Burn Bright

Burn Bright (2018) Patricia Briggs

The first time I read this book (right after it came out) I was unable to rate it, because I couldn’t decide quite how I felt about it. Something seemed off to me, but I couldn’t place precisely what it was.

This book still feels off to me, and I’m still not 100% certain why.

One thing is that this feels like a short-story / novella rather than a novel. It’s got 316 pages, so it’s not an issue of length. Best I can come up with is that the story arc and pacing feel off for a Patricia Briggs story. The story takes place in a very short period of time, yet parts of it still felt rushed.

There were other parts that felt forced: why were two additional people sent out to check on the wildlings? The initial four selected–Charles, Asil, Leah, and Anna–made sense. Asil dealt with many of the wildlings, Leah and Charles and Bran’s authority, and Anna was best able to deal with some of the most damaged wolves. So adding two additional wolves made little sense within the story.

Also, I didn’t understand why only Jonesy noticed the equipment in the woods. Yes, the wildlings are broken, but they are STILL WEREWOLVES with heightened senses. So that entire thread was problematic, since I had trouble believing spying equipment could have been placed in the woods completely unnoticed (or was it ONLY placed around Hester and Jonesy’s place? That makes even less sense).

And considering how broken Jericho and Devon were, I also can’t believe it took Charles as long as it did to twig onto the fact that something was wrong.

Plus, this bit STILL really bothers me.

“Bran’s not funny about her,” he told Anna, feeling uncomfortable. “He thinks of her as his daughter, and he doesn’t have any other daughters still alive. There’s nothing strange about it.”

“Or so everyone is much happier believing,” agreed Anna blandly. “Including Bran. We’ll leave it at that. So the musical evenings were a thing between Bran and Mercy?”

“Not like that,” Charles said, feeling defensive because Anna put her finger right on something that he’d been ignoring for a long time. He took a deep breath. “All right. All right. You might have a point about Da and Mercy.”

The whole idea that Bran has romantic-type feelings for Mercy that he never acted upon is CREEPY AND SQUICKY. He acted as a father figure to her. He saw her as a BABY and watched her grow up. It’s one thing for young people to grow up together and develop romantic feelings, but it is just squicky and creepy to think that Bran could have romantic feelings for someone whose diaper he changed.

That’s just ICKY and DISTURBING.

This is not to say that it isn’t a fascinating and interesting story and important to the over-all story arc. But it has problems that I wasn’t expecting to find in a Patricia Briggs story.

Publisher: Ace
Rating: 6/10

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