Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson, Book 5) (edition 2010)

Every bit as good as the rest of the series. A few pages to go. The next book is on the way and should be here in a few days. ( )

Amazon preorder

Stayed up until almost one, and finished with a happy sigh. I was just going to read part of it, honest. Briggs is such an excellent writer.

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I was very interested in the development of Sam's backstory. If werewolves weren't so longlived that he must have a lot of backstory this might have felt like a cheat.

Likewise I was absolutely fascinated to see more about Zee.

And Adam is such an excellent hero. Just makes me happy all over, especially because there is so much possibilty in the worldbuilding to end up with jerks, but Briggs manages to work around this. ( )

sometimes, I really wish I didn't read this fast! The next book won't be out until January 2011... ( )

See Abigail's review at All Things Urban Fantasy. ( )

After waiting for a year, it felt so good to sit down with a new Mercy Thompson book. I'm a devoted fan, but I admit I was a little worried about this one: I really liked book 4 in the series, but it wasn't my favorite, and I was a little nervous about how the series would continue now that Mercy and Adam are a settled couple. I'm happy for them and all, but a pair of mature adults in a committed relationship don't always make for thrilling reading. Luckily, it looks like Briggs has built a certain amount of tension into their new life and that turned out to be one of the big plots running through the novel: Adam is the alpha of his pack, so when Mercy chose to be his mate, she wasn't just choosing him...she was choosing him and a whole lot of baggage. There are people in the pack who hate her, they've got a laundry list of reasons why, and werewolves generally don't sit and stew quietly when they've got a beef with someone. Mercy and Adam have a lot of work to do before their relationship gets easy and dull.

When Mercy isn't battling off her new packmates, she's got a couple of other big problems to deal with. Samuel reaches the end of his rope, and a suicide attempt leaves him alive but in a whole heap of trouble. While Mercy is trying to figure out how to restore Samuel's will to live, she's also trying to return a book that her partially-fey friend Phin loaned her. But every time she tries to return the book, Phin is mysteriously absent while a variety of neighborly, helpful fae are nearby and offering to return it for her. Mercy, smart girl that she is, finds that awfully suspicious. Briggs really shines when she writes about the fae, and Silver Borne is no exception.

There was one big coincidence in the book, where a couple of plotlines conveniently converged - I won't say more than that, but anyone who's finished it can probably guess what I'm talking about - that stretched my ability to suspend disbelief a little too far. But, really, that's just nitpicking and in general Briggs has better follow through than most authors. ( )