Written in Red

Book Title: Written in Red

Author: Anne Bishop
Series: The Others #1

Date Started: January 6th 2015

Date Completed: January 10th 2015

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Romance
Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

I enjoyed Written in Red, but I have to say I'm not running out to get the next book in the series - despite the fact the story seems to be dependant on several books to get its point across. The book also contains what might be triggering to people with self harm backgrounds, though I have to say its use in the world was very interesting for me.

Meg Corbyn is hidden in the Courtyard: a town full of the Others, the supernatural creatures that humans having been living with since Namid created the earth. But even acting as the human Liaison for the Lakeside Courtyard won't stop the people she belongs to coming after her. And as the Others start to suspect her true identity, things can go wrong for Meg very, very quickly.

The writing was a little less easy than YA, which was nice for a change, but I still got through this book reasonably quickly and it wasn't hard to read several chapters at a time with the slow yet gradually developing storyline. The world itself is the typical supernatural idea with equivalents to werewolves and vampires and shapeshifting animals etc, but with a more original twist: these creatures have always been here and humans have always had to grudgingly get on with them. The one problem I had was that the concepts of these creatures and the society they lived in hadn't completely convinced me by the time things started getting frankly a little silly.

I did have a few issues with the plot, but I do think it was reasonably well thought-out  and has a lot of space to develop in future books. The main problem I had was that there was no real continuity as to why all these dangerous Others were taking care of her. It was sweet, and it was definitely vital to move the plot forward, but there just wasn't any reason at all why the whole Courtyard fell in love with her and were willing to break the anger they had at the humans since literally the dawn of civilisation. However, the Others were still definitely a threat despite their friendliness, and it was clear that the humans were well aware of this and weren't going to act like idiots just to get a few dramatic moments for the plot.

The ending, purely because numerous hints were dropped throughout the story that something else was going to happen, really disappointed me, While in hindsight it was a satisfactory ending, because of the practically obvious direction the plot was going, the conclusion just became anticlimactic when it turned out this was something that's going to happen later in the series.

I really liked the majority of these characters, though I didn't really see what some of them contributed to the story just yet. I'm sue they'll be more important in future books, but it was a little annoying that some of the many names I had to learn in a reasonably short space of time weren't really important.

Meg was a nice protagonist, though I think Bishop fell into the trap of having everyone worship her for no particular reason that happens a lot in these fantasy books where the protagonist has a special power of some kind. However, I liked gradually learning about Meg and her story; especially how she was pretty fierce under her friendly demeanour.

Simon was nice, and I liked the way he didn't turn out to be the troubled bad boy and stayed the moody leader of things (it's better than I make it sound, promise). But to be honest his relationship with Sam was the most affectionate thing about him.

Overall, I really liked the slow development of the story and its characters, however when I was reading the book it did sometimes annoy me that nothing really important was ever happening. This is really why the novel reminded me of a contemporary book, because it was all about how each day played out one after another and how relationships were built etc. But, for a fantasy 'thriller' that I expected when I started, this confused me.

I think Written in Red is a good adult urban fantasy, though it's maturity wavers at times - despite the possibly triggering content. I also wouldn't recommend going into this series if you don't want to have to read all of the books to understand what's happening in the grand scheme of things. However, it is an enjoyable read that reminded me of a contemporary-style fantasy and I'm interested to know how things continue.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15989350-written-in-red