Bone Crossed: Mercy Thompson Book 4 [Paperback]

The fourth book in the Mercy Thompson series, which starts with MOON CALLED, BLOOD BOUND and IRON KISSED, BONE CROSSED starts about a week after the events in Iron Kissed left off.

Mercy Thompson, a shape-shifting mechanic in the Tri-Cities, is still recovering from the abuse she experienced at the hands of Tim in the previous book. Although she has finally chosed between Samuel and Adam, the two Alpha wolves who were both after her heart, her frequent panic attacks and understandable reluctance to get intimate with anyone is the next obstacle that Adam and Mercy have to overcome.

The book opens with Mercy's vampire friend, Stephan, being dumped at her trailer as a dried out husk that is near death. The queen of the vampires has found out about Mercy's part in the death of one of her fabvourite generals, and now she's after her. Mercy now needs to try and outwit the entire vampire hoard of the tri-cities, without drawing Adam and the pack into trouble as well.

I liked how honest Mercy is about her issues; her panic attacks make for some very sympathetic reading, as she tries to recover from the rape in the previous book, and some of the more emotionally detailed sections of the book brought me to tears. I also have a huge amount of respect for Adam and how he deals with it; makes him all the more attractive, if that's even possible!

All in all a very welcome addition to the series, and I will be interested to see where Briggs takes Mercy in the next book. Anyone who enjoyed the previous three in the series will definately enjoy BONE CROSSED; however, even though I've given it 5 stars (which it deserves), I think perhaps I enjoyed IRON KISSED more.

"My soul was a lot more battered than my body, but I couldn't see it in the mirror. Hopefully nobody else could either."

Patricia Briggs put her werecoyote heroine Mercy Thompson through the grinder in the past, complete with a brutal rape. "Bone Crossed" has Mercy dealing with a slew of new personal problems -- plus some very nasty vampire politics. It's a pretty busy story, but Briggs juggles the subplots -- and Mercy's internal troubles -- with unusual deftness.

A week after Tim's death, Mercy and Adam are trying to hash out the whole Alpha-mate situation, when a couple of unexpected guests arrive -- her mother, and a tortured, starved Stefan. Mercy destroyed Marsilia's right-hand man Andre, and the vampire has retaliated by almost killing Stefan and by roundabout attacks at the wolf pack (including a crazed snow elf).

To make matters worse, Mercy investigates a haunting at her old college buddy Amber's house... and discovers that the freakishly powerful vampire called the Monster is manipulating Amber. Stefan decides to take some drastic action to protect Mercy from other vampires... but it may not be enough to keep her safe from her new enemy.

Patricia Briggs has always had a knack for giving a unique spin to the staples of a genre, and fortunately "Bone Crossed" shows no diminishing of that. Instead, Briggs ties a bunch of subplots into a complicated knot, and slowly unravels it as Mercy discovers the answers to all the various mysteries. All through it, she continues to juggle the subplots without dropping them.

And Briggs' smooth, detailed style is well-suited to Mercy's world, which is described with mellow humor. Lots of chilling moments (including a claustrophobic climax with Blackwood), but also some warmer moments with Adam and Stefan. And she never lets a tense plot get in the way of some tongue-in-cheek humour ("what kind of stupid person puts white carpet in a house frequented by werewolves?").

Having dropped a big trauma on Mercy, Briggs also devotes some time to exploring how this has affected her heroine -- panic attacks, unease with touch, and the new way people regard her. But fortunately Merry never becomes an emo victim, nor does she just "get over it" out of sheer determination. She works on this gradually, and Briggs does it with utmost sensitivity.

Adam serves as the rock to cling to, since he is trying to support and heal Mercy in her time of need, although he goes overboard on the protectiveness early on. And poor abused Stefan goes through the wringer both physically and mentally -- although he has some lighter moments, such as debating the merits of Scooby-Doo vs. Dragonball Z with a deaf boy.

"Bone Crossed" is a pretty brilliant urban-fantasy/mystery, with plenty of chills, humour and a likably down-to-earth heroine. Patricia Briggs does it right.

Mercedes Thompson, mechanic and shapeshifter, lives in a world where the fae were forced to come out to the human population due to the advances in technology: making the secret nature of their species no longer possible. Thus the Gray Lords (the enigmatic leaders of the fae) decided it was time to come out to the humans -- along with the werewolves who revealed their existence recently. Vampires however, remain hidden in shadow fearing what would happen if their existence was discovered.

'Bone Crossed' continues the plotlines expounded in 'Blood Bound' with Stefan, Marsilia, and the vampire seethe. Having murdered Andre and received Stefan's protection in covering it up to keep her safe -- Mercy has nevertheless been waiting for the fallout that would occur when Marsilia (the Mistress of the vampires) finds out about the killing. After all, Stefan can't protect her forever. She's safe until Stefan lands (quite literally) in the middle of her living room a tortured shell of the vampire he once was, and informs her that the Mistress knows. Now she is after a little creative retribution. Some that will not start a war with the werewolves. The other arcs in 'Bone Crossed' is Mercy's continuing relationship with Adam, alpha of the local werewolf pack, and the consequences of the sexual assault from the prior book. There's also the arc tied up in the vampire one of the ghosts in Spokane.

This book was a little patchy. There were a lot of things going on and perhaps, not quite enough space to develop them all sufficiently. The start of the story was incredibly slow and the actual meat of the plot did not get moving until many pages into the book -- what was worse, was that I just wasn't very interested in the Spokane-ghost plotline. There was very little tension and it just wasn't exciting.

The first part of the book was more concerned with character issues and the immediate aftermath of 'Iron Kissed'. I didn't mind. I enjoyed it all, but it did lack the exceptionally graceful pacing of the other novels. I did think there was perhaps a little too much time spent on Adam and Mercy's romantic relationship; I did find that well written, but less is more when it comes to romance. Also, the question of Stefan's feelings for Mercy which are shown strongly throughout 'Bone Crossed' but are left without much development. We still don't know why he's in love with her, and why he holds her higher in his affections than his sheep even. Hopefully Briggs is just leaving this for another book... it does need better clarification. The fact that it was brought up again in the final scene tells me it will be an important point in future novels. At any rate I think that to a man like Stefan, he sees it as a noble thing to love Mercy from afar.

That said, I did enjoy much of this book. There was a lot to like. It was great having Adam and Mercy happy together, Samuel with more of a sense of humour, and it was great having Stefan back. I liked learning more about the vampires and Stefan as a character. His friendship with Mercy is interesting; it's oddly loving and intimate in an old-fashioned reserved way. We didn't see much of Warren, Kyle, Honey, Ben, or even Samuel for that matter (although I hear the next book will focus on Sam, yay!). Mercy's relationship with the little deaf boy Chad was one of best things about the book, and the funny discussions about Superheroes.

Overall, a nice outing, but lacking the quality and tension of the previous volumes.