Hey all, I’m back with the fifth book in The Others series that details the lives of the Lakeside Courtyard for this week’s Bookish Wednesday.  It’s Anne Bishop’s Etched in Bone.

Plot: The plot of this entry slims down in terms of scope following the aftermath of the previous book’s events, which makes sense given what happened. It deals predominantly with the Lakeside Courtyard and the rest of Lakeside, rather than reaching out into other parts of the world Anne Bishop created like Prairie Gold or Sweetwater. I enjoyed this book, but it wasn’t as good as previous entries in The Others series as it deals with some drama that feels just a bit too forced for my tastes. Granted, that said drama occurs for plainly stated reasons, but I just didn’t like the nature of it. Still, this was a good entry, and a cooling down character arc after the frenetic events of the fourth book in the series. It’s also the last entry in Bishop’s world that deals directly with the Lakeside Courtyard, at least for now. I do hope Bishop eventually goes back to detailing what happens to the characters that I’ve come to enjoy in this series. Especially since there are character and plot arcs in The Others series that aren’t completely finished.

Characters: We don’t get introduced to many new characters in Etched in Bone, and the ones we do meet are definitely not characters I enjoyed. That’s blatantly intentional of course, so the author did a great job of making me hate those characters, but I was glad to see they weren’t likely to pop back up for the most part if we ever do get back to Lakeside in Bishop’s series. My favorite characters from previous books are still around, of course, and I really enjoyed Twyla quite a bit. She’s a great addition to the characters of this series.

Overall: A solid, if less dramatic entry in the world of The Others. Still a fun story, but not as good as previous entries.