Book sixty-two: No Humans Involved

No Humans Involved (2007)
Kelley Armstrong

Rating: 4/5

I love this series. Not only does Armstrong maintain the quality of her writing and plots, but it just keeps getting more and more interesting.

Jaime, who knows a thing or two about showbiz, is on a television shoot in Los Angeles when weird things start to happen. As a woman whose special talent is raising the dead, her threshold for weirdness is pretty high: she's used to not only seeing dead people but hearing them speak to her in very emphatic terms. But for the first time in her life - as invisible hands brush her skin, unintelligible fragments of words are whispered into her ears, and beings move just at the corner of her eye - she knows what humans mean when they talk about being haunted.

She is determined to get to the bottom of these manifestations, but as she sets out to solve the mystery she has no idea how scary her investigation will get, or to what depths ordinary humans will sink in their attempts to gain supernatural powers. As she digs into the dark underside of Los Angeles, she'll need as much Otherworld help as she can get in order to survive, calling on her personal angel, Eve, and Hope, the well-meaning chaos demon. Jeremy, the alpha werewolf, is also by her side offering protection. And, Jaime hopes, maybe a little more than that.

Bitten the first in this series, was the first book I read with a werewolf in it, so I think it will forever hold a special place in my heart. But seriously, I remember reading somewhere that Armstrong hadn’t originally planned to have this as a series, and knew that there was no way she’d be able to write about one character indefinitely. So, she create a whole cast of characters that are just – if not more – interesting than her originals.

I also found it really interesting the different perception you gain of different characters just from seeing them from a different point of view – and the stuff you find out that they are keeping from others. Very tricky.

After reading this, I think I’m going to have to find the anthology Dates from Hell to find out what exactly went on between Hope and Karl.

The next book in the series, Personal Demon, will be released in the U.S. in Spring 2008, and will have Hope and Lucas as narrators. How will that work? I thought this was supposed to be Women of the Otherworld… maybe they’ll change it to just Otherworld?

I don’t care, as long as Armstrong writes it, I’ll read it.

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Finished: 9/6