The Mercy Thompson Series by Patricia Briggs.

The Mercy Thompson books are an urban fantasy series set in Washington State, specifically in the Tri Cities area of Washington state. Since this series is five books long and growing, I'm not going to do a series of entries dedicated to each book. I'll hit on some minor plot points here and described the characters.
It was a little weird for me to start reading this... I'm usually not a fan of "This Kind" of book. I don't read Laurell K. Hamilton (though I have in the past) and I haven't even finished the Sookie Stackhouse books of TrueBlood fame. I don't like chick lit or supernatural romance or lots of gore and sex. I actually rarely read anything that describes much sex at all, if you're gonna be picky. But this series is different. I can relate to the characters more and I really like the way the first couple are written. I've had issues with the second to last book, Bone Crossed, because it struck me as a the most chick lit-y of the series, but Silver Borne made up for it, in my eyes. This series isn't about showing off how well-versed in literature I am or anything but just enjoying a well-crafted storyline and characters you can really get care about, as much as you can for fictional characters. And for me... that's a lot. The names of the books in order are:
Moon Called
Blood Bound
Iron Kissed
Bone Crossed
Silver Borne

Mercedes Thompson, known as Mercy, went to college to study history and literature. Natrually, she's now a Volkswagon mechanic with her own shop. She's sarcastic, kind, fair, logical, open-minded, snarky, poised, responsible and a score of other adjectives that sound like lip service when you make a list like this. She's also a Native American shapeshifter, meaning she can turn into a coyote at will. This kind of shapeshifter is known as a Walker, and differs from werewolves in several important ways: her transformation is painless, voluntary and is not affected by the moon's cycle. She's also presumably not sterile, which is how she catches the eye of Samuel, one of the sons of  Bran, the leader of the North American werewolves. Mercy was raised by werewolves when her mother, who gave birth at the age of sixteen, came home to find a coyote pup in her daughter's crib. Bran agreed to take in her and raise her, giving her protection under the name of The Marrok, which is his title as leader. It's taken from the name of one of King Arthur's knights who was apparently a werewolf. As of the first novel, the werewolves have not yet come forward and revealed their existence although it isn't too far into the series before they feel the need to take that step, as the Fae did before them.

You see, in Mercy's world, the supernatural is fairly commonplace, even if it's not widely accepted. The Fae population of the world came out of hiding sometime in the not-so-distant past, a decision made by the Gray Lords (a sort of Fae ruling class). The term fae is a broad one used to describe a variety of pleasant and unpleasant supernatural creatures of myth, legend and fairy tale that are European in origin--everything from selkies, brownies and actual fairies to ogres, child-eating monsters and  other uncomfortably powerful creatures. It was deemed that the Time of Hiding was at an end when it appeared that the science of DNA and forensics threatened to reveal the supernatural creatures in hiding, whether they wanted to be revealed or not. Mercy actually purchased her garage from Ziebold Adelbertsmiter, known as Zee, a kind of fae known as a metalzauber or metalsmith because he knew that it would be impossible to continue running it once he was revealed to be fae. He's also fairly famous in the myth sense and one of the few fae that can stand iron.
 Most of the fae were driven from Europe by a combination of newly forged iron and in the wake of Christianity. They moved to the new world to escape, slaughtered a whole host of indigenous supernatural creatures on this continent and then iron and Christianity followed them over here anyway.

Since purchasing the garage, Mercy fixes a number of cars free of charge for the local vampire seethe, as she can't afford to pay them the protection fees they usually receive. It's sort of like paying the mob, because what they protect you from is mostly themselves; incidently, the vampires also haven't come out of hiding... there's really no way to put a positive spin on the fact that they drink human blood. Her contact within in the seethe is Stefan, a very pleasant, honorable, chivalrious vampire who almost painted his van black because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He ended up painting it to match The Mystery Machine because "even the Slayer is no match for Scooby-Doo." He reports directly to the Mistress of the Seethe, Marsilia, who has it in for Mercy for a variety of reasons. (SPOILER ALERT: the vampires are a big part of the reason Mercy is one of or possibly the only remaining Walker left in the United States.)

At the start of the story, Mercy was living a quiet unassuming life, mostly free of interaction with werewolves and any fae or creature who would cause her trouble until a very young werewolf named Mac showed up, ignorant of how to live as a wolf, half starved with a sad story that helped reveal a lot of corruption across the United States. Pack law is naturally brutal and not something to be ignored, so Mercy took it upon herself to help Mac, as her closest neighbor is the local pack Alpha, Adam Hauptman. After Mac is murdered and left dead on her porch, Mercy ends up reconnecting with Bran, Samuel and forming closer bonds with Warren, the only gay werewolf in Adam's pack, his boyfriend Kyle and Jessie, Adam's daughter. Meaning only to help Mac, Mercy ends up becoming more and more involved in the magic, rules and dangers of the world of the Fae, wolves and vampires. As of the fifth book, it's pretty much fair game as to who wants her dead the most.  She's killed or caused the death of both wolves and vampires, been raped, kidnapped, learned too much about the Fae, and eventually even becomes part of the werewolf pack. Like the coyote with the trickster spirit and too much bravado for such a little body, Mercy just can't seem to stay out of trouble.

Like I said, especially during Bone Crossed, the romantic aspect of this got to be a little too much for me. I like the actiony parts of the story much more than I like any of the parts concerning her attraction to Adam. It doesn't ever get explicit or explore the boundaries of sexuality or really even get beyond just general quasi romantic and intensity. It's never overtly Anita Blake-esque. I just don't really much care for mush or sex in my science fiction. It also is awesome but sucky at the same time that Patricia Briggs has gained such notoriety. This guarantees more books, but also means her books now come out in hardcover first, which equals 'spensive. I also fear the possiblity of a Mercy Thompson movie... which would be absolutely awful unless handled perfectly. Yeah. Like THAT happens.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Fat Charlie Nancy isn't fat. All the stories are Anansi's. Don't talk to spiders, unless it's something you really mean.
Oh, and Neil Gaiman's still incredible.


These are the lessons I take away every single time I read this novel. It's probably my favorite of Gaiman's books--including any of the Sandman series. I know, I know, American Gods is incredible, but this is my favorite. And hey, it's in the same storyline anyway. So, shush, naysayers.

The story is about the two sons of Mr. Nancy, Fat Charlie and Spider. Before his father died, you see, Charles Nancy, nicknamed "Fat Charlie" by his father, didn't know he had a brother. And after he finds out, well, he can't wait to believe he's an only again. And that the world is as logical and boring as he'd led himself to believe, and that magic doesn't really exist.

Turns out Mr. Nancy is really the modern incarnation of Anansi, the West African spider god, the trickster. And he's not lost  a bit of his trickster ways though he's become a somewhat modern man. Fat Charlie was subjected through a variety of embarrassments at the hand of his father as a child. Like the time Mr. Nancy told him that for President's Day, all the kids picked their favorite president and dressed up as them for school that day... so Fat Charlie showed up all decked out in his presidential finery. And he was the only one. Then there was his father's habit of taking him "mermaid watching." There weren't any mermaids. Mr. Nancy was also fond of performing what he referred to as the "miracle of the loaves and fishes."


"He loafs and he fishes and it's a miracle that he makes a living."

But the most embarrassing moment was his manner of death. During a particularly fine round of karaoke, singing directly at a group of sunburned tourists, Mr. Nancy had a heart attack, fell gracefully from the stage and managed to pull the top completely off the blondest tourist.

After Mr. Nancy's death, Fat Charlie is told he's got a brother by his neighbor Callyanne Higgler, (who's in fact responsible for the fact that Fat Charlie and Spider were separated to begin with). And all he has to do to meet him is pass a whisper to a spider. But when Spider shows up, he takes over Fat Charlie's life. He steals his fiancee. He impersonates him at his job and blackmails his boss (who's legitimately up to no good). He even turns the tiny spare bedroom of Fat Charlie's apartment into a window into an alternate space with a hot tub, giant TV and tropical scenery. To get rid of him, Charlie ends up making a deal he never should've made with one the god's from his father's world, who is in league withe his father's oldest enemy. In exchange for her word and a feather, he ends up offering her Anansi's bloodline if she makes his brother go away. Turns out though, Anansi's bloodline includes him. So he has to step up and find out how much he really is his father's son to save the day.



As usual I said a lot without saying much at all. What it wraps up to is this: I love Gaiman's odd humor. I like how overtly British everything is.  I also like that it's one of the first non-Southern books I can remember reading where it's made pretty clear that none of the main characters are white. That's something I missed the first few times I read it, honestly. I don't know HOW, but I did. And I love all the stories about Anansi. I love the way he always ends up getting his, in the end. I love how matter of factly the stories are told. I love the descriptions of Tiger, so dark and bloodthirsty. I also like the casual references to American Gods throughout the narrative. And frankly, any book that has people having to flee in the face of hundreds of homicidal flamingos and then later homicidal penguins is pretty worthwhile right there.

Gaiman always seems to deal with unusual family situations, where it becomes abundantly clear that loving your family in spite of what you may view as their faults is infinitely better than losing them to something that wants to kill and/or eat them... or kill and/or eat you, depending on which you're reading. I like that. I like that his characters are often outsiders who can find a place to belong. And who hasn't felt that hope in their heart when they can't help but think there's no where in the whole wide world where they fit in?

Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore.

Now this may be a faux pas, but I am going to do another reaction to a vampire book... but let me tell you, this is so different from Let The Right One In it's not even funny. Actually... it's very funny. In a sort of you had to be there way.
I can never get enough of Christopher Moore. This man is a flippin' genius. Although I do not think this is his best book (that honor either goes to Lamb, A Dirty Job or Blood Sucking Fiends: A Love Story).
This is the third part of his series about vampires set in San Francisco.

When the series began, it was the story of C. Thomas Flood, an aspiring writer from middle America. He moves to San Francisco to realise his dream of being a writer.  He meets a woman named Jody late one night outside of his job at a local Safeway, where he manages the night stocking crew known as The Animals. A local homeless man known as The Emperor (who is the Emperor of San Francisco and Protector of Mexico, based on the real life Emperor Norton) plays the part of guide, observer and knight errant. So after he meets Jody and befriends the Emperor, Tommy thinks he's got a pretty sweet deal going on. What he doesn't realise is that Jody is a vampire... and his life will never be the same.

In the first two books, they defeat the vampire that turned Jody with the help of two SF police officers, the Emperor, his dogs Bummer and Lazarus and all the Animals, except Simon. They take all the money and art on the ship and go to Vegas where they hook up with a high price call girl named Blue... because her skin is dyed blue. Jody and the original vampire agree to leave the city, but Tommy can't stand that idea so he has them bronzed instead. When he drills holes in the bronze so Jody can listen to him talking to her, she turns to mist and streams out of her bronze shell. She then turns him into a vampire. Hilarity ensues as they find a minion in the form of Abby Normal, goth girl and whiner extraordinaire. (She's also the best friend of Lily, one of the main characters from the book A Dirty Job) and her gay best friend. Part of the trouble of now having two vampires to feed is solved by first feeding off of a homeless man named William. William is famous for his sign, which reads I Am Homeless and Have A Huge Cat. The cat, Chet, is where things get interesting.

Because by the end of the novel, when things seem to be going right finally, they begin feeding off Chet. They shave him to have better access and then return him to William. And that's when Chet, the Vampire Cat descends on William and things just go to a whole new level of ridiculous.

And that's also where the third novel starts.

I am not a huge fan of Abby Normal and she is the narrator for You Suck and Bite Me. And in this story, they have to stop the enormous army of vampire cats, birds and vermin that Chet has unleashed on the city. Not to mention all the disappearing homeless people...

I'm not going to wrap up the whole plot and though it might seem like I gave everything away for the previous two, believe me, I didn't. I love Christopher Moore's ability to incorporate characters from other books, like Abby and Lily being best friends and Rivera/Cavuto's past experiences on the force. I also especially appreciate the part where Jody goes into Asher's Second Hand and speaks to Charlie Asher, the main character of A Dirty Job.

But this isn't one of my favorite Moore books. I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong. I liked the idea of the animal vampires being more instinctual and better at  discovering their vampire powers. I liked the mist of mice. I liked the process of finding a vampiric cure. I even kinda liked Chet morphing into more than just a cat... even more than just an enormous vampire cat. I even liked the idea of this coven of vampires from the old world to clean up the mess made by the original vampire, Ben. They roared into town guns (fangs?) a-blazin' to fix the issue only to find... no need. There are indeed a lot of cute parts to this novel, but overall, it just isn't one of the best, in my opinion.

So although I recommend reading it, I don't recommend starting with it. Pick up the first and second and read it to round out the series. Besides, who starts a series at the end? Crazy people. That's who.

Let the Right One In by John Adjvide Lindqvist

I'm going to try to keep most of the really big shocks under wraps. I'm going to have to reread this to make sure I'm separating the book and movie because it's been a minute and the plot's getting muddled.
After seeing this movie a couple years ago, I was floored. The sound quality, the subtlety and the acting made this movie really stand out to me. It was a little twisted, too; naturally I had to read the book as soon as possible.
If you strip away the vampire part, this book is a love story between 12 year old Oskar and his new neighbor, named Eli who he sees as a very strange girl to whom he's mysteriously drawn. Eli is Oskar's friend and confidante, the one he takes his problems to after being victimized by school bullies for years.
But you can't strip the vampire away. Eli isn't a normal little girl. This is obvious from the moment Oskar first encounters her on the playground. He comments on her smell, noticing that honestly, she smells like she hasn't bathed in years. Because she hasn't and she's been out of  practice being around normal people for so long, she's forgotten to clean herself. He sees her leap down from the top of the jungle gym, seemingly floating to the ground, he hands her a Rubik's cube that she returns completely solved the next day. And she begins talking to him by informing Oskar that they can't be friends, not ever.
While Oskar is trying to figure it out, he wonders if it's her very protective grandfather. Turns out, he isn't her grandfather. He's a pedophile who goes out and drains people's blood for Eli's sake in exchange for money. It's made clear, however, that he'd be perfectly willing to go without payment if he could only be intimate with Eli.
Oskar, meanwhile, has finally found a friend and an escape. He asks Eli to be his girlfriend. She doesn't say no, but her exact response isn't what it appears to be on the surface. She simply tells him, "I'm not a girl."
In spite of Eli's early warnings, they become very close. Eli becomes a protector and kind of mentor as well as a companion. She helps him fight back against the bullies who torment him. She is nearly discovered because she murdered one man, Jocke, by snapping his neck after draining him and a woman, Virginia, she's attracted the suspicion of a local man named Lacke who was friend to Jock and sometimes boyfriend to Virginia. Her guardian/pedophile is discovered while killing and willingly offers his blood for Eli. He falls from a hospital window, only to break open on the ground below. This doesn't stop him from becoming a vampire, however. Even undead, he still seeks out Eli. Virginia, in fact, also becomes a vampire and willingly commits suicide by exposing herself to sunlight while she's in the hospital.
The novel ends with Eli rescuing Oskar from the older brother of his main nemesis and Eli and Oskar leaving the city together, to meet what fate they may.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

I'm sitting here, listening to Old Flame by The Arcade Fire (one of my favorite bands). And I adore this book, yet I can't think of a single thing to say about it. I've been trying to write this reaction for weeks.

Here's a summary, to begin with:
Perseus Jackson, known as Percy, is a 12 year old boy and strange things always happen to him... things that aren't his fault, but are so inexplicable that he gets blamed for them. As in most modern YA fiction, there's a supernatural reason he's been kept in the dark about. One day, after just such an event occurs, Percy's strange friend Grover tells him the truth:
Percy Jackson is a demigod.

His father is one of Greek gods. The incredibly stinky man his mother married? She choose him to protect her son. Demigods have a distinctive odor which attracts monsters. And the weird attacks and unexplained events and weird people who seem to mess up his life at school? Monsters that nobody can recognise because of the Mist, which disguises all monsters, from the eyes of the mere humans, the mortals. Grover isn't even a kid with a funny walk like he seems. He's a satyr, a half-human, half-goat. And his math teacher? Not a man in a wheelchair, but a centaur (half-man, half horse).
Grover's job is to go around and find demigods, like Percy, and escort them to the one place in the world they'll be safe: Camp Half Blood.

After some interesting misadventures and tons of really awesome, off-hand lessons in the way Greek mythology and history worked, they reach the camp. There are cabins for each of the gods of the Greek pantheon and nobody is aware of who Percy's father is, so he stays in the cabin for Hermes. During a particularly vicious game of Capture the Flag, he uses the power of a river to defend himself against a daughter of Ares and Poseidon's green trident appears above his head.

This causes a bit of a problem and a bit of a stir, as story goes that due to a prophecy that one of their children would make a decision at the age of sixteen that would either save or destroy Olympus, the three head gods, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades have vowed to stop having children... but looks like somebody's betrayed the oath, don't it?

After he moves into the empty cabin for Poseidon's children, his education in the ways of the demigods and Camp Half Blood continues. He finds an animosity and friendship with Annabeth, a daughter of Athena and Luke, a son of Hermes. He learns more and more about what he can expect his life to bel ike and the lives of those like him. Percy finds the camp is at least partially protected by another demigod named Thalia (a daughter of Zeus), who exists in the shape of a tree on the very border of the camp because she died protecting the two demigods who traveled to camp with her. But soon, disaster strikes. Zeus, finding out that Poseidon broke his oath, accuses Percy of stealing his Master Bold, the powerful lightning bolt that is one of the sources of his power. The rest of the book is about the adventures he has while just trying to clear his name and keep himself alive....

This is an EXTREMELY abbreviated summary and hardly any of my favorite moments were mentioned. I've had such a hard time typing this because it's so dense, so good but not at all overwhelming. I don't want to ruin the rest of the story for anyone, so I'm just gonna have to type from the hip, so I mean, let's put this out there.

I cannot say enough good things about this book to prospective readers at my job. It is a smart, fun, funny and engaging series. The movie looks incredible--I've seen the previews only but still.
I know everyone says "for fans of Harry Potter" and all that sort of stuff about this series, but honestly, this is just for fans of anything smart, anyone who appreciates a good metaphor for the awkwardness and insecurity of the early teen years. This is just for anyone who wants a good time.
So. Read it, kids.

Forever Odd & Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Since this is a series, I'll discuss these two together.

I'd borrowed the second and third, but as the people owning the series had lost the second and fourth, I just went ahead and read them out of order. This entry will be pretty spoiler-heavy as it's hard to discuss any of the events in the latter books without revealing what caused them.

Brief Summary:
A young fry cook named Odd Thomas can see ghosts, spirits and the occasional "other" sort of entity. He uses this sensitivity to help solve the murders of some of these ghosts, aid others in crossing over and to even help stop or prevent certain tragedies (like a shooting or the full scale slaughter of the entire population of a monastery). The love of his live and soulmate, Stormy, is killed in the first book, though it isn't immediately apparent that she actually dies (it's kinda like a less crappy scene from Ghost... only less pottery wheel and bad early nineties hair), so a lot of the rest of the novels deals with him dealing with his grief.
Odd is also haunted by the ghost of Elvis, who believes that Odd is his best hope of crossing over and then later by the ghost of Frank Sinatra, who even helps him out by exhibiting poltergeist tendencies when provoked. His companion in the last two book is a ghost labrador affectionately named Boo. His human compatriots include a chief of police who helps keep him out of the public eye, the folk he's gotten to know at the diner where he became a fry cook and his friend Ozzie, an overweight gourmet-slash-mystery writer. Over the series, Odd prevents a shooting spree, helps save a friend who's kidnapped by an occult-obsessed woman who wants to exploit Odd's sensitivity to spirits and his magnetism for energies, rids a monastery of quasi-mystical science conjured creatures and prevents a pregnant woman from being murdered and the US getting nuked by your typical evil to the bone group of morons.


Forever Odd:
I liked this one. I often find myself a little... embarassed? when I read something like this, the sort of grocery store novels that a lot of my more literary-minded friends would just sneer at. It's easy to dismiss anything popular as trash but darn it, it's enjoyable. Think of it as popcorn literature. You can't always go around eating rich foods, you'd die of surfeit. Same with books. Everything can't be so overtly serious, in the intellectual sense. Either way, I liked it.

In the aftermath of Stormy's death, Odd's having a hard time with his life as Elvis is with passing on. His childhood buddy Danny gets kidnapped by a psychopath who wants to use him to make Odd use his powers according to her designs and he's got to come to the rescue. I think the main part of this novel that stuck with me was the guilt. The recurring theory that Elvis lingers because of the guilt he feels at facing his mom after dying a superstar, but one with a drug problem and unfulfilled potential. Danny's guilt at having revealed so much as to inspire the psycho to want to use Odd's powers. Odd's guilt and grief deal with not only his inability to use his 'gift' to prevent Stormy's death, but the fact that it can harm people he loves no matter the circumstance. At the end, it's no surprise that Odd ends up escaping to the would-be peace of a monastery.

I view this entire series as a coming of age story. So this particular book reminded me of the end of your teen years, end of high school. You're further along in figuring out who you are, but you've never had to test it. If you linger, you won't grow, you won't be productive and you might even just become a burden on the people you love. So you deal with the sucky parts of moving on and then you do it. Pretty straightforward, though the metaphor I just made here is entirely my own baggage coming out to play. It never mentions anything like that in the book.

Odd Hours:
Odd has helped Elvis cross over and vanquished the monastery monsters and he's now working as a chef/assistant to former movie star. Now he has Frank Sinatra hanging around and the spectral dog, Boo. He dreams of a pregnant woman who he's seen at the lighthouse he often visits to look over the ocean. Suffice to say, amidst drama, intrigue, coyotes and lots of shennanigans, Odd manages to save the lady, Annamaria, from being murdered and the US from being nuked.

I still kind of look at the nuclear attack storyline askance. It made me kinda go, huh, really? REALLY? But within the world of the story, it's sorta forgivable. This was the book that made me realise, too, what a dog lover Dean Koontz is. There's references to the joy provided by dogs, discussion of how unlike humans, most dogs prefer not to linger, talk about the way dogs laugh. It made me like the book a little better. I'm beginning to realise how all-encompassing my passion for dogs and animal welfare really is. This was, in my opinion, one of the weaker of the series as far as story and stronger in terms of theme. Although I highly enjoyed it and would read it again, I wouldn't describe it as my favorite.

The overwhelming theme I got from this one was loneliness. If I stick to my coming of age story idea, this is more like your early midtwenties. You've done a lot of your growing up, but you're not quite done. You've got a pretty good idea of what you can do with who you are, but not how to apply it quite yet. You're setting down roots, but you don't know where you belong. Odd can't make friends, can't stay in one place because he has to use his gift to help but he's constantly bombarded by serendipity and the chance good he witnesses in strangers. It helps balance out the cruelty and out and out evil he witnesses in the world.


Wrap It Up:
This series is, maybe as should be expected, a little predictable and at times kind of over the top. But above all, it's fun. It's easy to read and has characters that I really liked and cared for. I don't mind suspending my disbelief and accepting that, yeah, a fry cook can see things others can't. That there are real evil, real monsters and real interactions with them in the world. So I'm pretty excited about this series, still, and I'm really looking forward to reading the graphic novel, In Odd We Trust and whatever future titles Dean Koontz churns out. Bring on the popcorn.