Anne Bishop, Heir to the Shadows (Roc, 1999)
Heir to the Shadows is the second volume in Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy. It is the bridge between our introduction in Daughter of the Blood to much conflict — between Jaenelle Angelline, who is the long-awaited Witch, the Queen who is dreams made flesh; Saetan Daemon SaDiablo, black-jeweled Warlord Prince and High Lord of Hell, an undead Guardian who has waited millennia for Witch to appear; his sons, Daemon Sadi, fated to be Witch's Consort, and Lucivar Yaslana, his Eyrien half-brother, a winged warrior; and their enemies, Dorothea SaDiablo, the High Priestess of Hayll in the Realm of Terreille and Hekatah, Saetan's former wife and the self-styled Dark Priestess of Hell, where Saetan's rule is absolute — and its resolution in Queen of the Darkness. It is also the pivotal section of the story, in which Jaenelle recovers from the assault that ended Daughter of the Blood and comes of age as Witch.
One of the hallmarks of a good fantasy is careful and believable universe-building. There are many authors who create consistent, realistic and engaging settings for their stories, and there are those who are exceptionally good at it. The universe Anne Bishop has given us in Black Jewels is far beyond good — it is an organism, so completely real that the "construction" is completely subsumed into the actuality. The three Realms — Tereille, Kaeleer, and Hell — are evoked masterfully, with their parallels and differences sharply delineated. The society of the Bloods — those who share in the powers bequeathed by the dragons — is equally clear, and provides a chilling picture of power corrupted contrasted with those who understand its legitimate uses. (There is an interesting parallel here with C. J. Cherryh's definition of evil at the end of her Fortress series, which is as secular and moral a definition as the one that Bishop develops in Black Jewels; in both authors' eyes, it is the selfish and irresponsible use of power over others that leads to what we may call eternal damnation.)
Bishop takes everything we have ever learned about night, darkness, and blackness and reverses it, through an idiosyncratic evocation of elements of Judaeo-Christian mythology, European folklore, stories of the living, the dead, and the undead. (The characters' names alone are a strong clue as to the bases of the context.) The Darkness is the source of power, night is the time of comfort as well as danger — indeed, for the demon-dead and the undead Guardians, it is the time when they are physically at their best — the dark Jewels are the most powerful, while twilight is the ambience most often felt in the narrative. There is a strong thread of the basic elements of Witchcraft throughout, starting with the notion of duality rather than dichotomy as the necessary keystone of the social structure and including the idea of reverence for life and the natural order as the foundation of true humanity. Bishop's several references to the Queens' need to be in touch with the land only underscore this motif. The role of Jaenelle as Witch, she who is "dreams made flesh," is another and fairly radical statement — as Saetan realizes, not all of the dreamers were human.
How to describe the Blood and their society? Think of wolves, their hierarchies, their intricate formality, their social organization in which all is centered on a ruling pair. Think also of wolves, or perhaps the great cats, as individuals, with all their immediacy, their lightning reactions, their tempers and playfulness, given human form and human — or nearly human — motivations. These are dangerous people who only survive by adhering to their ancient social codes in which Queens rule and that rule is supported and tempered by the males in their courts. That Bishop names them "the Blood" is indicative of their collective character — these are people attuned to deep currents, by turns fierce, loving, calculating, all from a kind of fundamental vitality that comes from the basic stuff of life.
Bishop is a favorite example of my theory that women writers of fantasy and science fiction somehow bring an earthier, more sensual feel to their work than most men writers. One of the overriding characteristics of Heir and of the series as a whole is the sensuality that inhabits every page, a kind of eroticism in its broadest sense — this is a dangerous world, a world as heavily invested in sensation as intellect, a world in which relationships between people grow out of visceral needs, not only for sex or companionship, but for affection and trust, that can only be recognized by psyches highly tuned to subtle clues of scent, attitude, and affect. Jungian psychologist Graham Jackson, in his book The Secret Lore of Gardening, makes reference to this aspect of the erotic as something that is fundamental to defining and structuring relationships. While he discusses specifically relationships between men, this is an idea that has much wider application and one which Bishop, whether consciously or not, illustrates effectively in her rendering of the Blood and their society.
It is no surprise that there are coming of age elements in this story: even though it has grown far beyond its origins as a genre for more-or-less geeky kids, speculative fiction has kept as one of its basic themes the idea of transition from dependency to independence and power. That the young woman coming into her own is a mystery — we never are privy to Jaenelle's thoughts, seeing her only through the eyes of those around her — adds another touch of psychological reality: with Saetan, we are all cast in the role of a parent trying to understand a teenager from the vantage of our own memories of a different time and a different place.
And, as any parent, there are times that Saetan just has to tuck in and endure. Bishop treats these episodes as opportunities for wry, affectionate humor that helps to balance the undeniably troubling aspects of the series: abuse of children is a fundamental part of this story, and Bishop refuses to pull any punches. It is perhaps from this that one of her main themes derives, the dissection of power and its proper and improper uses.
As noted earlier, Heir to the Shadows is a bridge and a pivot: the events — Jaenelle's recovery, Daemon Sadi's sojourn in the Twisted Kingdom, Saetan's struggle to keep Dorothea and Hekatah from destroying Jaenelle, the brutalization and escape of Lucivar, who in turn asserts his own independence, their defense of the Kindred, Jaenelle's assumption of her adult role — are the framework for a richly evoked landscape that is by turns provocative, troubling, reassuring, and hugely satisfying.
