Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

"Daughter of the Blood" is a book about hating balls. One of the first scenes features a man tied up naked in a leaky rowboat and pushed out to sea. Killing him slowly would be bad enough, but the evil queen also covers his balls in bacon grease and fills the boat with rats (who, as we all know, would navigate even the most difficult maze for a bite of their favorite snack, delicious bacon-flavored nuts). The ball torture doesn't stop there; Anne Bishop imagines a world based around the family jewels--literally because everybody's rank comes from a jewel / jewels given at birth and again when you come of age, and figuratively, because men who misbehave are punished by having their balls slowly removed with a rusty straight razor for the court's entertainment. The jewelry caste system is the most convoluted and confusing aspect of "Daughter of the Blood." The jewels are symbolic but also literally give you power. Except you can break a jewel by thinking about it too much and then you either get a lower jewel or you go insane and everybody who has a similar jewel dies unless they brain surf the jewel-breaking wave. You can talk to other people of your same stone-level using ESP, but you can teleport using the webs for jewels of equal or lesser value. And you can get higher jewels or you can have lots of jewels or your jewels can be uncut jewels which are better than cut jewels (like unshaven men are better than those the queen castrated with scissors). Etc. Etc. Etc. It reads like a Shane Co. catalog after Shane went batshit crazy and his co couldn't talk him off the ledge. The plot of the book (the thing that happens between scenes of ball destruction) follows a young witch (but not in the sense of the word you're used to) who is destined to take over hell (or the living world that orbits hell? I'm not clear on where this is all taking place). She learns basic magic from Saetan (but not the Satan you're used to, this is the emo high-lord of hell whose name is misspelled for [I can only assume] copyright reasons). Meanwhile, Sateian's son befriends her in that totally normal way of a 200-year-old sex slave who plays Tag with and secretly pines for a 12-year-old girl he might be related to. Don't worry, nothing happens between the child and the sex slave. Well, they kiss. Oh, and he does touch her with his "seduction tendrils", his magical ability to go down on a woman's brain. Oh, and he does get his first erection in 200 years thinking about her. Oh, and there is this part where they're both spirit-people and they fool around a little while she giggles like a child, but he's only doing that get her to go back to her body after she wants to die because actual pedophiles have been taking advantage of her in the real world. Men are all either slaves or pedophiles in "Daughter." The world is run by women, but not normal women. These are psychotic, aggressive, ball-hating, and extremely horny women. They force slave men to go down on them almost constantly, and they control these men by attaching a magical cock ring that delivers debilitating electrical shocks directly to a man's penis (and balls!) if he misbehaves. And presumably these men get paid 30% less than the female sex slaves so it's extra mean. Does this sound like an "erotic" fantasy to you? It's not. Don't believe anybody who says that. There isn't one second of healthy, consensual, adult-to-adult human-to-human sex in this book. It's as sexy as watching a dog get neutered, but the dog kinda deserves it because his collar has a ruby on it. Will the young witch come to power with the help of melodramatic Sueautaeuan and his creepy sons? Who knows. Like everything else in the Sex Torture Fantasy genre, this is the first of 1,000 books so no plot elements ever wrap up. Just know that you don't want to find out.