Review: Daughter of the Blood

Warning: All spoilers will be denoted as such: THIS IS A SPOILER MARKING
Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Concession Stand: Soft Pretzel

I'm torn for my review of this book. On the one hand the story, and the characters, are engaging enough that I feel a desperate need to get my hands on the second on in the series. Not to mention the cliff-hanger ending. But the world and the writing style didn't thrill me.



The general concept and magic system is intriguing, but I feel that the author just dumped you into them without any warning and very little explanation. Some authors can do this and gradually show and explain the world to you as you progress. Not Anne Bishop. There are dozens of things about the magic system that I still don't understand even though I finished the book. This would be fine if she hadn't used these things at least a dozen times in the books. I think I have the general concept worked out by filling in the edges with the tidbits sprinkled throughout the books, but the center of the idea - the meat of it - is entirely missing.

Like take vanishing something, for instance. Does it just disappear? Does it go somewhere else? Is it a pocket dimension or a physical location? Can anyone call it back or is that reserved only for the person who sent it? Or perhaps anyone with the same or higher Jewel ranking? If people can vanish and retrieve things with such ease, why isn't there more safeguards available to prevent theft and assassination - as well as any other crime more easily accomplished by people who can simply abscond with anything they can touch? Also, why can't the men just vanish the Ring of Obeisance? 

Also, what is with the gestures? They aren't consistently mentioned, so are they a required part of the Craft or just a idiosyncrasy of certain people? When performing the Craft are there other requirements? Certain applications seem to have props that are necessary - the candles to open the gates, for example - but others seem to just require a focus of will. Is this a facet, again, of the Craft itself or are the props something that lesser casters need to focus their will? 

The different realms - what are they? How do they interact? It seems like there's some crossover between them but it's all very vague and only hinted at when it is mentioned that it is odd that Janelle travels between them at will. Yet it also seems apparent that at least some people in the main, living realm (Terrielle) are aware of the other two realms and it also seems apparent that people in the other realms are completely aware of all three and can seem to travel between them rather easily, if they so chose.

On another issue, as much as the individual characters eventually intrigued me, the interpersonal relations in the book are just awkward and completely nonsensical. Many of their reactions to each other seem to have no basis in any kind of logic or sense. The treatment of men as subservient is never explained very well and some of the things which they are made to do or have done to them make little sense as well. Couple that with the fact that one of the main male characters has the title The Sadist, even though the author did not seem to have a clear understanding of what that word means, and that he is strangely desired and sought by every woman who's ever wanted a man between her legs, even with his reputation, and I was thoroughly confused by the end as to why everyone didn't just kill those people who were troublesome/actively antagonist to them and have done. Especially since the author makes a note that that is, in fact, what is being done by certain people who then proceed to let other characters just prance about and defy and annoy them. It was just confusing and irritating to me.

So, this book gets a grudging three stars from me because through all that I did still fall in love with the main character (or, well, the character that is the focus of the book, even if the story is told from the perspective of everyone but her) and found the general concept and story to be engaging and intriguing. And because I couldn't bring myself to only give it two stars when it did succeed in making me want to get the second book.

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