Now Reading

The "Mercedes Thompson" series from Patricia Briggs. Wow. A Paranormal Romance series with a Heroine by a Female writer. Not my style. But with all those strikes against it, I love the series & put it right up with the books by Simon Green & Jim Butcher. From the author: "Moon Called is the beginning of the story of Mercedes Thompson, a coyote shapeshifter who is also a pretty decent mechanic. Mercy's world looks a lot like ours except that the Otherworld is begining to be forced out of hiding by our modern technologies. Mercy shares her back fence with the local Alpha werewolf and works evenings on the vampire Stefan's VW bus. She's safe and content -- which doesn't make a very strong story, does it? So, of course, matters begin to change on the first page. In this book Mercy faces trolls and gremlins, old boyfriends and older vampires. I hope you enjoy her story." Humor. Drama. Suspense. Romance. An outlook I can identify with . . . From the book, Mercy speaking: "I grew up in Montana. where an old unregistered rifle was worth a lot more than a new gun whose ownership could he traced. Not that the gun owners in Montana are planning on committing crimes with their unregistered guns—they just don't like the federal government knowing their every move."

Briggs is, by the way, a Montanan, and her stories are based in Troy over in Lincoln County and the Tri-Cities area of Washington. Yeah, I ordered these first three books in hardcover for my permanent library and bought the newest, Bone Crossed, at Borders this week. If this was Ebay, I'd be doing an "A++++++++++++++++++++" on this series.

(Me) (Blacktail Books)