Moon Called by Patricia Briggs ★★★★☆

This book more than kept up its side of the contract.

Fiction – Urban Fantasy/Paranormal

288 pages

Publication Date:  January 1st 2006

Mercy Thompson #1

When the half-starved kid Mercy Thompson was trying to protect ends up on her front porch dead, and her next door neighbor Adam Hauptman, the local werewolf pack’s Alpha, is on the brink of death from the same attack Mercy knows she can no longer stay on the fringe of the supernatural world.  Pulled back in she is forced to return to the werewolf community, that raised her and rejected her, for help opening up old wounds that never healed properly.  

Okay to start out with the cover is a little ridiculous, but it does serve to grab your attention and as a child of the marketing age I can only fault it so much.  Please do not hold this against Moon Called, try instead to treat it as quirk of the series.

This book was easy to like and I quickly fell into the rhythm of the story from page one.  Briggs unravels this fascinating story at just the right speed to keep me interested, but not overwhelmed with detail and mythology.  I found myself pulled into Mercy’s world without really knowing when I agreed to fully enter it.  I mean I know when you start a book there is almost a contractual agreement between reader and story, but it is really so much easier when I can like something without a huge effort on my part.  The caliber of this story is higher than usual for this genre as well as the main character, Mercy.  Mercy Thompson is independent, intelligent strong, but reasonable, and not perfect.  I like the Tri-Cities as a location out of the norm, and appreciate the Washington State flavor Briggs adds to the story (whoo hoo for the Northwest, holla). 

The plot was fun to follow as well as the emotional journey, with an excellent balance between the two.  The politics between species and even within the hierarchies of the species were interesting and I can’t wait to further understand Mercy’s world.

PS  I have been reading the rest of the series and I have to say I like them more than the Sookie Stackhouse novels.  Sure it’s missing the element of horrific fun, but I personally prefer the story construction, mythology and Mercy.  Oh, and don’t worry the parade of ridiculous covers continues.