Hiking through the snow, holiday baking and playing board games by the fire?what?s not to love about an old-fashioned family Christmas?Werewolves Elena Michaels and Clayton Danvers want to give their four-year-old twins, Kate and Logan, something their parents never had: a nice, normal holiday. No Pack responsibilities, no homicidal half-demons or power-hungry sorcerers to deal with?just the four of them, alone, at a chalet outside Ontario?s Algonquin Park. Then a strange werewolf shows up at their door?while the town is buzzing about a young man, back from college, found half-eaten in the woods. And there?s the missing little girl?With all the signs pointing to a rogue mutt with a taste for human flesh, Elena and Clay have no choice but to investigate. But are they the hunters?or the hunted?
It?s a well-known fact that I love Kelley Armstrong?s?Women of the Otherworld?series, and the books from Subterranean Press hold a special place in my heart. Not because they are the biggest and the best, but because they?re something special. Kind of like that extra present you find hiding behind the tree at the end of Christmas. The thing about the books is? they?re short, and they aren?t cheap.?Hidden clocks in at 193 pages, and that?s with YA novel sized print in a trade-paperback sized hardcover. Basically, they?re novellas, but most people who buy them go into it knowing that. (Oh, and there is also full-color artwork inside the book, compliments of the very talented Angilram.)
And in this case, good things come in small packages.
With the series ending with?Thirteen?(releases July 24), one of the things readers weren?t sure would ever be addressed is Clay and Elena?s children. They?re only four years old, so they don?t really have a role in all the grown-up business that transpires over the longer novels. But Armstrong found a way to give readers a little piece of what life is like for the Danvers in this very?Otherworld-appropriate holiday story.
Clay and Elena are trying to give Kate and Logan a Christmas away from the pack?just the four of them. Of course, they get to the house in the woods and things go wrong with a local mutt and a dead college kid. But as much as the story is about that, it?s more about the Danvers as a family. That?s one of the things that I love about Armstrong?s work?as much as the books are about the supernatural, at their heart, they are about family and friendship and love. In this case, it?s about whether or not sheltering your children makes them safer or puts them in more danger, but it never gets preachy.
Needless to say, the plot is a full and rich one. (Would I have liked it to be longer? Of course, I love the characters and want to spend as much time with them as I can. However, the story doesn?t need more words to be complete and fabulous.) The characters are exactly the ones we?ve come to know and love throughout the series, with Nick and the newest additions to the pack making an appearance as well.
In all, Hidden is exactly what fans of the series have come to expect from Armstrong. Fantastic characters with real-world problems and issues wrapped up in a supernatural plot full of twists and turns. I wish I?d had it to read for the holidays, but ? there?s always this December.
Posted by Julie ??@?? 20 July 2012
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