Black Jewels/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Canon Sue: There are none bigger than Jaenelle Angelline.
    • Although, Jaenelle Saetiencomes close.
  • Complete Monster: This series features a lot of these, with just about every scene featuring them involving either rape or torture.
    • Or, y'know, both. Case in point, that creepy scene in Daughter of the Blood where Zuultah doses Lucivar with safframate...and generally does horrible violent and sexual things to him.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: Near the end of Daughter of the Blood, where Daemon breaks the Ring of Obedience using sheer Heroic Willpower.
    • Jaenelle, after she made her Offering, storming the council room and declaring herself Queen of Ebon Askavi to protect the Kindred.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny : "Your children are having a wonderful time. Come and get them."
    • All the books are chock full of these and it would take fifty pages or more to list them out. Combined with the violence and horror of some scenes, it's easy to accuse the series of Mood Whiplash, but the scary scenes and the funny scenes are spaced out enough for the reader to better acclimate to the change in mood.
    • From Shalador's Lady: "You think you can give me sex that's as good as these cookies?"
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming : When Saetan is reunited with his sons, who were taken from him and brought up as bastards.
    • When Daemon gives Jaenelle the cuff bracelet on their first Winsol together and she kisses him. Then he kisses her back.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Many of the more important villains -- such as Dorothea, Hekatah, and Kartane -- are introduced as being relatively good-looking. None of them remain that way, however.
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Briarwood.
    • "Jaenelle says it is like deboning chicken. Just hook two fingers around the spine and pull."
  • Narm: Pretty much the whole series. Listed on its own page.
  • Tear Jerker: there are some truly heartwrenching moments throughout the series, including but not limited to Jaenelle's rape, Daemon's slide into the Twisted Kingdom, the massacre of the unicorns, and Jaenelle's supposed death.
    • Most recently in The Shadow Queen, there's Saetan's own (temporary) fall into the Twisted Kingdom and his explanation to his son Daemon about what caused it. "It could have been you."
    • From the short story about Zuulaman in Dreams Made Flesh: What happens to Saetan's third son. "Look, Andulvar. Look what they did to my baby. Look."