Tag Archives: urban fantasy

Linda Lou’s Library: The Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs

I’m still in an urban fantasy phase with my reading, so I decided to re-read the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. Ms. Briggs has built a wonderful world and I love her character development; even her minor characters are well written and memorable. I’m partial to Mercy because she is my sister from another mister. Like me, Mercy has a problem with being ordered around. Ask politely and she will bend over backwards to help you. She will consider a suggestion, depending on the tone in which it was made. Telling her what to do? That’s going to backfire in a hurry. Kenn says anger is my go-to emotion, and Mercy has a tendency to get angry when scared or hurt or relieved… You get the picture. I spend a lot of time giggling when Mercy reacts to a situation the way I would and reading excerpts of the books to Kenn. (Kenn wants to know how long Ms. Briggs has been spying on me, LOL.)

Mercy is a VW mechanic, and yes, she has heard all of the jokes about Mercedes, the VW mechanic. Thanks to her late father, Joe Old Coyote, Mercy is a walker – a Native American shapeshifter who shifts into a coyote at will. When Mercy’s seventeen-year-old mom found a coyote pup in Mercy’s crib when Mercy was three months old, she realized she was in over her head; Mercy was then sent to live with a werewolf pack who raised her until she was sixteen. Now, in her early thirties, Mercy is happy with the independent, if slightly lonely, life she has built for herself.

According to the books, Mercy has a coyote paw print tattooed on her abdomen and a “couple of other” tattoos on her arms. The arm tattoos are only mentioned once. The book covers show Mercy with full-sleeve tattoos, chest and back tattoos, and a tramp stamp. Mercy would probably roll her eyes at the covers, LOL. Another thing to know about Mercy is that she has usually had the crap beat out of her by the end of every book; this seems to be what happens when a coyote shifter starts playing in the magical creature big leagues. There are currently fourteen books in the series. These are a some of the primary characters:

  • Mercedes Athena Thompson, aka Mercy: walker, shifts into a coyote
  • Adam Hauptman: werewolf, Alpha of the Columbia Basin pack, control freak (as werewolves tend to be), Mercy’s back yard neighbor, crazy about Mercy
  • Warren: werewolf, third in Adam’s pack, Mercy’s best friend
  • Jesse Hauptman: Adam’s fully human teenage daughter
  • Siebold “Zee” Adlebertsmiter: iron-kissed fae, taught Mercy how to work on cars, Mercy’s extremely dangerous friend
  • Tad Adlebertsmiter: Zee’s half-fae son, Mercy thinks of him as her little brother
  • Stefan: vampire with a penchant for Scooby Doo, Mercy’s friend, more than halfway in love with Mercy
  • Wulfe: vampire, bat-crap crazy, obsessed with Mercy in a creepy stalker sort of way
  • Larry: king of the goblins; even though Larry doesn’t appear until later in the series, he is worth the wait
  • Moon Called – At the beginning of the series, Mercy is working in the garage she bought from Zee and talking martial arts lessons. Run-ins with Adam not withstanding, she is happy to ignore and be ignored by the members of the other paranormal races. The appearance of a young, untrained werewolf at her shop changes everything.
  • Blood Bound – As if regular vampires aren’t bad enough, demon-possessed vampires are worse.
  • Iron Kissed – This one is a rough one, y’all. This time, Mercy doesn’t just get hurt, she gets raped. As hard as it is to read, I think it was handled well, and leads to learning more about another character. The PTSD Mercy develops as a result of the rape is also handled well in subsequent books.
  • Bone Crossed – Vampires, and ghosts, and coyotes, oh, my!
  • Silver Borne – The Gray Lords, the rulers of the fae, set Zee up to take the fall for something he didn’t do. Mercy isn’t about to let them get away with it, no matter how powerful the Gray Lords are.
  • River Marked – Poor Mercy can’t even go on her honeymoon without ending up in a wheelchair by the end of the book.
  • Frost Burned – Car wrecks, kidnapping, and a necromancer. Just another day in the life of your local VW mechanic.
  • Night Broken – This book contains the first appearance by Christy, Adam’s ex-wife. I detest Christy. I’ve dealt with Christys and Ms. Briggs does an excellent job of writing a manipulative character.
  • Fire Touched – Leave it to Mercy to make a declaration making life easier for the residents of the Tri-Cities area while simultaneously making things harder for the pack.
  • Silence Fallen – This book goes international with various characters in Italy and Prague. When Mercy almost dies at the beginning of the book, you know you’re in for a ride. This book also includes a wonderful twist that I usually forget between read-throughs. This time, I remembered, LOL.
  • Storm Cursed – Miniature zombie goats provide some levity. Otherwise, it’s another good story that’s a hard read. It’s always disappointing when a character – even a secondary one – betrays the others. I will admit to ugly crying over the kitten. Not when he was found, but when you find out why he survived.😭
  • Smoke Bitten – Christy strikes again! The woman may be pure human, but her ability to cause problems is almost magical.
  • Soul Taken – A creature from a horror movie comes to life and stalks the Tri-Cities. Also, as the owner of a Subaru Outback, the part with Mercy, Warren, and Warren’s Subaru Outback was priceless.🤣
  • Winter Lost – Never trust a frost giant.

If you have read this series, I’d love to know what you think. If you have any urban fantasy recommendations, I’d love to hear them!

Linda Lou’s Library: Lindsay Buroker

Urban fantasy is one of my favorite genres and Lindsay Buroker has quickly become one of my favorite urban fantasy authors. One of the things I most enjoy about Lindsay’s books are that her heroines are not the typical urban fantasy heroines. (Her stories also have enough romantic elements to please my romantic heart.)

The series that introduced me to Lindsay is Death Before Dragons. At first glance, Val Thorvald, the heroine of the series, appears to be very much the typical UF heroine. Why? Well, Val is tall, blonde, wears a lot of leather, and is good with both guns and bladed weapons. How is she not the standard heroine? Val is sixty years old. Admittedly, she’s half-elven so she looks thirty, but still. She’s also divorced and a reluctant absentee mom. (Val is an assassin for the government; when magical bad guys hurt people, Val is in charge of making sure they never do so again. She stays away from her daughter to protect her from possible fallout from her job.) The hero of the series is Lord Zavryd’nokquetal, a dragon. (Dragons can take human form.) Dragons are powerful and arrogant and Lord Zavryd has both traits in spades. When Val and Lord Zavryd are forced to work together, the process is anything but smooth. Oh, I almost forgot – Val also has a magical tiger.

Image from Amazon.com

There are nine books in the Death Before Dragons series:

  • Sinister Magic
  • Battle Bond
  • Tangled Truths
  • Elven Doom
  • False Security
  • Storm Forged
  • Secrets of the Sword I
  • Secrets of the Sword II
  • Secrets of the Sword III

While Val and Zav’s story wraps up with the of the Death Before Dragons series, the storyline continues in the Legacy of Magic series. While Val and Zav make occasional appearances, Matti Puletasi step into the role of heroine. Of all of the heroines in the three interconnected series that make up this storyline, Matti is my favorite. Matti is short, curvy, rides a motorcycle, and refurbishes homes for a living. She’s also half-dwarven and carries a magical dwarven war hammer. The role of hero is taken over by Sarrlevi, an egotistical elven assassin. (As a big fan of Zevran Arainai, the elven assassin in the Dragon Age Origins video game, I support this choice of hero. In fact, in my head, Sarrlevi looks a lot like Zevran.)

Zevran Arainai, Dragon Age Origins

The series starts with Matti being framed for murder and Sarrlevi being the only person seemingly interested in helping her. As the series moves on, our intrepid hero and heroine move from one crisis to another – many of which revolve around Matti’s dwarven mother; the mother Matti long thought dead.

Image from Amazon.com

There are eight books in the Legacy of Magic series:

  • Hammered
  • Betrayed
  • Trolled
  • Tested
  • Wrenched
  • Fused
  • Wanted
  • Cursed

After the events of the Legacy of Magic series, the storyline concludes in the Tracking Trouble series. Heroine Arwen Forester is a socially awkward introvert; she’s also an archer, tracker, and forager. Much to Arwen’s dismay, she is also half dark elf, and is always in danger of being found and captured by her mother’s people. Arwen puts her skills to the test to track, rescue, and befriend the hero, genetically engineered half-dragon super soldier, Azerdash Starblade. (With a name like that, he has to be the hero.)

Image from Amazon.com

There are five books in the Tracking Trouble series:

  • Marked by Magic
  • Bound by Blood
  • Driven by Destiny
  • Pursued by Peril
  • Tested by Temptation

If you enjoy urban fantasy, I highly recommend these books. There’s a lot of action and so many wonderful secondary characters. I enjoy the fact that the characters introduced in earlier books continue to make appearances throughout the series.

Have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think? If you like urban fantasy, who is your favorite author?

Linda Lou’s Library: The Soulwood Series by Faith Hunter

Welcome to the first edition of Linda Lou’s Library! I’m an avid reader and I have a blog, so where better to talk about the books I enjoy? I primarily read fiction; science fiction, urban fantasy, and paranormal are my favorite genres. (The primary difference between urban fantasy and paranormal is that urban fantasy includes magic, paranormal does not.) My plan is not to review books as such, I’m just going to write about the books I enjoy and why I enjoy them. The books I don’t enjoy… well, you’ll never see them here.

Faith Hunter’s Soulwood series is one of my favorites. The series is a spin-off of her Jane Yellowrock series. (Jane is a Cherokee skinwalker working as a vampire hunter in New Orleans.) Nell Nicholson Ingram is the main character in the Soulwood books and makes her first appearance in Off the Grid in the Black Water anthology of Jane Yellowrock stories.

Image from Amazon.com

Nell Nicholson Ingram was raised in a polygamous religious cult (God’s Cloud of Glory Church) and became a sister wife at age twelve. At the beginning of Blood of the Earth, the first Soulwood novel, “widder woman” Nell is dealing with the consequences of having assisted Jane Yellowrock during the events of Off the Grid. Those consequences include being hunted (literally) by the leaders of God’s Cloud of Glory Church; they want Nell’s land and to take her back to the church where she can be punished (aka raped) for her “sins.” (Her so-called sins include such things as being a woman owning land and daring to live on her own with no husband to keep her properly in line.) Nell has also realized that she is non-human, although she doesn’t know what exactly she is. She knows if the churchmen discover the truth, they will want to burn her at the stake. She finds herself working with the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security or PsyLED for short. PsyLED is the arm of law enforcement responsible for investigating incidents involving witchcraft and/or paranormal beings. Working with other paranormals helps Nell to see that, whatever she is, she isn’t evil, she just is.

In addition to Nell, the primary recurring characters are the members of Unit Eighteen of PsyLED. The members of the team include:

  • Paka, an African black wereleopard shifter. Paka first appears in the Jane Yellowrock series.
  • Rick LaFleur, also an African black wereleopard shifter. Rick makes his first appearance in the Jane Yellowrock books. I do not like Rick due to his actions in the Yellowrock books. We’ll see if he can redeem himself in my eyes. So far, six Soulwood books in, he has not.
  • Occam, wereleopard shifter.
  • Tammie Laine Kent (T. Laine), moon witch.
  • Josephine Anna Jones (JoJo), human hacker.
  • Thom Andrew Dyson (Tandy), empath.
  • Soul, arcenial. Soul first appears in the Jane Yellowrock books.
  • Ayatas Firewind, Cherokee skinwalker. Ayatas first appears in the Jane Yellowrock series and is Jane’s brother. Ayatas definitely suffers from a superiority complex, but there is hope for him. By the events of book five, he is starting to work the stick out of his butt and may actually be in danger of developing a sense of humor. The changes are in large part due to Nell who has no problems telling others the things they need to hear – even, or maybe especially, when they don’t want to hear them.

Soulwood is an ongoing series. At the time of this writing there are six books available.

  • Blood of the Earth, published August 2, 2016
  • Curse on the Land, published November 1, 2016
  • Flame in the Dark, published December 5, 2017
  • Circle of the Moon, published February 26, 2019
  • Spells for the Dead, published July 28, 2020
  • Rift in the Soul, published March 5, 2024

Nell is one of my favorite characters ever. I have loved watching Nell grow from a woman living alone, traumatized by her upbringing, afraid of what she is, into an increasingly confident woman with a career and friends; a woman rebuilding her faith and her relationship with her family on her own terms. I also appreciate the fact that it is set in the Southern US. As a native Southerner, I always love a story in a familiar setting. Though, it isn’t just the setting that draws me in; the dialects and turns of phrase speak to me as well. Having someone referred to as “looking a mite peaked” brought a smile to my face; I haven’t heard that phrase in a while. (If you aren’t familiar with the meaning, it can be translated as “You’re looking a little rough… bless your heart.”) More importantly, I guess one of the biggest draws for me is that I see a lot of myself in Nell. Even though the Soulwood books are a spinoff, you do NOT need to read the Jane Yellowrock series first; the author does a wonderful job of providing the salient information without it being an information overload.

If you decide to read the Soulwood books, please stop by and let me know what you think. If you have already read the Jane Yellowrock series, the Soulwood books, or both, let me know what you think of Rick LeFleur – maybe a different perspective can change my mind about him. Maybe.

Until next installment, happy reading!

Here We Go Again…

If you’ve followed me for any time there are a couple of things you may know about me:

  • First, I’m a writer. I write under the pen name Isabella Norse.
  • Second, I participate in the annual madness known as National Novel Writing Month where I attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days ( or less).

I debated not participating this year but decided on Oct 31st to go ahead and go for it.

I’m a pantser which means I don’t outline, I write by “the seat of my pants” . I’ve always been this way. Even in high school when I had papers to write and teachers expected outlines, I was baffled. How was I supposed to know what I was going to write until I wrote it? The outlines that I had to turn in in advance of the finished paper were complete works of fiction.🤷‍♀️When I start a story I know who my main characters are, how the story begins and ends and random bits in the middle; the rest comes to me as I write. I’m pantsing a little more than usual this year because at this point my heroine doesn’t have a name, LOL. I’m also writing in a different genre this year. In years past I’ve been focusing on my sweet paranormal romance series. I decided I need a change so this year I’m going to be working on an urban fantasy with a middle-aged heroine. (Why should the twenty-somethings always get to save the world?) Since I always have to have a title when I begin a story this one is called Menopause and Mayhem. I even used Canva to create a book cover to use on the NaNo site. I’m looking forward to just having fun this month, even if I don’t reach the 50K goal.

Wish me luck!