Continuing her “Others” series, Anne Bishop introduces us to new characters and a new setting. As part of her divorce settlement Vicki was given a rundown lodge that she it trying to fix up. She even has a lodger, although it turns out Aggie is one of the shape-shifting others, and she has found a body. Watching the twists and turns as Vicki tries to do the right thing and also explain human oddities to the others is fantastic. This series is the best, world building is top notch and I want more! Highly recommended.

Though it's tentatively called the sixth book in The Others series, this thrilling romp through the world of the terra indigene carries minimal references to the previous five books. The setting is semi-familiar, a small town in the same region, but unlike the college town feeling brought by Lakeside and it's inhabitants, everything in Sproing is a bit less... civilized.
Similar to how the series began, Anne Bishop begins this book with a woman attempting to distance herself from her past. This time, Vicki DeVine is a recent divorcee and trying to make due after a contentious separation from her ex-husband. The only thing she appears to have gotten out of that relationship is a rather run-down, lake-front B&B with some rather stringent conditions on renovations and land use. That and an ongoing roulette wheel of anxiety triggers thanks to years of mental and emotional abuse.
Bishop skillfully weaves themes and tropes that she introduced in previous books to tell a new tale, with a new cast and setting. The traumas of Vicki's past are treated seriously and with gravity, by others if not by herself, and trauma and emotional wounds are treated respectfully in how they are carefully explained and handled by multiple characters. In both using the explaining of 'human things' to the terra indigene, as well as the guise of characters being new in town, Bishop is able to provide information without sounding as if she is narrating exposition to readers.
As politically twisted as the previous books, this one too depicts the follies of men and a world attempting to rebuild in a more gentle way - mostly. Much like in Lakeside, the citizens of Sproing are a mixed bag, and newcomers ride a delicate edge of establishing themselves while meeting, some for the first time, the terra indigene. On the other hand, the wild woods are much closer to Sproing and the area surrounding Vicki's cabins at The Jumble, on the edge of Lake Silence, and the terra indigene there are much less used to human interaction.
While this book and this series are generally tagged within a romantic sub-category, if Bishop continues with the adventures of these characters that romance, similar to the first five books, will build slowly. It is only right, with these characters and the things they have been through, and it adds to both the credibility of the characters as people and Bishop's world-building chops. Certainly any future additions to this world will be full of plenty other to keep the characters, and readers, occupied.

Pub date: Mar 2018
3.5 This spin-off is centered around another wounded woman, Vicki, becoming a bridge between humans and the terre indigene. I was happy to see another in this series, even though it didn't have Meg or the Lakeside gang.

So. Freaking. Good!!!!!
It took me a tiny bit to get into it because Vicki is so different from Meg, but Anne Bishop had me sucked into her incredible world very quickly.
It was so cool to see a different point of view and how people were behaving a little after the Great Predation. I loved all the characters and am very much looking forward to seeing them grow and develop. Loved the way the author added to the world she'd built in the first five books and am seriously considering re-reading them...for the third time this year😎.

Overall I’m a fan of Anne Bishop’s new Others book. Vicki is a plain heroine, which is not something we see very often. Despite that, she is kind and generous and people respond to that, and it is lovely to see in a fantasy novel. Vicki, as a heroine, does leave a little to be desired though. She has very realistic anxiety, but that could be frustrating at time because she never appeared to be working on that. Instead of feeling like exploration of mental illness vitally needed in popular culture, it read as an excuse for Vicki to let people do everything for her.

That said. This book has a good hook - I was invested in the story from the first sentence, and it was nice to see more of the Sanguinati, my favorite Others from her previous series. This book has a more clear cut format than many of her previous books, with clear POV shifts between chapters and this delineation was nice. The overall framing was a little strange though - firstly because Vicki says things like “some things to know”, that make it feel like she is talking to another person without providing any further reason to believe that Vicki sees herself as addressing an audience. Secondly, Vicki’s chapters are the only ones in first person, and the switch between first and third person is jarring.