Meg Corbyn is running for her life when she stumbles in to a Courtyard, the local sanctuary for the Others. The Others consist of vampires, werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night, but a job with them could provide Meg with the protection she needs, as long as she can survive her employers.
Describing this book is hard if you haven't read Bishop before. She describes her Black Jewels series as a romance that just happens to take place in a fantasy world. I (and most other people, I think), would put her books firmly in dark fantasy--something that bridges the genres of fantasy and horror--if only because the dark parts are really dark (this book, for instance, involves kidnapping, sexual abuse, and cutting, so readers be warned). But the lighter parts of her novels tend to be really light--bordering on fluffy. The contrast can be a little off-putting, but it's a good mix for me, and keeps the book from veering too strongly in one direction or another. And that's the case here: most of the time you have a charming story about a young woman finding her place in what amounts to a small town, and making friends with the owners of the local bookstore and coffee shop. Then, every once in a while, a werewolf eats someone. Then we go back to chocolate chip cookies and babysitting ssaid werewolf's adorable nephew. The focus of the book is less on plot (indeed, the villains are basically stock characters, but that's okay, because I was more interested in the good guys than the conflict), though the book does have a pretty action-packed climax involved a team mercenaries trying to abduct Meg. I can already tell that the next book might be less fluffy, since Bishop set up a lot of potential conflict in this volume. I tore through this book, and I'm eager to keep reading and see where Bishop takes this world.
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