LitPick Review
Olivia Shepherd has intentionally decided to ignore her special abilities of being an empath, something that has been passed down through the generations within the maternal side of her family. She feels it won’t benefit her in any specific way because she saw how it traumatized her mother to the point of taking pills and drinking herself to sleep every night just to avoid feeling any sort of empathic things that she picked up on from her surrounding environment. Olivia has made a promise to herself she would not follow in her mother, grandmother, nor her great-grandmother’s footsteps. To this point, it seems to be working out that she’s ignoring her special gift. Or so she thought.
Recently, Olivia has noticed her life spinning out of control to the point of destruction. Her well-being, her self-employed job of being a consultant, and her general overall life while living in San Francisco has had so many destructive hits to it that she has decided to drink herself into a foggy haze. While drowning in her self-pity in her home, one night she realizes she had yet another dream of this woman who she doesn’t know, coming and forewarning her that she is in grave danger. Olivia thinks it’s the drink causing these strange dreams until she realizes she’s wide awake and a woman, a time-walker between this world and the other world, is here to teach her to use her special empathetic gifts to protect herself. Elsa convinces Olivia that she must embrace her gift or else The Others, malicious people who exist in this world and the other world, will eventually make sure they eliminate her because of her special abilities. Olivia reluctantly decides to trust Elsa and so begins not only a close friendship together, but the awakening of Olivia’s special abilities she will need to survive. Does Olivia learn to use and trust her special abilities? Is Elsa able to train Olivia enough to handle any of The Others who she is confronted with?
Opinion:
My first impression of this story was that the descriptions of how The Others used the fog, which was a common occurrence around San Francisco to mask how they came and went interchangeably from this world to the other world, were extremely believable. I loved this concept and truly believed when the fog rolled in, there was definitely mischief going on between the worlds by The Others. It was just a matter of time before people would find out what had happened while the fog was rolling through. This concept was so real for me that I can honestly say that I truly believed whenever any fog rolled through San Francisco, hell was going to break loose somewhere soon. I had hoped that each time, Olivia would be safe.
The characters created by Ms. Davis were very believable as well, to the point I felt as if these were people I could reach out and touch. I enjoyed reading about the coming and goings of people in both this world and the other world, and I truly hoped that all of Elsa’s efforts of training Olivia to use her inherited special abilities would pay off and save her life in the end. As Elsa was training Olivia, both physically and mentally, I, too, felt I was going through this rigorous training in order to save my own life. At times, I hated Elsa, just as much as Olivia did, for pushing too hard to learn all the intensive survival techniques.
I did, however, feel that the pacing was a bit too slow for my preference and made it a bit difficult moving through the story. I know there was a heavy concentration on politics in this story, especially since Olivia was a political campaign consultant, but I felt the political aspect weighed way too heavily throughout this story and bogged it down. I felt because of this, it took away from the supernatural aspect of the story and characters. I wanted more supernatural elements to the storyline and less political ones. Again, this was just my preference.
Overall, I did find The Others a good book to get lost in for a few hours. This is first book in a three-part series under The Council title, so Ms. Davis’s readers can look forward to a series of books set in the supernatural political world she created.
