Book Review: Silver Borne

4 out of 5 Stars…

Last night I finished Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs and I’ve had a few hours to let the story marinate for awhile in my head. I don’t want to give away any spoilers because it aggravates me to no end when I read a review hoping to get an idea of what someone thinks of the book, only to find any twists of plot, character deaths, or relationship squabbles have all been dribbled throughout a review and underlined with a red marker. So, I will try my best to make my review as straightforward as possible.

For those of you who haven’t read a Mercy Thompson novel, be advised this is the fifth book in a (hopefully longer) seven book series. I would definitely suggest picking up Moon Called the first book, although the story really picks up in the second book, Blood Bound.

Booklist Blurb: The fifth Mercy Thompson yarn has the garage mechanic-to-coyote shape-shifter… up to her armpits in romantic and supernatural trouble. Her housemate Sam, a lone werewolf, has developed suicidal depression from the conflict of his two natures. Mercy herself is still working out the relationship with Adam, her bonded mate and the leader of a werewolf pack, which has been put in… danger posed by a jealous female werewolf. Then Mercy gets a call asking her to check on a comrade who may have gone missing. The Fae may be involved.

When I began reading Silver Borne I was overwhelmed with anticipation (I’ve been waiting for this book to come out for months), but once I began, I have to admit, I was left with a question mark above my head during the first hundred pages or so. Although many say they were excited to read about the growing relationship between Mercy and Adam, I felt the second half of the book was able to more successfully weave their relationship with the action-filled plot, creating a read that pushed me forward rather than placing me at a standstill.

Once I was able to get past the first hundred pages (which were admittedly interesting and kept my attention, they just seemed disjointed from the fast moving plot in the second half), the story sped up tremendously and I couldn’t put the book down. I was disappointed that it took me a little over a hundred pages to really immerse myself into the plot, and then when I got there I was hoping there were three hundred more pages to read to expand upon the intricate plot she seemed to suddenly weave. A plot filled with fae, lost love, the Underhill and so much more. She crammed so much information into the last one hundred seventy pages or so that I felt kind of puzzled and unsatisfied because things happened so quickly. She invested so much time (four books) building the relationship between Mercy, Adam, and Samuel in the previous books that it felt rushed and I wanted to put the book on pause hoping to find missing pages that went into more detail about what had occurred.

Even though I wasn’t in love with the first half (I still enjoyed it immensely) I was still enraptured by the second half which packed action and read more like Briggs’ old fantasy novels or a missing chapter from Tithe by Holly Black. Definitely check this book out; if you’ve been following Mercy and Adam for this long, or you’re hoping for more of Briggs’ classic fantasy; it won’t disappoint, and Briggs has promised there will be more back-story in the next book.