Actual rating: 2.5 stars, rounded up. I remember being so excited when I first found Bishop’s The Others series. It felt like a breath of fresh air in the urban fantasy genre, balancing genre favorite entities, like vampires and more common shapeshifters, with the less familiar, like elemental spirits and blood prophets. The series also managed to be both more brutal and somehow more innocent than most I had read in the genre, which I thought was a very interesting dichotomy. But, as much as I enjoy this world that is so similar to ours except in one major way, part of me wishes Bishop would have moved on after the original series ended in the fifth book. The World of the Others, the spinoff series, has not felt nearly as strong or as special as the original. This is obviously just my own opinion, but the wonder has worn off and, as much as I liked the idea, I think I’ve decided that this is the last book set in this world that I’ll be reading. Bishop’s original five-book series set in this world fascinated me in terms of tone and world building. There was a simplicity and quaintness to the community of the Courtyard, which was an interesting foil to the expansive, terrifyingly unknown Wild Country surrounding the cities. Because so many of these characters could shift into human, but were most definitely Other, there was an innocence to their outlook on life that charmed me in comparison to many of the humans in the novels, whose complexities tended to hide evil. I found all of these building blocks, when paired with the almost oddly simplistic writing style, a truly compelling and original mix. However, after transitioning from the Courtyard and Meg’s story into Wild Country and the small communities scattered within it, something about the series lost me. The simplistic style I enjoyed suddenly felt too simple, like the kind of writing we use to teach kids how to read. It lacked the nuance that helps readers embed themselves in a story. And oddly, the charming quaintness turned into a tendency to bog down so deeply in minutia that it became difficult to keep from skimming. These two concerns are a really weird mix, and no amount of intriguing preternatural entities could make up for them. Whatever magic imbued the original series is missing from The World of the Others. Crowbones in particular felt as if Bishop was trying to juggle too many strands in the plot, leaving the overall narrative feeling muddy. And while I liked the idea of the Jumble, it just didn’t deliver the same level of charm as the Courtyard. There are some interesting characters here, and even some reprisals from the original series, but none of them felt quite as special as that original cast. Vicki, the closest thing we have to a main character, feels as though Bishop has tried too hard to make her quirky, lovable in spite of the fact she feels very unlovable. Something about the way Bishop wrote her fell flat in comparison to Meg. The other characters were fine, but forgettable. Actually, my description of Crowbones, as well as Wild Country and Lake Silence, would be exactly that: fine but forgettable. Which is really a shame, considering how much I enjoyed the first series set in this world. But these three… none of them were bad. I finished them, and didn’t hate them. But I didn’t love them, either. These are “meh” incarnate.

The Others series is so familiar and comforting, and the newest addition Crowbones is no exception. The dynamic between the characters and the revisit(s) of old characters are heartwarming.