Marked in Flesh (The Others, #4)

by Anne Bishop

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

Marked in Flesh is the fourth book in The Others series. This is a series that I’ve loved since the first book, Written in Red (though I was a little late getting to that book). This series is just so completely different from anything else I’ve ever read. First of, the shifters are more animal than human. I don’t mean that they they have animalistic nature. These are creatures that are animals that mimic humans. They look at humans as just another kind of prey that can be useful at times. This all changed with Meg Corban arrived at the Lakeside Courtyard in the first book.

In the first three books, while we’ve seen a small amount of life outside of Lakeside, the vast majority of the story followed the residents of the Lakeside Courtyard. In this book, we start to follow more characters outside of the Courtyard. We have the cassandra sangue who are in more locations. They are providing more prophecies, but their caretakers aren’t always clear about how to read those prophecies and they don’t always come in time. We also have people in these area. The Inuits and the terra indigene around the country.

The Humans First and Last Movement (HFL) is really starting to ramp up their efforts. They are starting to threaten humans who refuse to join their movement. If you refuse to join you are branded a “wolf lover” and could lose your job, your home or business could be vandalized, and sometimes they even try to kill you.

Previously, I had thought that the elementals were the scariest thing that Namid had to offer. I was wrong. Not that elementals didn’t have a part to play in this scary world, but they are by far not the scariest thing in this world that Anne Bishop has built. We even get to bit of POV from these other creatures which are known as “Namid’s teeth and claws”.

Watching some of these stupid humans not learn was really frustrating at times. I really wanted to stand up for my race, but they weren’t even standing up for each other, which made it really difficult. Then there are the ones who did want to see peace between the humans and the terra indigene. They were trying their best to figure out how to make things better for everyone, but the HFL was the loudest voice in the room, which was making it so much harder for the others. I couldn’t help be reflect on how it relates to some things going on in real life.

Once again, this story had me engrossed in the story. I found myself looking for reason to continue to listen. I loved learning more about the world outside of the courtyard. Meeting so many new characters. I loved seeing Simon and Meg’s relationship continue to grow, even if it is one of the slowest growing relationships I’ve ever read. I don’t think a relationship between these two could be any other way. Still my favorite series.

Narration
Alexandra Harris continues to nail the narration of this series. She does such a great job with all the different characters. There are several different types of voices that she must master for this series and I think she does a great job with all of them. I can’t imagine just reading this series without her narrating it to me.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.