It’s a rather odd experience: donning the robe of a wary evangelist. For all the warmth it offers, that robe is a heavy garment, woven together as it is with thick threads of deeply-hued love, brightly embellished with moments and hours spent immersed in an another world, and held together by zigzag seams of worry that someone might not feel just that way. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve taken up that robe in the name of Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels books, but I can begin to explain why (and that’s all it will be: a woefully short, superficial look at something that’s long been burrowed deep in my reading psyche and heart).

There is much to commend this series: dark, detailed world-building; occasionally brutal, more often beautiful, and always absorbing story lines; and a cadre of characters so well done, so vital, that they alone make reading these books more than worthwhile. And, as it turned out, three characters would ensure my fall: Saetan, Daemon, and Lucivar. Individually lethal, all three scarred by grievous, unthinkable traumas, and bonded so thoroughly, so palpably that it made my fangirl heart sing an aria. To say that, while I read these books, I lived for the moments these three men would be on the same page would be an understatement: I craved their shared dialogue, I worshiped the moments they spent painstakingly putting one another back together, and I held my breath in between.

With the Black Jewels books, Anne Bishop created heartbreaking characters navigating very real relationships in an encompassing, transporting fantasy world that you’re never quite ready to leave.

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You can visit Chelle at her blog, Persephone Reads =)