Review: Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs

Title: Blood Bound
Author: Patricia Briggs
Series: Mercy Thompson #2
Genre: Paranormal/Urban Fantasy/Mystery
Publisher: Ace
Publication Date: January 30, 2007
Edition: Ebook
Source: Library
Purchase: Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | Bookshop | Kobo | Powell's | 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Synopsis:

   Mercy has friends in low places—and in dark ones. And now she owes one of them a favor. Since she can shapeshift at will, she agrees to act as some extra muscle when her vampire friend Stefan goes to deliver a message to another of his kind. But this new vampire is hardly ordinary—and neither is the demon inside of him.
   When the undead and the werewolves sent to find him don’t return, the local vampire queen turns to Mercy for help. A coyote is no match for a demon, but Mercy is determined to get her friends back—including the two werewolves circling around her heart.

 

*******

 This book is I kind of where I can see why people recommend this is a good series to read if The Dresden Files doesn't work for you for how he writes his characters, especially the female characters.

 

I like that we get thrown right back in the thick of it in this book. Shenanigans are already  causing problems for Mercy, and she's still trying to move past the last time nonsense landed on her door step. But this time it's Vampires causing problems. 

 

Mercy is asked to repay the favor her Vampire friend, Stefan, did for her in the previous book. But it ends up being far more than either of them bargained for. He wants to get to the bottom of what really happened with his friend, a newly turned Vampire, and it was not what I had been expecting. 

 

What I like about Mercy as a character, is that she really gains nothing from staying involved with any of this, but because it's her friends it becomes personal. Especially after the local wolf pack gets involved and that becomes even more of an issue. The resolution to for how the problem was handled felt like it had weight. Although, the who was behind creating the demon problem, wasn't really a surprise. I had a feeling about half way through the book they were connected to causing it in the first place.  

 

There was a lot of action and tension in this book, more than I feel like there was in the first book, which to me makes sense, as the first book is just an intro into the world and the mythology of everything. I wasn't sure who in Mercy's circle was going to make it out at the end. For a minute there I thought one of the side characters wasn't going to make it. 

 

There is a sort of romance sub-sub-plot in this book/series. Between Mercy and Adam, and then there's Sam, her past... I'm not sure what he actually was to her. She was raised by his pack, and knew him from when she was a teenager. But, he's much-much older than her. In the first book it's revealed that wolves age slower and he's been around for a while, he's at least 1500 years old, and he keeps trying to justify trying to convince Mercy to marry him when she was 17. He does kind of apologize, but it's all completely selfish, so I hate him. I would like his character to be written out of the story or something. I doubt it will happen, at least not any time soon. He's there for "romantic tension" and a foil to Adam. I like Adam as a romantic interest more, he makes it known that he's interested in Mercy, but he's not pushy about it.