Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs

This is my review of Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs.

Book
This is the third book in the Mercy Thompson series. It is about Mercedes “Mercy” Thompson, a VW mechanic and skin walker. She can change into a Coyote. She is sort of involved with the local werewolf pack. She is also friends with Zee, her old boss and part of the fae, who is arrested for murder. He is innocent and Mercy takes it upon herself to solve the crime to absolve Zee.

Thoughts
This is book three, so there might be spoilers for book one and two. Without me meaning to, but hey.

So I really like Mercy. She’s like a real, proper grown-up. She acts sort of reckless and a bit silly at times, but she’s very comfortable with herself and she knows herself. Which I find really refreshing. She’s not only just like… a grown up, she’s a strong, and confident person. She can be petty, and she lives to rile up her neighbour, but I like it.

There’s one thing about werewolf books I never get. I mean, I get it because patriarchy, but in the werewolf books that I have read the alpha is always male. Now admittedly I haven’t read many werewolf books, so I might just be picking the wrong books. In nature the alpha of wolf packs are usually a couple, the parents of the pack. Which, why aren’t the books like that? Although writing this now, I realize that Mercy is declared the mate of Adam, so she’s technically his second. Still, he is still in charge of her. WHY? I realize it’s fantasy so why would it be like nature? But it annoys me.

I like how comfortable and grounded Patricia Briggs is in her world. It’s urban fantasy, so it’s set in our world, but she has a very clear grasp of her own mythology, and her own society. I love that, she’s very confident in how she writes. I love how comfortable she is with Mercy as well, and how consistent she is.

I liked the actual plot, it was interesting to see more about different magical creatures. It’s a look into the fae community, with a bunch of different types of fae. There are gremlins, and selkies and all kinds of different fae. I liked looking into the different kinds of fae.

I enjoyed the look into Ben’s character. He’s a bit creepy, and weird, and it was interesting to see his more human side, and I felt sympathy for him, and he was great. Something happens at the end of the book, which I will obviously not spoil, but I feel like how Ben handled it was impressive, and how Mercy handled it was very true to character. And it was very honest and real how Briggs dealt with it.

I am so glad they sort of solved the whole Samuel/Mercy thing. Mercy will be forced to deal with being all indecisive. Now she has a fairly good reason for being indecisive. She has been forced to this decision she has to make, by two over-macho assholes. But I’m glad that part of that mess is sort of resolved. Because that was annoying as fuck.

Finally
I really like these books. I really love Mercy, she’s a badass. I like Adam, with the scowling, and the being a grumpy alpha wolf. I love Zee, and I like Ben, somehow. I like how grounded the books are in their own reality. Briggs is da bomb.