Kelley Armstrong brings us the seventh installment in her Women of the Otherworld series with NO HUMANS INVOLVED. Jamie Vegas is getting her big break. She is one of three spiritualists asked to star in a reality television series. After all, contacting the ghost of Marilyn Monroe can't be that hard, and it will make for great TV. This is Jamie's path to getting her own television series, all she has ever wanted, or is it? What she really wants is to explore her relationship with Jeremy Danvers, the werewolf pack alpha that was introduced in Bitten. Kelley has been hinting at a relationship between Jamie and Jeremy for several books, and now Jamie has her shot.
During a shoot for the show Jamie is confronted with souls of the departed that she can't communicate with, and she is afraid her necromancy powers have caught up with her. After all, the power to see and speak to the dead drove her grandmother mad, and she has met other necromancers who have been driven insane by their powers. Soon Jamie learns that the problems aren't caused by her powers, they are caused by humans who are trying to break into the world of magic using the only means they know, black magic and ritual sacrifice. In order to save the souls and allow them to pass on to the next world, Jamie has to overcome her fears about her necromancy powers, a struggling relationship with a pack alpha, and her frustration that she always ends up as the damsel in distress requiring a rescue. But what could be more romantic than being carried through a sewer full of rats by the pack alpha?
Kelley has written a story with excellent character development set in a paranormal world that isn't your "typical" place. Her dialogs between Jamie and the ghosts she meets while wandering around Hollywood are wonderful. Even as Jamie tortures herself because she knows she can't help every ghost she meets. As always, some of our favorite characters from books past show up to add their $0.02 to the situation and try to help solve the problem. Eve even gets to play her new role as avenging angel. We also get another glimpse into the world of demons, and the children they have left behind.
Jamie gets herself into trouble from the very beginning, always requiring a rescue and not realizing where her talents, or should I say powers, lie. I have thoroughly enjoyed the entire Women of the Otherworld series and I can't wait for the next book.
Jaime, who knows a thing or two about showbiz, is on a
television shoot in Los Angeles when weird things start to
happen. As a woman whose special talent is raising the
dead, her threshold for weirdness is pretty high: sheβs
used to not only seeing dead people but hearing them speak
to her in very emphatic terms. But for the first time in
her life β as invisible hands brush her skin,
unintelligible fragments of words are whispered into her
ears, and beings move just at the corner of her eyeβshe
knows what humans mean when they talk about being haunted.
She is determined to get to the bottom of these
manifestations, but as she sets out to solve the mystery
she has no idea how scary her investigation will get, or to
what depths ordinary humans will sink in their attempts to
gain supernatural powers. As she digs into the dark
underside of Los Angeles, sheβll need as much Otherworld
help as she can get in order to survive, calling on her
personal angel, Eve, and Hope, the well-meaning chaos
demon. Jeremy, the alpha werewolf, is also by her side
offering protection. And, Jaime hopes, maybe a little more
than that.
βAs I knelt on the cobblestones to begin the ritual, I
opened not some ancient leather pouch, but a Gucci make-up
bag. . . .
I know little about the geography and theology of the
afterlife, but I do know that the worst spirits are kept
secured, and my risk of βaccidentallyβ tapping into a hell
dimension is next to nil. Even if I do bring back some
depraved killerβs spirit, what can it do to me? When you
deprive someone of the ability to act in the living world,
heβs pretty darned helpless. In death, even the worst
killer plummets from lethal to merely annoying.
Yet whatever had been trying to contact me apparently could
cross that barrier, could act in the living world. . .at
least on me. I added an extra helping of vervain to the
censer.β
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