• The Invisible Ring

  • A Black Jewels Novel
  • By: Anne Bishop
  • Narrated by: John Sharian
  • Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (521 ratings)

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The Invisible Ring  By  cover art

The Invisible Ring

By: Anne Bishop
Narrated by: John Sharian
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Publisher's summary

A prequel set in the "dark and sensual world" (11th Hour) of the national best-selling Black Jewels Trilogy.

Jared is a Red-Jeweled Warlord bound as a pleasure slave by the Ring of Obedience. After suffering nine years of torment as a slave, he murdered his owner and escaped - only to be caught and sold into slavery once again. The notorious queen who has purchased him, known as the Gray Lady, may not be what she seems. Soon, Jared faces a difficult choice: his freedom, or his honor.

©2008 Anne Bishop (P)2008 Penguin

Critic reviews

“Plenty of adventure, romance, dazzling wizardly pyrotechnics, and [a] unique and fascinating hierarchical magic system...darkly macabre with spine-tingling emotional intensity, mesmerizing magic, lush sensuality, and exciting action, all set in a thoroughly detailed, invented world of cultures in conflict... The Invisible Ring will serve as an enticement, whetting the appetite to explore more of the realms in the Black Jewels trilogy. It and its predecessors are genuine gems of fantasy much to be prized.” (SF Site)

“[An] entertaining otherworlds fantasy adventure with battles and dangers and chases. Fresh and interesting.” (Chronicle)

“A weird, but highly diverting and oddly heartwarming mix.” (Locus)

What listeners say about The Invisible Ring

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Save Your Credit

Note: Although this is supposed to be a standalone novel, I don't believe anyone would be able to follow the story without reading the Black Jewels trilogy first. And, if you read this book first, you may never read another Anne Bishop book so don't start Black Jewels here.

I really enjoyed the original Black Jewels trilogy so I didn't worry much that there were no reviews of this prequel and picked it up with high expectations. What a disappointment - absolutely pathetic. I would normally return a book this bad, but I wanted to post a review just to warn others. I now realize why there were no reviews even though there are many people who have read it. Any time you post a critical review of a beloved author, you get slings and arrows, but just in case anyone is interested before listening to this dud, I will brave it and advise you to SAVE YOUR CREDIT for something better.

Everything I liked about the original trilogy - engaging characters, intricate magical system, grand world building - is gone. Everything I was afraid might be in the original trilogy and was happy to find it wasn't there, has made it into this book. Women who behave like naughty 3-year-olds sulking and pouting and men who find that idiocy attractive and "handle" women like they were children even though the male characters are written to be just as immature and stupid as the female characters. Jared's big romance is the driver for the whole book and even if I liked Romance as a genre (which I don't), this is a REALLY lame romance with two of the most boring characters of all time. The only male character in this novel with the kind of fascination factor of the original is a "walk-on" appearance of Daemon and there is not a single female character that comes anywhere close to being as engaging as Jaenelle, Surreal, or Tersa. In addition, Bishop's writing, that I found rather pedestrian in the trilogy becomes truly lame in the Invisible Ring. Some cringe-worthy samples that will give you a flavor of this rather painful listening experience:

"He'd said goodnight to Lady Cuddles and woke up to Lady Grumpy." (ugh)

"I should take you over my knee and wallop some consideration into you." (Said by a grown man to an unrelated grown woman - I do not have words for how much I despise this kind of interaction between male and female characters in novels.)

""It knocked me down", she said, pouting. She sounded like a little girl whose best friend has snatched her favorite toy." (This is Bishop's description of a grown woman, gray-jeweled witch after using her magic. I'm betting Surreal would have called up her stiletto to use on this girl!)

Like the other Black Jewels books, this one is heavy on the sadism, but unlike the original trilogy, the sexual perversions and tortures are almost totally gratuitous and do nothing to further the plot or character development. And the constant discussion of "Moon Blood" and "Virgin Nights" was it's own kind of torture for me. The book is 400+ pages and I'm guessing the word "bitch" must be used an average of 2 times per page. Throw in a generous helping of "slut" and "whore" and you can probably tell that the misogyny quotient for this novel is huge and it's just a lazy, tedious, manipulative way to make you hate the bad guys.

The Invisible Ring not only doesn't measure up to the original Black Jewels trilogy, it is just plain bad.

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23 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Bad Queen, Good Queen, Warlord Prince

You should only consider getting this title if you're already a fan of the Black Jewels trilogy ("Daughter of the Blood," "Heir to the Shadows," and "The Queen of Darkness," hereafter referred to as BJT), and even then I wouldn't recommend "The Invisible Ring."

The BJT is a mix of magic, epic fantasy, sadistic evil, adventure, romance, and erotica (both romantic and BDSM). Its world is one of multiple planes (Terreile, Kaelaer, Hayll, and the Twisted Kingdom) and different races (winged humans, humans who live for centuries, regular humans, "black widows," and undead sorta vamps). Jewels are the source of magic, and the darker the jewel the more potent the magic. Women hold the dominant sexual power and evil queens enforce it by forging "rings of obedience" onto the … anatomy … of any powerful Warlord Prince they can get their hands on.

If you're still reading this after the above description, you might enjoy the BJT books, which are unique, intriguing, exciting, romantic, and often erotic. But "The Invisible Ring," a prequel to the BJT, is none of these.

The marvelous, fully developed characters of BJT are absent. Instead we have the callow Jared and a pretty young pre-queen who may, if Jared and his buddies can manage to save her from the hideously evil Red Queen Dorothea, develop into a full-fledged Grey-Jewelled Queen (grey jewels being pretty high-powered items in this world). Dorothea is the only major character from BJT who shows up (well, BJT' s hero Daemon has a cameo, but it's so pale you can overlook it). Dorothea's scenes are truly gruesome--she is one corrupt witch queen!--but mostly the book is just boring and trite, and very unlike the books of the trilogy.

P.S. The review of Invisible Ring by Tango is spot on. I have been meaning to post this "warning" review for a while, and her excellent summation has just beaten me to it!

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Not a classic but an interesting back story

Based on the couple of reviews already written by Tango and Carol I skipped this book originally and listened to the remaining books in this series.

Its reading order is book 4 - immediately after the original trilogy but I am glad I skipped it and went straight to book 5.

The Shadow Queen - which is book 7 refers back to events involving Jarod and Lia, the principal characters of this book and I think I found it more interesting to come back and listen to this book afterwards as I had a bit more interest in the characters then.

So if like me you enjoyed the rest of the series I think its worth listening to this one, though it is easily the weakest book of the 9
The points made by Tango are all valid but I don't think its quite as bad as made out in that review, some of the dialogue and behaviour of the characters is cringeworthy. Still I finished it and enjoyed the climax - even though it was all fairly predictable.

By far the best character in the book is Dorothea who is just as evil as we would expect.
Daemon makes brief appearances but we don't learn anything new about him and there are passing mentions to Lucifar and Surreal but other than that no other characters from the other books are even mentioned

The performance by John Sharian is all you would expect so if you liked his narration for the other books then you will be happy with his performance here.

My summary - if you enjoyed the whole series and want extra background its worth a credit, but its really not in the same class. Committed fans only.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Another tale in the amazing Black Jewels universe

This is just another example of how much I love any stories set in this world. The characters were interesting and I loved the dynamics between Jared and Daemon.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

hard to finish

of all the books so far this is the hardest to get threw. the characters have no depth and the story is just boring

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

reader is obnoxious

The story ties in perfectly with the rest of the Dark Jewels series. Talon is a character I was pleasantly surprised to get more backstory on. The reader however is incredibly obnoxious with his attempts at voices. Would have been better if he'd read it monotoned.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A great sife-story in the Dark Jewels saga

This was excellently constructed and executed. A mad dash story that had enough twists to keep me guessing until the end.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Boring

Nothing like the Trilogy. Very boring, could care less about any of the characters.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Disappointed

A very, very, long coming of age romance ., feel free to skip this one in the series .. it filled in only a few tiny holes in the saga series, not enough to warrant purchase or the misery. Fan of this author, but I’m wondering where was her editor ? On vacation ?

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Loved it!!

I look forward to reading the next book in the Black Jewel series. I fell in love with this series years ago when I first read the trilogy.

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