The Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs is one of the very few Urban Fantasy series that I still follow. I used to read almost nothing but UF for the best part of a decade, until the genre was so oversaturated with new, mediocre stuff that I lost the taste for it.
Last year, when another book in the spin-off series Alpha & Omega came out, I re-read both series in chronological order, which took quite a while. It was fun and an excellent reminder of some foggy details and hotly debated points of the fandom.
In June 2022 another installment of the series will be published, Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson, #13). Counting the spin-off series, that brings us to book 19 in this universe, ignoring a bunch of short stories, comics, etc. Book #12 of the main series dealt with some marriage problems between our titular hero and her mate, that hopefully will get resolved in the new book.
I liked that book, but this is another series where I am starting to wonder if it‘s perhaps time to wrap things up for good. Definitely still getting the new one in June though! Pre-ordered!
Welcome to #6degrees. On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book. I am using this meme to work on my backlog, aka reviews that I haven‘t yet posted to my blog here. How the meme works and how you can join is explained here. The initial blog post about this month‘s choice is here.
Which, yet again, I haven‘t read. I know Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, as probably most people do. I don‘t know, how much of an autobiography this book is, but nonetheless I will mention another book by an author…
I read this at some point in the ’90s. I don’t recall any details, just a general sense of having read something pleasant and somewhat entertaining, befitting of the biography of a true, English gentleman. I would have loved to mention an autobiographical book by Dirk Bogarde next. It was about his time in the Royal Airforce (I think?) during WWII, but sadly I don‘t remember the name and couldn‘t find it, when I looked now. I don‘t want to mention Michael Caine again, although it is a very funny book. However, I posted about it already in another meme. So… Moon? Moon!
My favourite book of Ilona Andrews‘ Edge books. I loved the crazy family, the rathole and the Mire. In my mind I kept punting through a darker and pissed-off version of the Everglades. Great setting, good plot, suspenseful, good snark. The sword on the cover of this book leads me to…
For a few years Wilbur Smith was my guilty pleasure and I enjoyed his books tremendously. This one here is the second book in the family saga of the Courtneys of South Africa. I liked the first one a lot. When I picked up Power of the Sword, I possibly had outgrown my interest in Wilbur Smith. One Smith leads me to another Smith…
None of my lists would be complete without a comic / graphic novel. The story did not do much for me. The heroine ran around shooting and otherwise killing a lot of baddies and in the process got the good guys killed as well. She got told off for it, ignores that completely and killed some more. Rinse and repeat. Gore, blood, not much plot. Not much character development either. I tried the TV adaptation and didn‘t like it much either. Homecoming is the title of another tie-in comic…
I am a huge fan of the series, so I had to give this a try. Not a lot of world building. I doubt I would have understood what was going on or who they all were and related to each other, if I hadn‘t know the books. Mercy looks different in every chapter. Her face changes, her body shape changes. Sometimes she is muscular, sometimes she looks like Barbie with runner‘s legs. Big boobs, small boobs, pointy chin, square chin, malnourished looking, at times badly proportioned. Very odd. The other humans or werewolves weren‘t terribly well done either. I suppose it‘s silly to expect them all to be anatomically correct, but sometimes the drawings looked a bit too amateurish for my taste. Bottom line, don‘t bother. I will certainly not get another of these comics. Apparently they have also done comics for Laurell K Hamilton, so those are out as well. Talking about Hamilton, I posted about a fair few Anita Blake books, but never about…
The usual humour and an interesting storyline (this is early-ish Hamilton!), although not quite a gritty as Anita Blake. Up until the point, until the heroine goes home. From the onwards it just seemed to be Merry Gentry considering who looks the most stunning, what their clothes look like and how good they might be in bed. Probably sounds familiar for readers of Laurell K. Hamilton.
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted over at That Artsy Reader Girl. The current Top Ten is MY TOP TEN FAVORITE READS OF 2020, predictably so. Let‘s see, how many 5-star reviews I can scare up for this year… no particular order, I listed them as they popped up.
I re-read the whole series, plus Alpha & Omega spin-off, at the beginning of this year. Still good and still one of my favourite UF series of all time. I am looking forward to the new Alpha & Omega in March 2021.
I am slowly working my way through The Walking Dead, the ultimate zombie graphic novel, that spawned an ever increasing horde of books and TV series… this volume was a very good ones. I am still at it, currently reading Volume 13.
As pure escapism goes, this was an excellent choice. Cavers go down to find the centre of the Earth. And things they did not bargain for. Reminding you of Jules Verne? Yes, indeed.
Another re-read, in a pretty Deluxe hardback edition. The book shows its age and author‘s bias in the treatment of women and LGTBQ representation, but if you can look past that it is still one of the best SF novels out there.
This seems to be my year of re-reading old favourites, because I also read the first Dragonriders of Pern trilogy again. And I still like it a lot, phew. The treatment of women in this one is even more problematic than in Dune though. Odder still, the author is a woman. However, if dragons are your thing, this series should be on your list.
My winner in the romance genre for this year. Good sense of humour, believable and not cringe-worthy amounts of drama and angst, blessed lack of the most stupid romance tropes.
Finally I picked up something by Hogarth again, after a longer break. Very chilled, very relaxing, a nice amble through her unusual universe. Let’s call it Pastoral Science Fiction. A slow book with mellow drama and a slowly building asexual romance. Uplifting. Another reviewer called it a cozy, finding-one’s-place story and that sums it up nicely.
Ilona Andrews, well… I would rate their shopping list with five stars.
Not a very sophisticated list with a lot of literary merit, but I had fun. I could list a few more graphic novels. In terms of novels there were no massive highlights this year. Plus the longer I review books, the stricter I seem to get with my ratings.
Not much to add to my first review. The famous conversation came out of the blue and did not sit well with the rest of the story. So I am really looking forward to finding out if this topic will get a lot more coverage in the next Mercy novel coming out this month. Why else even stick it in there, as it was never mentioned in any of the many previous books.
This time around I did not know who the bad guy was and really only clocked on in the last moment. The story didn‘t keep me up at night, but it was good. I liked the look at the various wildlings and loved the altercation with the vikings. Fun!
Onwards to the last book of my re-read!
P.S.: Forgot about that playlist down there. This book is the reason I started to actually listen to Dolly Parton. I recently watched a documentary about her on Netflix. Turns out she is not the dumb, enhanced bimbo she looks like! Why do women do that to themselves? I will never understand that…
Very early in the book there is a brief conversation between Charles and Anna, that upset some of my goodreads friends quite a bit. It might cause them to stop reading this series and also Mercy Thompson. I was surprised when I read that conversation, mulled it over a little, but was not massively perturbed by it. It might or might not be a plot bunny for later books, we shall see.
Unfortunately the comment thread of that review had spoiled me by revealing who the traitor in this story is. That obviously took some of the suspense out of the story.
The plot as such was pretty straight forward and simple, the action was good, we get a deeper look into Anna‘s ever developing skills with her gift. Leah gets some page time that helps to make her a more interesting character. I liked it, solid addition to the series.
Playlist:
Johnny Cash, Hurt
Bobby Dylan, Knockin‘ On Heaven‘s Door
Waylon Jennings, I‘ve Always Been Crazy
Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus
Patsy Cline, Crazy
Dolly Parton, The Company You Keep
Mercy is kidnapped. Took long enough into the series to happen. This is the one set in Europe. I vaguely remembered liking it a lot, for the sheer difference in scenery. And other things. Larry, for example. Great addition to the cast of characters! And The Doctor—I missed it again! Next time I will pay more attention…
“I’m a mechanic; I fix things that are broken. I turn into a thirty-five-pound coyote. I have powerful friends. But when it comes right down to it, my real superpower is chaos.”
Changing points of view, that’s a new one for this series! I liked it, although I am not quite sure about the off-set timeline. It added an interesting dynamic, but probably made it unnecessarily complicated.
Nice revelation there at the end, makes me want to re-read the whole damn book right away… I missed all the clues, if there were any.
Some great character additions. Libor was fun. Lots of vampire politics, which I usually find tedious, but they were well done here. Great visuals, good plot, entertaining, three very late nights of not wanting to put this down…
This one starts of with that highly entertaining fight scene with the troll…
“I don’t know if you and Adam can help us,” Tony said rapidly. In the background, sirens were doing their best to drown out his voice. “But we have a situation here. There is something, a freaking-big something, on the Cable Bridge, and it is eating cars.”
And this is the one where Aiden makes his appearance…
“He’s just human. But all I can think of is Star Trek and ‘Charlie X.’” Maybe. Maybe not.
So, fae and Underhill and… it sort of meanders along. Attack on a house, attack on another house… the plot is not terribly suspenseful and doesn‘t really offer any great surprises. The beginning of the book is really the best part for me. The ending is not bad.
Knocking off one star, I am a little ambivalent about it.
There is humour… Holy Avon, Batman, I thought as worry relaxed into annoyance-tinged humor, I’ve been attacked by a multilevel marketer.
And profound stuff… Death is not to be feared. Death is easy. It is living that is brutal.
And swearing… “My croaking fat frog will shag my fucking Aunt Fanny before I’ll go now,” he said.
And a very nice, feel-good ending… “Nudge,” he said.
I took me a while to warm up to Adam, but by now I love him. And Mercy still is an excellent character. The Pack dynamics are very well done, truly believable, UF for grown-ups, without silly drama. Love the fae, love the settings, good action, great world building.
Still going strong. Looking forward to the next book.
Upgrading this to ★★★★★, because I thouroughly enjoyed it. Well, ok, minus all the drama with Christy and the general bitchiness of the female werewolves. That almost makes it worth knocking off that fifth star again.
This one and the one with the River God are probably my favourite Mercy books. Because it‘s not just the same old fae, vampires, more fae, another vampire…, but a truly different and more interesting creature.
I liked it. I am not ecstatic about it, but it was yet another solid read. Although it has been two years since I read Frost Burned, I had no problems getting back into Mercy Thompson’s world. Her stories were more fun, before she married Adam. Although he is obviously a very dishy character. I also like Jesse, Tad and Warren a lot. Good fights, good story, some nice character additions. The ending made me want to pick up the next book straight away. So now, a long wait ahead of me…
“Who needs a slow build-up? Let’s just jump into the middle of that crisis in the first chapter…”
That‘s what I wrote in an update during my first read and it holds true. This story starts in the middle of the action and keeps going. Good tension and build-up, none of the issues I mentioned below in my first review. Yes, getting a bit fed-up with the bitchy bitches in Mercy‘s pack. But the drama is bearable. I did enjoy the parts written from Adam‘s POV and the expansion of Tad‘s character. I would like it, if Briggs took a deeper look at Mercy‘s abilities and how to expand and make them play a bigger part. Yes, again, almost no recollection of the storyline. Besides the parts with Zee, I remembered zilch.
I liked the POV switching to Adam, the ghosts added a nice little extra, too. The Mercedes (the car, not our heroine) had me cracking up. I took some smaller breaks in between and had problems keeping some of the characters straight, but that might have been me. Took me a bit to get back into it, the gap between this and the last book feels huge. After reading Eileen Wilks I have to say I like the dynamic of her werewolf packs much better. The female werewolves here are so bitchy. Perhaps because they are bitches, literally… 😉
(view spoiler)[“Pup,” he said into the sudden silence, “today, I’m giving you one of my treasures. You see that you take proper care of her.” Mercy is getting married human-style to her werewolf mate and and her foster father Bran, the biggest, baddest wolf, is giving her away. So off we go on honeymoon. Obviously, various things will hit the proverbial fan shortly. Mercy finally meets her father… (hide spoiler)]
This time around we get fewer werewolves, vampires or fae. Instead we dive into native American folklore. A little more romance, a rural setting, almost no Columbia Basin Pack, more of a fantasy feel. Different to the previous Mercy books. I like it.
———— 1st read in 2011: ★★★★☆ What do you call Urban Fantsay without an urban setting? Is it just Fantasy? Because in this one Mercy and Adam are running around in the wilderness and get wet in a lot of rivers.
Good suspense, straight forward story, lots of action. It wasn’t breathtaking, but a good, solid read. Interesting detour into Native American Folklore.
Do you remember that book explaining about fae from the previous Mercy Thompson novel? Mercy still has it and something is fishy about it.
And Mercy is still struggling with her new pack bonds and also with her mate bond with Adam. It‘s getting a little old. I can‘t remember how long this drags on, I hope not through too many more books.
I remembered almost nothing of the story. And this is the first book in my re-read, where I did not feel a great compulsion to pick it up and finish reading it. It was still well written and entertaining, the plotting just didn‘t work for me. So I am knocking off one star of my first rating. Well, honestly, this is more of a ★★★½☆, rounded up for old times sake…
Cathy's Reading Bonanza 