Sara's Review: River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6) by Patricia Briggs
REVIEWER PURCHASE PUBLISHER: Penguin Audio RELEASED: March 2, 2011 GENRE: PARANORMAL FANTASY LENGTH: 8 hours and 56 minutes FORMAT: EBOOK, AUDIBLE, PAPERBACK
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Being a different breed of shapeshifter-a walker-Mercy Thompson can see ghosts, but the spirit of her long-gone father has never visited her. Until now, on her honeymoon with the Alpha werewolf Adam. An evil is stirring in the depths of the Columbia River-and innocent people are dying. As other walkers make their presence known to Mercy, she must reconnect with her heritage to exorcise the world of the legend known as the river devil...
THREE BOUNDLESS STARS
I originally read this on back in 2011 and gave it four stars. Listening to it the second go around, I remembered how much I didn’t care for it compared to the first five books in the series. Listening to them back to back makes the differences obvious. In River Marked Mercy and Adam get married and go on their honeymoon, which I loved. The parts with them together not fighting bad guys seems so few and far between so it was nice seeing them together being a happy couple for a while. However, trouble always follows Mercy. This time in the guise of a HUGE River Devil that can take over people’s minds and eat them. What I didn’t care for in this story is it goes from an Urban Fantasy revolving around Fae, Vampires and Werewolves and morphs into Native American folklore. The entire feel of the story changes. I understand that Mercy is Native American, and her Coyote form comes from that heritage, but this story didn’t feel like it fit with the larger Mercy World to me. It took a complete 180. Bringing in the spirit animals, with Wolf especially was just weird. How does that fit in with the larger world? For me, it only adds more confusion, especially any time Coyote speaks and the deal about her father. WTH. River Marked is not my favorite, and I am rating this one 3 Boundless Stars.