Shalador's Lady by Anne Bishop

For years the Shalador people suffered the cruelties of the corrupt Queens who ruled them, forbidding their traditions, punishing those who dared show defiance, and forcing many more into hiding. Now that their land has been cleansed of tainted Blood, the Rose-Jeweled Queen, Lady Cassidy, makes it her duty to restore it and prove her ability to rule.

But even if Lady Cassidy succeeds, other dangers await. For the Black Widows see visions within their tangled webs that something is coming that will change the land-and Lady Cassidy-forever..

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Warning: Spoilers

I loved Shalador's Lady. Okay, so it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the Black Jewels Trilogy, but it comes close. By the end of the last book, The Shadow Queen, Theran seems to be willing to accept Cassidy as Queen. In this one, he is trying to figure out to replace her at the end of the year when her contract runs out. It’s not really an about face, more like he went back to how he was acting in the middle of the last book, only this time the court is more willing to support Cassidy.

There were so many fantastic scenes, I really don’t know which one I like best. Gray grows up, Cassidy learns to trust her court not to leave her, the Shalador people get to know and love her. Theran gets an ultimatum from the other Warlord Princes living in his land. That was fun. Possibly, if I had to pick, the best scene was when Ranon keeps Cassidy from running away by taking her trunks.

The end was perfect. So perfect, I cannot imagine a more deserving ending.

The most intriguing part, the one that makes me want to read the next Black Jewels book, are the references to Falonar and flexible honor and Daemon doing something to him. In the trilogy, there wasn’t any indication that his honor was a flexible thing. Of course, there was any indication his honor was as strong as the other characters (Daemon for example). So I want to know what happened.

If this book has a weakness, it’s that it doesn’t stand alone. It is a sequel, of course, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that if you haven’t read the trilogy first, you are going to miss a lot. Not a lot, you will still get the idea and what’s going on all that and it will still be fun. But Shalador's Lady will lose depth.

Grade: A-