Bookfreak Review: Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

I've had this book on my Amazon wishlist for a while now, but just haven't placed any orders recently. So Tuesday, the new Sherrilyn Kenyon book came out, Dark Side of the Moon, and being the addict that I am, I had to get it THAT MORNING. What can I say? I'm hardcore. Being unemployed also helps. Anyway, so driving the fifteen minutes down to Barnes & Noble is just too far to only get one book, right? So I took some notes from my wishlist to check out when I got there. Sure enough they had Moon Called by Patricia Briggs, whom I've never read before, so I decided to give her a whirl. From what I can tell, though she's written several books, this is her first foray into what I would call urban fantasy, or modern fantasy, which is my cup of tea, the side on which my bread is buttered, if you will. High fantasy, with its castles and sorcerers and unpronounceable names that all end in "ir" or "il" all kind of blend together for me for some reason. Obviously, there are exceptions to that such as everything Tolkien, Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Series, and my most favoritest of all Alice Borchardt's Tales of Guinevere books (when is the last one going to come out already????).

But I digress.

Moon Called is the subgenre of fantasy I love best. It is set mostly in present day, with the only fantastical thing being the presence of your standard preternatural creatures such as vampires, werewolves, and the fae. This book has mostly the same groundrules and creatures of the books of this kind. And it has a female protagonist, which y'all know I love me some buttkickin' chicks. The premise itself was kind of standard, Mercedes the VW mechanic (hehe!) and shapeshifter gets a whole mess of trouble dumped in her capable lap and she must deal with sexy wolfmen and a smattering of other supes to unravel it. But I felt the author had created some really good solid characters with interesting pasts and inter-relationships. What I found surprisingly refreshing was that Mercy was not annoying to me. She felt really real and relatable. She was very capable without being cocky, and while she was tomboy-ish and without frills, she still came off with a feminine touch, which I feel is often overlooked. So often heroines are either squawling whiners or macho men with breasts. Or squawling men with breasts, for that matter.

This was not what I would call a paranormal romance, which is a genre that has really exploded in the past few years. Even though Mercy is caught between two charismatic and totally hot Alpha dudes, one from her past and the other from her present, the author doesn't fall into the trap of pausing in the middle of a crisis so her characters can bonk. Not that I have anything against romance, but in a crisis, I like practical people, and that just wouldn't have been practical. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them for the sake of a good story, but putting pleasure before people whose lives are on the line has never jived with me. I liked this book, because, like the best of this genre, the characters felt like interesting but regular people put in totally irregular situations, blown wonderfully out of proportion when things like superpowers and dual-natures get thrown into the mix. It also helps when the main characters are kind, intelligent people you would totally hang out with.

I dug it. I dug it a lot. It is perfectly set up for more books with the immediate crisis resolved, but the characters left circling each other and wondering what to do about it. I even kind of liked that she didn't pick one of the guys and do the "We've saved the day! Take me! Take me now!" sex scene resolution at the end. Both of the guys mean a lot to her and come with baggage, and I respect her all the more for it. The author has as many as four planned, and I'm in for the haul.

This one gets five Napoleons. That's how flippin' sweet it was.