Vampires and Werewolves and Faerie, oh my

[bibliogramma]

Patricia Briggs:
Moon Called
Blood Bound

Moon Called and Blood Bound are the first two novels in Patricia Briggs’ urban fantasy series featuring Mercedes (Mercy) Thompson, a not-quite-human auto mechanic raised by werewolves. She herself is a shapeshifter, but of a kind known in indigenous North American traditions, not European ones – a skinwalker. Her animal shape is that of a coyote, she doesn’t have the great strength of the werewolf but she is not bound by the moon, is faster than ordinary humans, is resistant to certain kinds of magic and can see and talk to ghosts.

In Mercy Thompson’s world, the supernatural beings – fae, werewolves, vampires and others – are in the process of revealing themselves to ordinary humankind, because it is becoming harder and harder to keep their existence a secret. At the beginning of the series, only the lesser fae have done this, but other kinds of non-humans are dealing with the question of how to respond to the increasing problems they are having in remaining undetected, and what changes may be necessary to old habits and traditions in either keeping hidden for now, or in revealing themselves without sparking fear and potential retaliation from humans.

There’s a lot of neat things to commend the series, but there’s also one huge thing that is potentially poison – Mercy gets very close to both werewolves and vampires, in a way that I find just a little too reminiscent of the early Anita Blake books, although with much less actual sex. However, there is a fair amount of focus on dominance issues, the Alpha wolf of the local community declaring Mercy to be his mate at least in name, and how that affects her relationship with his pack, the politics of the local vampire community (Briggs uses the nomenclature “seethe” for a group of vampires related by loyalty to one master), the relationships between pack and were, her friendship with one of the more powerful local vampires, all of the things that made Hamilton’s books interesting at first and then made them intolerable once she’d gone too far with it all.

So far, Briggs is avoiding the pitfalls, and I’m enjoying the series quite a lot, but I’m reading with caution.