Night Broken

Patricia Briggs

Ex-wives and volcano gods

Night Broken is the first novel in Patricia Briggs‘s Mercy Thompson series that I found a little disappointing. Night Broken is not in itself disappointing. However, any long book series has, in addition to the stories of the individual books, the story of the series has a whole. That holds for Mercy Thompson. As the series progresses Mercy matures from a relatively powerless Volkswagen mechanic (who, to be sure, is also a shape-shifter who can take on the form of a coyote) to the person at the center of power and politics among the preternatural beings of the Tri-cities area where she lives. Mercy’s progress is the story of the series.

I was disappointed by Night Broken because it doesn’t much serve that broader story. I am speaking from the perspective of one who has already read every (or very nearly every) book in the Mercyverse, and who therefore knows where things are headed. From that point of view, Night Broken feels unnecessary to me. If you deleted it, the rest of the Mercyverse would, I think, hold up just fine.

The story begins when Adam’s ex-wife Christy calls him in distress. She is being pursued by a stalker who, there is every reason to think, is likely to turn violent. Mercy, Adam’s current wife, knows Christy as a manipulative woman who, she is fairly certain, would just love to manipulate Mercy out of Adams’ life and herself back into it. Yeah, so far, so hackneyed. It transpires, though, that Christy is not lying about the stalker. He is indeed dangerous, He’s a supernatural creature like Mercy and Adam and most of the cast of these novels. (Christy, in contrast, is 100% human.)

That’s the bulk of the story: figuring out the nature of Christy’s stalker and how to deal with him. It’s a good, action-packed story. I enjoyed it, but it is certainly not my favorite novel of the series.

Brok3n Engines

★★★★☆ Night Broken, by Patricia Briggs