Overall Enjoyment: 4/5
Characterization: 3.5/5
World building 4/5
Diversity 2.5/5

First, let me say that I'm in love with the world of the others. It's an urban fantasy like I haven't read before and I just love it. There are many different types of werecreatures in this book and there's so much going on. I must admit that while I did enjoy this book I will say that books 1-5, the original story line, are still very much my favorites.

Let's start with the characters. There are so many. I loved those that I would consider the main characters. You have Jana whose always wanted to be a cop and has enough spunk to handle Virgil. I wasn't sure at first if I'd like Virgil, but he definitely grew on me and he's a big softy at heart. He bark is worse than his bite (usually). I particularly like his voice within the book. It gives a unique perspective that I really enjoy. Tolya, he's basically the equivalent of a vampire, and he was kinda bland at first. He has a lot of dealings with Jesse though and it really brings out his character when he's with her. Jesse is really great too. I loved all these characters, but there were also so many more characters. Honestly, too many characters for me. We were introduced to A LOT of characters and I don't feel like some of them were really necessary unless there's another book in this particular town (which I don't believe is the case) and it left me with some questions that I never felt answered.

World building was good for an urban fantasy based novel. It's based loosely on the world we have now only instead of humans being the dominant species the terre indigene (mostly what I would call werecreatures) are. The terre indigene are what really draws me into the story. Bishop gives them all a unique voice that I find really enjoyable.

The plot was a bit scattered to me. There was a lot going on in this book and again it was almost too much. I won't say much on that because I don't want to spoil things, but be ready. This book also has some western book-inspiration that I didn't think I'd like, but actually enjoyed.

The diversity in this book. I'm unimpressed. Now, there was a gay couple and there was a neurodivergent child so let me explain why I was unimpressed. They felt forced and that they were only there to say the book had diversity. I doubt that was the author's intent, but the diverse characters are introduced and then just kinda fade away or are in the background and never really given much attention. They had no really point in the book and I found that disappointing.

All right, I’ll start by saying I love Anne Bishop. She is an auto-buy author for me, and when Wild Country came up for an Advance Reader, I couldn’t pass up the chance to get a hold of it early.
Rather than continuing the timeline established by Lake Silence, her previous book, the timeline in Wild Country takes us back to the towns of Prairie Gold and Bennett. Transpiring over the events occurring at the end of Meg and Simon's story, but before the events in Lake Silence. I feel like this book could have come before Lake Silence and I might have enjoyed it more, but then we would not have some of the other establishes relationships that are linchpins in this book, like Hope Wolfsong. Still, I love the characters and world building that Anne Bishop has created.
For me, the timeline issue was my biggest pet peeve. My second issue was with feeling like this book was trying very hard to recreate the Original magic in a different town. It tried to cover all the bases and make sure we had our staple characters, the wolves, the vampires, the elders, and then worked in a solitary harvester. I felt like it was forcing in other Lakeside. We don’t need all the pieces to make the book work within the series, because I was more than happy with the mixed community idea, and the tensions and relationships that were already forming.
Other than that I would consider this a fair book by Bishop. Not great but not bad. I would still recommend it, but it just doesn’t conjure the same emotions as some of the other books in the series.

I finished reading this book last night and I’m literally tempted to read it all over again right now.

In Wild Country, author Anne Bishop brings us back to the world of The Others – and it’s a world of pack dynamics and things with teeth and claws.

Now, I do recommend you read the first book in the series before this one, if only to truly understand the very tentative Human/Terra Indigene relationships here…and how very dangerous it is.

Our Others are wonderful, our humans funny (or horrible depending), and the Elders are terrifying.

I also love the way Bishop approaches relationships in her series. It’s a slow build up – in romance, friendships or pack – and it works. But, oh! She gives us a relationship that I loved and didn’t see coming.

I want another book now!

• ARC Provided via Net Galley

A BIG thank you to the publisher for giving me an ARC in exchange of an honest review.

I still don’t know how she does it, but Anne Bishop does it so damn well!
Wild country is a little darker than previous books but the writing, the world building, the humorous and emotional moments all blend in one GREAT story.
We don’t really have one main character, but a plethora of good and less good people who let us in their heads. Viewing parts of the Other worlds through their eyes, humans or terra indigene, gives us a complete tour of Bennett.

This is a must-read! Just like any other books from the series but beware this one is a liiiiil’ tad more graphic for lack of better word.

I love Anne Bishops stories for the most part, but this one fell flat for me. The story line was just a little too vague and I didn't really get attached to any one character.

I just love the creative world-building in The Others/The World of Others series. While it is the same series, Anne Bishop drops us into a new world featuring the Town of Bennett which is so very different from the Lakeside Community we have come to know and love.

The timeline for Wild Country blends with the happenings of Book 5 of The Others series. In Etched in Bone , Simon and Vlad are interviewing possible candidates to resettled the western town of Bennett which lost all it humans citizens in retaliation of the attacks by the Humans First and Last Movement.

One of the main characters is police officer Jana Paniccia, who graduated the police academy as the first woman officer but who couldn’t find a job in a men-only profession. The Lakeside Courtyard is unconcerned with the fact that she is female, they are more concerned that the Wolfguard sheriff in Bennett would eat he new human deputy. They need a human officer in Bennett because the current sheriff is wolfgard and after losing his pack, including his mate and pups to the attacks by the HFL, Virgil is still hostile to the humans arriving in Bennett. Jana simply hopes that she can find acceptance in the mixed-town of Bennett but more importantly, she wants a chance to be a real police officer.

Both are law officers, but Jana and Virgil aren’t always on the same side of the line. Virgil’s beliefs are usually to bite anyone who is causing trouble and even eat them if they cause too much trouble, and while still a shiny, new officer, Jana is trying to veer Virgil towards arresting and prosecuting bad guys. Jana desperately wants to be accepted into the Police pack but she first has to understand the wolves. Virgil and Jana’s dominance battles can also be noted when Jana adopts a puppy and they don’t agree on the proper way to raise him. It is Tobias Walker, the Intuit from Prairie Gold, who tries to make Jana understand that she is thinking like a human and Virgil thinks like a wolf; Jana needs to understand her boss, a dominant wolfguard enforcer if she is going to survive and be accepted in Bennett.

The funniest part is that while Virgil continues to have issues with humans, he is not sure how he feels about Jana. Is she, as a human, an enemy; or is she, as an officer, part to his pack? But he is convinced that, even though it is impossible for terre indigene and humans to breed, his feisty deputy must be part wolverine since she acts like she is a bigger predator than she is and while he most often wants to bite her, he respects that she isn’t easily cowed.

We have met several of the characters in Bennett in Etched in Bone. There are several people from Prairie Gold (the small ranching town to the South) as well as John Wolfgard to leaves the Lakeside Courtyard to run the bookstore in Bennett and help repopulate the Wolfguard pack. Tolya Sanguinati who left Toland to run Bennett. We also find out that some of the nice people from Prairie Gold are hiding dark secrets. While the Elders (Namid’s teeth and claws) purged a lot of humans after the HFL attacks, they can’t tell good humans from bad, so not everyone heading for Bennett is looking for a new life…some humans are arriving looking to see what they can fleece from the abandoned houses and the naive citizens of Bennett. Some are even looking to take over the town from the terre indigene, not knowing that the only reason the town is allowed to have human citizens is because the terra indigene control it. If these new arrivals take over the town, then the Elders will simply finish where they left off. After all, humans are still only clever meat.

While we want to see harmony between the humans and terre indegine, there will still be a part of you siding with the Others and saying “someone eat that guy.”

This town is portrayed as being like an old frontier town which gives this story a whole different flair than the other stories. Towns have been but off across Thaisia. Communication between cities is limited and towns like Bennett in the west, cannot contact cities like Lakeside or Ferryman’s Landing in the east. The only safe way to travel is train. Horses are used within the town limits since gasoline is scarce and expensive. The saloon has everyone dressed in costumes to promote the old-time frontier theme.

We also see that while Bennett is a mixed community of terra indigene, humans, simple life and Intuits, it is not just humans who are closed minded. We still see prejudices, and not just in the outlaws coming who want to take the town from the terre indigene. We meet one of the pantherguard and his adopted brother who is part Intuit and part cassandra sangue and while they are accepted by the town, Jana has to step in to protect two human males who adopted some orphaned terre indigene children and hope to find acceptance in this new community.

It was so intriguing to watch the reemergence of this new/old frontier town and absolutely tension-filled as we watch the outlaws work their way toward Bennett and Prairie Gold and see their intentions for the town become darker and darker. It was such a great story and such a great series which is a must read for Urban Fantasy/Fantasy lovers. I enjoyed the audiobook narration but couldn’t pass up the change for an ARC except now I have to wait another year to see what happens next. The pain of waiting is a direct indication of how good a series this is.

It starts off slow and kind of dense, but once the action begins, it's hard to resist the story as it drives forward. It reads as a true epic, one that makes you feel the world really has been reshaped as you read it. Would recommend.

Humans don't learn.
In initial books in the Others series, I took the simplistic outlooks and language - of both the 'sophisticated' protagonists and villains - of the humans as a sort of support to the alternating simplistic and cunning behavior of the Others. But this oversimplification got wearying as the series ran on, with both pro- and antagonist humans continually being surprised and scared by dumb presumptions and shoot-yourself-in-the-foot violence backfiring.
This book is already a partial retread of the last book in the series that followed the main characters. When you layer on the recurring set-up - villainous humans thinking they can somehow coerce beings that have recently and overtly murdered a lot of humans who transgressed - and the Others somehow *still* cooperate with the villains enough to let them put the Others in danger, it becomes a bit of a frustrating read.
Few characters develop or learn much over the course of this book, but especially not the humans.
I enjoyed Lake Silence and the most of the main series, but this one fell flat.

For the first time in this series I felt sorry for the humans. The survivors are trying to figure out the new rules in the land but no one has told them how serious it is . The Old Ones are still watching and judging humanity. Unfortunately they also seem to be using the criminals against the human race. This book shows that it won't be easy mixing between the humans and Others. Understanding still has to be worked on.

Had a hard time putting this one down and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

It’s a measure of how much I love this series that, on receiving an ARC, I did a happy dance and dropped everything else to read this immediately. I loved the story but had a few frustrations with it as well.

This book takes place concurrently with some events in Etched in Bone, the story one I had expected to be the first in the Others World spinoffs. The Elders have wiped out large swaths of humanity but have agreed to allow limited resettlement of a small frontier town, Bennett. Tolya Sanguinatti leads the effort to rebuild, and we see some characters we met previously take larger roles in this story. Jana, the young female cop who’d interviewed in the Lakeside Courtyard for a job as deputy in Bennett, plays a key role as she learns to work with Virgil Wolfgard, the sheriff who hates humans as he lost nearly his whole pack, including his mate and pups, to the hateful Humans First killers. Barb Debeny, sister to a Lakeside cop, and Jesse Walker, the Intuit woman who helped save some Wolfgard pups in a previous book, are some of the other characters whom we revisit in this book.

As with the storyline with Meg and Simon, the best parts of this book have to do with how the Others and humans think so differently yet strive to understand one another. I laughed out loud more than a few times at Virgil and Jana’s interactions, especially those related to her puppy. But these were the source of some frustrations as well. As bright as Jana was purported to be, she was slow to learn some lessons. And, as experienced as some like Tolya were with dealing with humans, some actions (or lack of actions) seemed incredibly naive. <spoiler>Tolya and the Others allowing themselves to be as vulnerable as they were at the “showdown” was frustratingly unbelievable. They knew the humans’ evil intent, so why give them any benefit of the doubt or allow them to position themselves for a challenge? This only resulted in unnecessary deaths and more heartache. </spoiler> In addition, while I enjoyed getting to know more of the denizens of Bennett, the lack of focus on a couple main characters (like Meg and Simon in the Lakeside books) made me care a bit less about them all.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the story and loved getting another chance to read about the world of the Others. I hope Bishop continues to write in this series as I believe there are many wonderful stories yet to tell with these characters and world.

WOW! So much happened in this book that I'm still reeling. New and old characters converge to make a riveting and twisting tale, even sometimes heartbreaking. Anne Bishop continues to deliver, I cannot get enough of this series.

Getting a new book by Anne Bishop is becoming one of my most highly anticipated things of the year. When I started reading her The Others series exactly two years ago, December of 2016, I had no idea how much this series is going to mean to me. I just recently binge read the first five books again, and loved them as much as the first time around.

Wild Country is a kind of continuation of the original five books. Because of that I wouldn't recommend jumping into this book without reading the other books first. Start with Written in Red.

Now even though I love her books, especially this series, Wild Country wasn't my favorite and it's easy to pinpoint why.

In the first five books Meg and Simon were pretty much the main characters. And I realized quickly that I need at least one or two main characters that I can really connect with. Characters that carry the story, that are the center a novel is built around.

All of this doesn't mean that I didn't have fun reading Wild Country. I loved getting back to one of my most beloved series. lI actually devoured the book!!

I just would have liked it done differently. Because Wild Country was a story told by many different cast members. Even though all were important to the story, this kind of style actually prevented me from really connecting with a specific character - if that makes any sense.

The next thing that worries me is that I don't really know what the author has planned for the future. Her last novel Lake Silence seems to be a standalone in THE OTHERS series. And right now I don't know if she will continue her story arc in Bennett or move on.

I would love to get back to the people in Bennett. One book isn't enough to really get to know them all, especially since most of them were new introductions and with Lakeside we had 5 books to really get to know the entire cast.

I'm also interested to see what other connections and relationships are being built between the terra indigene and humans. These mixed groups of characters are something I enjoy the most. How everyone adapts, how they learn from one another and build friendships on trust, kindness and support - even if the odds are against them.

Because what I love the most about this series, is that it's all about good vs evil. It's one of these stories that will never grow old, and Anne Bishop has a wonderful and heart-warming way of spinning stories that I love to devour each and every time.

I have just loved this series since finally discovering it last fall! Even though Wild Country, which does take place in the Others World, isn't about Lakeside with Meg & Simon I enjoyed all the new characters. The only bad thing will be the wait for a new addition to the series!

As a fan of urban fantasy, I enjoy Anne Bishop’s novels and the worlds she builds within them. There are recognizable humans, but also shapeshifters, elementals, and vampires, none of whom is invincible. After many towns were destroyed, the town of Bennett is still habitable, with Virgil Wolfgard as sheriff and, Jana, his human deputy trying to keep things safe. The mayor, a vampire, is challenged by a shady human gambler and his crew, and what follows is a high-noon-like situation with an unpredictable outcome. I hope Bishop continues to write about these characters; I’d read and enjoyed her series about the Lakeside community, and some familiar names from that series do appear in this book.

I often begin Anne Bishop books mentally whining about them not featuring my favorite character. However, the impeccable storytelling and richly drawn characters quickly suck me in. Wild Country is no exception. This installment features Jenna, newly appointed deputy to Bennett. She has to work closely with a number of the Others, most of whom haven't interacted much with humans. The potential consequences for a mistake are high - the annihilation of the entire town. The precarious situation in Bennett gets worse as a gang of con men and hired guns closes in on the town.

Bishop does a great job blending the overarching narrative and small moments, really emphasizing the...er..."humanity"...of her characters. Moments of levity, little misunderstandings between species, etc. keep a serious main plot from feeling overly grim. I would highly recommend this to anyone, though it makes the most sense if read after her other The Others books.

Pub date: Mar 5
4.5 I loved this Others installment! In a world where humans have been allowed to live in the Others' lands, this one is set in the frontier town where the Others have killed all of the humans in retaliation (from the previous book). Resettling it is a great cast of characters, human and Other, who made me like this almost as much as the books set in Lakeside, with Meg and Simon. Adding in the well-paced action and interesting relationships made this a great addition to the series!

I loved this one. It gave me just about everything I could ask for in an Anne Bishop Others book. A closer look at the Elders; the various groups -- Human, Others, Simple Life, Cassandra Sangue, and Intuits -- learning how to co-exist without wholesale genocide (which doesn't mean there is no blood, death, or sorrow, because there definitely is); great personalities combined with personal growth for at least some of the characters. Jana and Virgil were favorites. Tolya, Jesse, and Scythe are also good. I hope we get to spend more time in this neck of Thaisia!

I hate to say it, but has Bishop run out of ideas? This book feels extremely formulaic for her Others series - new human encounters Others, realizes they are scarier than originally thought, learns to adapt. Nothing felt new or fresh in this story, and I was pretty disappointed by it

Yes! This is everything that I wanted lake silence to be. A novel set in the world of the others that mentioned many of the characters from the original series. The character of Jana was perfect. Someone to show us both the human side and the struggle for us too understand how the others work.

For those who haven't read the rest of the books in the Others series, the population of the town of Bennett was wiped out in a previous book. It is now being repopulated and under control of the Others. As a book, this stands on it own, but you'll have more context if you've read the other books set in this world.

Wild Country has a different context, it has much more of a historical Western feel than the others and it fits with resettling the town and the dramatic showdown foretold between the Blackstone Clan and the others. There are a fair number of characters and storylines to follow. Here's where I struggled with this book: we know for so long that this showdown is coming, and it seemed bizarre how ill-prepared they were for it. I struggled with the last 10% of the book. It's hard for me to tell if new readers to the series will find the story too drawn out to get to the conclusion. It overshadows the growth made between Jana and Virgil and other characters in learning pack behavior, or human behavior. The theme of found family continues and grows, and cooperation for those who come to Bennett for a new start.

One interesting take in this novel is what happens when an Intuit isn't using their abilities for making the world a safer place? There is good and bad everywhere, and sometimes a second chance isn't enough. Unfortunately my education in Western novels is lacking because I may have missed some connections here.

Wild Country is an interesting fantasy with a nod to Westerns but ultimately the drawn out story just felt too long and unsatisfactory. I'm going to keep rereading the other books set in this world and skip this one.