Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson Series), Patricia Briggs

SILVER BORNE (Ace 2010) writ­ten by Patri­cia Briggs, hard­cover list price of $24.99 and is apart of the Agency 5 (links to Diesel ebooks arti­cle). SILVER BORNE is the fifth book in an ongo­ing series fea­tur­ing coy­ote shape-shifter and mechanic Mercy Thompson.

The series is told from Mercy’s per­spec­tive and is set in the Tri-Cities. Mercy is apart of the half-hidden super­nat­ural com­mu­nity that con­sists of vam­pires, were­wolves and the pub­licly outed Fae. There’s no telling what else might be out there, wait­ing to be unearthed from it’s lair.

Quite frankly, this is one of the few series that I can still read in a genre full of vam­pires and were­wolves or some vari­a­tion or hybrid thereof. Just so you know, I am sick to death of them, too. Must warn new read­ers that I may reveal some spoil­ers for this series that may hin­der your enjoy­ment. I advise you to stop here if you don’t care for any details about the series in gen­eral. Mean­while, I’ve tried not to spoil every­thing for you in my sum­mary recap.

What’s dif­fer­ent about this series is that Mercy is a mechanic and not some secret vam­pire or were­wolf bounty hunter with a mis­sion. She has a some­what reg­u­lar life, work­ing in her garage fix­ing cars. But she is a coy­ote shifter who is half human with a boyfriend who is a sexy, dom­i­nant were­wolf who refuses to leave her side. Mercy’s had some nasty scrapes in this series and have lived to tell the tale because she has pow­er­ful friends.

She’s bat­tled with the pow­er­ful Queen of the vam­pire seethe in one book (refer to Bone Crossed) and she along with vam­pire Ste­fan, help rid the world of the demon-possessed vam­pires in another (refer to Blood Bound). Through all of that though, she’s a vic­tim in recov­ery (refer to Iron Kissed). In this world, there are seri­ous con­se­quences when tan­gling with the supernatural.

In “Sil­ver Borne” Mercy finds her­self in pos­ses­sion of an ancient arti­fact that the Fae want back quite badly. Ear­lier in the series, Mercy was loaned a book that con­tained vital infor­ma­tion about the world of the Fae. She needed the book’s secrets to tackle a pow­er­ful adver­sary. When she tries to return the book, she finds that the book­store owner who gave it to her has gone miss­ing. Could this have some­thing to do with the book? Maybe.

Again Mercy is the tar­get of the pow­er­ful and mys­te­ri­ous Fae who are quite secre­tive and will go to any lengths to keep their secrets out of human hands. Not all of the Fae were outed to the pub­lic unlike her friend and co-worker Zee. Seems that quite a few are still hid­den from soci­ety and would like it to remain that way. There are many dif­fer­ent types of fae who are quite dan­ger­ous. Instead of fight­ing with the Gray Lords, who rule the Fae, Mercy find her­self the tar­get of the pow­er­ful fairy queen this time around. She wants the book for her own dubi­ous pur­poses but Mercy has it and isn’t will­ing to relin­quish it to her.

Along­side that main story arc, the focus shifts back to Mercy’s per­sonal life, more specif­i­cally, her love life with her now mated part­ner. Seems the pack bond they forged together is weak and has been tam­pered with by out­siders. While Mercy and Adam are on their date one night, Mercy finds her­self being manip­u­lated men­tally by the pack bond. The out­come of this manip­u­la­tion was to drive a wedge between Adam and Mercy. Who would try to do that?

For the last cou­ple of years it seems that the pack has been hav­ing some prob­lems. A hand­ful of were­wolves resent Mercy being apart of their pack and blame her for the trou­ble she keeps get­ting them into within the super­nat­ural com­mu­nity. Pack trou­ble really began when Mercy was added to the pack with­out her con­sent and since Mercy took her time in decid­ing between the two men who were vying for her atten­tions, the pack grew frac­tured and unstable.

But any­way, after Mercy makes her choice, the ever brood­ing Dr. Samuel Cor­nick con­tin­ues to with­draw into him­self. As a lone wolf not apart of the pack and sev­eral cen­turies old, he con­tin­ues to feel as if he has noth­ing to offer the world. Sadly, he feels that he doesn’t have a place in this world any­more. He doesn’t even feel needed as a med­ical doc­tor who saves lives on a daily basis.

Samuel’s father, Bran, is the Mar­rok and ruler of all the were­wolves in North Amer­ica. It is Bran’s job to remove trou­bled wolves even if it might be his own son. Can Samuel pull it together and find some­thing worth liv­ing for? You’ll have to read it to find out. This was an emo­tional thread con­sid­er­ing that I really do like Samuel.

SILVER BORNE has two or three threads going par­al­lel and all were quite inter­est­ing. So how did I like it? I enjoyed it for the most part. Since this series hit hard­cover last year, the author tries to make it worth your money and time and she suc­ceeds (for me at least). Briggs writes with such detail. Plus, her prose is very visual. There is also the con­stant con­trast between Mercy’s reg­u­lar life and her super­nat­ural life that makes the events in the story seem real.

The mon­sters in her sto­ries can come off scary. She’s good with sus­pense and really good at bring­ing myth and folk­lore to life. Aside from the para­nor­mal crea­tures there is Mercy’s now some­what less com­pli­cated love life. The rela­tion­ship between them can heat up the pages even with their clothes on. Strength wise, Mercy is not as strong as her oth­er­worldly friends but she has back-up. A girl can never have enough back-up in the super­nat­ural world.

Over­all, I felt the end­ing was a lit­tle drawn out for me. I had to skim to the get to the action and the dia­logue. Pre­dictabil­ity reared it’s ugly head but then again this is the fifth book in the series where Mercy is again the tar­get. Patri­cia Briggs is a solid writer. Her series reminds me a lot of Char­laine Harris’s Sookie Stack­house series, another series I enjoy.

There are some com­pa­ra­ble ele­ments. Both women have some form of para­nor­mal abil­ity. Sookie with her telepa­thy and Mercy is a coy­ote shifter. Both have jobs out­side the para­nor­mal com­mu­nity. Both series have fea­tured roman­tic con­flicts to draw read­ers along. The para­nor­mal world is seen as an adjunct where reg­u­lar life some­times clashes with reper­cus­sions. Lastly, both worlds come off look­ing believable.

Addi­tion­ally, this entry also focuses a lot on the were­wolf pack pol­i­tics and dom­i­nance games/roles. Even goes so far as to explain the rela­tion­ship between man and wolf and the dan­ger they pose when the wolf and not the man is men­tally in con­trol. This world is quite lay­ered with the same social issues of our own mod­ern world.

Unfor­tu­nately, this series doesn’t stand alone well con­sid­er­ing the var­i­ous loose threads from ear­lier books that may or may not get picked up in later nov­els. Even I’ve had to go back and reread some things based on my lack of mem­ory. How­ever, if read­ers are inter­ested in the Mercy Thomp­son series, you should start with Moon Called. Five books in and it is still going strong. You couldn’t do any worse than this series.

I’d rate SILVER BORNE a B/B+ read for me. To bone pick, I felt that some scenes were overly long (Sylvia and the kids) and the han­dling of Samuel’s char­ac­ter felt some­what uneven to me emo­tion­ally. For a bit of time he just went miss­ing on me and then later turns up for a crit­i­cal part of the story. I felt he was slapped with a hasty res­o­lu­tion, too. Other com­plaints are minor and have more to do with the inher­ent prob­lems with series books and recur­ring char­ac­ters. Over­all, I enjoyed SILVER BORNE. The end­ing while drawn out did have my heart rac­ing a bit. So yeah, it’s a B from me. Look for­ward to see­ing what Mercy tack­les next.

Note: There is an off-shoot of this series that fea­tures Bran’s son and sec­ond in charge, Charles Cor­nick who is an Alpha and enforcer of the Mar­rok and his mate, Anna Latham, an Omega in the Alpha and Omega series that started in the novella, On the Prowl and has two books now out in the series: Cry Wolf and Hunt­ing Ground. Very roman­tic and char­ac­ter dri­ven. Highly rec­om­mend that series as well.

SILVER BORNE is avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat and hard­cover at the time of this writ­ing at selected retail­ers. Since the new agency model came down, cer­tain titles are unavail­able at cer­tain retail sites. No affil­i­ate links are used in this post. I bought my own copy of this book for the sake of dis­clo­sure. Edited: spelling.