Audiobook Review: Murder of Crows by Anne Bishop

After recently getting to finally listen to Written in Red, the first book in The Others by Anne Bishop, I was excited to learn that Murder of Crows was due out soon. Of course, I was in the middle of another series when it came out, so I was a good girl and waited to finish the other series before jumping back to this one.

The opening sequence is where the title of the book comes from.  A couple of boys have baited some garbage cans with poisoned food and are waiting for the crows to come ahead of the weekly trash pick up. They dose some hunting dogs with another drug and let them lose on the unsuspecting crows and watch the blood bath begin. Unfortunately, there was a human girl out, and she too was attacked by the dogs. When one of the boys tries to rescue the girl and calls for help, it quickly escalates and the police are called out and begin questioning some of the boys who don't belong there. There had been another incident a few days prior as well and the police quickly start drawing conclusions that the same boys were involved in both incidents.   Meanwhile, Meg dreams of black feathers in snow and wakes up screaming.

When Meg has the prickling feeling so bad that she can't stand it, she cuts herself and ends up cutting too deeply. Simon, sensing something is wrong, breaks into her apartment, and finding her on the bathroom floor, tries to staunch the blood and clean the wound by licking it.  He figures that it will cause him to be angry, like last time and he can use that anger and aggression to help Meg. This time, it has the opposite effect, and the Lakeside Courtyard is giving undeniable proof that both of the drugs that are poisoning Thasia are coming from the Cassandra Sangue. One town has already lost it's lease and had the humans evicted, and another is shut off from contact by the Terra Indigene while a they debate whether to close it as well. Both stem from incidents involving the drugs and the fall out from them. Simon invites the leaders from across Thasia to Lakeside to discuss the matter and give them a chance to meet Meg as well as discuss what would need to be done to protect against the drug.

I liked this book even more than the first. The world has been established, we have gotten to meet most of the major players, now we start really digging into their pasts and motivations. We are introduced to some new characters, ones that I hope make a reappearance in the next book, Vision in Silver, due out March 2015.  This was a 5 star read and personally, I can't wait to see what's next for Meg, Simon and the rest of the Lakeside Courtyard.

Return to New York Times best-selling author Anne Bishop’s world of the Others - where supernatural entities and humans struggle to co-exist, and one woman has begun to change all the rules…

After winning the trust of the terra indigene residing in the Lakeside Courtyard, Meg Corbyn has had trouble figuring out what it means to live among them. As a human, Meg should be barely tolerated prey, but her abilities as a cassandra sangue make her something more.

The appearance of two addictive drugs has sparked violence between the humans and the Others, resulting in the murders of both species in nearby cities. So when Meg has a dream about blood and black feathers in the snow, Simon Wolfgard—Lakeside's shape-shifting leader—wonders whether their blood prophet dreamed of a past attack or of a future threat.

As the urge to speak prophecies strikes Meg more frequently, trouble finds its way inside the Courtyard. Now the Others and the handful of humans residing there must work together to stop the man bent on reclaiming their blood prophet—and stop the danger that threatens to destroy them all.

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