Anne Bishop (1) (1955–)

Written in Red is the first book in The Others series by Anne Bishop. The story is set on an alternate Earth where the world is populated by terra indigene, the earth natives, the Others, who consider humans to be their prey.

Meg Corbyn is on the run. Having fled the facility where she was being kept by her Controller, Meg is desperate to find a safe place where she can hide for a few days. Meg is a cassandra sangue, a blood prophet, a person who can see the future when her skin is cut. This show more makes her very valuable to those who are chasing her. Seeing a sign at the Lakeside Courtyard for a job as Human Liaison, Meg decides that maybe hiding with the Others is the safest place she can be for a few days. Simon Wolfgard knows there's something different about Meg, she doesn't smell right and she's obviously hiding something, so he reluctantly gives her the job to buy himself time to solve what ever mystery it is she's hiding. Besides, the Courtyard really does need someone who can interact with the humans in the area, even if only for a few days.

Slice of life meets paranormal fantasy! I don't know how Bishop managed it but she pulled it off. The story is one beautifully written slow burn that focuses on Meg's daily life of mail delivery as she adjust to her new role as Human Liaison for the Others and learns about the world outside the compound she escaped from. I can see how this could be frustrating for some readers as the plot moves at a glacial pace. I quite enjoyed spending my time with Meg going about her day and learning about both the world and the Others right along with her.

Meg is definitely not your typical heroine. Given that she's been sheltered her whole life, only learning through training videos and other imagery, Meg retains a childlike innocence about her. In some ways her lack of a typical upbringing is a benefit as it gives her a completely different perspective of the world and the Others, allowing her think of solutions to her unique situation that most people likely wouldn't have. It also turns laugh out loud funny at times with some of the odd reactions she has to basic things we take for granted. Meg's courageous, forthright, intelligent and genuinely cares about others no matter what their species. I liked her a lot.

The Others of the Courtyard were a genuine treat to get to know. Bishop has given the standard paranormal creatures a great twist as they identify much more with their beast and elemental natures. This lends an eerie atmosphere to most of the story as these beings are definitely NOT human and barely understand the basics of humanity. Simon, Sam, Tess, the ponies, Vlad and all the rest were a lot of fun to watch how they reacted to Meg-the-not-prey and learned to care about her in their way.

Most unique is there isn't any romance. I honestly have no idea when the last time I read a paranormal fantasy that didn't have romance in it. It was a refreshing choice even if I could see something happening between Meg and Simon in future books.

Even though this is a slow burn that does not mean there isn't any action. The violence of the Others is bloody and can be disconcerting when you realize that humans are their food of choice so nothing goes to... waste.

I quite enjoyed spending my time with the Others. I look forward to continuing along with Meg and her adventures in the next book. show less

Seven hundred years ago a Black Widow witch saw a prophecy in her tangled web of dreams. Now Witch, a new Queen who will wield more power than the High Lord of Hell himself, has come but she is still young, open to influence and corruption. Whoever can control Witch will rule the Darkness. And so begins a game of ruthless politics over the fate of one young girl and the Realms.

Daughter of the Blood is the first in Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy. It is a dark fantasy series set in the show more Realms of the Blood. Blood society is matriarchal with castes ranked by the color of the jewel you wear. The darker the jewel, the more power you have. Bishop has reversed typical fantasy roles. Not only do the women rule but she highlights the physical and social differences between the sexes and shows the fallacies of the system that the people of her world have accepted. She challenges typical gender roles regarding relationships, sexuality and power between men and women. She also explores the idea of how empowered women can be when they believe in themselves and just how easy it could be to destroy that empowerment.

The setting is also different. There are three realms: Terreille, Kaeleer and Hell. It is not medieval nor is it particularly modern. The best description I can come up with is otherworldly. Magic is used instead of technology. People are split into two groups, landen and Blood. Landen are your normal, every day people while Blood is the ruling class that wears jewels, has magic and is fairly long lived. Among the Blood this is broken down further into the living, the living dead and the demon dead with a few races mentioned. Each Realm is divided into territories, with each territory ruled by a Queen and her court. There are various roles in the Queen's court though details are left somewhat vague at this point.

While there are many side characters, the story focuses on four characters in particular: Saetan, Daemon, Lucifer and Jeanelle. The first three are almost pretty much exactly what you think. Saetan is the High Lord of Hell and Daemon and Lucifer are his sons. Daemon and Lucifer were taken as children and raised as pleasure slaves in their aunt's court. Both men have been tortured and abused for their entire lives, their only hope laying in the prophecy of a future Queen who is destined the cleanse the blood of their aunt's taint. Jeanelle is the youngest granddaughter of Chaillot Territory's Queen. Her family sees her as a disturbed young girl who makes up fanciful stories and has been in and out of a mental institution since she was five. Not is all as it seems at the hospital as many of the girls admitted never return to their families. Each character is caught in their own prison, some mentally, some emotionally, some physically, with each person struggling to break free as the story progresses. Each character also must face what they are willing to sacrifice to ensure the prophecy comes true.

The story is a slow reveal with many threads that is spread across all three books. This is a reread for me and it's fun to see just how each book builds upon the one before it. The first book ends on quite a cliff hanger so make sure you have the second one ready to go if you end up enjoying the first.

This series is not for everyone. There are graphic sex scenes and plenty of violence, especially violence against women and children. The scenes are very intense and can be uncomfortable to read. Light moments are mixed in to break things up but it is a series not for the faint of heart. show less

This was really terrible. Anne Bishop is known for writing id-fulfillment in fantasy novels, complete with as many abused Mary Sues as possible. I expected lots of fluffy titilation with very little substance (no real plot or cohesive world building, I mean), but I was annoyed at how boring and dull the would-be-titilation was. Sebastion is an incubus living in a world created specifically to cater to "dark desires", and yet all he does is have bland sex with women. No kinks, no gender-play, show more certainly nothing homoerotic (dammit)--the most depraved thing he does is eat cheesy bread shaped like sexual organs. The Den of Iniquity is supposedly terribly shameless and lascivious, yet all that apparently happens there is lame het sex. A single murder sends all the residents into a tizzy. And no one worries about money! Everything is provided by Gloriana Belladonna, a beautiful, abused-as-a-child enchantress. (Note: In Anne Bishop stories, *everyone* is abused as a child.) There's no tension or grit to this book. Even the big terrible monster is A)not scary in the least and B)clearly going to lose, undoubtedly due to some deus ex machina. Ugh. show less

'Lake Silence' was a wonderful surprise. I loved 'The Others' series. 'Written In Red' remains one of my favourite Urban Fantasy books: it was original, exciting, packed with emotion and opened up a whole new world where humans can't quite accept that they are not at the top of the food chain. I read the fifth book, 'Etched In Bone' recently and I thought it did a good job of rounding out Meg's story. I wasn't sure how Anne Bishop would move forward once she left Meg and The Courtyard show more behind. It turned out that she managed to keep a lot of the themes and the emotions of 'The Others' series while getting to introduce a whole new set of characters.

The title and the cover of 'Lake Silence' had given me the impression that this might be a gloomy book, so I was surprised and pleased to find that parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny. I loved Vicki Divine, the main female human character in the book. She was so well realised and easy to relate to. She's a woman who has freed herself from an abusive marriage where her husband used words like fists to beat her down and keep her wounded. Following her divorce, Vicki has made a new start for herself by renovating a lodge in the Wild Country on land owned by The Others. With the right people (and the right Others) around her, she's started to create something positive. Then her husband and his cronies arrive, determined to take it all away.

'Lake Silence' really surfaced the rage at misogynistic, narcissistic, hate-driven, entitled, venal men who use bullying, lies and violence to feed their insatiable hunger for power and money that is at the heart of Anne Bishop's books. 'Lake Silence' shows a deep understanding of the effects of long-term abuse and the mindset of abusers. Vicki Divine's panic attacks and her vulnerability felt real to me. The mechanics of the abuse felt so familiar that they felt almost inevitable. Vicki was prey. Her husband was the predator.

But this is the world of The Others, where all humans are prey unless The Others see a reason to classify them as 'not meat'. The world of The Others is a wish fulfilment environment, where the reader knows the bad guys are going to get their comeuppance but you don't know how or how much damage they'll do before they're stopped.

I admired how Anne Bishop not only revealed the mechanics of patriarch/old boy's club - getting away with things, reneging on deals, bullying - every deal a contest with only one winner - but how she managed to show this behaviour as fundamentally pathological. These men are doomed not because they are bad (although that's why we readers cheer when their doom catches up with them) but because they lack the imagination to understand that they are not the biggest predators around. More than that, how they behave is so much a part of their identity that they hide their failures from themselves, refusing to accept and adapt to the reality that the world is not theirs to rule.

The Others in this story were familiar enough for me to understand them and new enough for me to fall in love with some of them again, without ever losing sight of how dangerous they are.

One of the things that 'Lake Silence' made me think about was our unwillingness/inability to see the world as it is when seeing it that way means acknowledging that we are never truly safe. Even the ordinary people in the town, those not blighted by an exaggerated sense of their own importance, managed to convince themselves that they were not sharing space with shapeshifters who looked human but who, in the right circumstances, might see humans as a mid-morning snack. It made me think about how this translates into ordinary life, especially in cities, where anonymous violence is always a possibility if you're of the wrong gender, race, age or class or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do we let ourselves understand the risks to ourselves and the people we care about or do we remain stubbornly optimistic because the alternative would be not to leave the house?

Mostly, 'Lake Silence' was a good story, well told, that delivered tension and laughter and characters I could care about. It was great entertainment. Behind the entertainment, it seemed to me that there was a message, half plea, half prayer for a world that recognises that real strength has no need for dishonesty or mendacity and that the weak can find their place if they have the confidence to offer what they have openly and truthfully. show less