Five Books In And I’m Meh About This Series

I initially was pleased to read The Others series by Anne Bishop, particularly starting with Written In Red, the first book of the series. I’ve read some of her other fiction, the first few books of the Black Jewels series, which I would not recommend at all.  A few people told me, yeah those books are terrible, but the Others books are great.

The Others takes place in a world that is sort of like our own, but there are elementals and powerful forces of nature that are sentient and not too happy with humans.  Then there are the lesser forces, the werewolves, vampires, and other creatures.  And then there’s the heroine of these novels, Meg, who is what they call a cassandra sangue, basically a psychic who can see the future when she cuts herself.  The series begins with Meg escaping a sort of institution where her prophecies are sold to the highest bidder.  She comes to a town called Lakeside that is run by the Others, but humans also live nearby, and she finds a way to bring the worlds of the humans and the Others together.

I don’t want to spoil it too much if you haven’t read any of these books, but they do have a lot of interesting stuff in them.  The world is interesting, and the creatures can be a lot of fun (particularly the crow-beings who can look like humans).  But there’s also some problematic aspects, a lot of sexism, and a weird sort of “natives are more powerful” trope, and if that kind of thing bothers you, maybe you would give this series a wide berth.  (And definitely whatever you do, don’t read the Black Jewels series!)

Books one through four were a slow build of the war between the humans and the Others.  This is book five, a denouement after the war.  It’s mostly about how a creepy guy moves to the town where Meg lives and causes all kinds of problems.  He’s pretty much a cardboard cut-out of a villain, and no one is going to be upset if he gets killed by the Others.  By book five, there isn’t as much of a feeling of real danger happening to our favorite characters, just some kind of gross stuff happening when a sociopath moves into town.  I wouldn’t recommend book five unless you read and loved the first four!