Thursday Thoughts: Re-reading The Others series by Anne Bishop!!!

Hey there guys!

This is a scheduled post because I'm out and about on a quick and rather improptu trip! I'll tell you all about it once I return, and hopefully I'll share some photos if my phone & laptop feel like working together!

I continue to keep Thursdays as my days to catch up with my series re-reads! I'm quite proud to say that I've been re-reading quite a lot more this year, and it's proven quite amazing to revisit series I've loved to prepare for the next or last installment!

This week I'm gonna talk about one of my absolute favourite adult urban fantasy series out there: The Others by Anne Bishop! Must give a BIG shout out to Octavia from Read Sleep Repeat because she kept recommending this series to me, time and again!


Unlike what I did with the Red Rising trilogy I won't do a book by book re-read review because even with this re-read, I'm still sure I might end up mixing up a few events from one book to another because my brain now processes the whole series as one timeline and I'm not 100% sure where one book ends and were the next starts. So I'll just do a series overall review and gush about how much I absolutely love it, so be warned!

Overall series re-read review!

The Others series is urban fantasy, its world being not ours but with enough similarities to fool us sometimes and makes us as readers forget that it's not happening in our "human dominated" world. Humans in this world are not the apex predators or the ones that are in charge of the world, since they are late comers to a world were The Others are in charge, and they don't tolerate humanity's over reach and disregard of nature, not outside of the boundaries given to them. Namid isn't Earth exactly, and Thaisia is really NOT North America, even if they can feel enough alike to throw us off when we're reminded of the differences.

The story starts with Meg Corbyn, a young woman running away that finds a safe haven in an unlikely place for a human, the Lakeside Courtyard, or the place where The Others live (and keep an eye on the humans). The first book gives us enough world building and character development to keep us turning the pages hungrily and to have us hooked for good in this series. We want to protect and root for Meg all the time, and we share the protectiveness the Courtyard Others feel towards her. We discover what a Cassandra Sangue is (more or less) and we learn more about this world. The relationships between the characters are so nuanced and full of small details here and there. It doesn't matter if we're talking about vampires or werewolves or humans, they all FEEL so real!

Talking about the paranormalcy of The Others, we might seem to know them but these vampires, werewolves and others aren't exactly as you might know them, and we do get more than a few reminders about that. These are not creatures that have hidden their existence in our midst, they are there and they are in charge, even if the humans might want to ignore that fact.

There are two main plot lines that intertwine and build on each other, one is the more personal with Meg and her growth and relationship with the Others and specially Simon, the Courtyard leader. And the Other is the mounting conflict between the Humans First and Last movement and the Others. One thing that this book managed to do time and again is to make me hate my own species. The HFAL movement simply made me root for the Others so much... it's a bit awkward when you stop to think that the characters that are your same species that you like are just a handful!

In each book we learn more about the Others, the Cassandra Sangue, the extremes humans can reach in their hate and their will for self destruction and lack of respect for their world they live in... The world building is expanded, from Thaisia to other continents, to more about the past, more about the Others that are not the ones we know from the Courtyard, more about the blood prophets and their compulsions and abilities. Characters grow and change, relationships progress (although the one I care the most about goes at a very fitting snail pace as it's right for the characters, even if it's maddening for us readers) and the plot thickens and progresses and the tension builds up to a rather worrisome level!



Marked in Flesh by Anne Bishop

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I was so very excited for this book, with all the tension and the build up for the confrontation and the expected backlash from The Others, if the Humans First movement made their move.

With every book this series manages to get better and better! We might have lost a bit of the more personal time we had with Meg and the wolves and the rest of the Terra Indigene since everything keeps getting broader and bigger, and Meg is the first but not the only one blood prophet, there's so much to learn and to work on. The conflict is so widespread, so much bigger than just one Courtyard, one city, or even one continent! We meet some more dangerous and less humanized Others/Terra Indigene and some of them really brought to mind those "things that go bump in the night" in the sense that you could feel them and the fear they cause, but not being really sure if you'd see them or what you'd even see!

There was plenty of tension or more quiet moments, of moments that made me once again hate my own species and there were quite a few interesting revelations, with what I hope more to come. BUT since the big conflict that was building up was resolved here, I'm not entirely sure WHAT will happen in the next book. I'm hoping we will return to the more personal part of the conflicts and continue with the focus on the Cassandra Sangue and on a certain relationship that I want more focus on again and a bit more progress, not so snail paced!

Still, this book is once again deserving of 5 stars like the previous books in the series, and I'm very much looking forward to re-read them all to prepare for the next one!