Patricia Briggs: Bone Crossed

Review by Vicky London

No good deed goes unpunished when it comes to vampires. In Iron Kissed, Mercy Thompson did a favor for the vampire Marsilia, Mistress of the Tri-Cities, and ended up killing a vampire who wasn’t supposed to die. Mercy’s friend Stefan helped cover it up to keep her safe. Someone squealed and when Marsilia finds out she tortures Stefan and dumps him in the middle of Mercy’s living room. Mercy’s link to the werewolf pack through her boyfriend Adam protects her from a direct attack by Marsilia. So that means it’s open season on her friends.

Escalating magical attacks force Mercy to consider leaving town for a while. The perfect and suspicious opportunity arrives when an old college friend, Amber asks her for help with a ghost haunting her Spokane home. Mercy agrees to help and finds herself on the radar of a very scary vampire in the area. Danger follows wherever Mercy goes and she discovers that things are definitely not what they seem with Amber and her family. Fortunately Stefan and the werewolf pack are at her back but Mercy will have to rely on every skill and resoucrce she has to rescue herself from the vampire known as the Monster.

Bone Crossed is an excellent book with all of the elements I really like in a story; action, romance, emotional growth of the characters, and a deeper knowledge of the world in the series. Mercy and Adam finally take their relationship to the next level with surprising results. I was a bit disappointed however, that when they finally make love. The prose goes into extreme soft-focus and skims over even the slightest of details. It seems odd to do that when the tension between these two has been deliberately built over the last three books. On other fronts, I’m interested in seeing how Mercy’s relationship with the pack will develop now that she is officially Adam’s mate.

Bone Crossed is the first Patricia Briggs book in hardcover. My feelings about that are mixed as I think it gives a author more visibility but I also fell like it’s a slight to the fans who are dedicated to buying each book as it comes out. Seriously, is this book worth $17 more than the last book? Not really. It seems like a poor way to repay dedicated readers of the series. But that’s obviously a publisher decision and not the author’s fault. The cover of Bone Crossed is once again done by the talented artist, Don de los Santos. His beautiful illustrations are a perfect complement to the story.

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