Broken

Broken is another book in the Women of the Underworld series, therefore to be able to follow this instalment, it helps to be familiar with earlier books.

Here we return to the Elena, the female werewolf, introduced in the first book of this series. Elena comes to terms with her life as a werewolf. Her relationship with Clay as much improved, especially now she’s expecting a baby.
However, the half demon Xavier, calls in a favour. A simple job, all that’s needed is to steal the Jack the Ripper ‘From Hell’ letter. Sounds easy! Of course nothing is ever easy for Elena and when she accidentally opens a portal to hell, during the theft, her pack become responsible for dealing with killer zombies and disease running rampant in Toronto.

Personal Thoughts – Elena is one of my favourite characters in this series. She introduced us to the strong female characters in the Underworld series and I’ve very much enjoyed her quick wit and no nonsense attitude. She’s known for stepping up to deal with the difficult jobs and her high maintenance relationship with Clay, the werewolf who turned her, makes for interesting reading.
In this instalment, Elena’s called upon by Xanier and finds herself stealing the ‘From Hell’ letter from another half demon. However, when she accidentally opens the portal to hell, she finds herself on the run from dangerous zombies and hunted by half demons. And if this wasn’t bad enough, she has to deal with over protective pack members, Clay and Jeremy, due to her being the size of a small whale.
Her journey through the pitfalls of problems the open portal brings to Toronto take the reader on an action packed ride as the pack deal with one disaster after another. Some new characters appear and some familiar characters return. However, it would have been nice to have Page and Lucas on board, as I felt they interacted well with the werewolf pack in earlier books.
As usual the author grabbed my attention quickly and drew me into her character’s lives. And despite Clay and Elena acting more loving towards each other (I did miss their clashing) they still felt like the two favourite characters I bonded with in the first book. My only complaint would be the baby issue, I’m not the maternal type so found the baby talk distracting and it curved the actions of Elena in a way that, for me, spoiled the action within the story a little. Overall this is another entertaining story by Kelley Armstrong and fans of her books won’t be disappointed.

Other Reviews of works by Kelley Armstrong

Dime Store Magic - Feb 26, 2006