Living with the Dead

I've been following Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series since the third book came out.  The ninth, Living with the Dead (Bantam, October 2008; editors: Anne Groell (US/Bantam), Antonia Hodgson (UK), Anne Collins (CA)), is now out in paperback, which is the format I've pretty much settled on buying for this series.

Living with the Dead is a bit of a departure for the Otherworld books.  While it's an okay read (even the worst Kelley Armstrong novels are pretty good), Armstrong's decision to write in third person and follow the story from multiple perspectives (including, unusually, a villain's) makes it less gripping than the very best in the series.  Two of those focal characters, non-supernatural publicist Robyn Peltier and untrained necromancer John (Finn) Findlay, just didn't grab me all that much, and both break with the series premise: Robyn isn't a "Woman of the Otherworld," and Finn isn't a woman at all.  Other characters followed are half-demon Hope Adams (the narrator of the more-interesting eighth book, Personal Demon, discussed here) and young clairvoyants Adele and Colm, who are members of a rather creepy clairvoyant commune styled around Romany culture that (predictably) hides dark secrets.  Several other clairvoyants and a few sorcerers enter the story mix, as does Hope's on-and-off lover, werewolf jewel thief Karl Marsten.

What to say about the story?  The main plot thread about Robyn's misadventures as she is pursued by a supernatural stalker -- and the police -- is serviceable enough, though I thought one character was left mysterious a bit too long.  Romantic elements are present but don't dominate the story, which is how I prefer it.  And the romantic resolutions were not convenient, clichéd, happily-ever-after endings; that's a plus.  I was especially pleased with how the Hope/Karl storyline has developed.  I'm not qualified to judge the accuracy of the portrayal of Romany or Romany-influenced culture.

There's nothing really wrong with the Living with the Dead.  I just expect something a little more intense from Armstrong and hope she'll go back to single- or double-narrator first-person writing in future books in the series.  There are hints at the end of the book that the Otherworld series as a whole might be building up to something big.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.

A final note: I was unhappy with the use of serial rape as a story device, even in the service of demonstrating just how despicable the chief villain was.

While I can't really gush over this book, it's a perfectly fine, well-written supernatural/paranormal/urban fantasy/whatever-the-heck-this-subgenre-goes-by novel.  There are sample chapters on Armstrong's webpage (look at the menu at left) if you want to test the waters before reading it. 

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