Reviews with content warning for Violence - Moon Called

extremely strong premise - perhaps the strongest i've seen for an urban fantasy series - however the execution was really disappointing. very underwhelming read. how does a book packed with werewolf, witch, vampire, shapeshifter and fae politics end up being so boring???

and the worldbuilding (and incorporation of native american culture) is actually the best part of moon-called. the first 1/3 was engaging enough, then the overall pacing got weird...

briggs attempts to give mercy a personality, but the quips fall flat. sure, mercy knows a lot about cars and goes to church, but it's difficult to connect with her emotionally bc the turning-points in her relationships with other characters are told and not shown. i.e. her relationship with samuel, most of the date with adam...

speaking of other characters, this book was a total sausage fest. loads of indistinct men, who have the same character "voice", so they all blend into one. nothing about samuel stands out...HE SUCKS!!! i had trouble believing he was mercy's first love...he reads as a random guy who she argues with a couple times. very chemistry-less. adam is marginally better, but his "banter" with mercy is pretty blank (again, she rarely describes the emotional or physical effect he has on her...) (i like bran though!)

and, of course, all the women hate mercy! the only female character who likes her happens to be ADAM's teenaged daughter.

i think this book is partially a product of it's time? in a lot of the 2000s urban fantasies i've read the heroines can fight and are quirky but not alienating/annoying... not so beautiful that they're unrelatable to the average reader...but still sexy enough to have multiple hot male love interests that the reader can experience vicariously. it's tricky to balance all the ingredients, and maybe moon-called came out of the oven tasting very bleh as a result?

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styxx's review

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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sup3r_xn0va_maya's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Why are her werewolves trash? They hate gay people and don't accept them because "they're actual predicators and even MORE aggressive than the straight werewolf." Then the wolves are misogynistic and they view women poorly and as the weakest links of their packs. Why though?

This was just as boring as Alpha and Omega and Cry Wolf. Someone promised me that Mercy Thompson was THEE paranormal urban fantasy series to get into. I read Cry Wolf and it's prequel novella and gave them both 2 stars.

There's little to no action until about 60% of the way through the book, it took me 10 days to finish this, it was so boring.

This is the last Patricia Briggs book I'm reading, I tried three separate times and all three reads got 2 stars from me.

I'm giving this two stars.
⭐️⭐️

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