Bone Crossed

Bone Crossed (2009) Patricia Briggs

The 4th Mercy Thompson book follows immediately after the events in book three–actually it replays and finishes the scene that the third book closes, and I appreciate the way this scene plays out.

Mercy had really awful things happen to her in the previous book, and it seemed like she’d just shaken those events off. This book makes it clear that Mercy still has a great deal of healing to do, which is a GOOD thing, because it’s realistic and true and healthy.

The Mercy who is able to say this, “you can’t marry someone to fix him, even if you love them” is not a person who could just have moved on from the events in the previous book as if they never happened.

I’ll note that this makes parts of the Mercy story difficult to read, but it also makes it true and healthy.

But never fear–Mercy is still herself, even if she’s a little more fragile right now.

I was upside-down in the driver’s seat, with my head up the Jetta’s dash, when a sudden thought came to me. I rolled over and looked at the shiny new CD player in the ancient car, which had held only a cassette player when it had last visited here.

When Zee came in, I was using Power Words to describe service techs who didn’t know how to tie their own shoes but felt free and easy meddling in one of my cars.

There is also a very nice scene between Bran and Mercy, that has Mercy continuing to reevaluate her past (and current) relationship with Bran.

Samuel laughed out loud. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you, Mercy? He never was mad about the car. He was the first one at the scene of the accident. He thought you’d killed yourself. We all did. That was a pretty spectacular wreck.”

I started to say something and found I couldn’t. The first thing I’d seen after hitting the tree was the Marrok’s snarling face. I’d never seen him that angry— and I’d done a lot, from time to time, to inspire his rage.

Samuel patted me on the back. “It’s not often I see you absolutely speechless.”

“So you had Charles teach me how to fix cars and how to drive them.” Charles was Bran’s oldest son. He hated to drive, and until that summer I’d thought he couldn’t drive. I should have known better— Charles can do anything. And everything he did, he did very well. That’s only one of the reasons that Charles intimidates me and everyone else.

“Kept you busy and out of trouble for a whole summer,” said Bran smugly.

He was teasing … but serious as well. One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.

The story also finds Mercy with vampire trouble–Marsilla has discovered that Mercy has killed not just one, but two vampires, and is looking for revenge, so Mercy leaves town for a bit, only to run into another vampire.

I especially like Stefan in this story.

Published by Ace

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