Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, #1)

by Patricia Briggs

[Angie]

I'd been hearing a lot of good things about this series, so it was about time I got to it. I'll admit that all of the praise caused my expectations to be pretty high, so I was bummed when I wasn't hooked from the first chapter.

There was quite a bit of info-dumping, which disrupted the flow of the story. I generally love the world building aspect of fantasy books, but only when it feels organic, which it definitely wasn't in Moon Called. Whenever we met a new character, Mercy would give us a short biography and history of their life. Most of it didn't even add to the plot or to my understanding of the character, and just felt like information overload. There were quite a few instances where I forgot what was happening story wise, because of some lengthy character description.

Despite all of the info-dumps, I don't feel like I truly understand how werewolves and skinwalkers work. I have no clue how old Mercy, or any of the other non-human characters, is. There's mentions of the 1800s, so I know they're old, but do they age extremely slowly? Or do they stop aging at whatever age they were changed? Do the born shapeshifters like Mercy just stop aging at a certain time, or slow their aging in their prime? I just have no clue. I don't even know exactly what a skinwalker is, or how Mercy is different than werewolves other than that she changes into a coyote. Are all skinwalkers werecoyotes, or do they turn into other animals? There's just a lot of holes in the world that seriously nagged at me.

As for the plot, it was just okay. The Alpha's daughter has been kidnapped, there's some new drug being tested on werewolves, but who's behind it and why? Well, it ends up being a tangled mess of supernatural politics, and I just didn't care. In fact, I didn't even fully understand what was going on, and how everyone involved was connected. This was probably because the big reveal was another info -dump rather than a slow trickle. The pacing is also super slow, so I found that my mind would wander and I'd miss some of what I was reading and have to re-read.

Ultimately, this one just did not work for me. I did like how many types of supernatural creatures are featured, but the plot was slow and confusing, and the whole book was bogged down with unnecessary history lessons and random personal information. I didn't particularly like Mercy, but I didn't dislike her either. She just wasn't very interesting, and it seemed like all of her actions were just to reinforce her repeated line of "I'm not part of the pack and therefore don't have to listen." I'll probably read the next book, since it should be free of so many info-dumps and hopefully has a better plot.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.