No Humans Involved

Women of the Otherworld, Book 7

By: Kelley Armstrong

Narrated by: Laural Merlington

Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

It's the most anticipated reality television event of the season: three spiritualists gathered together in one house to raise the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. For celebrity medium Jaime Vegas, it is to be her swan song: one last publicity blast for a celebrity on the wrong side of 40. But unlike her colleagues, who are more show than substance, Jaime is the real thing.

Reluctant to upstage her fellow spiritualists, Jaime tries to suppress her talents, as she has done her entire life. But there is something lurking in the maze of gardens behind the house: a spirit without a voice. And it won't let go until somehow Jaime hears its terrible story. For the first time in her life, Jaime Vegas understands what humans mean when they say they are haunted. Distraught, Jaime looks to fellow supernatural Jeremy Danvers for help.

As the touches and whispers from the garden grow more frantic, Jaime and Jeremy embark on an investigation into a Los Angeles underworld of black magic and ritual sacrifice. When events culminate in a psychic showdown, Jaime must use the darkest power she has to defeat a shocking enemy: one whose malicious force comes from the last realm she expected.

In a world whose surface resembles our own, Kelley Armstrong delivers a stunning alternate reality, one where beings of the imagination live, love, and fight a never-ending battle between good and evil.

©2007 Kelley Armstrong (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Paranormal and show-business power struggles make for hard-to-put-down entertainment." ( Booklist)
"Armstrong deftly juggles such creatures as werewolves, witches, demons and ghosts with real-life issues." ( Publishers Weekly)

just listened to this for the upteenth time

I love this book its well written and well read its one of my all time favs

This was the first Kelly Armstrong book I've read

I enjoyed it very much, it was very different and full of wild characters. Looking forward to more of her work.

Good story about Jamie

The story focuses on Jamie. Good story, but the narration could be better.
Laural Merlington keep the same voice from ealier books, but Jamie's voice and Hope's sound the same.

Not for Everybody

The book was well enough written with some interesting concepts. However, it just was not for me, or maybe not for my generation. The “supernatural” throughout the work was just too, well, sugar coated. Not sure if that best describes it, but despite this being a new generation of “fashions, coffee shops, and sensitive men,” those items just do not fit well with childhood memories of lycanthrope wolves pushing through their human skins to fulfill their hunger for ripping out human throats on a full moon.

Instead, this book gave us the sensitive romantic alpha male (sensitive romantic alpha male? Isn’t that an oxymoron?) werewolf who with the main protagonist spent a lot of time sipping coffee in coffee shops. It seemed like an extensive trivialization of necromancy, death, good, evil, angels, demons, religions, ghosts, vampires, magic, cults, werewolves, and lets not forget your pesky everyday "non-supernatural" human used to provide a very popular subject matter backdrop for some modern day characters.

Finally, the narrator only managed to heighten the story’s weaknesses by making the action, just a little less exciting and the main characters, just a little more unlikable.

Good book, good narrator, unwise combination

Kelley Armstrong is one of the few whose books I buy as both print and audio, and I loved this book in print. I simply could not get behind the combination of Jamie Vegas -- the most sexual female in Ms. Armstrong's lineup -- and Laural Merlington, the most comforting and grandmotherly voice in the audible paranormal lineup. Jamie and Jeremy's encounters are very edgy and explicit, and listening to them in Ms. Merlington's voice was unpleasant, almost embarrassing.