Title: Fire Touched (#9 in the Mercy Thompson series)

Author: Patricia Briggs

Published: 2016

Read: March 2016

And this, dear friends, is why I’m so behind on my reading this year. It’s not that I wasn’t reading, it’s that once I finished this book (and it took me about a day), I immediately needed more Mercy Thompson, so I read books 7 and 8. Then I read books 1 – 5. I started 6, but it’s my least favorite and I think I finally filled that hole that comes when your favorite author, who publishes maybe once every 18 months, releases a long-awaited ninth book in an engaging series.

Here’s the long story. Once upon a time I encountered this book called “Twilight.” You might have heard of it. I, in my new mom haze (I’m blaming it on new momery/back to workery) found it totally engrossing and while I acknowledged the subsequent books in the series were not as good as the first, I really fell for the whole vampire/werewolf shenanigans. I lent it to my work spouse (the most avid reader in the urban fantasy realm that I know) for a read and she came back and she was like *shrug*. She said, “if you want to read a real werewolf book, try THIS” and so I picked up Moon Called. And the rest is history. Goodbye Bella & Edward, HELLO Mercy & Adam.

After discovering this genre, I went through a big urban fantasy phase, read anything that looked remotely interesting and said “vampire” or “werewolf” on the cover. I read some good stuff, but mostly mediocre stuff. After sampling a lot of it, I’ve only kept a few authors that I still follow. Mercy Thompson (who gets an honorable mention in this post of mine) is probably my favorite urban fantasy series. Kate Daniels and The Dresden Files are the other two that I read completely, and love. But let me get back to Fire Touched for a sec.

She’s a shapeshifter car mechanic (she can take a coyote form). Married to the alpha werewolf of a pack in the Tri Cities in eastern Washington (so, you know, it’s local. That’s important, too). And she’s friends with this hipster vampire and her mechanic mentor is a powerful fae. AND she gets in trouble. Like in a good way. In this particular series Mercy find herself trying to protect an old fae that is disguised as a 10-year-old from the big important fae that want him for probably nefarious reasons.

There’s fighting. There’s travelling in the strange fae world where time and space are merely suggestions. There’s internal squawking amongst the werewolves. There’s magical objects that appear out of nowhere and protect you from the big bads. It’s a fun quick read, but seriously if you want to try this you need to start from the bottom, and that would be Moon Called.

My only complaint is this: As part of the Mercy-verse, as the fans say, there is a spin-off series about a couple of werewolves who also seem to find or discover trouble as they solve cases and save people’s hides and what not. And in that series there was one book (see Fair Game) that ended with this epic scene that seemed to set up both series for some incredible …. SOMETHING. And since then I’ve been waiting for that something and I haven’t seen it yet. There seems to be filler. And it’s been about three books I’ve read since then and it finally dawned on me that I was so anticipating this SOMETHING that I wasn’t able to just enjoy the series for what it was. This is one of the reasons why I immediately re-read the previous 2 books after finishing this one. I wanted to re-read without the expectaaions. And it was all still just really good.

Recommended for: Urban fantasy, vampire, werewolf fans. There’s a little bit of romance. Little bit. Forget Twilight. This is the real stuff.