Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: August 19th, 2012
Date finished: August 21st, 2012
This is the final book (at least so far) in Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series. This review may contain spoilers for previous books in the series, and anyone who hasn't read Kelley Armstrong before, would be better off starting with Bitten, Dime Store Magic, Haunted, Personal Demon or Spell Bound.
Thirteen starts pretty much immediately after the cliffhanger ending of Waking the Witch. Savannah Levine has rescued her half-brother from a renegade group of supernaturals determined to reveal their existence to the world. They've injected Savannah's half-brother with some something containing the DNA of several supernatural races, and it's making him really sick. Savannah and her friends need to make sure that the Supernatural Liberation Movement don't succeed in their plan, but with powerful forces involved, both on the demonic and angelic sides, the struggle could turn into an all-out war, and that would be very bad for humans and supernaturals alike.
As a fan of Kelley Armstrong since 2004, it was both nice and a bit strange to read Thirteen, the culmination of all her Women of the Otherworld books. Like the previous book in the series, this book features pretty much every major character in the series, both protagonists of previous books and a large cast of supporting characters. As such, I doubt it'll be very satisfying to anyone for whom this is their first foray into Armstrong's supernatural universe. Armstrong writes good heroines, and no one can say that she has cookie cutter characters. While the quality of the series has been a bit varied (I went off it for a bit, only to go back and rediscover why I loved it a few years back), this is a solid ending, and it was great to see all the former heroines and heroes working together towards a common goal.
Savannah, who started out as a supporting character in Stolen and Dime Store Magic wasn't always a very likable character, and even annoyed me quite a bit in the previous two books in Armstrong's final trilogy. Yet it was obviously carefully calculated by the author, to show just how much growing and development the character had left to do. I'd rather a character had too many flaws, rather than none and it's always nice when they develop and mature into someone better after a series of trial and tribulations.
If you've read some or all of Armstrong's other books in this series, then you'll probably enjoy this one a lot. If you haven't, do yourself a favour and check out one of the earlier ones I mentioned, they're some of the finest paranormal fantasy out there.
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