Mercy Thompson's life is not exactly normal. Her next-door neighbor is a werewolf. Her former boss is a gremlin. And she's fixing a VW bus for a vampire. But then, Mercy isn't exactly normal herself.
She’s an independent, strong woman who runs her own business as a mechanic. She lives in a singlewide trailer with her cat, Medea, and drives a beat up VW Rabbit. She looks and seems harmless, and her ability isn’t exactly glamorous by supernatural standards -- she’s a Walker who shifts into a coyote. By a twist of fate, she was raised by a pack of werewolves. It’s a good thing she has such experience because she’s going to need all of her coyote wiles and werewolf culture in the coming days if she plans on staying alive.
When a young, disheveled teenager named Mac shows up at her garage looking for work, he seems harmless too, but she didn’t peg him as a werewolf by scent (a bad thing. Her nose is one of her best assets.) Needing a helper, she hires him on and finds he isn’t a member of the local pack lead by Adam, her surly Alpha male next-door neighbor. This puts Mercy in a bit of a spot. Being a young werewolf without a pack is a very dangerous thing. No one to teach him the ropes, and there is the large possibility he just may eat someone -- like Mercy, for instance. If she keeps Mac’s existence a secret and the pack finds out? He’s got a target painted on his chest.
When a human thug and a new werewolf come looking for Mac, things really go sour. Sharp of hearing, she picks up “cage,” “drugs,” “experimentation,” and the gist is to drag Mac back to wherever he came from. A fight ensues and to save Mac, she draws the werewolf off in a chase after her coyote and she ends up killing him…“by accident.” Yes, it surprised her too. Lil’ ole coyotes don’t go around killing a dominant species.
After calling Adam about the incident, he appears at the garage to take Mac away (just before he eats Mercy) and to discuss her meddling in pack business. When she comes home from work to see Adam’s yard full of cars, she doesn’t think twice knowing he has called a pack meeting. All seems well, but in a few hours Mercy finds Mac dead on her front porch, Adam near death in his mansion, and Adam’s human daughter, Jesse, gone missing. Mercy has no choice but to meddle, or Adam will die. She packs up Mac’s remains and Adam into the vampire’s VW bus and heads for her pack in hopes one of their doctors can help. And she’s not about to back off one inch in finding Jesse, alpha males be damned.
All of this happens in the first 65 pages.
There is a lot going on in this novel. Mercy is not part of the pack (at all, as she proclaims loudly and often) but she finds herself in the maelstrom of pack politics, vampire politics, kidnapping, and a conspiracy plot. To add to the difficulty, she is caught in a triangle between Adam and Samuel – her first love, and the one to break her heart (and she's still very pissed at him over it.) Is this a typical romantic setup of love/hate? No. They barely tolerate each other but there's a lot simmering under the surface, when she finds out little tidbits about her relationship with Adam along the way. From my perspective, the romance is an accent to the adventurous plot.
You’d think the secondary characters would be left in the dust, but they play a goodly part in the plot as they all come together in a rescue, and foiling the conspiracy (a crazy one at that.) The main characters are larger-than-life, with more than the usual sketchy motivations. The pace is a mix of hell bent for leather, and slamming on the brakes for a breather in between the action. And with several questions left unanswered with the entire crew, it’s begging for a sequel.
For fans of this genre, it’s an excellent read. And I won’t be missing the sequel.
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Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Ace (January 31, 2006)
ISBN: 0441013813
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