I’ll be putting up two reviews today, so look out for one this afternoon.
This morning, you get a review not of a single book, but a whole series. Someone over at According to Hoyt (who I don’t recall a name for, sadly) suggested that I might like this Urban fantasy series. I picked up the first book, Moon Called, on sale, and then didn’t get around to it for a while, school being what it was. Actually, the First Reader started on it before I did. When he enthusiastically told me that after he realized it was old enough to predate most UF tropes (probably spawned some of them, he suggests) he’d begun to enjoy it, that was a good sign. It was an even better one when he told me it reminded him strongly of Amanda Green’s Nocturnal Origins books. We both enjoy that series, and not just because Amanda is a friend.
The last few days of Finals I took two hours off in the evenings to read. Since this is how long it takes me to finish an average novel, and he’d recommended it, I picked up Moon Called, the first of the series. Ah! Now here was a fun read. Patricia Briggs sets up a good conflict for her character, gives the coyote shifter weaknesses that both make her appealing and let her grow and develop through the series without becoming too powerful to be human.
I can’t really review the whole set of books without spoilering the first couple of them. I will say that they are worth picking up on sale or at your library and reading. The books are weightless reads, the characters are excellently developed, the conflicts will grip you without making you feel as though the author is breaking the characters willy-nilly. The good guys win, the bad guys lose. Not all the bad guys are as bad as they seem. And as in the real fairy tales, the Fae are not very nice at all, even when you ally with them. I really loved the symbolism of the little sheep necklace. That alone would have won me over but Briggs makes it easy to get lost in her world.
The first book introduces the main characters and motivations well. Sucked me right in. As Finals came to a close, I went through the rest of the series… well, let’s put it this way. I got home Friday night from the last exam, hit the library and the online book library and binge-read four books in about eight hours. One of the big perks to starting a series with 8 books already written is that you can finish one and moments later pick up the next one.
I then went on to pick up Cry Wolf, the first in the spin-off Alpha and Omega series, and was surprised at how awkwardly it opens. I got partway through the first chapter and had to stop and go check to make sure it was the first book. I felt like I’d gotten dropped right into the middle of a story and something was missing. I’ll keep at it – I recognize characters like Charles and Asil and I’m interested to see where she goes with the story. She’s playing off trust built with the other series, and had I picked this book up first instead of the Mercy Thompson series, I would have given up on the author right there. 
Comments
4 responses to “Review: Mercy Thompson”
It strikes me that Briggs was mining a lot of the same ground I’m digging in and maybe I should study here and see what I can learn. Thanks for the tip!
M
Yes, she was pretty much at the beginning of the wave that became Urban Fantasy. It was interesting to read her with an authorial eye. That, and she has similar interests to mine – Coyote and Raven make appearances.
I just acquired a childhood love, the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, which, if memory serves, includes a pretty extensive collection of Native American (American Indian for those of you in Rio Linda) myths and legends, which, while surely not dispositive, could serve as a starting point for investigation. I’ve loved Charles de Lint’s treatments of First Nation myths and want to learn more about them. Yes, Coyote is one of my “Gods”. I want to work on him with loving hands.
M
The awkwardness in “Cry Wolf” might be because it’s really not the first in the series. You might say it’s the 1.5th book, because the first work in it is the novella “Alpha & Omega,” found in an anthology called “On the Prowl” or available as an e-book by itself. It really makes a lot more sense if you read that first.
(Honestly, I don’t know why they didn’t just put “Alpha & Omega” on the front of “Cry Wolf” to begin with. It would have made a lot more sense than expecting people to find and read a novella before starting the “first” book in a series.)