Murder of Crows, Anne Bishop

Murder of Crows: A Novel of the Others 
Anne Bishop
ISBN: 9780451465269
2nd in Series, after Written in Red
Read April 18, 2014

I read the first of this series and did a shorty review of it a while back, and I'm happy to say the sequel was pretty darn good.  I was sad to see less of the Elementals; I love the seasons and the weather/natural phenomenon ponies so much, but they weren't a big part of this.

I will say the plotting was more solid this time around, although the characters are still a little one-dimensional.  That's ok with me, because I like the dimensions they show off, and honestly I wasn't looking for the next great literary epic.

Good stuff: More about the background and the world, some really creepy moments (meat grinders and hands in jars) and a good bit of Tess (who is scary scary!).

Not so good stuff: A few elisions made me wonder about either plot-holes or the mental capacity of the Others.  After learning that it's not wise to use attacks that could involve ingesting the blood of their enemies, the main characters assist on an all-out-attack, where either the main characters forgot to tell the other assailants about this little detail, or the other assailants didn't give a crap - and none of the so-far pretty serious consequences were mentioned as a result.  That bugged me a little.

The totally unnecessary mis-communication regarding the "sweet bloods" kept at the facilities was really irksome.  I just hate that particular method of introducing in-group conflict or tensions, and it felt very false to the characters and story so far to end on that particular note.

However, I still enjoyed the crap out of it, read it straight through, and can't wait for the next one!