Etched in Bone (The Others, #5)

by Anne Bishop

[EBookObsessed]

Anne Bishop created and destroyed her worlds in The Others series. In Etched in Bone, we see what comes next.

The Humans First and Last Movement has been destroyed along with a good portion of the human population. Humans forgot that they existed and thrived in Thaisai at the benevolence of the terre indigene who owned and leased the lands to them so they could create their towns and cities. Now the entire continent will wait to see when, and even if, Intuits, terre indigene and remaining humans can start again.

The Elders killed off a significant portion of the troublesome humans who declared they didn’t have enough and who tried to kill the terre indigene. But while they might have killed off many of the members of the Humans First and Last Movement, the Elders (Namid’s teeth and claws) have no idea that there is such a things as good and bad humans. To them, all humans were behaving badly. Since the decency of the human being destroyed wasn’t a factor in the Elders choices, there are still plenty of humans looking to profit off of others and who think they deserve more.

While most of the Elders have gone back into the corners of the wild country, a few have stayed behind to watch and observe the wolf and the howling-not-wolf (Simon and Meg) and the rest of the Lakeside Courtyard which now includes a human pack. They are still watching and waiting to see if leaving even some humans alive was the right decision.

One of the humans looking to profit off of others is Lt Montgomery’s own brother, Cyrus. Monty wants his brother gone before he creates a problem that could cause the Elders to finish what they started. But the Elders want to observe this “bad human” closely so that they can make a determination in the future of which humans are better to simply eat and be done with it. Everyone in the Courtyard and in the Police Department knows that Cyrus is a bomb just waiting to explode and destroy everything they have been working so hard again but with the Elders demanding a front row seat for the fireworks, they can’t do anything but watch and wait and hope. But while they are waiting and hoping, Cyrus is plotting and everyone is going to be sorry.

It is not just Lakeside and the Courtyard that are recovering from the recent purge. Many of the human-run towns in the midwest have been decimated and one of them in Bennett. They need new workers and trained professions. They also need to make sure there is a mix of the terre indigne, Intuits, Simple Life and humans and they want Simon’s help weeding out the candidates to fill the needed positions. This will set us up for Wild Country which releases in March 2019, where we will go to Bennett and see how things go with the candidates that we meet at the Job Fair.

I love the world building in this series and I very much like the twist of shifters who are animals who turn into humans (it is a very important difference).

I do have some issues with the cutting of the blood prophets and also some concerns that anything sexual in this series is references to rape, abuse and sexual assault. I understand that kissing isn’t a wolf-thing but in the first book, Simon address the fact that some humans like to come to the Courtyard to get wild and have sex with terre indigene. Even Simon did this, and wonders if it would be different if the human was Meg. This was the only book in the entire series actually addresses the fact that the feelings that Simon and Meg feel are strong than just a simple bond of friendship, but that if things changed from friends to more between Simon and Meg and it did not work out, their break up could have devastating repercussions throughout the Courtyard and the Town of Lakeside and maybe even Thaisai as a whole. In this series, Meg is uncomfortable with naked Simon when he changes from wolf to human because his nakedness (not really any of the others) makes her uncomfortable and she keeps him at arms length whenever tensions build between them. Yet in a moment after Meg experiences the haze and euphoria following a prophecy (which is basically an orgasm), a bad human sexually assaults her and was going to rape her but stops when he is almost discovered. So Simon and Meg exploring their growing bond sexually is a no-no and bad for the series but Meg almost being raped is a plot point?

The pros in this series outweigh the cons but I have had moments when I want to give the author a hug and ask if there is anything she wants to talk about.

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