Hardcover published Orbit 2014.
I admit to being slightly worried how this series would go when Mercy and Adam married, (River Marked) but it hasn’t slipped a bit. This is the 8th in the Mercy Thompson series and again, it’s an excellent read and a keeper. A portion of the plot is familiar this time, Adam’s ex-wife, Christy, has turned up on the doorstep asking for help and protection. Her last boyfriend brutalized her and she has the bruises to prove it, he’s made threats that he’s coming after her, and it looks as if he is. Mercy doesn’t like Christy, who is a sneaky manipulator, but how can she say no without looking unfair and unkind? So Christy moves in – and starts moving in on Adam as well, while every move that Mercy makes, has her appearing to be mean and spiteful. It doesn’t help that Jesse, Christy’s daughter, who lives with Mercy and Adam, is torn too. She loves her mother, but doesn’t really like or trust her, whereas she does like and trust Mercy, and the worsening trouble between Mercy and Christy is both distressing and stressing Jesse. This book was a very well-written reminder that supernatural/paranormal you may be, it won’t exempt you from the realities of life, it merely adds a few new angles to things that can go wrong.
Medea, Mercy’s cat makes an appearance too, Medea always makes my day, she’s a cat that likes anyone prepared to provide a lap and stroking hands. Vampires, werewolves, and the fae. All of whom, any cat with a normal sense of self-preservation, would avoid like the plague. Not Medea, there she is, stropping against calves, hopping into laps, and you get a feeling that those she approaches like it because most cats run from them, and if you were or are a cat-lover it must be upsetting, so it’s pleasant to find that one cat at least is happy to be cuddled even if your fangs are bigger than hers. I wonder when I read about her, if like my own feline friend, she isn’t an Ocicat, because when next door’s pitbull was a puppy and wanted to be friends, Thunder wasn’t at all bothered by that. And his own attitude, that an offered lap and cuddles renders any intelligence acceptable, is very much Medea’s attitude as well.
This is another solid work from Patricia Briggs, I recommend it, and pretty much anything at all that she’s written. My only complaint is that I wish she’d write a third Hurog book, and a sequel to When Demons Walk. I loved the characters in those and would really enjoy seeing them return. But then you can’t have everything and with her books, you’re getting excellent writing, characters, and plots. I’ll settle for that any day.