

It is the Olive Garden of books: you go there kind of as a joke, and once you are gorging yourself on a never-ending pasta bowl with salad and breadsticks you start to think ‘Hey, this is pretty good! Why don’t I eat here more often!?’ (This book came to my attention through NPR’s Guilty Pleasures series!) I know it sounds kind of corny and bad, but you really won’t think so once you get into it. It’s an all you can eat buffet of everything that makes books fun: sex violence, magic, aphrodisiac-addled male sex slaves, and of course, castration! The cast of male characters, Daemon, Lucivar, and Saetan (think ‘that Satan’ but less evil and more ‘I wear smoking jackets and shoes and socks’) live to serve their queen, and the queens have all the power.

We talk about what color jewels we would wear and “rising to the killing edge.” When people ask us what the hell we are talking about we say “Black Jewels!” and the eye rolls we get are just one of the many reasons these books are awesome. My friend and I read The Black Jewels Trilogy at the same time and it has been fueling our conversations ever since. Includes Daughter of the Blood, Heir to the Shadows, and Queen of the Darkness
