Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs

This story begins when Mercy and the werewolves and Joel get called out to fight a bridge troll. What's not to like here? I mean bridge...troll...rollicking battle...good times.

After the smoke clears, it becomes apparent that a small group of the Fae are trying to reestablish their hold on the area, after years of peace.

Zee and Tad show up, having escaped from a Fae dungeon with a changeling child in tow, called Aiden. His stay in the Underhill has changed him, giving him a unique relationship with the element of Fire. Mercy offers him the sanctuary of the pack, which triggers a bit of a power struggle with Adam's people, and sets the pack up in opposition to the power hungry Fae.

But Mercy aligns herself with another faction, and they undertake a dangerous mission into the land of Faerie to recover an artifact which is the price of peace.

There's some good tie-ins here with some of the short stories in Shifting Shadows, and Mercy's powers are getting a bit stronger with every novel in the series. Fun to see where Briggs is going with this.

Night Broken by Patricia Briggs

I knew this novel was going to be too short when I saw the page count (250) on my Nook as the story began. Ah well, I suppose it was exactly the number of words that needed to be written to tell the tale that must be told.

Mercy gets an unpleasant surprise when Adam's ex-wife, Christy, is fleeing from a former lover turned violent stalker and calls Adam for help. His sense of responsibility for his "pack" as alpha wolf forces him to let her seek refuge in the home which now belongs to him and Mercy. You can probably see that this is going to lead to fireworks, perhaps literal, from the moment it begins.

But Christy's stalker turns out to be far more dangerous than anticipated, and we get the first indication when the townhouse where she lived burns to the ground, killing four innocent bystanders.

About this time, one of the elven Grey Lords shows up at Adam and Mercy's, looking for his father's walking stick, which Mercy gave to Coyote to keep, after she used it to kill the river monster a couple of books ago. He threatens all sorts of dire consequences, oh so politely, as the fae are known to do things, if she fails to turn it over within a week.

Mercy begins trying to get in touch with Coyote - not something any sane person wants to do - and ends up in jail. Well, not that way, but she visits a "half-brother" of hers, Gary LaughingDog, where he's being held for stealing a police car and a case of expensive scotch, and asks him if he knows how to contact Coyote. Shortly after her visit, Gary has a vision of disaster unfolding and breaks out of lockup to warn Mercy, Adam and the pack.

When Christy's stalker turns up at Mercy's garage and demands that she be given back to him, our favorite shape shifter finds out that he's not even close to being human, and is an immensely powerful bad guy - Guayota. With a little help from Adam and Tad (half fae son of the Dark Smith), she manages to drive him off and kill one of his minions, but it's obvious to all concerned that they're going to have to deal with him more permanently at some point.

All of which, of course, leads up to a big battle scene at the end of the book, and some new possibilities forming for the overall plot arc.

Too short. More, please, for Mercy's sake!

Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs

Sometimes, it seems like Mercy can't go anywhere without getting into trouble. She and her mate, Adam's daughter, Jessie, decide to go out after Thanksgiving dinner for a little Black Friday shopping, and get more trouble than they bargained for. Mercy suffers a panic attack for no apparent reason (it comes to me later that it's triggered by her psychic tie with Adam), and when they have the tow truck driver drop her and Jessie at the garage, they find Gabriel and Ben have taken refuge there from a group of rogue Cantrip agents who have taken most of Adam's pack into custody.

The Cantrip deserters want Adam to assassinate for them a senator who does not agree with their agenda, and they need all the leverage they can get to force him to their will. It's obvious that there would be no better leverage than to capture Mercy and Jessie, so it is essential that they stay out of the agents' clutches. But Warren's partner, Kyle, is already being held hostage and interrogated to find out where the "girls" might hide, so Mercy sends Jessie and Gabriel off to stay with Gabriels family, and asks her half-fae friend, Tad (Zee's son) to watch over them, then she and Ben set off to free Kyle and interrogate the hostage takers. To help, she recruits the vampire, Stefan, and together they are more than a match for a handful of humans.

Mercy, who is in some strange metaphysical or metaphorical way the daughter of the Amerindian god, Coyote, gains some interesting new powers in this novel. Her mixture of using Indian magic with Christian symbols for banishing ghosts seems like a new thing in urban fantasy, unless you count Anita Blake mixing her crosses and necromantic powers, I suppose. So, the bad guys are poisoning the werewolves with silver to keep them weak, and Adam is using his alpha magic to absorb the silver into his own body. When Mercy spirit walks to be with Adam, she ends up "eating" a large quantity of silver, thereby taking it away from Adam and the pack, and giving her nothing more than an upset stomach and a few minor side effects, hardly debilitating.

When the rogue agents betray a band of mercenaries they hired to help kidnap the pack members, the mercenaries make it easy for Adam and his wolves to escape and take vengeance on their captors. But that's not the end of the story, as the money and power behind the Cantrip people belongs to a powerful vampire, who wants control of the entire country, and a return to the time when vampires were at the top of the food pyramid. So Mercy and her friends have to fight one last supernatural battle to decide the fate of America.

Good action, an interesting plot, and some neat new skills for Mercy.

River Marked by Patricia Briggs

The latest installment in the Mercy Thompson series was worth waiting for. As the novel begins, Mercy is getting serious wedding jitters, about the planning, not so much about being married to Adam. After they tie the knot, it's all good, and they head off with a monster RV on a honeymoon.

This is where it gets especially fun for some of us readers. Get your minds out of the gutter, people, Briggs doesn't get all graphic about the honeymoon, but if you're from the Northwest, you'll recognize the area where they choose to spend their time. It's in the Columbia River gorge, near the Dalles, and a place called Maryhill.

I've spent a lot of time traveling in that area, and have been to the Maryhill museum which she describes quite well, have visited the replica of Stonehenge nearby, which also plays a part in the story, so I was really able to visualize what was happening there above and beyond the descriptions Briggs provides.

Mercy and Adam run afoul of a monster out of Indian legends on the Columbia River, and join forces with some other "walkers" a shaman or two, a few ghosts and even a demigod or two in this tale. The monster has been eating people all up and down the river, and growing in size and power. The fae are peripherally involved, as they have resettled some otterkin (akin to kelpies) in the area where the monster lives, and the otterkin are apparently in league with the "river devil".

There's a lot of relationship development between Mercy and Adam in this installment, too. They learn how to work together more effectively, and begin to define the boundaries of their roles as husband and wife, which is entertaining as they're both seriously alpha material. Love conquers nearly all, in the end.

A skillful blend of ancient legend and modern trappings make this a truly enjoyable tale. If you're one of those folks who likes to peek at the last page or two of a book before you start, I'm warning you not to. You'll be seriously upset and worried, and won't truly be able to enjoy this fine bit of fun.

Mailbox Monday

Can't wait to sink my teeth into this one.

Silver Borne, by Patricia Briggs

In Silver Borne, Briggs continues the saga of Mercy Thompson, were coyote. One of her friends, Phineas, a part-fae owner of an antiquarian bookstore, has gone missing. Bounty hunters show up at her garage, with a warrant for the arrest of her mate, Alpha of the local werewolf clan, Adam. Someone is messing with the pack bond between herself and Adam, making her do things she wouldn't ordinarily. Also, her werewolf roommate, Samuel, son of the Marrok, has decided he's tired of life and attempts to commit suicide.
It's a mixed blessing that Mercy has so many friends, as on the one hand she feels responsible for all of them, and they can be used as hostages to her good behavior, but on the other hand there are plenty of folks to help out when the going gets tough.
One of the more powerful fae turns out to be behind the kidnapping, and Mercy must first deal with her minions and then the evil fairy herself in order to extract Phin from her clutches. The fae is after an old artifact that belonged to the bookseller, that he loaned to Mercy, and it's not entirely certain whether Mercy will escape the fae herself, much less free Phin.
She and Adam will also have to deal with unrest within the werewolf pack, as some factions want more power and others are offended that Adam has taken a coyote as his mate. As icing on the cake, how do you stop a suicidal werewolf?
My only regret about this book is that I finished it way too quickly. If you've been following Mercy's exploits, don't wait for the paperback, folks.