero should be paired with some wrinkly old woman. Instead, he gets the Gray Lady’s feisty but very virginal young granddaughter, though unfortunately there was no scene where Little Red-Jeweled Riding Hood exclaimed, “Oh grandma, what firm breasts you have!” The book, which had been sliding slowly downhill, took a swan dive with that romance-novel-worthy revelation and never recovered.
I’ve come across a number of Mary Sues in published fiction, but the Gray Lady’s grandspawn contends for the top of that particular pile. Even her name, Arabella Ardelia, is part of her aura of adorability, though she takes care to mention that her (no doubt eeeeevil) cousin perverts her first name into “belly button”. Dear God. The horror. “I hate my cousin,” she adds. Yes, such a vile slur upon the heroine or the heroine’s navel should result in a retributive fatwa at the very least. Anyway, the little princess is known as Lia, and Jared, besotted as a teenage girl with her first crush, thinks that the name suits her and goes on to imagine her loving populace asking each other, “Did you hear what the Lady Lia’s done now?” She’s grown a personality? We can only hope.
Like most implausibly perfect people, Lia is egalitarian to the point where she would no doubt invent democracy and the two-party system if she wasn’t busy playing Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad. As she schleps her newly freed slaves cross-country, she allows them to take turns riding in the wagon and sheltering from the rain (personally, I’d have bought more than one wagon, so that everyone could have ridden). As well as this act of selfless generosity, when Lia plays chess with Jared, she risks her queen’s safety because “There are no pawns”. Gary Kasparov she ain’t. And as we are frequently reminded, she’s a virgin, the kind who shivers in fear when Jared goes into a state of heightened hormones known poetically as “rut”, and rubs himself against her. Giving his, er, other Jewels a little nudge with her knee is something good women just wouldn’t do, but luckily for her, Jared is your sensitive New Age type of Neanderthal, so he settles for snuggling up beside her at night, which quiets his raging pon farr down to the point where the other men in the room can sleep as well. Ah, the sacrifices Lia makes for the bourgeoisie.
All this sweetness and light, by the way, makes Lia a direct contrast to Dorothea SaDiablo, who purrs, slinks around and sexually torments some young Warlord by ordering him to pleasure himself because she’s occupied at the moment. Man, telling a teenage boy to masturbate… that’s just cruel. If there was any book which revolved around the madonna-whore complex, it would be this one, though it’s difficult to decide which of the two stereotypes is the more boring. I’d go with Lia, since her Joan d’Arc impression got very old very fast. She has no faults, while Dorothea has no virtues, and the book has no content which would elevate it beyond cereal box level. The scene where Jared finally transforms Lia into a Fulfilled Woman actually makes matters worse, since he does a dance for her first. This is supposed to be a very special dance in Jared’s part of the land – “a male celebrating his maleness” – but since he does it naked, he comes off as more hilarious than erotic. If this was a film, it would be Dimwitted Dancing. Ms. Bishop tries her best, describing Jared’s golden skin as glistening with sweat, for instance, but I figured that was just plain terror at the thought that someone might see him doing the Blood version of the Macarena with his clothes off. One thing was for sure – he recovered from being a pleasure slave surprisingly fast. That’s what the Love of a Good Woman does for you, and as for that queen he killed, she’s never mentioned again. More narrative space was given to Lia’s menstrual cycle and to a grocery store trip than to any repercussions for Jared’s crime. Unfortunately the grocery store didn’t stock any plots, so the menagerie of mannequins are forced to improvise with what little they have.
Every possible cliché comes into play during Lia and Company’s interminable trek into Granny’s province. Secondary romance? Check. A traitor in the ranks? Of course. An ambush along the way? No surprises at all. The wagon trundles along, Lia gets her period and has to stay inside with cramps and the Blood version of Midol, it rains, Jared cries when he realizes that his mother forgave his becoming a pleasure slave, some minor but perfect character dies, Lia cries. Meanwhile, Dorothea and a stooge of hers – who was so bland and predictable that I can’t remember his name, so I just think of him as Toto – plan to stop the good guys and rape Lia. Sex with the heroine, always the villain’s priority and the hero’s privilege. Said sex, by the way, is good enough to jump-start Lia’s magic and give her the exact level of power she needs to defeat Toto and his cronies in the anti-climax. Jared finally realizes that the cock-ring he’s supposed to be wearing is not only invisible but intangible – gosh, could this mean that it doesn’t exist? – but since he’s just Not Worthy of Lia, he rides sadly off into the sunset. Luckily Daemon (one of Anne Bishop’s more intriguing characters from the Black Jewels trilogy) happens to be slumming in the area, and stops Jared to tell him not to give up on True Love. Jared might be all testosterone and no brain, but Daemon is so very alpha that he can get away with painting his fingernails, so Jared defers to the more dominant male and returns to the Gray Lady’s province, where he’s informed that his desertion made Lia cry. Damn, that made me cry too – in relief that the book was nearly over. It’s a happy ending, though, because Lia’s all smiles when she sees him. Maybe she was pregnant from their one night of unprotected sex. It’s good to know, though, that just like in any traditional romance novel, the heroine ends up with the first man with whom she ever had sex; the way to a woman’s heart is through her hymen.
If you read this book for the strong female characters, you might come away with the impression that good women, no matter how tough they pretend to be, just want a man to take care of them. Little Cathryn has Corry to protect her, little Thera has Blaed and little Lia has Jared, all of whom embrace, cuddle, soothe and reassure their sometimes cranky but always vulnerable females, especially when said females get their periods. Moral of the story : it’s great to have a woman in charge, as long as she likes flowers, adores children and allows a man to spoon up behind her in bed when he’s in rut. If you read this book for the magic, you might be even more disappointed. The Jewels and their hierarchy fit the previous books much better, blending in with the baroque background of courts and mansions, but here they just seem out of place, in the rain and mud and general rustic atmosphere. Plus, some of the Jewel colors are a bit silly; Summer-sky and Purple Dusk make me think of My Little Pony. One thing this book might have done correctly would have been to describe the everyday abilities of the Blood; in the previous books, people kept making things vanish, and I wondered how. Here, the narrative explains that each of the Blood carries around a magic space like an invisible cupboard, in which things can be stored, though that just made me wonder why Jared couldn’t keep weapons or even food in his personal “cupboard”. Answer : that involves thinking. Finally, if you read this book expecting a story, most of the conflict comes from the pseudo-macho squabbles among the male slaves to determine where they stand in the pecking order, and this happens often enough on Earth that one really doesn’t need a fantasy novel to see it. But still, at least this novel came to a welcome stop with Jared’s declaration of wuv, and all’s well that ends.