Years ago a friend of mine with a similar taste in fantasy books told me to try the Black Jewels Trilogy as she was sure I’d love it. Not being able to find it at my local bookstore and not yet buying online at that time I forgot about it though.

Then one day I came across an anthology called Imaginary Friends and in this anthology was the story ‘Stands a God Within the Shadows’ by Anne Bishop.

I fell in love with this story. The writing, the story itself, the emotion in it: everything about it was brilliant. To this day it’s still my favourite short story. So I just had to read more by this author.

I started out my search for more books by Anne Bishop at the local bookstore again. And what did I find: Anne Bishop was the author of the Black Jewels books my friend had mentioned to me years before.

As is usually the case my bookstore still didn’t have the trilogy, but they did have one other Black Jewels book: Tangled Webs.

I took a chance and bought the book even though it wasn’t the first book in the series.

And I’m very glad I did! Tangled Webs was just as beautiful a read as the short story in Imaginary Friends. There was one negative thing though: the characters were so cool, so intriguing that they overshadowed the story. All the while I kept getting sidetracked as I wanted to know more about them and their history. One thing was certain when I finished the book: I had to read more books in this series!

My next read was The Shadow Queen, also a book further along in the series and I loved it, but my curiosity about the characters and their past kept on growing. So my search for the original trilogy was on and finally I found them combined in one large volume.

 Absolutely brilliant!

The Black Jewels Trilogy is fantasy at its best: gritty, dark, but also filled with hope, love and friendship. An epic story with the most amazing characters I’ve come across in fantasy. And just as every other book I’ve read by Bishop it’s written so beautifully it’s a joy in itself to just lose yourself in the flow of the text.

When I finished the trilogy I got hold of all the other books in the Black Jewels series that were available at that moment and devoured them so to speak. And since then I’ve been rereading them all on a regular basis.

At the moment there’s just one book in the Black Jewels series I haven’t read yet and that’s ‘Twilight’s Dawn’ a book that contains short stories and for the moment is only available as a hardcover. I have a rule that I will not buy a hardcover if a paperback will become available of that same book as well, but I can tell you I’m itching to read ‘Twilight’s Dawn’ and I will need all my willpower to keep to my rule in this case. Still more than 200 days to go till the release of the paperback according to book depository. I will try to be strong.

I think there’s a high possibility I will cave though….

Anne Bishop’s writing is too beautiful to resist.

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