Sunday, December 14, 2008

Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson, 3) by Patricia Briggs


*****

Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson, 3) by Patricia Briggs

Once again Mercy gets tangled up in trouble. The action starts when she agrees to help Zee and Uncle Mike sniff out the murderer on the Fairyland reservation to end a debt she owes the fey for helping her end the vampire demon from the last book.

Mercy determines that the murderer must be a human man named O'Donnell who works as a security guard at the Fairyland Reservation. This is puzzling news to Zee and Uncle Mike since no human should be able to kill the fey like O'Donnell managed to. Uncle Mike and Zee go to talk to O'Donnell but when they get there their suspect is already dead and the human police have just arrived and take Zee into custody.

Since Zee is a personal friend and Mercy knows that while her old gremlin friend is capable of murder that he did not kill O'Donnell. Mercy hires the best lawyer she can find and starts digging for evidence herself.

As usual the plot is complicated and Mercy gets in way over her head. The werewolves and her fey friends help out a lot but there is no mention of the vampires in this particular book. Once again the tension between Adam and Sam is present but in this book it comes to a head and Mercy has to make a choice.

I particularly appreciated the last few pages of the book where the author takes some time to ponder feelings of guilt that sexual abuse victims may carry. I was almost ridiculously pleased with the revelation about Ben (the snarky, usually snarly werewolf that was abused as a child and stood up to protect Mercy). I knew there was a reason that I liked him/didn't hate him as we were obviously supposed to. That part was also particularly heart-wrenching and added a whole new human emotional depth to the story that doesn't usually find it's way into urban fantasy novels.

I think this was my favorite of the three so far and now consider myself to be well and truly hooked on Patricia Briggs.

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