The first of the Mercy Thompson novels is quite an enjoyable introduction to Patricia Briggs's urban fantasy setting (although that term is semi-inappropriate for this story, as it takes place for the most part in what sounds like a suburban setting with a side order of mountain wilderness toward the middle). Told in the first person, this series follows the adventures of Mercedes Thompson ("Mercy" for short), who believes herself "no match for a werewolf" but has a tendency to prove herself capable of standing up to most of the dark things life throws at her from this book onward. A "walker," Mercy's magical superpower is the ability to shift into a coyote form, but what makes her interesting is the mundane set of talents and traits layered on top of that, many of which manifest her as one of a surprisingly small number of "strong, independent woman trope" characters who narratively make sure they earn that status in the eyes of the reader rather than just stepping up and assuming that a handful of vaguely defined positive strengths can carry a character arc. She's a tough character, but also tactful enough to maneuver around the troublesome dominance instincts of a werewolf to avoid angering them; she's independent in the most practical sense, by which I mean she runs and owns her own business and is good enough at what she does to be proud of that business. And while she may mentally acknowledge and occasionally acquiesce to the wishes of the protective Alpha males in her life, she never quite brings herself to give up sticking her nose in things and has the cunning, nerve, and deductive reasoning skills to stand out as a dark horse contributor to the adventures she takes part in. That Mercy is such a compelling character is important, because Mercy is what holds this series of books together. There is no single, continuous plot, there is only continuity and character development. The stories are largely self-contained within their own arcs apart from their building effect on the world in which Mercy lives and on her and the characters around her.
This first book, Moon Called, is a little bit shaky in some aspects. It has a strong beginning, and a strong latter half. But toward the middle it begins to meander a bit too much, focusing too much attention in too condensed a chunk of the book on "guy problems," by which I mean Mercy's guy problems and then, immediately after, the problems of her gay werewolf friend. None of this is bad, but it leaves the pacing feeling uneven and I couldn't help but think that, if there was going to be a protracted period of non-action so soon in the book, it should not have set such a tense, violence-soaked tone in the early portion of the book. And if it needed to do that, then the romantic tensions of the middle portion really ought to have been spread out and broken up by more plot-relevant events. Fortunately this book is short enough that the meandering middle didn't wear me out before the story got back to business, which is good. And maybe this portion of the book is just more popular with Briggs's intended demographic than I give it credit for. It's very obvious from the way Mercy narrates events that the story is being written with straight women who like chiseled muscles, alpha males, and romanticized "animal instinct" notions in their love stories, and I'm a straight 29-year-old GUY who likes athletic women with a bit of humor and attitude, while simulataneously finding "animal instinct" notions in love stories goddang annoying. So my perspective might be skewed. Although the "...but all these animal instincts are kind of a pain in everyone's butts" caveat undertone to the proceeding does tickle that latter tendency of mine too, which I guess is a sign of a darn good, well-rounded approach to that idea. So Patricia Briggs does deserve some props for catering to one demographic while not necessarily writing a story that would be repellant to all others.
Anyone coming into this series in the year 2017 might be thinking of the likes of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey when I talk about that kind of thing though, so rest assured: Patricia Briggs is a much, much, much much much better writer than Stephanie Meyer or E. L. James. Leagues better. The only writing issues I can pinpoint are the above-mentioned uneven pacing, occasional typos here and there that should have really been flagged and fixed during the editing process, and the character of Warren, who is defined too heavily on his introduction by his homosexuality to entirely become anything more by the end of this book than "Adam and Mercy's gay werewolf friend" and may not grow on readers until subsequent books as a result of that. The frustrating thing in that last one is that Mercy herself briefly relays an anecdote about something cool Warren did in the past that marked him as a hero and all around good guy in her eyes, but actually witnessing that event as a scene within the book's narrative rather than a vague summary of backstory would have established Warren so much more effectively and then the whole thing where Mercy meddled with his boyfriend would have just been... you know... character development, rather than the only thing we knew about the character for the majority of his "screen time."
Still, first novel in series, so some misteps are to be expected. Overall it was still very enjoyable. It never really elevated itself beyond the level of pulp fiction popcorn entertainment, but as those kinds of novels go, this is one of the good ones. It gets my wholehearted recommendation, and I'm already reading the second one as I write this.
Final note: formatting in both the Mass Market Paperback and the Kindle edition are largely identical and fine. Paperback's small but sturdy and feels pretty good in the hand, but is not built for antiquity. If you're looking to COLLECT physical copies of these books, find hardcovers.
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Great start to what I know will be a great seriesMercy was a badass MC and I'm looking forward to book 2!
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An entrancing start to a fabulous series
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 22, 2021Bookworm 262
Brilliant start to the series
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2020
