It seems that the reason Mercy’s race, the coyote shape-shifters, a native-American breed, is virtually extinct is that they have a special talent for killing vampires: once the vampires arriving in America from the Old World discovered this, they set out on a war of extermination. Sam is obviously in love with her, yet their living arrangement is entirely platonic: her mate, her true love, is another alpha werewolf, Adam, the leader of the local pack. Her day-job is car-mechanic, and she lives in a trailer, sharing it with an alpha werewolf called Sam, in ‘real life’ a doctor. But she is the only one, or at least the only one she knows of, so for want of anything better she mixes with werewolves, vampires and the fae. I looked down at myself and realized that I was naked and covered with blood from head to toe.Īnd bizarrely, she doesn’t change into a wolf or a bear, or a lynx or a wildcat, but into a coyote. The sort of voice you’d use on a madwoman. ‘Could you unlock my door?’ His voice was soft and gentle. When she shape-shifts, she does not do so properly dressed. (The books now, not some no-longer-compatible couple.) Mercy Thompson is still my favourite modern urban-fantasy shape-shifter. Perhaps it is you, the reader, who has changed, grown up, or simply grown older, as seems to happen so often with first marriages.īut not these two. Maybe it’s not the series or the writer at all.

Sometimes a sequel can be a disappointment when a series goes on and on, especially when you come back to the series after a long break.

I had read the first three, Moon Called, Blood Bound and Iron Kissed, some while back, before my last trip to India, but the fact that I actually did read all three, and still remembered Mercy and the story-line with a warm feeling of almost guilty (jealous?) pleasure, was enough to make me pull out my money when I saw these two on a shelf in a shop in Colchester where I was browsing. I have just read books 4 and 5 in the Mercy Thompson series, Bone Crossed and Silver Borne.

Bone crossed by patricia briggs