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The Others by Anne Bishop
Apr. 5th, 2022 01:35 pmWritten in Red, Murder of Crows, Vision in Silver, Marked in Flesh, Etched in Bone
3/5. The ones about the girl prophet running from her captors who finds shelter in, essentially, an embassy for weres/vampires/Others, and stuff happens.
Oh boy. Anne Bishop, you guys. Random thoughts:
• Her website says she writes "dark fantasy" which *squints* I mean . . . I guess? It certainly has dark themes. But really it's one of those non-mixing suspensions of violence/horror with cuddly found family feels, so really it's more like . . . cow-print fantasy.
• So let's be 100% clear, the "good guys" in this book are, in fact, the villains. They regularly eat people who vaguely annoy them, claim to own the entire continent and so function as horrifically bad landlords to all humans, and, oh yeah, small detail, wind themselves up in the course of these books to ( spoiler I guess ). Most of the plots of these books are about how these mean mean humans try to start an uprising against the Others and how they are hopelessly outmatched and also terrible people, and uh, no? They are using terror tactics because that's the only tactics they have left in light of staggering oppression? Bishop cycles between totally knowing this and not giving a fuck, knowing it and feeling defensive about it, trying to fix it, and hotly denying that it's true at all. The net effect is like one of those 500,000 word Harry Potter AUs where Harry, IDK, starts sleeping with Bellatrix Lestrange and becomes friends with all the Death Eaters, and the Death Eaters keep murdering and terrorizing but everyone comes home and has a nice dinner after with Harry so it's fine. That's the vibe. You've just got to commit to it, and she mostly does except where she doesn't.
• Part of the mythology here is that there are these girls who see the future when you cut their skin, and if they don't tell anyone what they see it's horrifically painful but they remember the visions, and if they do tell they feel intense sexual pleasure (really, we hear all about the wetness, a lot a lot) and they forget what they saw. I'm . . . just going to leave that here except to say that is an impressive conjunction of kinks all shoved into one piece of world building.
• Parts of this are good? I mean, that's always been the problem with Anne Bishop, she hits a hundred buttons that aren't mine and like ten that are mine but she hits them so good. Here it's a very slow romance between people of different species, and how they become family first, then pack, then something else, and how their differences are healing for them both.
Content notes: Anne Bishop.
Okay okay, um. Cannibalism, violence (sexual and otherwise), gore gore gore gore gore, and that little thing up under the cut.
3/5. The ones about the girl prophet running from her captors who finds shelter in, essentially, an embassy for weres/vampires/Others, and stuff happens.
Oh boy. Anne Bishop, you guys. Random thoughts:
• Her website says she writes "dark fantasy" which *squints* I mean . . . I guess? It certainly has dark themes. But really it's one of those non-mixing suspensions of violence/horror with cuddly found family feels, so really it's more like . . . cow-print fantasy.
• So let's be 100% clear, the "good guys" in this book are, in fact, the villains. They regularly eat people who vaguely annoy them, claim to own the entire continent and so function as horrifically bad landlords to all humans, and, oh yeah, small detail, wind themselves up in the course of these books to ( spoiler I guess ). Most of the plots of these books are about how these mean mean humans try to start an uprising against the Others and how they are hopelessly outmatched and also terrible people, and uh, no? They are using terror tactics because that's the only tactics they have left in light of staggering oppression? Bishop cycles between totally knowing this and not giving a fuck, knowing it and feeling defensive about it, trying to fix it, and hotly denying that it's true at all. The net effect is like one of those 500,000 word Harry Potter AUs where Harry, IDK, starts sleeping with Bellatrix Lestrange and becomes friends with all the Death Eaters, and the Death Eaters keep murdering and terrorizing but everyone comes home and has a nice dinner after with Harry so it's fine. That's the vibe. You've just got to commit to it, and she mostly does except where she doesn't.
• Part of the mythology here is that there are these girls who see the future when you cut their skin, and if they don't tell anyone what they see it's horrifically painful but they remember the visions, and if they do tell they feel intense sexual pleasure (really, we hear all about the wetness, a lot a lot) and they forget what they saw. I'm . . . just going to leave that here except to say that is an impressive conjunction of kinks all shoved into one piece of world building.
• Parts of this are good? I mean, that's always been the problem with Anne Bishop, she hits a hundred buttons that aren't mine and like ten that are mine but she hits them so good. Here it's a very slow romance between people of different species, and how they become family first, then pack, then something else, and how their differences are healing for them both.
Content notes: Anne Bishop.
Okay okay, um. Cannibalism, violence (sexual and otherwise), gore gore gore gore gore, and that little thing up under the cut.
