The Shadow Queen (Black Jewels, Book 7)

Reader Reviews
Like most of the other reviewers, I really liked Cassidy and Gray--and I didn't find Theran that bad, since there's room for a lot of later character development there. I also found the Jaenelle/Daemon interludes distracting and mostly irrelevant--they reminded me of Tangled Webs, which was a major disappointment. They were especially annoying as the story drew ot a close, I found myself looking at the centimeter or so of unread text and wondering when she was going to get back to the real story. Saetan's rampage against the extortionist/adulteress was really stupid, I thought, and added nothing to the story. I know how hard it is to let one's favorite characters go and move on, but Bishop needs to do that with Jaenelle and, especially, Daemon. I was never one of those who was completely enamored of him, anyway. He's really too powerful, and that gets boring. And all the sex seems, well, kind of adolescent. I thought that Tangled Webs was kind of a metaphor for Bishop's problems with the Black Jewels world--it was like she was trapped in a world she had created, but couldn't think of any imaginative way to expand it--like Surreal etc., trapped in that silly house. The Shadow Queen, on the other had, had real flashes of brilliance, and I read it in one day. (Tangled Webs was put back on the shelf before I finished it.) I want to see more of the new characters, and less of the old ones--I loved them in the trilogy, but it's time to move on. I'd like to hear more about the Landen, like to see more of Cassidy and Gray, hopefully doing more than gardening (but not necessarily just having sex, either)--and more, much more, of the whole wonderful world Bishop created. This book was a start, but it felt unfinished.