As I noted in the review for Mélusine, The Virtu and it were apparently originally intended as one book rather than two separate volumes. And, as I also noted, this does show. The Virtu picks up pretty might right where Mélusine ended, with Felix’s sanity and his powers restored. Half the journey has been completed, and what remains now for him and Mildmay is to return home to Mélusine so that Felix may attempt to mend the Virtu, broken with his powers but not by him in the first book.

Sometimes, it is difficult to say what is harder to deal with: who you are, or who you aren’t. Imriel nó Montrève de la Courcel, son of Terre d’Ange’s most infamous traitor, the deadly beauty Melisande Shahrizai, and foster-son of its most famous heroine, Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève, finds himself in such a situation. He despises his real mother and idolizes his foster-mother and her consort, Joscelin. But he cannot escape Melisande’s legacy, which makes him suspicious in the eyes of some and a worthy heir to the throne in the eyes of others, any more than he can hope to be a great hero, chosen by the gods to save all of Terre d’Ange. Instead, he must try to find his own path in life.

Since stopping Melisande’s plot to overthrow Queen Ysandre, Phèdre has had ten years of peace together with Joscelin. However, all that time the shadow of Hyacinthe has still hung above her, and she has never stopped trying to find a way to release him from the task he took upon himself. Other concerns have nagged at her mind too, such as the whereabouts of Melisande’s hidden son, third in line for the throne of Terre d’Ange. These two matters then become inseparably linked as Melisande sends for Phèdre, and reveals to her that Imriel, her son, has gone truly missing. Now she wants Phèdre to try to find him, and as payment for this service she is offering something that may be the only thing that can help find a way to free Hyacinthe.

In the second book of Kushiel’s Legacy, the story of Phèdre is given a worthy continuation, though in many ways it is a very different book from the first one. This was to some extent unavoidable, however, given that Kushiel’s Dart was focused around Phèdre’s coming-of-age. Here, however, we meet a more mature heroine. Following the events of the first book, Phèdre is living a relatively quiet life in the countryside, something that probably would have started to wear thin sooner or later, save perhaps for the distraction offered by her continued attempts to search for a way to free her friend Hyacinthe. However, it turns out she has no reason to be worried about growing bored, as she finds that she must once again take up her duties as a Servant of Naamah in order to uncover what the elusive Melisande—escaped by the help of a traitor in their midst—now plans to do.

In the third and final book of the Black Jewels, the struggling factions of the previous two books will finally clash for the final time. Though Jaenelle knows that she is too powerful to unleash her full strength, as it would destroy most of the Blood, she can no longer avoid a confrontation with the two women who have made Terrielle into the twisted perversion of Blood society that it now is: Hekatha, the demon-dead Dark Priestess who once was the wife of Saetan SaDiablo, and Dorothea SaDiablo, the woman who has taken control over all of Terrielle. The pair now seeks to extend their influence into Kaeleer, to corrupt the realm of Shadow in the same way that they have corrupted the realm of Light, and the only possible outcome seems to be a war between the two realms. But the last one devastated them both, and even though Kaeleer was stronger then as it is stronger now, it still suffered grievous losses.