River Marked (Mercy Thompson, book 6) by Patricia Briggs
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Edition Reviewed: Paperback
Amazon: Paperback | Kindle
Goodreads: River Marked (6)
Coyote shifter Mercy Thompson knows that life with her mate, the Alpha werewolf Adam, will never be boring, but even their wedding doesn't go as planned. Nevertheless, a ten-day honeymoon camping on the banks of the Columbia River, alone, just the two of them, should make up for it. But the trip - and the pimped-out trailer they're using - is courtesy of the fae. And nothing from the fae comes without strings attached...
Being a different breed of shapeshifter - a walker - Mercy can see ghosts, but the spirit of her long-gone father has never visited her. Until now. An evil is stirring in the depths of the Columbia River - and innocent people are dying. As other walkers make their presence know to Mercy, she must reconnect with her heritage to exorcise the world of the legend known as the river devil...
Review:
Most excellent! Going into River Marked I was very nervous. Especially when the wedding gets sped up and things happen lightening fast. A lot of fans won't agree with me, but at this point Mercy and Adam haven't gotten a lot of page time together. Most importantly when the stuff is going down Adam is always somewhere else, out of order, or something so that Mercy can save the day by herself.
Thankfully River Mark is the book where Mercy and Adam really get to interact. A lot of people have told me that they've known each other for 10 years and they don't need to have so much development time. But all of that happened before this series started and I didn't get to see it! That's off page development. When Mercy and Adam where together in previous books I enjoyed them together. There was heat, I saw them as a couple. But once they were mated and stuff I didn't think they had enough time to develop. The books are kind of small and there's a huge cast of characters that all get explored.
I loved seeing them exploring how to be together, how to fight and deal with when they should fight. Stuff like that. It made them feel like a real couple and for me the last book really took some shortcuts in developing characters. So it was bliss to see Mercy and Adam so fleshed out. I adore them together and look forward to them working together. (Maybe Adam won't be passed out next time and they really get to work together. Though if he gets “left behind” or stopped from helping Mercy again I'm going to be exasperated.)
Since Mercy and Adam leave the Tri-Cities that means there's not a lot of time for favorite side characters. But they are covered, so I don't think fans should gripe too much. River Marked helps to finally give some answers to Mercy's father and some other questions. Though I still ended up with a lot of questions about Mercy, a walkers powers, and so on. The Native American mythology is lovely and I love how well researched some of the places are. It was perfect. Not to mention how much I have longed to read Coyote in the Mercy verse. I knew he had to pop up! And yes. It was a glorious thing.
Not to mention how much I loved the monster. There is always something decidedly creepy-wrong about water monsters. River Devil is one of the scariest monsters I've read, definitely the scariest water monster, and I'm going to be hard pressed to read a scarier one!
In the end River Marked restored my faith in the series. Bringing back the character development that I NEED from this series. I am very curious which new characters may be coming back later. While the oldies didn't get much page time, the newbies are tons of fun and I loved them. Briggs is a champ at creating wonderful characters and I can't get enough of the ones she brings into the Mercy books. I'm really happy that this book helps to flesh out Mercy's heritage, even if it still leaves a ton of questions floating around. I loved the different feel of River Marked. Where there was only one bad guy and the book wasn't crammed with a ton of crazy mysteries and problems that Mercy has to solve. It was great getting a slower pace, though it's still a crazy rush of a read, and finally get the time to develop Mercy and Adam together. Even better together outside of the pack. I look forward to enjoying them as a married couple and can't wait to see what happens next! Trouble always finds Mercy.
Sexual Content: There are sex scenes but there the more classic fade to black, with a few “dirty” mentions. Wink Sexual humor and such.
5/5- Fabulous, a beautiful obsession!
| Previous book(s) in series: | ||
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| Moon Called (1) | Moon Called (1) | Moon Called (1) |
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