Josh Reviews: Otherkin by Nina Berry

Title: Otherkin Series: Otherkin #1 Author: Nina Berry Publisher: Kensington Format: Paperback, 320 pages Published: July 31st, 2012 ISBN #: 9780758276915/ 0758276915 Genre: Young Adult My Copy: From the Author Rating: Buy: I thought I knew myself. Then I met Caleb. Dez is a good girl who does as she’s told and tries not to be noticed. Then she rescues a boy from a cage, and he tells her secrets about herself. Now inside her burns a darkness that will transform her. Everything is about to change — and neither Caleb, nor the Otherkin, nor those who hunt them are prepared for what Dez will unleash

Most of this book will remind one of a movie, studded with charismatic dialogue and expansive action sequences, so expansive, in fact, that one of the final ones really trips over its own feet, trying to pack in every single little bolt of the animals and villains.

If I could harken back to that precious ark known as The Matrix, with its cargo of religious symbolism and philosophical obviousness, one will remember that its dark night of the soul (a term I am borrowing from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat and indicates the moment following our protagonist realizing that all is lost) dramatized how completely hopeless Neo’s position was. Agents had never been taken down. Agents had Morpheus. Neo was going to challenge Agents to retrieve Morpheus.

The Tribunal, another paranormal romance urban fantasy hypocritical mishmash of Bible thumpers and shotgun toters, do not feel unstoppable. Perhaps because Dez and Caleb escape within the first couple of pages. Why wouldn’t Dez and Caleb and even the supporting cast not tackle the Tribunal head on?

Beyond these plot mechanics, when the book does shift into little, more colorful moments, it does so nicely.

The book’s message, one of kinship and coming to together, rings true, adequately summed up in the werewolf, London’s, question, “why does everyone hate everyone else so much?”

Transformations although frequent are not dizzying.

Dez’s backstory, which even she is still working out, remains a site of wonderment and “what can’t this girl do next”.

I just wish we saw more of the workings of this school’s magical janitor. He seems like the real story amidst all this sound and fury (furry?).

Recommended	if you like kind of a spare read that occasionally barrels into cactuses of compressed passion
Like this, like that	The Girl With Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rossetti and the The Demon Catchers of Milan by Kat Beyer

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