Review: Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Item: Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, #1)
Rating: 4.5
Author: Kate

Posted March 14, 2020 by Kate

Check out on Goodreads | Buy on Amazon
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy
Also by this author: Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson, #2), Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson, #3)
Series: Mercy Thompson #1
Publisher: Ace Books
Source: My shelves

Mercedes Thompson, aka Mercy, is a talented Volkswagen mechanic living in the Tri-Cities area of Washington. She also happens to be a walker, a magical being with the power to shift into a coyote at will. Mercy's next-door neighbor is a werewolf. Her former boss is a gremlin. And she's fixing a bus for a vampire. This is the world of Mercy Thompson, one that looks a lot like ours but is populated by those things that go bump in the night. And Mercy's connection to those things is about to get her into some serious hot water...

This is my third time rereading Moon Called, the first book in the Mercy Thompson series. It’s such a fun PNR / Urban Fantasy read that every time I catch sight of it on my shelf… I think “ooohhh… reread?” This time, I relented and here we go :)

Mercedes “Mercy” Thompson is a natural-born coyote shapeshifter/skinwalker, auto mechanic, and neighbor to the Alpha of the local wolf pack in Washington. She is strong, together, sensible and independent, and lives in a world of humans and the paranormal, which includes vampires, werewolves, walkers, fey, and witches. Which is oh-so-perfectly my cup of tea.

The book starts with the murder of a young boy named Mac, who Mercy had taken under her wing and employed at her garage. He’d been turned into a werewolf unwillingly and was kept in a cage and experimented on by a secret organization doing such things to new werewolves. She decided she’d help him, but when that organization comes calling and Adam, the leader of the local wolf-pack and Mercy’s neighbor, is attacked and his daughter kidnapped, Mercy gets involved. Moon Called has that specific feeling of “first book in long urban fantasy series,” where there’s a lot of world-building and set up, but Briggs does a great job at making it feel natural, instead of explanatory.

“Under the mellowing influence of good food and good music, Adam relaxed, and I discovered that underneath that overbearing, hot-tempered Alpha disguise he usually wore, was a charming, over-bearing, hot-tempered man. He seemed to enjoy finding out that I was as stubborn and disrespectful of authority as he’d always suspected.

Mercy is such a fun character. She’s fierce and doesn’t take any shit. She’s a coyote shifter, and doesn’t belong to any werewolf pack – not the one she grew up in, and not the one Adam, her neighbor, heads. This means she doesn’t have to follow their rules or their edicts, as she keeps having to remind the respective Alpha’s ✨

There is a hint of a love triangle that happens in this book – but please, don’t worry about it. Mercy isn’t interested (right now at least ????) in a relationship, and she makes it clear she’s no toy to be fought over, and the choice is hers, not their’s, no matter that she doesn’t intend to be in a relationship. Perhaps my favorite scene was when Adam and Samuel got into a growling-Alpha-match over rights to Mercy, and she just walked out and went to spend the night at her friend Stefan’s house. She took back the power, and it’s a majorly indicative reason as to why I love her ?But this book doesn’t focus on the romance – it was just an entertaining sub-plot that had the reader giggling (and Mercy sighing in exasperation, no doubt) in between the cracks of the main plot. There’s plenty of action and conflict that makes this one intriguing, and I was invested – despite this being my third time reading it ?

The Mercy Thompson series is such a big hit with me because it effortlessly weaves together all the worlds of the paranormal and supernatural into an Urban Fantasy read. There’s fey, shifters, vampires, along with ghosts, witches, and skinwalkers. The fluid sense of storytelling is what has it sitting up there with other big-name urban fantasy reads – like the Kate Daniels, Black Dagger Brotherhood, and Psy-Changeling world. I definitely recommend this one ? (Read my review for book two)