CBR4 Book 77: "Thirteen" by Kelley Armstrong

Page count: 409 pages
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.

CBR3 Book 63: "Spell Bound" by Kelley Armstrong

Publisher: Orbit
Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars
Date begun: August 4th, 2011
Date finished: August 6th, 2011

This is book 12 in the Women of the Otherworld series, and while Kelley Armstrong's books previously have been pretty stand alone from each other, this one will make little to no sense unless you've read at least Waking the Witch, and preferably also Personal Demon, No Humans Involved, Broken and Haunted. So there will absolutely be spoilers for the previous book. If you haven't read it, skip this review, and go read Armstrong's back catalogue instead. It's pretty much all excellent.

Savannah Levine, daughter of a very powerful witch and a sorcerer, has lost all magical ability, and is unsure of how to handle herself, having always relied on her magic in all aspects of her life, especially when working for her guardians' investigation firm. There's a witch hunter after her, who doesn't realize that Savannah is powerless now, and Savannah wishes she'd paid more attention to traditional self defence and investigation technique. Her various supernatural friends cannot find a reason for her sudden loss in powers, and once it turns out that the witch hunter is the least dangerous of the ones wanting their hands of Savannah and several of her friends, she'll need to figure out how to get her magic back, so she can help out in what looks to be a supernatural war.

Savannah has been a supporting character in several of Armstrong's earlier books, and got her first "starring role" in last year's Waking the Witch. While she's 21, Savannah is also self-centered, immature and quite annoying at times. Considering the very privileged life she has led, she should be a lot more grateful, and less of a spoiled brat. This is clearly intentional, as Armstrong has not one, but several other characters tell Savannah to get the heck over herself and start growing up in this book. Which she appears to be doing, with minute baby steps.

For long time readers of Armstrong, this book pretty much features every single character who we've met in her universe before: Elena, Clay, Jeremy, Jaime, Paige, Lucas, Cassandra, Hope, Karl, and of course, Adam. Most of them have little more than cameo appearances, several of them feature much more prominently in Industrial Magic, for example. Still, this story is clearly mainly about Savannah, and her development into one of Armstrong's strong and admirable heroines. This book is clearly also the middle installment in what will be a trilogy. It starts immediately after the end of the previous book, and ends with most of the threads introduced in this book unresolved. According to the internet, the concluding book, not just to the trilogy, but to Armstrong's entire Women of the Otherworld series, will be out next year. As someone who's followed her series for nearly a decade, I will be reading that one as well, even if this was one of the less engaging of the installments.