I may one day write an actual review of this book, but this is not going to be your typical review, because I am conflicted. Very, very conflicted. I love this book, I have loved Sarah J. Maas all the way back from around 2004! when I first came across an amazing story by "SJ Maas" on Fictionpress called Queen of Glass. I've spent years admiring her and, to be brutally honest, wishing that I could write half as well as her and that I had the courage to seek publication as she did. But as much as I adored A Court of Mist and Fury, part of me is just jumping up and down saying - doesn't ANYONE ELSE see it? 
 And by that, I'm mostly taking about the overwhelming amount of stuff from the Black Jewels Trilogy. Therein lies the conflict: if you're offered your very specific favorite dish, made mostly in the same way down to the same recipe, but at a different restaurant than the one that invented it, how do you react? The food is just as delicious, but at the end of the day, it leaves you feeling a little bothered for enjoying it so much. 
 I've always known that I apparently grew up reading and loving the same books as Maas. My very first favorite books ever - which is something pretty hard to define when you're as voracious of a reader as I was - were Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain. Then I moved on to Tamora Pierce briefly before falling under an Anne Bishop spell that lasts to this day. I read and reread The Black Jewels Trilogy at least a dozen times, no exaggeration needed. They got me through some really low points in middle school, and then in high school I met and fell in love with Phedre and Joscelin, and Jacqueline Carey became my all time favorite for the Kushiel trilogy. Each one of these that I've mentioned will be important, so please bear with me. 
 Anyway, I am practically militant about promoting Maas' Throne of Glass series to friends, students, anyone, and this, uh, recycling of ideas from our shared favorite authors is not something new before. It isn't surprising in that sense and I've written reviews justifying and defending the sources of her inspiration before. But... I'm also the girl who once upon a time read a well known Harry Potter fanfiction trilogy - which was already dogged by plagiarism accusations - and, just about lost my shit when I read City of Bones and realized that parts of it were lifted wholesale from her own fanfiction. So I wrote a very long, snarky review on Amazon, never thinking that out of the hundreds of reviews, anyone would ever bother to read my rambling review, but somehow that snarky review turned into the most recommended review. Long story short, I've been getting hate mail to this day from Clare's more or devoted fans, even after I backtracked and upped the rating to a three star review. With great power comes great responsibility, I'm telling you. You never know who's going to read your review and lose their dollar over your two cents. 
 So I'm pretty hesitant to say anything critical over this and I don't even really want to get in it, hence this very long introduction. But let's get back on track. If you want to read Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy/series and you haven't yet, 1. YOU SHOULD WANT TO READ IT. GO READ IT. and 2. Stop reading this review, because it's going to have all the spoilers I can manage to cram into nutshells. The Black Jewels trilogy consists of Daughter of the Blood, Heir to the Shadows, Queen of the Darkness. (let's start off by ignoring the whole Heir of Fire/ Queen of Shadows thing as I have no interest in quibbling over that) 
 I'm going to assume that if you're here, you've read A Court of Mist and Fury so I'll mostly talk about the Black Jewels and then maybe briefly outline some of the similarities if you still haven't gotten them yet. 
 In Bishop's world, ruled primarily by strength, you have Queens who rule courts full of dangerous warriors, with Warlord Princes being at the top of the food chain. Basically people of the Blood who have magic go through a birthright ceremony when they come to age and that determines what Jewels they wear - specifically, the color of the jewel corresponds to the strength of their magic, with darker colors such as Red, Gray, Ebon Gray, and Black being the strongest. These Warlord Princes are driven to serve and protect the Queens, and thus are bred/trained for their dangerous killing abilities, including a rage that drives them to the "killing edge." Along with this volatile nature is a bunch of primal (or macho, really) instincts with a fair amount of sexual aggression too. Now, 7th grade me took a while to figure it out (no matter how many adult books you've read, it's not every day that an author literally goes there), but Queens actually control these dangerous males by a magical ring around their dick, with varying levels of torture possible and the last resort option of more or less blowing it up. That's every bit as horrible as it sounds...although of course a truly skilled author can also turn it all around and make this ring into a symbol of honor, protection, courage, as Bishop does in a prequel to the Black Jewels trilogy, The Invisible Ring. 
 Anyway, power corrupts and you've got some truly awful people running courts, including some pedophilic rapists and a manipulative, ambitious, corrupt High Priestess. (Don't worry, her name is not Ianthe.) I know all this sounds pretty jaw droppingly explicit for anyone to read, let alone my entire middle school group of friends, but a lot of it is actually implied, not outright stated, with a lot of euphemisms. Whether that makes it better or worse for young readers, I'm not sure. All I can say is that parents freaking out about violence and bloodshed The Hunger Games these days clearly never knew what the kids a half generation before were reading. 
 At the start of the books we meet two brothers, both bastards but with the same father, Daemon and Lucivar. Daemon is the most powerful Warlord Prince, period - he's dark, mysterious, and takes scary-killing-machine a step farther beyond the "killing edge" as his anger runs cold, not hot, and his skills are mental, not physical. Let's just say that he can and does basically disintegrate people and/or blow them up - it's unclear as he just leaves a blood splattered room behind. However, due to the matriarchal society, he's also a pleasure slave that the powerful Queens are afraid of, yet can't resist using. Well, he's not just a sex slave, he's the best sex slave. But he has also waited for over a thousand years for his mate, the Witch who is destined to end the corruption, a Queen literally conceived from the dreams of those who want a return to the old ways of honor and glory - "dreams made flesh." 
 Onto Lucivar, also an extremely strong Warlord Prince, except when we first meet him, he's enslaved in the salt mines of Pruul. (Yes, salt mines are rather popular, aren't they?) Now I will copy and paste a blurb straight from the Black Jewels wiki since I couldn't have written it better myself: "Lucivar is a tall, good looking Eyrien, with the golden brown skin, black hair, gold eyes and large membraneous black wings typical of his race. He is well-built and very capable as a warrior, having spent his childhood in Eyrien hunting camps learning to master their weaponry and style of combat." I could go so deep into this, but then I'd be writing pages and pages when I can succinctly sum it up as Eyrien == Illyrian. I feel like I'm truly giving Lucivar the short end of the stick here because of that generic, bland description of him which doesn't go into his personality at all, but I'm sure you can guess. 
 Anyway, Jaenelle, the Queen more powerful than any other, finally arrives as foretold - as a young girl not fully mature with her powers. A lot of really dark stuff happens (just rape, torture, maybe a little castration later on...you know the usual), and unsurprisingly it leaves her in a physical coma and mentally breaks her. Daemon also goes insane trying to save her. Jaenelle eventually grows into her powers and creates the Dark Court, a hierarchical court based on loyalty, protection, honor. Let me just take a moment to say that despite all the dark, atrocious things that happen in this book, Bishop actually manages to put a lot of humor in as well and a lot of the goodness and light that eventually leaves your sense of justice (or what I like to call, "the world will be all right") satisfied. 
 One more thing, Jaenelle makes the ultimate sacrifice in the end and nearly dies, but is saved by the dreamers who brought her into existence as Witch and Dreams Made Flesh. She loses all the power of her jewels however, but is given a special jewel, Twilight's Dawn, which has the power of a little bit of every jewel color in it. Meanwhile Daemon thinks she's gone and is drawn to a sculpture of a ferocious beast/man and woman. At first glance it seems frightening but at a closer look, one can see that the woman is actually being protected. (I'm paraphrasing heavily here but maybe when I have more time I'll come back and actually excerpt the scenes from both books.) 
 So I've just spent many long paragraphs describing a book that is not A Court of Mist and Fury but which probably explains a lot about why I'm so conflicted. The thrice-bedamned Illyrians. Eyrians. And really, I mean, is it even fair to combine the incredible awesomeness of Daemon AND Lucivar into one friggin character? Daemon's psychic powers, his rage and sheer power, his constant seduction and masks hiding his true self, ADDED TO Lucivar's humor, brash arrogance, physical skills, Eyrian wings, etc.? 
 And yet, it is possible to actually not squeal like a fangirl gone wild now that it's actually been done? I mean seriously, no matter how weird I feel about recognizing all of this, how can I not love it when someone so very skillfully takes all the things I love most and basically makes more of it? The similarities are undeniably there, but so what? A large part of me also wants to tell the critical part, the part that can't stop seeing the parallels, to shut up and just let me enjoy this. 
 I really don't know how to feel, but I'll end this rambling mess with one more thing: the Cauldron, and the idea of the resurrected Cauldron Born. I said that long before I discovered Anne Bishop, I grew up on Lloyd Alexander. Book 2 of the Chronicles of Prydain is The Black Cauldron, a book that obviously Maas read too. But it would be extremely misguided to think that Alexander himself invented any of it - the Horned King, Gwydion, Arawn, etc. Most of it was heavily inspired by Welsh myths, particularly the Mabinogion. Alexander was my personal introduction to most of these names, characters, and places, but countless people have drawn inspiration from myths--have embellished them, reused them in new and different ways, and in a real sense, kept them alive for future generations. I mean, I can say something about Shakespeare here too, but I think you get the point. 
 You know that feeling when you've discovered a book so good, so you and everything you believe in and dream about, that you want everyone to read it - your best friend, your boyfriend, the world - but at the same time you're also afraid to let them try, because you're not sure if they'll get it and appreciate it the way that you do? With every word, sentence, description...I may have recognized where Maas got her inspiration, but at the same time, it's okay because she got it. 
 Perhaps it makes me somewhat uncomfortable, as such a big fan of the Black Jewels, to read about Illyrians and Rhysand and the Court of Dreams. But in a way, it makes me very glad too, because it also is a testament to how much Bishop impacted and influenced the young writers who read her books and dreamed of creating similarly lush, darkly fantastical worlds.