This is the second of the author's werewolf books I've read - I read Stolen some years ago but can't recall a lot about it, so I didn't have background knowledge of any of the characters.

In this, the protagonist, Elena, is heavily pregnant which is a great event as she is the only known female werewolf. Her partner, Clay, and pack leader Jeremy, are both very solicitous to the point where they are driving her stir crazy. So to relieve the boredom, she persuades them to fulfill a commission to steal the "From Hell" letter, supposedly sent by Jack the Ripper, which had been stolen from Scotland Yard in the early part of the 20th century and is now in the possession of a man who inherited it from his great grandfather. This is by way of doing a return favour for someone called Xavier who is apparently a semi-demon and I gather appeared in a previous book. Xavier has a human client who will pay a lot of money for it and if they steal the letter for him this will cancel a debt Elena owes him.

The theft goes smoothly, but Elena can't resist having a look at the letter and in the process a mosquito, which had already sucked her blood, ends up smacked onto it. Her blood opens a trans-dimensional portal attached to the letter. A couple of Victorian zombies promptly escape from it and come after her for reasons that later become apparent, plus a typhus outbreak affects the water supply of Toronto, where most of the novel is set, and rats which are affected with an unspecified disease start attacking people. All of these things are apparently triggered off by the portal.

There is a lot of running around in the novel as the characters try to follow up clues and interview people etc. Quite a bit is fairly pointless and made the pacing very slow. There is also a lot of emphasis of Elena's pregnancy and how it hampers her from what is apparently her normal 'kick ass' demeanor, yet she does still manage a fair amount which is - even for a werewolf - not that convincing for someone so heavily pregnant.

The style is "easy read" but another problem for me was the plethora of characters who kept appearing, phoning up with information etc. Two had names that sound similar - Rita and Anita - and I sometimes mixed them up when one was mentioned, thinking the characters were talking about the other one. None of these characters were developed enough to make them memorable, even the one who eventually turned out to be the villain who created the portal and also escaped from it. It didn't help that the villain's identity was patently obvious for entire chapters before this person decided to come clean, so it made supposedly intelligent characters seem really dim. Similarly, there is a misunderstanding towards the end of the book concerning a character who is apparently new to the series which again made them appear completely stupid; they hadn't alerted her to the identity of the villain, but when they see her with him, they jump to the conclusion that she must be in league with him rather than that she is intended to be his next victim. Eventually, Elena remembers an earlier warning that this character will be in danger, but only after the woman herself makes it clear she is unaware she has been tricked.

The good things about the book were the setting of Toronto, the easy style and interaction between some of the characters and the character of Zoe who was interesting and had a slight edge to her. The less good things were an over emphasis on pregnancy when the pregnancy wasn't dealt with realistically, and a huge cast of mainly cardboard characters who were not well developed, many of them off stage and only present through phone calls. It seems these are main characters in other series by the author and it was almost as if she needed to name check her other series. Even characters who appear in person, such as one who appeared at first to be a goodie but then turned against the werewolves, were not developed enough to be interesting or convincing.

The whole "Jack the Ripper and zombies" idea also came over as really muddled; was the villain truly the person who had gone by that name or had he employed one of the zombies to do the murders in 1888? Or was he completely separate and had used the uproar caused by JtR to carry out his own bloody crimes? These were apparently meant to gain a boon from his demon father .... though there was no sign of the latter in modern day Toronto, and his motive for tracking Elena - to sell her offspring on the black market - didn't seem to bear any connection to his earning of that boon. Instead, it seemed it was another character altogether Zoe that he needed for that. So the plot had some serious weaknesses and, given all this, for me the book as a whole only merits a 2-star rating. ( )

After finishing this book I fell even more in love with Kelley Armstrong's beautiful and enticing Otherworld. Elena is a strong character who is easily relatable to a modern woman. Dealing with pregnancy along with a portal that opened and is releasing zombies and disease into modern day Toronto all sets up for a wonderfully addicting werewolf led book. Five stars!!! ( )

TW/CW: Death, zombies, illness, injury, rats, murder, violence, fantasy violence, pregnancy, childbirth

RATING: 4/5

REVIEW: In Broken Kelley Armstrong takes us back to the werewolves, with Elena narrating as her pack takes on a job involving zombies, magic, and Jack the Ripper!

This was a good book and I really enjoyed reading it. In this book, Elena is pregnant – the only female werewolf alive, and the only one known to have ever given birth. That, of course, does not mean that she’s going to take it easy, even though that might be what Jeremy and Clay keep urging her to do.

Instead she takes on a case that takes her to the streets of Toronto, chasing zombies, running from killer rats, and fighting face to face with sorcerers, witches, vampires, and other supernatural creatures.

This book was exciting, and I found it moving quickly as I lost myself inside the mystery. It’s a good story, and while I might have figured it out before the end, it didn’t hurt my enjoyment.

A good book and I recommend to fans of urban fantasy! ( )

Kelley Armstrong's sixth novel in the "Women of the Otherworld" series brings us back to Elena's hometown of Toronto, with a rip in time leading to chaos as Jack the Ripper is seemingly unleashed on the city, with a host of zombies. Elena and the pack must navigate the magical world as they seek to fix things, all the while contending with Elena's pregnancy. This novel continues Elena's story after "Stolen". ( )

Rare pregnant werewolf and her pack battle "Jack the Ripper" in modern Toronto