(not quite a) Review: Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.

Warning: Mild spoilers for previous books in the series, but no spoilers for this one. Seriously, you don’t want to know what happens in the book, so avoid spoilers and reviews if possible (including this one, just in case I’m not as good at not telling things as I think I am). 

I have a weird reading history with this series. The first book I read was Night Broken (that’s the eight one, for those who don’t keep track) and as weird a choice as that sounds, I really liked it. I had no idea who any of the characters were, but I was pretty hooked regardless. And yet, I knew the previous books had rape, and I’m tired of the rape-as-rite-of-passage trope that seems so present in UF books, so it took me until last year to sit and read the whole series in order. But it only took me ten days to read them all. That’s how much I loved them. Yes, there’s rape and some unnecessary and surprising sexism, but I couldn’t put it down.


All that is to say that I’m not your usual Mercy Thompson reader and that even though I’m incredibly invested, I’m not weary or jaded about it (not that I think there are reasons to be tired of the books, other than the gross treatment and characterization of Adam’s ex, but maybe that’s just me) so my weird reading history probably colors my impression of this books, which is... wait for it:

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! READ IT!!!! 

My reviews just keep getting better and better, you guys! I'm impressed.

Seriously, though, I loved every single page. The series didn’t feel particularly stale to me, yet Fire Touched brings so much freshness to it. I don’t like endless series, and at 9 books almost everything feels endless, but here I sit, hoping there are many more to come.

That said, the story relies a lot in the reader being familiar with not just this series, but the Alpha and Omega books as well, which are set in the same universe and feature some of the same characters, but are most definitely not within the same series. And that feels a bit too demanding and somewhat manipulative. But really, this is me grasping for criticism, because, well, OMG awesome!

So, this is not as much a review as me endorsing the whole series. And we both know it really needs me to recommend it, because no one seems to be reading or talking about it. I mean, I bet this is the only review of it you will see all week.

Grade: 5
Purchase: Amazon
Synopsis:

Mercy Thompson has been hailed as “a heroine who continues to grow and yet always remains true to herself.”* Now she’s back, and she’ll soon discover that when the fae stalk the human world, it’s the children who suffer...Tensions between the fae and humans are coming to a head. And when coyote shapeshifter Mercy and her Alpha werewolf mate, Adam, are called upon to stop a rampaging troll, they find themselves with something that could be used to make the fae back down and forestall out-and-out war: a human child stolen long ago by the fae.Defying the most powerful werewolf in the country, the humans, and the fae, Mercy, Adam, and their pack choose to protect the boy no matter what the cost. But who will protect them from a boy who is fire touched?

Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs
Ace. March 8, 2016.