Novel Review: Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson, #3) by Patricia Briggs

Genre: Adult Fantasy/Supernatural (Light-Romance)

Rating (Out of 5): ~4-4.5

Publisher: Penguin (Ace)

Spoilers?: Minor.

Buy it here: Amazon.

Goodreads Synopsis:

I could smell her fear, and it satisfied something deep inside me that had been writhing under her cool, superior gaze. I curled my upper lip so she could get a good look at my sharp teeth. I might only weigh thirty or so pounds in my coyote shape, but I was a predator...

Mechanic Mercy Thompson can shift her shape - but not her loyalty. When her former boss and mentor is arrested for murder and left to rot behind bars by his own kind, it's up to Mercy to clear his name, whether he wants her to or not.

Mercy's loyalty is under pressure from other directions, too. Werewolves are not known for their patience, and if Mercy can't decide between the two she cares for, Sam and Adam may make the choice for her...

Something Specific:

 Quotes:

• "If there was one thing I'd learned over the past few interesting months, it was that when things started to get dangerous, it was important to have people who knew as much as you did. That way, when I stupidly got myself killed--someone would have  starting place to look for my murderer." (Paperback, pg. 141) I liked this thought. It's something Mercy has followed since, I think, the beginning of the series, and it's something that more characters should do.
• "...but he was one of those 'everything in its place and a place for everything' kind of people." (Paperback, pg. 109) I just liked the sound of that.
• "'You need to choose,' he told me intently. 'Adam or Samuel or neither. But you can't keep them dangling.'" (Paperback, pg. 4) I liked that he mentioned the choice of neither, because that thought is often left out. It's not really mentioned later, and it's obviously not a choice for her, because we all know who she really wants, but the thought is usually not even brought up, let alone chosen. 

Review: 

I really enjoy this series. I like every book, always want to start the next one immediately after finishing each book.

This book… this one was a bit of a surprise, in how bad the contents were to the characters. Something very dark and horrible happened in this book.

I don’t want to spoil it, but it was bad, and rather unexpected. I like Mercy, and I feel really bad for her, and am really interested in finding out what’s going to happen to her next. How badly this is going to scar her in the long term. It definitely scarred her in the short term.

While I do understand how horrible what happened was, and I do understand how badly it affected Mercy and the people around her, I feel like the actual events didn’t affect me, as the reader, as much as they could have. And I think part of that is because of how little description there was of the actual events. I think Mercy was trying not to pay too much attention to it, and she was trying to distance herself from it, but I think it distanced the reader and the effect on me because of it. Also, later on, when she was trying to hide and was listening to the conversations the people around her were having, it just didn’t seem like I was inside her head and feeling the pain she was feeling, but instead that I was getting an overhead view of it all. And I just… I wanted to feel more emotion than that.

Even saying that, I did really like this book, and I was interested in what was happening to her, and really want to read the next book.

Aside from the big event, some stuff did happen between Mercy and her two boys. Things between her and Sam come to a conclusion, which I was a little surprised by but did like, and so things with her and Adam are able to fully start. I liked the moments between her and him in this book, and am looking forward to seeing what develops between them in the next book. As well as seeing her and his daughter, Jesse, get closer. Also, how the other wolves will react around her, if they react differently.

There was also some fae business, and a problem with her friend/fellow mechanic Zee, and a problem with Jesse, and we got some insight into who Ben is, some of it entwined with the Big Problem, which was interesting, but wasn't as big of a problem or as attention getting as the Big Problem.

I’m just generally looking forward to the next book.

Novel Review: Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson, #2) by Patricia Briggs

Genre: Adult Fantasy/Supernatural (Light Romance - no sex)

Rating (Out of 5): ~4

Publisher: Penguin (Ace Books)

Spoilers?: No.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Under the rule of science, there are no witch burnings allowed, no water trials or public lynchings. In return, the average law-abiding, solid citizen has little to worry about from the things that go bump in the night. Sometimes I wish I was an average citizen...

Mechanic Mercy Thompson has friends in low places-and in dark ones. And now she owes one of them a favor. Since she can shapeshift at will, she agrees to act as some extra muscle when her vampire friend Stefan goes to deliver a message to another of his kind.

But this new vampire is hardly ordinary-and neither is the demon inside of him.

Available on Amazon.

Review:

I’ve been rather pleasantly surprised by this series since it started, it seems. Probably because I was expecting it to be more of a smutty supernatural flick, somewhat like the Anita Blake series, and this is very far from that series, but still.

A little bit into the book, I hit a slow spot (which might actually have been all my fault, not the books’), but once I really got into it, I didn’t want to put it down, and I wanted to start the next book immediately (especially because, apparently, the next book ends the love triangle thing, which I am so excited for).

Mercy faces off with a demon-ridden vampire in this one, which is a lot more complicated than her and her friends thought it would be. There’s a lot of damage done, and a lot of things come out of it, not much of it very good. We find out more about Mercy and her friends, some relationships grow in interesting ways, and the love interests expand maybe a bit, as well as some development with the previous ones (including some kissin').

I love the group of characters in this series, and I’m just really looking forward to finding out what happens with them all next. I’m looking forward to seeing how they all grow, what develops between them, and I’m sure the next book is going to be interesting. I’m really looking forward to it.

Review: The Gathering (Darkness Rising, #1) by Kelley Armstrong

Rating (Out of 5): ~4/4.5

Publisher: HarperCollins (HarperTeen)

Spoilers?: No.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Sixteen-year-old Maya is just an ordinary teen in an ordinary town. Sure, she doesn't know much about her background - the only thing she really has to cling to is an odd paw-print birthmark on her hip - but she never really put much thought into who her parents were or how she ended up with her adopted parents in this tiny medical-research community on Vancouver Island.

Until now.

Strange things have been happening in this claustrophobic town - from the mountain lions that have been approaching Maya to her best friend's hidden talent for "feeling" out people and situations, to the sexy new bad boy who makes Maya feel . . . . different. Combine that with a few unexplained deaths and a mystery involving Maya's biological parents and it's easy to suspect that this town might have more than its share of skeletons in its closet.

Review:

This, like that last book, I have been meaning to review but just haven't gotten around to it yet. What better time than a month before the next book in the series, though, right?

I read Kelley Armstrong's first young adult series, and I've read a couple of her Women of the Otherworld series (but only the first two, because I don't want to skip around but am having a hard time getting into the ones not about Elena/the werewolves). I've really enjoyed what I've read so far, and it didn't bother me that she was starting a new series with new characters but like her first ya one. But for some reason, even though I knew better, I was a bit wary that it would be too similar to the first one.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was very different. In a very good way.

Maya, the main character, is not Chloe (from the Darkest Powers series). I really liked Chloe, but I was glad to see that they were very different. (It kind of amazes me how well Armstrong is at creating characters different from her other ones.) Very different things are happening to the characters in this series compared the the first, which is nice. This book has more mystery and intrigue. It's actually a bit more exciting, or thrilling; not that the other one wasn't. They're just so different.

Maya is straight-forward, feisty, bold. I liked her, as I did Daniel, her best friend (and felt bad for both of them because of Serena, and would have liked to get to know her). (Also, I'm hoping that's not going to be a triangle. It could go in a different direction, and I hope it does.) I did like Rafe, and there was a point where Maya thought, was sure even when she wasn't, that he'd done something. I didn't really believe that he had, but Maya's feelings on it were completely believable.

I did like all of the characters relationships with each other. They live in a very small, secluded town, so everyone knows each other. The teenagers have nice, or just interesting, relationships, as do the adults. I want to know what is going to happen to all of the kids, see where they go, what they are if they're something. And I really Maya's relationship with her parents. They're so close, honest with each other, and can just play around. It was nice to read about such a close, fun family.

I also like what Maya is, what's she's turning into, or whatever (but I won't spoil it, since it's kept so nicely hidden unless you've read it). That was interesting, and I'm looking forward to more of that in the next book. As I'm looking forward to finding out what's going to happen, plot-wise. In this book, a lot of things are kept secret from the residents, the kids especially, and Maya and her friends are just starting to find things out and investigate them. Some big things happen near the end of the book, and I'm excited to see where they're headed.

This book seemed to open things up for the next one. It was definitely a good start to the trilogy, and did make me want to read the next one. Made me excited, and interested, for it.