Tales of the Otherworld

Yes, I'm back to Kelley Armstrong again, even though it's only been six months since the last time.  What can I say?  She keeps churning them out, and I keep reading.  This one doesn't really count as churned out, however.  Tales of the Otherworld (Bantam Books, 2010; no editor listed) is another collection of shorter series fiction which was, for the most part, first published online several years ago as freebie material for her fans.  (Stories not yet anthologized remain available online.)  It's less thematically unified than last year's Men of the Otherworld, which focused fairly tightly on the men of Armstrong's werewolf Pack.  Anyone who isn't following the entire series will probably be a little lost, since the collection hops all over the place:

"Rebirth" focuses on a minor series character, Aaron, at the time he becomes a vampire and his first meeting with senior vampire Cassandra sometime in the nineteenth century.  A good vampire suffering from angst at his condition is not exactly a new theme, and story is fine but nothing overwhelming.

"Bewitched," the only story not previously published online and thus the only one actually new to me, describes the brief affair of half demon and witch Eve Levine and the sorcerer Kristof Nast.  This mostly fills in a hole for people who were desperate to know how and why such an affair -- taboo in Armstrong's universe, where witches and sorcerers are mortal enemies -- occurred.  I wasn't actually desperate to know this, but the story isn't bad.  Going back and filling in events referred to in later book after her timeline has already moved on is an awkward project which Armstrong generally manages effectively but often without much flair.

"Birthright" and "Ghosts" really should have been in Men of the Otherworld.  The first describes the werewolf Logan's first approach to the Pack as an adolescent unaware of his heritage and the second actually takes place during the Armstrong's first novel, Bitten, and features Pack Alpha Jeremy Danvers.  Neither has much plot going on, but they're fine little vignettes.

"Beginnings" is at least novella-length, possibly novel-length, and again focuses on the werewolves, this time describing the initial courtship of the werewolf Clayton Danvers and Elena Michaels, then human and entirely unaware of his secret.  This is easily the highlight of the book and probably the best place to start for new readers as well.  It effectively fleshes out the brief skeleton of events described in the very first Otherworld novel, Bitten, and draws a pair of very good character studies in portraying the attraction between a lonely young woman who doesn't quite fit in and a werewolf who doesn't really understand (or like) human society but is determined to learn enough to make her happy.

"Expectations" returns to Eve, describing her encounter with crusading young sorcerer Lucas Cortez.  This is another fine but not exciting story that's filling in the details of something mentioned briefly earlier in the series.  I find Armstrong lot more inspired when she's moving things forward rather than writing this sort of filler story.

"Wedding Bell Hell," however, is an exception to this: pure comedy in its description of the wedding of Lucas and the witch Paige Winterbourne, which took place between books three and four of the series (Dime Store Magic and Industrial Magic). Anyone who's ever been involved in a wedding will appreciate the flustered dismay of the couple as they try to deal with everything from misprinted matchbooks to the overly helpful father of the groom.  Supernatural abilities aren't much help in these situations.

"The Case of El Chupacabra" is novella-length and describes an investigation by Lucas and Paige into a possibly supernatural murder while also addressing the awkward closeted situation of Kristof Nast's oldest son, Sean.  The mystery story is not particularly interesting; the excitement in this one is entirely in Sean's experience as a young gay man in a family and race that expects heterosexual machismo.  That's a problem I'd like to see followed up in a later book.  Now that the series is simply "The Otherworld" rather than the original "Women of the Otherworld" perhaps there's a chance.

So is Tales of the Otherworld worth getting?  The stories have been pulled off her website, so this is the only way to read them, and "Beginnings" in particular is well worth reading in its own right rather than just as series-frosting.  I enjoyed reading them, even though I'd read most of them before, but I'm a series fan, and at this point it's difficult for me to judge how accessible such randomly selected stories set in her very complex universe will be to new readers.  I think that other than "Beginnings," every single story here will be appreciated much, much more by people already familiar with the novels.  But Kelley Armstrong does a vastly better job than most paranormal fiction authors in bringing together a wide range of supernatural races in a single universe.  I think I'd still recommend starting with at least the first four novels (Bitten through Industrial Magic), which should give all the necessary background to appreciate these stories.

I'm looking forward to Armstrong's new novel, Waking the Witch, coming out this month and thus probably fated to be discussed here fairly soon.  An online excerpt looks promising: it appears to focus tightly on the young witch Savannah, and Armstrong's single- or at most double-narrator books tend to work better than the ones that jump around to multiple viewpoint characters.

I should also mention that the book is a fundraiser: all profits go to the very worthy World Literacy of Canada.

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