Review of Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs

            A review of “Frost Burned” A Mercy Thompson novel by Patricia Briggs

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After loving the last book, I was hoping the seventh book in the series would also be good. This book is a bit of a mixed mag for me, but I will look back on it as one of the better books so far in the series. “Frost Burned” starts out with action and has a good flow for the first half of the book. Mercy gets into a car accident, the pack wolves get kidnapped, Mercy must get her boyfriend’s daughter to safety, while Ben the werewolf is struggling with silver poisoning. Then Mercy, Ben and Stefan the vampire go to Kyle’s house, who was being held hostage. Kyle was the lover of a pack wolf named Warren, and friends with Mercy. Stefan takes out the bad guys and then we get introduced to a new wolf called The Moor, who is legendary. Then Mercy gets attacked by assassins and hit with some fae magic while trying to rescue Adam's daughter and her boyfriend’s family.

After all that chaos, the book finally slows down, but becomes more about long drawn-out explanations and exposition. It really hits the brakes. This is also the first book that deviates from Mercy’s point of view, where we get Adam’s perspective of events, probably to avoid more exposition. But it was interesting, being out of Mercy’s P.O.V. For a while. Last the quarter of the book, takes a strange turn. The vampire mistress, Marsillia, calls Mercy to help her fight against a big bad vampire that we briefly met in a previous book. It’s mentioned that this vampire hired the mercenaries that kidnapped the werewolves, but that doesn’t explain the mercenaries plan about having Adam kill a senator. So, the ending gets a bit sloppy. Of course, Mercy and her friends defeat this new “big bad” vampire and she remains on good terms with Marsillia.

I really enjoyed this book for the first half, the action was great, and the pacing flew by. The motivation of the mercenaries capturing the pack didn’t make a ton of sense, especially trying to tie it in at the end with the vampire. The villains were lame, but the concept was cool. I like seeing Mercy team up with Ben and Stefan for a bit. We resolve a side story that started in book five with Jesse’s boyfriend Gabriel feuding with his mother. There was a bit more of the fae magic, with Z’s son Tad joining the mix in this book. I loved including these side characters, because these books are at their best when the characters are interacting with each other.

One of the things that bothered me, is there is no Samuel and instead we find out that he and the fae woman that he met at the end of book five are now living together. It just feels like a rushed story line, that reminds me why I really didn’t like the fifth book. Mercy and her now husband Adam are separated for the first half of this book creating an interesting dynamic. We also get a few mentions of Mercy’s sort of real father the Coyote, who helps her with magic to save Adam. The book slows down a lot when Mercy and Adam reunite and the whole mercenary plot is conveniently wrapped up with a nice little bow, before Mercy must face off with the “big bad” vampire. The new character called the Moor, is interesting and I hope we learn more about his history and relationship with Bran the leader of all werewolves in America.

This book suffers from a few of the same issues that most of the other books do. Adam and Mercy’s relationship wasn’t great in this book, he comes off as way too possessive of her, and she of him. They resolve their issues by having lots of sex at inappropriate times. Which is supposed to show us they are so in love, they can’t keep their hands off each other, but these are grown adults. It’s sort of implied that their animal counterparts’ basic instincts take over, but it plays as more of a possessive quality, than “I’m so in love”. I really enjoyed the fast-paced action in the first half of the book and getting more time with side characters, but the second half slows down and loses my interest. Also, the surprise ending of inserting the character Frost – whom the book is titled after – feels like an after thoughts; and raises more questions than it answers.

Overall, I still really enjoyed this book, and it had some really good moments out of the series. If the book had stopped halfway through, this would be a top tier novel of the series, unfortunately it went on to bore me. This is not the best in the series but it’s also not the worst. So far for me, it ranks right in the middle. Let’s see if the series gets better.