ARC REVIEW: Taken by the Others

Jess Haines
Taken by  the Others (H&W Investigations #2)
Zebra
ISBN-10: 1420111884
ISBN-13: 978-1420111880
Urban fantasy
January 4, 2011

Blurb via the author’s site:

Once, New York P.I. Shiarra Waynest’s most pressing problem was keeping her agency afloat. Now she’s dealing with two dangerous, seductive vampires who have been enemies for centuries. The only thing Max Carlyle and Alec Royce agree on is that they both want Shia–for very different reasons.

Max is determined to destroy Shia for killing his progeny, while Royce’s interest is a lot more personal. That’s not sitting well with Shia’s werewolf boyfriend, Chaz. As the feud between Max and Royce gets ever more deadly, a powerful vampire-hunting faction is urging Shia to join their side. Shia has always believed vamps were the bad guys, but she’s discovering unexpected shades of grey that are about to redefine her friends, her loyalties–and even her desires…

I reviewed book one here. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out to get a better feel for the series if you’d like.

Before we get going, I’m afraid there can be no going until I acknowledge the cover. It sucks. We all know this already. That is most definitely not the heroine, Shiarra, as she is in the books. Rather, the cover makes her look like a pole-dancing wannabe, and she’s off to practice. This isn’t that kind of book, trust me. The covers for the first and third books much more accurately represent the series atmosphere and heroine.

Moving on, this was a pretty decent follow-up to book one, Hunted by the Others. While there’s not a whole lot to move this one along in terms of a series arc, we do further explore Shiarra’s deep-rooted fears concerning Others, especially of the vampire variety. And even though the plot does result from what happened in book one, it’s really Shiarra’s quite understandable aversion to working with vampires that’s at the center of this one. Her prejudice of Others seen in book one is much more relaxed here, and she comes to their defense many a time, despite society being one that abhors human interaction with anything or anyone Other. I do still think that Shiarra displays a grossly inappropriate lack of experience and tact when it comes to her dealings with Others, and at times the things she does, the decisions she makes seemed so utterly devoid of common sense. For example, there was a scene where she was discussing potentially dicey Other dealings on her cell phone, in a supermarket, not bothering to even lower her voice. She even reflects while having the convo that it’s not the best place to be doing it, or that she’s being too loud – something to that effect. But she does do it and receives many horrified stared from other humans while she does so. It’s when Shiarra does things like this that I’d get thrown out of the story, kind of gnashing my teeth a little that she was, after all she’s been through in dealing with Others, being, well, stupid. Because she’s really not a stupid, vapid woman and she knows darn well how dangerous Others can be. I wish she’d used a little more common sense at times, as well as the resources she had available to her, and not just when it was almost too late or after the fact. Granted, things happen that she has no control over, and this tends to force characters into actions they’d otherwise usually not take. Which seems to be a pretty common denominator in urban fantasy heroines.

Where Shiarra excels in this book, in my opinion, is her interactions with Royce, the city’s head vampire. While she has a very strange relationship with the enigmatic vampire, being contractually bound to him, it’s also a perfect vehicle to learn about not only the world the author’s built, but also the fears, anxieties and prejudices that society in general feels for Others. Because Shiarra is terrified of being bound to a vampire in any way, and at first she was the quintessential embodiment of human society’s views on Others. In this book, we see that she was right to be afraid. Now she’s caught between two master vampires, and the new one in town, Max, severely changes the tide, and it’s not in Shiarra’s favor. If you look tot he title, you can possibly guess what happens, but without spoilers, let’s just say that Max hasn’t made it easy for Shiarra to move beyond her fears.

What I feel I ought to make clear is the possible romantic nuances in the book’s blurb above. Shiarra does have a boyfriend. Chaz is the head of the local werewolf pack, and he seems like one of those all-around sweet, protective guys, and while Shiarra didn’t at first know he was a wolf, they seem to have ironed out a lot of those issues in this book. Or so I thought. While Shiarra doesn’t seem to mind that he’s a wolf anymore, even going so far as to defend him against the police after Chaz is seriously injured, their relationship does take a step back. There came a crucial point in the book that Chaz, in my opinion, pretty much abandoned Shiarra. I really like Chaz. Or until that point, anyway. While I understood his reasons, he blamed Shiarra for something that she had no control over, and yes, it has to do with the vampire situation with Max and Royce. I was pretty disappointed in Chaz, especially since Shiarra had been, well, so loyal to him up to this point. Sure, yes, there’s some sexual tension with Royce, but when isn’t there with vampires? Shiarra stays pretty true to Chaz, and considering he wasn’t always honest with her about his being a werewolf, I was suprised at his actions toward the end of this book.

As for romance with Royce – sure, yes, he’d probably like to take it to the next level with Shiarra when it comes to that, but I didn’t find that to be a driving force with this book. And I’m not altogether convinced that it’s necessarily the most important thing to Royce. He’s still very much a mysterious character, although we do find out some interesting tidbits on him. I think he’s one of the better vampire characters in recent urban fantasy. Combined with the sinister machinations of Max this time, I never really felt like either was trying to be a particularly sexy vampire. They were much more the sinister and scary variety, which was actually entertaining. While I love me some sexy vampires, I appreciate that this series doesn’t try to convince a reader that sex, romance and everything like that in between is the end goal. We don’t yet know what Royce’s goal is in wanting Shiarra. While, yes, my romantic side would like to think he appreciates her romantically, I get a strong impression that that’s not all there is to it by far. And that makes me think that there’s probably a lot more to Shiarra that we’ve not seen yet either.

I felt like this was a better installment than the first in terms of worldbuilding, plot and character development. There’s interesting new developments and characters to shake things up, and we even get a closer look at the White Hats, a group of human activists against Others. When Shiarra joins their ranks for a short time, we get to see that the organization’s members aren’t all the perfect poster boys/girls the White Hat’s leader probably wishes them to be. In a way, it was nice to see inside their organization to give them more depth. In the first book, they come off as standard bad guys with little to no depth beyond that of a name, but in this book we get more than just a token “bad guy” face card.

I really enjoyed reading this one and in the end would say it’s a great weekend read with just enough action mixed with lots of interesting new developments, characters and very decent  continuing development of the main characters and happenings from book one. I can say with all confidence that I’m looking forward to book three now. Deceived by the Others will release July 1, 2011.

Rating: Four Scoops

Series Order:

• Hunted by the Others
• Taken by the Others
• Deceived by the Others (July 1, 2011)