Alone In The Wild

Kelley Armstrong's latest full length novel, released yesterday, which I finished today, is "Alone in the Wild", her fifth novel set in a hamlet called Rockton full of people who need to hide from someone, deep in the Yukon. 

Our cohabiting heroine and her boyfriend (who have started to tell strangers that that they are husband and wife, and who are two members of a three full time employee sheriff's office in the town), find a dead woman and a live baby abandoned in a snow bank near their campsite on their rare day off and set out to determine the cause of the woman's death, save the baby, and figure out who the baby's parents are, while considering if they need to adopt the one month old child in the depth of forest plunged into a cold and snowy subarctic December in contemporary Canada.

It's the 36th full length novel of hers that I've read (in addition to numerous short stories and novellas, one of which I provided some copy edits for). So, I guess you could say I'm a fan, even though I have one of her stand alone novels on my bookshelf waiting to be read, and two of her fantasy trilogies (one co-authored with another fantasy author) yet to read.

I started with a series of books set in her "Otherworld" universe that has produced thirteen adult paranormal romances, and seven young adult novels, as well as one live action television series based upon her novel "Bitten". Her three Nadia Stafford novels, her five Rockton novels, and four stand alone novels, are all set in contemporary Canada and the United States in worlds that could easily coincide with each other. She has five other adult paranormal romances set in a (probably) different world in the Cainsville series, and two more trilogies each in yet other fantasy worlds. 

Why am I a fan?

* Her novels are page turning fast reads with plots that strike a good middle ground between simplistic and baroque. Most of her novels are basically mysteries, no matter what world they are set in.

* Her novels are all sufficiently different from reality to make them an escape rather than deeper immersion in other aspects of my daily life.

* Her novels are intelligent and about as well fleshed out and rich as they can be without the verging on cumbersome world building overkill of series like Game of Thrones and Tolkien's works. Her worlds don't have serious world building flaws, which a contemporary foundation for most of them helps with.

* Her novels engage in so many of the themes and issues of the zeitgeist without being preaching, dystopian, or utopian. "Alone in the wild" is no exception. This novel alone deals with, for example, new couples having and thinking about having kids, coping with severe traumas in life, dealing with a family member with an autism spectrum disorder, sex work, same sex relationships, human trafficking, psychoactive drugs, issues of consent in cults, the moral dilemmas associated with allowing people to live in anti-technological communities comparable to the Amish or indigenous peoples living traditional lifestyles with the benefits and costs that come with that choice, the question of when child protection intervention is appropriate, the pros and cons of having technology and global communications connections in life, environmentally conscious living, the risks of letter profits lead people to make decisions that are bad for communities and how middle managers can and should respond to those issues, the dilemmas faced by adult women trying to navigate life as modern feminist women, suitable ways to respond to neurodiversity, who someone is now versus who they have been in the past and the questions of what sins are forgivable, post-Christian religiosity, domestic violence, when revenge is justified, the appropriate role of law enforcement in a community, role models for living with a disability, social class, and more.

* She has well developed characters who are developed as the story progresses, and she gets into their heads to portray them in a believable way.