Win a Copy of Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs

Com­ing out of lurk to enter this won­der­ful contest!

What you like about the Mercy Thomp­son series thus far?

I like Mercy and most of the other char­ac­ters she hangs around. Mostly, I like the fact that Mercy knows her strengths and knows her lim­its. She knows just how far to push to make her­self some­one wor­thy of respect from the were­wolves and just how much to give to make sure they under­stand she isn’t out to threaten them or cause the pack any trou­ble. I like a hero­ine with a good head on her shoulders.

Which title is your favorite and why?

My favorite is Blood Bound, and that deci­sion is made kind of by process of elim­i­na­tion (which is not to say that I didn’t love the other two). Moon Called was a lit­tle thin on the plot and thick on expo­si­tion, but I didn’t mind too much because it’s the first in a series and some ground­work has to be laid in order for the series as a whole to suc­ceed. And Patri­cia Briggs doesn’t make it bor­ing at all. While I liked the prose, Iron Kissed was a strug­gle for me to fin­ish, just because it didn’t get inter­est­ing (to me) until she worked out who was respon­si­ble, and that was the last third of the book. I just wasn’t inter­ested in fae arti­facts or fae pol­i­tics and that’s obvi­ously an issue of mine, and not Briggs’s fail­ure or any­thing. Blood Bound is what I would call per­fect in every imag­in­able way. It was the per­fect bal­ance of action and plot, just the right amount of gore (not too much!) the seethe is inter­est­ing as hell. I also liked the fact that it was more of Stephan’s story. Stephan is my favorite char­ac­ter in the series just because he’s always up to some­thing mys­te­ri­ous and you can never be too sure of his motives. Another rea­son Iron Kissed was harder for me to get through was because Stephan wasn’t present any­where in the story, and it was very notice­able to me because I was con­stantly look­ing for him.

Any rec­om­men­da­tions for Briggs fans who may like some­one else who writes similarly?

I have to con­fess that I don’t read that many urban fan­tasy titles. I read a lot of gay fic­tion though so I can rec­om­mend some stuff in that depart­ment!

OK, I think every­one should try the Psy­Cop series by Jor­dan Castillo Price. It has plenty of char­ac­ters of dubi­ous motives. hehehe The orig­i­nal cov­ers were hor­ri­ble, but they’ve been re-issued in bet­ter cov­ers. Yeah well, enough of my cover shal­low­ness. The sto­ry­line is great! It’s in the mys­tery genre, prob­a­bly hor­ror too, but it’s not too gory. It’s hor­ror because there are lots of ghosts to deal with and themes of death.

A psy­cop unit is a detec­tive unit with one part­ner who has psy­chic tal­ents and one part­ner who is nor­mal (no psy­chic tal­ents). The bal­ance is to ensure that if the psy­chic half of the team is affected by some para­nor­mal attack or what­not, the non-psychic (NP) will be immune–theoretically.

It’s told in first-person (like the Mercy series!) and it’s a won­der­ful exam­ple of first-person nar­ra­tive. Vic, the nar­ra­tor, is the psy­chic half of his unit and he has the abil­ity to inter­act with ghosts. He’s the high­est level psy­chic around but he doesn’t like his abil­ity. To tamp down on that (when he’s not at work) he takes these pills called Aura­cel which are anti-psyactives and block his abil­ity, kinda. Vic spends most of the first book, a lot of the sec­ond book, and most of the fifth book high as a kite but there’s some­thing really attrac­tive about the way he tells a story.

Peo­ple should try it out!

Iron Kissed is my favorite. I think the series started off great and has just improved with each entry. Like Gina, the scene at the end with Ben and Adam took my breath away. Right now this is my favorite para­nor­mal series, hands down.

I don’t have any recs that aren’t already men­tioned, but I am car­ry­ing around a Car­rie Vaughn in my bag right now, so I’ll throw that out there.

Con­grats to who­ever is lucky enough to win! I ordered my copy today. I was going to pre-order it but I had a gift card and they have this thing at the book­store here where you don’t get free ship­ping no mat­ter how many books you pre-order! I would have just bought it at the book­store, but they prob­a­bly didn’t have it and it would have cost a lot more… Such is life, I guess!

It’s a great series, though!

You know, I couldn’t remem­ber if I liked Moon Called more or Blood Bound so I went to look up my notes! Blood Bound won by like half a point. Accord­ing to my notes, I pretty much stayed up all night to read the book (after pre-ordering it too). I WOULD have pre-ordered Bone Crossed, but the HC thing.. I know, it’s really great for the author, but I like paper­backs. So I’ve been think­ing it over. Because I really want to read it, I half expect to just buy it any­way, once I see it at the book­store and just can’t help myself, haha. Any­way, Blood Bound is my favorite prob­a­bly because I thought the end­ing of Moon Called was a tad bit com­pli­cated and a not-believable. Blood Bound just felt really well plotted.

Books I’d rec­om­mend. Well some­one has already rec­om­mended Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels series, which I think is the best rec for Briggs fans. And if you like smart hero­ines, I’d rec­om­mend C.E. Murphy’s books, though those seem more “real” with a tint of super­nat­ural than the whole world being super­nat­ural if that makes sense.

I love this series. I had dis­cov­ered Briggs last year via your rec­om­men­da­tion actu­ally. So thank you for that. I like Mercy because she is so down to earth. She is very easy-going and an all around “good” per­son with­out being too “goody-goody”. I would have to say that so far Iron Kissed was my favorite. What hap­pens to Mercy at the end is just heart break­ing. Briggs is such a good author I felt com­pletely immersed in the story, like I had to pick myself back up just like Mercy. I would rec­om­mend Kel­ley Armstrong’s Women of the Under­world series.