Daughter of the Blood

Black Jewels, Book 1

By: Anne Bishop

Narrated by: John Sharian

Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Seven hundred years ago, a Black Widow witch saw an ancient prophecy come to life in her web of dreams and visions. Now, the Dark Kingdom readies itself for the arrival of its queen, a witch who will wield more power than even the High Lord of Hell himself. But she is still young, still open to influence - and corruption.

Whoever controls the queen controls the darkness. Three men - sworn enemies - know this. And they know the power that hides behind the blue eyes of an innocent young girl. And so begins a ruthless game of politics and intrigue, magic and betrayal, in which the weapons are hate and love - and the prize could be terrible beyond imagining.

©2007 Anne Bishop (P)2010 Penguin

Critic reviews

"Darkly mesmerizing...[a] fascinating, dark world.” (Locus)

“Lavishly sensual...a richly detailed world based on a reversal of standard genre cliches.” (Library Journal)

“Vividly painted...dramatic, erotic, hope-filled.” (Lynn Flewelling)

A favorite revisted

I was very happy with the reader as I was worried for a bit but he grew on me. t

great story. the performance needs refining

loved the story. however the narrator, I feel, did not put the right emotion it convey the proper emphasis or emotion in the dialog. the questions did not sound like questions and sadness and exclamations seemed off.

but it was done well otherwise.

the story was great. little cringy in some parts, with the child sexually

Going back to it

The world building in this book is just a little too much for me. Way too confusing and complicated and takes away from the story. With that being said , I am going to go back and try this again at another time because I felt the same way about Ilona Andrew's Kate Daniel's series and when I went back to it, it became one of my favorite series. So I will change my review once I have tried it again when I'm in a different state of mind.

My "go to" read

The Black Jewels Trilogy is one of the best series I have ever read. It is dark and harsh and joyful.

Black Jewels

I have a hard copy of the book and downloaded this for a long drive with my fiancé so he could listen to it since it's one of my favorite series! I prefer to read books myself versus audio books, but I feel it was well done. My fiancé enjoyed it and is now listening to the second one through his account.

Listened to Several Times

I really enjoyed the story and characters in this book. This is a Re-Listen kind of a book. The Narrator is so good, I don't usually like listening to male Narrators because the female voices are never right, but John Sharian did an excellent job with all the character voices. Happy to have found this series.

A little hard to follow.

I am sad to say that I did not even finish the Audio book. I really tried to stick with it and got through over half of the book before finally setting it aside. I could not put together a story line. There were many well written ideas and concepts but nothing that ever came together. Believe me when I say that I really wanted to get a story out of what I was reading but......Sorry.

A Walk on the Dark Side of Fantasy

Three things you should know before getting this book. It's very dark and very mature, and if those things are okay with you, the author will take you on a wild ride through the world she created.

The darkness of the book comes from the world it's set in. Some of the characters have names we are familiar with... Saetan, Daemon, and Lucivar... however their names have nothing to do with their namesakes. This is a fantasy world that has nothing to do with ours. To be honest it could have been easier to just name them something else, yet since those names come with connotations, they impress upon us the dark/evil nature of these men... sortof. For instance, Saetan is the High Lord of Hell, yet he's an old man who walks with a cane and acts more like a grandfather. I'll admit it took me a good hour to become comfortable listening to the book because of the names and circumstances but it was worth it.

The mature content is pretty much everything under the sun, tho it could be worse. There's graphic violence and those who take pleasure at watching it, some not-so-graphic sex scenes, the bad guys of the book have a thing for young girls, and the women are uber-sexual females that use some males of their kind as pleasure slaves. However, all that said, the way the book is written, not all of it is smiled upon... it was almost as if the author was showing a world caught up in the worst part of itself. How it needs to be saved. And there's a promise of a young witch who just might.

The world is really well imagined and will definitely appeal to those who like the darker side of novels. There are some moments of revenge that you are hoping will happen, and there's even room for a bit of humor. Imagine two really tough brutal guys falling head over heels for a young girl, one becoming a father-type, the other a protector, both having no clue how to handle someone so powerful and so innocent.

If you're a fan of the dark side, it's a credit-worthy read.

Awesome!

Love all of the Black Jewel trilogy books. Bought all the books before buying audio. When I first got 'Daughter of the Blood', I wanted to read/hear more. Would recommend all the Black Jewel books. Didn't love Sebastian and Belladonna as much. And I absolutely love listening to John Sharian.

Daughter of the Blood

Fantastic story. The best. Looking forward to read more of this story.