Crowbones by Anne Bishop: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Crowbones by Anne Bishop

It has been a long wait for a new book in The Others series, three years since Wild Country and four since Lake Silence, where the characters of Crowbones were introduced. It’s book eight in the overall series and third book in the World of the Others spin-off.

Only a few months has passed since the events of Lake Silence. Vicki DeVine has her resort, The Jumble, up and running, and humans are vacationing there for the experience of living among the Others. But not even the Crows that Vicki employs are harmless, and the resort is surrounded and protected by much more deadly creatures too. When humans show disrespect and outright break the rules, the Others retaliate swiftly.

Someone is deliberately spreading maliciousness among humans and the Others. But they haven’t gone unnoticed, and they’re being followed by Crowbones, a creature who punishes the misbehaving. When people start dying, the human police, Chief Grimshaw, tries his best to investigate. When it doesn’t happen fast enough, the Others who rule the small town of Sproing, decide to speed things up by blocking all the routes in and out. Nobody is leaving until the guilty are found—and punished.

This was another great addition to the series. The creepy, dark atmosphere is the same, the world of the Others as unique as it has ever been, and the characters more familiar. There are more point of view characters and Vicki isn’t the focus, despite having her chapters in first person narrative while the others are in third. It’s mostly Grimshaw’s book, and he’s emerging to be my favourite. I kept wishing that the romantic pairing would be with him and Vicki, as they have better chemistry, but the author is set on Julian. He’s fine, just not interesting, and since there weren’t any scenes where the two properly interacted, it was difficult to get into the spirit of the slowly building romance.

Because of the several narrators, the suspense wasn’t quite as tense as in the previous book and the personal stakes weren’t as high, but it worked well in the end. But we still didn’t learn anything new about Sproingers, those unique critters that live only in Sproing.

I hope we don’t have to wait for the next book quite as long as this one, because I can’t get enough of this wonderful series. Maybe it’s time for a re-read...