Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
Facade: Once again there's a female on the cover with prominent boobage and abs on display. However, I don't view her as a Barbarella bimbo because of the confident pose and tattoos. One of the differences between Hunter's cover is Brigg's female is not openly displaying any weapons and this is important to me so it lacks the inherent violence Hunter's cover had.
Appetizer: "I didn't realize he was a werewolf at first." That is a GREAT first line because it hooks the reader like eating something something salty and fried with powdered sugar on top. The questions start popping up: Who is "he"? and How does the person know "he" is a werewolf? Those sort of questions are what bring the reader into the story quickly because the reader is already invested in finding the answers. And if the cover was not clue enough, the story has some paranormal going on.
Tossed Salad: I chose this book to contrast Brigg's Mercy Thompson "walker" character with Hunter's Jane Yellowrock "skinwalker" character.
Mercy Thompson, like Jane, is of Native American descent but she doesn't know who her father is, so she has her mother's name. I like that Mercy's ethnicity is glanced over rather than hammered into the reader. Mercy is different, she is a unique paranormal creature in a world saturated by paranormal creatures because she is a "walker," someone who can turn into a coyote without using the skin of the animal. However, since she is so unusual, she was actually raised by werewolves. She understands quite a bit about her abilities but there are elements she is still discovering because she did not have anyone to teach her.
Mercy is loyal and protective of her friends and adopted family and biological family. Jane does not have any real friends and those lack of ties bothered me. Mercy is a mechanic who trained to be a history teacher. She's not worried about fashion or style. She works out in a dojo to be a better fighter and takes care of herself. Like Jane, Mercy will use a gun in a fight but prefers to use her fist.
Mercy also has memorable quirks. She has a cat without a tail, named Medea who likes werewolves. She has a tendency to bake cookies and brownies when she's worried or stressed. All of her clothes are always stained with grease and she is constantly trying to clean her fingernails but can't get them clean. Mercy provides humor, especially when it comes to revenge because she will wait to get her revenge and is an excellent prankster.
Mercy also has challenges. She has abandonment issues because her mom left her to be raised by werewolves and then her foster mother died when she was a teenager due to cancer. When the foster mom died, her foster father killed himself. Then Bran kicked her out to keep her from getting involved with his son. These quirks and vulnerabilities allowed me as the reader to relate to the character and I was never able to do that with Jane Yellowrock.
Main Meal: The rules of this urban fantasy world are fairly easy to understand and seem realistic even. For instance, part of the back story that is revealed through Mercy's connection with her former boss, Zee, is that the fae were in hiding from humanity since the invention of "cold iron" or since the industrial revolution. However, due to technological changes the fae had to come out of hiding. The result was that they were given land to settle separate from humanity called "reservations." I really appreciate the fact that the rules of this world are built on historical actualities.
Part of my problem with Faith Hunter's book was that I did not clearly understand the rules of the world. It was clear that Jane and Beast were two different identities sharing a body but how that came to be remained my question throughout the book. Meanwhile, Mercy clearly states that she was born a walker, does not need skin of animal to change and can only change into a coyote. Briggs also explains that there is a difference between "walkers" and "skinwalkers."
One of the issues I had with this first book was that I sometimes got lost as to who was who because of the number of characters involved. There were times when I had to go back and think, "Okay, who is this guy again?" The characters are very interesting, but there were a lot of them.
Dessert: It's just a great book!
Word Count: 799
Edits: 1
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