Chris Marie Green: JENSEN MURPHY, GHOST FOR HIRE SERIES

Author:  Chris Marie Green
Series:  JENSEN MURPHY, GHOST FOR HIRE SERIES   
Plot Type:  Urban Fantasy (UF)     
Ratings:  Violence—4; Sensuality—3; Humor—2 
Publisher and Titles:  ROC
          Only the Good Die Young (2/2014)  
          Another One Bites the Dust (11/2014)

          Every Breath You Take (4/2015) (FINAL?)

This post was revised and updated on 5/7/15 to include a review of Every Breath You Take, the third novel in the series. That review appears first, followed by an overview of the world-building and reviews of the first two novels.

            NOVEL 3:  Every Breath You Take            

     In this book, (Jen) Murphy finally resolves her search for the person who murdered her decades ago when she was just twenty-three years old. For the first 3/4 of the book, Jen and her allies—both humans and ghosts—stumble around trying to avoid being attacked by the dark spirit of Jen's killer even as they are attempting to learn the villain's true identity. If you haven't read the first two books, you will be completely lost in the crowded cast of characters, all of whom have some type of connection with Jenn based on past events that Jenn offhandedly mentions in her interior monologues and in conversations among her friends. The author does not summarize the highlights of the first two books; she just drops the reader into this third chapter in Jen's adventures.

     In the midst of Jen's search for her killer, she and her human friend, Amanda Lee, become acquainted with a group of ghostbusters in the depths of Elfin Forest, the same place that Jen met her death all those years ago. For the first half of the book, the ghostbusters don't add much to the story, but eventually, they do become a crucial plot element.

     About half-way into the book, Green introduces Kalli, a wiccan, into the mix of humans and ghosts. As soon as Kalli meets the ghosts, she feels compelled to explain myriad details of wiccan mythology, which slows the pace of the action from a walk to a stumble. Green has her reasons for introducing Kalli, but padding the book with superfluous details about wiccan mythology was a mistake. Another example of unnecessary padding is the scene involving the witch of the woods. That scene does add an important clue to Jen's investigation, but it comes across as a deus ex machina because the witch, who has been mentioned but never seen in previous books, has no other purpose but to drop the clue and then vanish.

     Other sub-plots include the finale of the ridiculous romance between Gavin and Suze, which I discussed in my review of book 2. That relationship is getting rocky (big surprise!), and Jen feels guilty because she believes that she is to blame.

     Then, there is fake Dean, the supernatural being who keeps trying to lure Jen to his home in a starry realm, promising her eternal happiness. Fake Dean keeps up his efforts until Jen banishes him from her life—but then misses him so much that she wishes he would come back. Green has set up a love triangle involving Gavin, fake Dean, and Jen, but it never rings true.

     Just as in the previous books, the details of the world-building are muddy. Jenn darts in and out of people's heads, and the dark spirit injures and sometimes kills humans and ghosts, but I was never entirely clear on exactly what was happening. Jen's fellow ghosts rarely, if ever, do the mind-jumping thing that Jen does, even when it could possibly help out the story line, so why can she do it? Green has never really spelled out the rules of this world, so I have never truly understood the powers and limitations of Jenn and her fellow ghosts, not to mention her magic-touched human friends and acquaintances. Jen's ghostly friends just hang around making wise cracks at each other and not helping out much with Jen's investigation.

     I really had to push myself to keep reading the first half of this book because it moves so slowly and fails to cover any new ground. The pace picks up in the second half when Green begins to throw handfuls of red herrings into the story—a variety of suspects, any one of whom could be Jen's killer. At that point, the story becomes slightly more interesting, but it doesn't really take off until the final few scenes. By the end of the book, all of the major issues are resolved, so I assume that this is the final novel in the series. This has been a disappointing series that began with an interesting concept but, in the long run, failed to deliver. Click HERE to read an excerpt.

            WORLD-BUILDING            

     Welcome to the Boo World—a world of ghosts who exist among the mortal population, although most mortals aren't aware of their existence. In this universe, ghosts are energy trapped at the moment of death. The series mythology includes several types of ghosts:

    > Interactives: Intelligent spirits who "still have our personalities and...can think." (p. 95) These ghosts can move about among humans, see and communicate with other ghosts, manipulate objects, manifest vocal sounds, and go into the waking and sleeping minds of humans. They survive on electricity, but get the most power from their actual death spot. 

    > Noninteractive Spirits (aka Imprints): Ghosts stuck in time-loop imprints, destined to relive their deaths over and over again. They are unaware of their surroundings and never leave the exact place they died. These ghosts are "confused and afraid and won't come out to play like [Interactives] do." (p. 95)

    > Malevolent Ghosts: We learn next to nothing about these spirits in book 1, except that they exist and that they are dangerous to both humans and to other ghosts.

     Not all spirits remain on earth as ghosts. Some go on into the glare (a bright light) immediately following their deaths. "Not every spirit lingers or falls into a time loop. Sometimes there's so much anguish connected to their deaths or the people they leave behind that they can't stand the aftermath. Some spirits seek the light right away. Others…fall into a numb imprint." (p. 211) What happens in the afterlife is unknown. As one mysteriously powerful entity explains, "Not even I know what's beyond us, because once you go there, you don't come back. It might be heaven or hell, nirvana, or even a parallel dimension where everyone gets another chance in a reincarnated life." (p. 210) Each ghost has a wrangler—a reaper—and if a ghost decides to leave the earth and go into the glare, he or she can call on the wrangler for a ride into the afterlife. 

     Most of the ghostly characters are Interactives. They can enter buildings through cracks, chimneys, and open windows, but they can't move through solid objects like walls. They always look exactly like they did at the moment of their death—the same clothing and hairstyles—so it's easy to figure out when they died just by looking at them. Oddly, they don't manifest the injuries that led to their deaths—no broken bones, bruises, or contusions. They can modify their shapes to suit various purposes—for example, becoming thin enough to slip through the narrowest cracks, becoming fist-shaped to pound on a wall. Their major human enemies are cleaners—ghostbusters who use salt and iron to send the ghosts on to the light. Most ghosts don't have much to do with humans, but some do maintain relationships with mediums (aka psychics) who can see and communicate with ghosts, sometimes just one and sometimes many, depending on the level of the medium's power.

     The series heroine, Jensen (Jen) Murphy, was in her early twenties when she was murdered 30 years ago. She was the designated driver for a group of her pot-smoking, heavy-drinking friends one night when they went out partying in the Elfin Forest (in Southern California). Jen had been slamming down can after can of Mellow Yellow (a highly caffeinated soft drink popular in the 1980s) and wandered off into the woods for a "bathroom break," only to disappear forever. In book 1, Jen has memory flashes of being killed with an ax by someone wearing an old-lady mask, but she can't remember anything else.

           NOVEL 1:  Only the Good Die Young            

     As the story opens, a medium named Amanda Lee (pronounced "A MANdaley") Minter uses her psychic powers to pull Jen out of the time loop she has been stuck in for the past 30 years. Amanda wants to use Jen to get revenge against Gavin Edgett, the man she believes killed her friend, Elizabeth, three years ago. She wants Jen to work her way into Gavin's mind and scare him so badly that he will confess his crime to the police.

     Because Jen is a newbie ghost, she spends much of her time in this book just learning how to be a ghost—what she can and cannot do, how to travel from place to place, how to manifest her voice so that humans can hear it, and how to maintain a level of energy high enough that she doesn't fall back into the time loop. Eventually, she meets some more experienced ghosts who help her learn the ropes, but the world-building slows down the story—as is true of the first book in any series.

     Jen's relationship with Amanda is fraught with tension and distrust because Jen immediately recognizes that Amanda is completely blinded by her need for vengeance against Gavin. Even when Jen figures out that Gavin probably did not kill Elizabeth, Amanda refuses to accept that as truth. From the beginning, Jen (and the reader) know that Amanda is withholding information and telling some lies. In fact, most of the human characters are holding on to dark secrets that are not revealed until the final showdown scene. There are so many red herrings that the identity of the actual villain(s) is difficult to predict, but when the resolution finally comes, it plays out so quickly that it is somewhat unsatisfying, particularly since the rest of the story moves so very slowly.

     Among the non-humans that Jen meets is one who has glamoured himself to look and act just like Jen's long-ago ex-boyfriend, Dean. Dean is not dead. In fact, Jen flies over to his home to take a look at him in an early scene. But this non-human entity takes on Dean's persona and plays on Jen's emotions, trying to lure her to some mysterious place for his own nefarious purposes. At first, Jen thinks that "Dean" is the Grim Reaper, but he tells her that he is a keeper, not a reaper. He turns up several times during the story, usually to help Jen out of a tight spot, but he always follows up his good deeds by trying to get Jen to stay with him in his starry realm. He won't tell her exactly who or what he is, except to say that her life would be pleasant if she stayed with him. Jen, though, is too pragmatic to turn over her soul to someone she doesn't trust. Obviously, "Dean" will be a continuing character who will play an important role in future stories.

     For me this was a rough start for a new series—bogged down with an overload of exposition and character-building and struggling with a slow-moving plot that begins light but turns very dark in the final pages. It's a seemingly standard urban fantasy that slowly becomes a realistic true-crime horror story. Green uses Jen's first-person voice to tell her story, and she handles this sometimes-tricky voice with ease. Now that the world-building is out of the way, I'll be interested in seeing what Green does with her lead character in book 2. Click HERE to read an excerpt from Only the Good Die Young.

            NOVEL 2:  Another One Bites the Dust            

     The primary plot in this novel revolves around a sociopathic young man (Tim Knudson) who is becoming a dangerous threat to his girlfriend (Nichelle Shaw), a close friend of Wendy Edgett—sister of Gavin Edgett, one of the primary characters in book 1. (If you haven't read book 1, you might want to do that first so that you will understand the relationships among the relatively large cast of characters, both ghosts and humans.) Jenn and her fellow ghosts are already protecting Wendy from a menacing, but unidentified, dark spirit that was released at the climax of book 1, and now they add Wendy and Nichelle to their list of responsibilities. Jenn and Amanda immediately begin to investigate Tim's mental state and his personal life, while some of the other ghosts deal with the actual protecting. The investigation muddles along very slowly, with Jenn and her friends attempting to go into Tim's mind in a variety of ways, none of which are described with any clarity. The characters of Tim and Nichelle are so poorly developed that we never really get to know them at all, and as a consequence, I had trouble caring what happened to either one of them. In fact, I had trouble even finishing the book.

     The book has several subplots: Jenn's continuing relationship with fake Dean (a sexy but sinister entity who takes the form of Jenn's high school boyfriend, the real Dean); Jenn's continuing attraction to Harriet's brother, Gavin; Jenn's continuing search for her killer; and Jenn's continuing search for the true identity of the dark spirit. (As the book begins, she believes that the dark spirit might be the ghost of Harriet and Gavin's evil father.) These story lines disrupt the flow of the main plot because they are inserted so awkwardly into the action. 

     In one of the story threads, Gavin hits it off with Suze, one of Jenn's friends from her human life. At this point in time, Suze is in her early fifties, and Gavin is in his twenties—maybe early thirties—and they are supposedly becoming romantically attracted, making Jenn extremely jealous. For me, this story line is improbable and silly. In the Dean-Jenn story line, the author includes a gratuitous scene in which fake Dean touches Jenn in a sexual manner. The scene comes out of nowhere and goes no further. It's as if the author felt compelled to add some mild sex and couldn't figure out any other way to do it. She has really painted herself into a corner here, because her heroine is a transparent, vaporous entity who can solidify her body only when she is in fake Dean's presence. Even though Jenn is attracted to Gavin, she can't have a physical relationship him because they can't touch each other, so Jenn is stuck with the mysterious, untrustworthy Dean. About all we know about Dean is that he collects ghosts that entertain him, feeds on them until he gets bored, and then turns his attentions to new ghosts—definitely not an honorable hero.

     One last nit-pick: I don't wish to be a grammar tyrant, but Jenn constantly makes one very perplexing and irritating grammar error that drives me crazy. Instead of beginning compound-subject sentences correctly (for example, "My friends and I," with "I," the subject pronoun, coming after the noun, "friends")," she begins sentences incorrectly, using "me" (which is an object, not a subject, pronoun) and placing it first: "Me and my friends did this..." or "Me and Twyla went there..." or "Me and Louis talked..." or "Me and Amanda visited...," and so forth. I truly don't understand the author's decision to have Jenn break this basic grammar rule because, in general, Jenn's dialogue and interior monologues are grammatically correct, and her vocabulary is relatively sophisticated (e.g., using words like assuage, dolorous, and fraught). Yet she breaks this simple rule over and over again. 

     I had hoped that this series would grow stronger, but this book is a disappointment. The author uses the "tell, not show" method of character development, and as a result, her characters are all as flat as cardboard cutouts. In the case of Tim and Nichelle, character development is practically nonexistent. The plot moves at a glacial pace, and the ghost-magic scenes in which Jenn and her buddies invade Tim's mind are so disjointed that I had trouble figuring out exactly what the ghosts were doing. At this point, I can't recommend the series. Click HERE to read an excerpt.

UPDATE! Laura Anne Gilman: THE PORTALS DUOLOGY

UPDATE!

I have just updated a previous post for Laura Anne Gilman with a review of Soul of Fire, the second and FINAL novel in her PORTALS DUOLOGY.

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the updated review.

UPDATE! Alma Katsu's THE TAKER TRILOGY

UPDATE!

I have just updated a previous post for Alma Katsu with a review of The Descent, the third and FINAL novel in her series, THE TAKER TRILOGY.

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the updated review.

UPDATE! Diana Rowland's KARA GILLIAN SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated a previous post for Diana Rowland with a review of Fury of the Demon, the sixth novel in her KARA GILLIAN SERIES.

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the updated review.

UPDATE! "Hollow City": Ransom Riggs' Sequel to "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"

Author:  Ransom Riggs
Title:  Hollow City
Series: PECULIAR CHILDREN 
Plot Type:  Fantasy with a touch of horror
Ratings:  Violence—4; Sensuality—2; Humor—3
Publisher:  Quirk Books (1/2014) (available in hardback, CD, MP3, and e-book formats)

PUBLISHER'S BLURB:

     September 3, 1940. Ten peculiar children flee an army of deadly monsters. And only one person can help them—but she’s trapped in the body of a bird. The extraordinary journey that began in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. 

     There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom. Like its predecessor, this second novel in the PECULIAR CHILDREN series blends thrilling fantasy with vintage photography to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

MY REVIEW:
     Click HERE to read my overview of the world-building and my review of the first book, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Click HERE to go to the Peculiar Children Wiki, which contains in-depth information about the setting and the characters. I don't recommend reading Hollow City as a stand-alone because it doesn't contain very much basic information about the series mythology. Also, you need to read the first book in order to understand how and why the peculiar children appear—in the opening scene—in two rowboats off the coast of Wales in the midst of World War II.

     As Hollow City opens, the year is 1941 and ten peculiar children have escaped from the destruction of their long-time home on Cairnholm Island. They are rowing as fast as they can towards mainland Wales, pursued by a submarine full of wights and hollowgasts (aka hollows). Also along for the ride is Alma LeFay Peregrine, who is stuck in her bird form. Miss Peregrine is an ymbryne—a shape-shifting manipulator of time and headmistress of Cairnholm's magical time loop. 

Here is a list of the children and their peculiar abilities:

> Jacob Portman: the hero and narrator; he can see and sense hollows

> Emma Bloom: Jacob's girlfriend; she can make fire with her hands

> Bronwyn Bruntley: a large girl who is extremely strong

> Millard Nullings: an invisible boy who is a scholar of all things peculiar

> Olive Abroholos Elephanta: a girl who can float in the air

> Horace Somnusson: a boy who has visions and dreams of the past and the future

> Enoch O'Connor: a pessimistic boy who can temporarily animate the dead

> Hugh Apiston: a boy who commands and protects great numbers of bees that live in his stomach

> Claire Densmore: the youngest girl; she has an extra mouth in the back of her head

> Fiona Frauenfeld: a mute girl who can make plants grow

     The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 follows the children as they complete their ocean journey, discover and enter a time loop populated by talking animals, and get help from a group of gypsies. Part 2 takes place in London (which is in the midst of Hitler's bombing Blitz), as the children search for Miss Wren, an ymbryne who (they hope) will help Miss Peregrine regain her human form. Throughout their journey, the children are constantly pursued by wights and hollows. Book 1 contains an extensive mythology for the wights and hollows, so I won't go into much detail here. For the purposes of this review, I'll just say that they are the villains and that they plan to capture the children and the ymbrynes for unspeakable purposes.

     As the children make their way to London, their peculiar skills come in handy several times. Jacob can always sense the presence of hollows, so he always gives the group plenty of warning. Emma saves them several times with her fiery talent, and Hugh twice comes to the rescue with his bees. Millard is also helpful because he is very familiar with an ancient book entitled Tales of the Peculiar, which contains stories that are relevant to their search for Miss Wren. Bronwyn's strength frequently comes in handy because she transports their heavy trunk on her back and she carries Claire, who tires quite easily. As for Claire and Fiona, their talents are never used in this book. The same goes for Enoch, who uses his necromancy skills only once, with unfortunate results fro the group. This treatment of the latter three characters is a definite weakness: Riggs makes Claire a burdensome child, Fiona a non-character, and Enoch a bullying complainer.

     The reason for this misuse of characters, I believe, is that in this book Riggs' story-telling is led by the weird photographs, whereas the plot of the first book is enhanced by the photos. Rather than supporting the narrative, many photographs (and their accompanying mini-story lines) actually detract from the main plot. This is particularly true of the bizarre animal photographs in chapters 3 and 4, where Riggs appears to have manipulated the story line solely for the purpose of including some particularly weird animal photographs. In chapter 8, Riggs includes a number of vintage photographs purportedly showing scenes of the London Blitz. These particular images are mentioned very briefly in passing, but have nothing to do with the story line. Even the photograph on the book's cover has only a tenuous connection to the plot. The hole-in-the-stomach girl is in just one scene before she and her sister turn their backs on the peculiar group. This awkward and manipulative use of photographs is one reason why Hollow City doesn't have either the coherence or the strange magical resonance of the first book.

     Another problem is that the peculiar children have suddenly turned into superheroes who go for three days and nights with hardly any sleep and with very little food, yet are able to out-fight and out-think their enemies with no serious injuries and without losing any members from their original group. In the first book, the peculiars suffered at the hands of the wights and hallows, but in this book the children are almost Scooby-Doo-ish as they lurch from one dangerous situation to the next, always winning the day in some unexpected and frequently outlandish manner. Each confrontation with their enemies plays out like a Roadrunner vs. Wile E. Coyote parody. After awhile, you come to realize that, like the Roadrunner, the children will easily beat their enemies into complete submission—time after time.

     Even though the first book is the stronger of the two, Hollow City is still an above-average read. Riggs is an eloquent writer with the ability to fully develop his characters (particularly Jacob) through their actions, dialogue, and relationships. Jacob is a terrific narrator, internally facing down his doubts and fears while maintaining a calm facade as he plunges ahead into this dark, often hopeless, world to which he has pledged his loyalty and support. Although he dreams of his real home and family, he also has strong emotional ties to his peculiar family—particularly to Emma. Here, Jacob sums up the situation as the children search for Miss Wren in London: "So it had come to this: everything depended on a pigeon. Whether we would end the night in the womblike safety of an ymbryne's care or half chewed in the churning black of a hollow's guts; whether Miss Peregrine would be saved or we'd wander lost through this hellscape until her clock ran out; whether I would live to see my home or my parents again—it all depended on one scrawny, peculiar penguin." 

     One of the most clever plot elements is the choice of location for the London time loop. I won't go into detail, except to point out that the children are searching for Miss Wren, and that there was a certain man with the same surname who had a major influence on London architecture. 

     The plot twist at the end is completely unexpected, and it adds a cliff-hanger ending to this second episode in the series. If you're looking for a stand-alone, this isn't the book for you. You need to read the first book for background on the world-building, and you'll need to read the third book for closure. (As I understand it, Riggs plans for this series to be a trilogy.)

UPDATE! "Bitten": The TV Show vs. the Book

2001 Original Cover

    After viewing the first five episodes of the SyFy Channel's new show, Bitten, I decided to go back and reread the 2001 novel, just to check my memory of events and characters and to see exactly what changes were made in converting the book into a screenplay. I'm really glad to have done this reread, because it reinforced my belief that Kelley Armstrong is one of the top paranormal writers currently on the market today. In Bitten, she demonstrates her imaginative talent by presenting the reader with an intriguing plot, compelling action, spine-tingling suspense, and complex characters. My reread also served as proof to myself that my memories of the characters and plot elements were, for the most part, on the mark.   

2004 Reprint Cover

     For the most part, the seres is following the plot of the novel very closely, with the exception of a few changes in the sequence of events. One major difference is the large part that Philip (Elena's human boyfriend) plays in the TV show. In the novel, Philip is rarely seen at all. During most of the novel, Elena spends her time at Stonehaven. She is in Toronto briefly at the beginning and near the end, but even then, Philip is a minor presence, and his family members show up only in one early scene. Also, the book has no love scenes between Elena and Philip, but LOTS of sexy scenes between Elena and Clay—a huge difference from the TV show, which actually opens episode 1 with a Philip/Elena bedroom scene and which has no love scenes (so far) between Elena and Clay.   

     The preview for episode 6 (to be aired 2/17/14) has Elena returning to Toronto for Philip's sister's wedding. In the book, that doesn't happen. The preview also shows that Daniel Santos crashes the wedding to offer Elena a deal. That doesn't happen in the book either. 

Reprint Cover
with SyFy Logo

     Other than the Philip/Toronto discrepancy, the biggest difference between the show and the book is in the portrayal of Elena herself. In the novel, Elena is described as being "tall and rangy." She describes herself as being "difficult, temperamental, argumentative." Later, she describes her usual self as "snappish" and "willful." Since high school, she has lifted weights and worked out daily. In one scene, as Elena dresses up to lure one of the newly turned mutts to her she explains that she "needed to pull on the mask that worked best with werewolves: Elena the sexual predator. This didn't mean miniskirts, fishnets, and see-through blouses, namely because I didn't own any. And I didn't own any because they looked ridiculous on me. Skimpy tops, stiletto heels, and barely there bottoms made me look like a coltish fourteen-year-old playing dress up. Nature didn't bless me with curves and my lifestyle didn't let me develop extra padding. I was too tall, too thin, and too athletic to be any guy's idea of centerfold fodder." In that same scene, she describes the unfamiliar process of putting on make-up: "I…went back to my makeup, studying a jar of pink stuff and trying to remember whether it was for my lips or my cheeks."

TV Cast Photo

      TV Elena is so far removed from Novel Elena that her character ruins the show for me. TV Elena is a demure, petite, curvy fashionista with a soft, flirty personalty. Instead of being argumentative and willful, she comes off as a pouty and petulant sex kitten. Her nails are always manicured; her makeup is runway-model perfect; and she wears low-cut tops, skintight pants, and stiletto-heeled boots. Even worse, she simpers and casts coy, hooded glances when she wants to make a point. Novel Elena would never act that way. She always said exactly what was on her mind—clearly and brusquely—and let the chips fall where they may. When I read the OTHERWORLDS books, I always pictured Elena exactly as she was described—a tall, attractive, athletic, kick-ass heroine—a woman like Kate Beckett in Castle, Olivia Benson in Law & Order: SVU, Molly Parker in Killer Women, or even Ava Crowder in Justified or Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. TV Elena is so badly cast and so poorly played that I'm not sure that I'll keep watching the show. Elena is the heart of the OTHERWORLDS novels (especially the early ones). Unfortunately, TV Elena is, at best, an artificial heart—and that heart is not beating with the right rhythm to carry the show.

     The character of TV Clay is also problematic. He looks wolfy enough for the part (although Novel Clay is blond), but he doesn't have the smoldering just-below-the-surface rage that drives Novel Clay in every aspect of his life. In the book, Elena describes Clay like this: "For Clay, instinct ruled. He'd learned tricks he could employ if he had advance notice…But without such warning his temper took over and he'd explode, sometimes endangering the pack. No matter how smart he was—his IQ was once measured at 160—he couldn't control his instincts." TV Clay comes across belligerent and moody, but he doesn't radiate rage like Novel Clay. For Novel Clay, that always-simmering inner rage is the key element of his personality—the thing that drives him to make a life-long series of wrong decisions that have had (and continue to have) disastrous consequences for himself and for his werewolf family. 

     Also missing from the show is the constant physical contact among the Stonehaven pack members. In the novel, they touch each other constantly as a means of showing familial affection. 

     One last difference of some importance is that the TV show doesn't provide enough exposition. We don't learn much about Clay's feral childhood in the Louisiana swamps—which shaped him into the troubled misfit that he is today.  "He'd been living in the swamps and tenements, eking out an existence killing rats and dogs and children.  At such an early age his Changes were uncontrollable and he vacillated continually between forms, reason having almost given way to madness….Jeremy had brought the boy home and tried to civilize him…" We also don't learn many details of Elena's troubled childhood in a series of foster homes and the abuse that she suffered—which made her into the assertive and aggressive person she is now. "By the age of seven Clay was a full werewolf with an inherent capacity for violence and a temper to match. By the same age my foster families had taught me how to hate, developing my own capacity for violence, though I'd been better at hiding it..." We don't learn anything at all about Jeremy, the pack leader who holds the group together. As far as I can recall, the TV show doesn't mention that he is a renowned artist. (I might be wrong on that, but if it was mentioned, it was just in passing.) Elena describes Jeremy as having "more talents than any person I knew….He could speak and translate in over a dozen languages, he could splint a broken bone so it healed as good as new, he could paint scenes I couldn't even imagine, and he could stop a two-hundred-pound charging wolf with a look."

     Here are a few more differences between the book and the show. Some of the changes have obviously been made to provide more racial and gender diversity within the cast of characters. I understand that writers of screenplays frequently make changes in print plots, and the ones that follow are relatively inconsequential, but worth noting nevertheless.

In the book…

   > Pete is killed in the town of Bear Valley when he, Jeremy, and Antonio are attacked by the mutts. Pete is the second of the good guys to die.

   > Logan is described as a "fair-haired bearded man" who lives in Albany. He is never seen in person in the book—only heard from in a phone call to Elena.

   > The sheriff is a man.

   > The sheriff finds only one body on Stonehaven property—the first woman to be murdered. The werewolves later find the body of a young boy, but Elena disposes of it without notifying the authorities. 

   > Although the citizens of Bear Valley distrust the Stonehaven inhabitants, there isn't much open hostility against them.

In the TV show...

   > Pete's body is left at Stonehaven's front gate. He is the first of the good guys to die.

   > Logan is a black man (for diversity's sake, I presume) who lives in Toronto.

   > The sheriff is a woman (for diversity).

   > The sheriff finds several bodies on Stonehaven property, including the first woman to be murdered, a young boy, and a man from Bear Valley.

   > The folks of Bear Valley distrust, dislike, and fear the Stonehaven inhabitants, and there are several scenes of hostility and fighting between the two groups.

     Click HERE for a reading-order list of titles in Armstrong's OTHERWORLD series, a brief overview of the world-buildig, and my reviews of the final two books in the series. Click HERE to read my original post about the TV show, Bitten.

UPDATE! Devon Monk's AGE OF STEAM SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated a previous post for Devon Monk with a review of Cold Copper, the third novel in her AGE OF STEAM SERIES.  

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the updated review.