Sometimes you read a book and when you finish, you smile and think, “Gee, that was a good book.” Other times you finish and you think, “I can’t wait for the next installment!” Then there are books like Twilight’s Dawn by Anne Bishop, where I was crying with 100 pages to go, and didn’t stop until long after I finished it. And when I say I was crying, I don’t mean a tear slid down my face. I mean I was out and out sobbing, to the point where people were stopping by my cubicle and asking if there was something wrong. Don’t get me wrong — I was sobbing in a good way, if that’s possible. It’s just…after so many years nurturing and loving these characters, to have the series reach its natural conclusion, and to see how happily the ever after is destined to be…yeah, it was an emotional time.
I guess now would be a good time to say that the Black Jewels series is my all time favorite. I hate to play games like this, but if I had to choose one and only one set of books to go with me to some desert island, these would be the books. The original trilogy enthralled me back in the late 90’s, and when the follow-on novella anthology followed in 2005 I nearly fell over myself trying to lay hands on a copy. The continuation novels, with an expanded character set and wider-ranging adventures, were good, but part of me longed for a return to the tried and true characters that I had fallen in love with.
Twilight’s Dawn brought everything full circle, incorporating the expanded characters with the core gang, and explored various aspects of their life, from the extraordinary to the mundane, that didn’t fit into any of the other books. We got to see domestic life, holiday celebrations, and in the end, the culmination of the story arcs for all of the major characters. I’m trying not to spoil anything here, so this may seem really vague. But that last novella, might be the most heart wrenching thing I’ve ever read, but also the most heart warming. A word of advice, however. Read the other books first. Much of this one won’t make much sense, and the emotional impact of what Bishop has done will be lessened for not taking the full journey before reaching this destination.
All of the hallmarks of Bishop’s work are on display here. Hers are character driven stories. The settings are left to the imagination, and in a lot of ways, the plot is a secondary device for us to get to know the people that populate the world. That might make for weak books, but in this case, the characters are so strong, so well developed, and so addictive that any other perceived slights are easily overlooked. In fact, I think the books would suffer if any less consideration was given to the characters. By the end, Daemon, Jaenelle, Surreal, Lucivar, Marian, and the whole gang are part of the family. Or, rather, the reader becomes part of theirs.
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