Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs Review: A Turning Point for Mercy Thompson

Mercy Thompson #5 | First published in 2010

Minor spoilers for earlier Mercy Thompson novels; major developments in Silver Borne are left undisclosed.

I thought Silver Borne was where I stopped reading Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series the first time around. Having finished it again, I am no longer sure. I remember a different plot, possibly from a later book, or perhaps several stories that have merged together in my head. Much of this fifth novel felt unfamiliar, but it also reminded me how much the series has accumulated since Moon Called. Events that once seemed like individual adventures have become a history that the characters must live with.

Samuel’s long struggle with his wolf is coming to a crisis, Mercy’s place in Adam’s pack remains contested, and a borrowed book left over from Iron Kissed brings her into conflict with the fae. These problems have been developing for several novels. Where Iron Kissed changed the emotional stakes of the series, Silver Borne feels like a convergence of its longer-running storylines. Briggs finally begins resolving some of them, although I am more convinced by the problems she has created than by every solution she provides.

Cover image: Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs, published by Ace. Used here for purposes of review and commentary.

An Overdue Book and Several Old Problems

The fae plot begins with an unusually ordinary problem: Mercy needs to return a borrowed book. More precisely, it is a volume of fae knowledge that she borrowed during Iron Kissed, and its contents turn out to be much more sensitive than she realised. When she tries to return it, the bookshop is closed and the proprietor has disappeared. Soon she finds herself pursued by people who want the information it contains and who are not inclined to explain their motives.

Samuel has a different kind of problem. The balance between his human and wolf natures is failing, and Mercy knows that if the wrong werewolves discover the extent of it, his own father may be obliged to have him killed. At the same time, her relationship with Adam continues to cause friction in his pack. Some members resent the influence of a coyote shapeshifter who does not fit comfortably into their hierarchy. Mercy has acquired more protection and standing since the first book, but both come with obligations and enemies of their own.

I liked how thoroughly these plots depend on previous events. Even the overdue book has a publishing history of sorts. In Briggs’ comments about Silver Borne, she explains that returning it was originally a minor loose end. When the real-life bookshop that inspired the fictional one closed, she imagined Mercy arriving to find the place deserted. A forgotten errand became a substantial supernatural adventure. It is an appealing piece of continuity, although the fae mystery is ultimately less interesting to me than the character arcs it helps bring together.

Samuel and the Price of Surviving

Samuel remains a more compelling character to me than Adam, and this is the first book to make his troubles a central concern rather than an unsettling presence in the background. He is an extraordinarily old werewolf who has endured losses and changes that would exhaust almost anyone. More troublingly, the human and wolf parts of him no longer seem to agree about whether they want to continue living. In Briggs’ mythology, the wolf has instincts and responses of its own; Samuel cannot simply reason his way out of the conflict.

His age is especially striking once one considers what werewolf longevity actually means in this setting. Werewolves are almost always made rather than born—Charles Cornick, Samuel’s half-brother, is the extraordinary exception—and most people do not survive the Change. Those who do gain strength, rapid healing and the possibility of living for centuries. Yet the Briggsverse reference drawn from Moon Called puts average survival after the first Change at just ten years, with dominance fights responsible for many deaths.

That is quite a contrast: a creature resistant to the normal causes of ageing, living in a society where violence usually kills it long before age becomes relevant. Samuel belongs to the rare survivors who discover the less obvious cost of those centuries. Human partners grow old and die, families disappear, and the ordinary world repeatedly changes around them. The strength needed to keep living does not necessarily supply a reason to want to.

Pack life offers one possible answer. Other werewolves may share Samuel’s lifespan, and belonging to a group can create some continuity when human lives are so brief by comparison. Unfortunately, the pack is also an institution built around dominance, hierarchy and the constant danger of conflict. The same social structure that offers companionship can threaten independence and even survival. Samuel’s age, temperament and divided nature make those contradictions particularly difficult for him.

I find Briggs’ treatment of this more interesting than the familiar fantasy complaint that immortality is lonely. Samuel’s predicament grows directly out of the rules she has established. Most werewolves never live long enough to face the burden of extended life; those who do may be unusually good at surviving a world that eventually wears them down. Survival itself has become something Samuel struggles to want.

My reservation concerns how the novel begins to resolve a problem built from centuries of grief. The prospect of relief arrives a little more neatly than I expected, given the depth of what has been established. I would not want Samuel condemned to endless suffering in the name of literary seriousness, but the movement towards a solution feels swift beside the emotional weight of the crisis. It does not diminish my interest in him, which remains one of the strongest reasons to continue the series.

Fae Mythology and Werewolf Society

The fae supply the other great attraction of Silver Borne. Their secrets, old obligations and extraordinary variety make Mercy’s world seem considerably larger than it did at the beginning. European fairy traditions give Briggs an abundance of creatures and stories to draw upon, many of them far stranger and more dangerous than the familiar modern image of a fairy. The borrowed book works well as a source of trouble because Mercy does not need to pursue some grand magical quest: possessing knowledge that powerful beings want hidden is enough.

I am reminded of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye novels, where the history of the fae and the political structures built around it become increasingly important as Toby explores more of Faerie. Both settings give the impression that the protagonist understands only the visible surface of something much older. A new discovery does not simply introduce another monster; it changes the meaning of places, relationships and rules we thought we already knew.

At first I wondered whether the fae were inevitably going to be more interesting than Briggs’ werewolves. Once the rules of the Change and the pack hierarchy are established, there seems less room for invention. Samuel’s storyline is a good counterargument to my own assumption. The fae give Briggs mythological breadth, with an almost inexhaustible range of beings and magical histories. The werewolves provide social and psychological depth through longevity, dominance, divided identities and the cost of belonging. Their apparent limitations have generated some of the series’ best character material.

Unlimited fae variety carries a different risk. If every ancient being can possess some previously unknown power, a mystery can become difficult to judge fairly: the solution may depend on rules the reader could never have guessed. Briggs usually maintains enough internal logic to avoid that problem, though I am not equally persuaded by every turn of the immediate fae adventure. The expanding mythology interests me more than the precise sequence of dangers Mercy encounters here.

Adam, Mercy and the Romance Question

I vaguely remember disliking Adam during my original attempt at the series, and I still find Samuel more interesting. Adam is not without depth, but the protective, possessive Alpha is a familiar romantic figure that does not particularly appeal to me. It may even have been part of why I stopped reading, though my memory is far too unreliable to make that claim with confidence.

Briggs at least treats Mercy’s independence as a real difficulty rather than an attitude she is expected to outgrow. Her relationship with Adam gives her protection, but it also changes her position in a hierarchy whose other members have opinions about whether she belongs. The opposition she faces in Silver Borne makes the romance consequential outside the couple itself. Accepting Mercy means changing how the pack understands loyalty, status and its Alpha’s choices.

This is one reason the romantic material has been less intrusive than I expected. The comparison with Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake novels remains striking. Anita’s series mixes gruesome supernatural investigations with increasingly elaborate sexual and romantic entanglements, sometimes to the point where the original procedural structure struggles to remain central. Briggs includes romance, violence and supernatural politics too, but the developing relationship generally changes what Mercy must navigate rather than replacing the adventure altogether.

I am not convinced that this balance will be easy to maintain once Mercy and Adam become more established. Repeated misunderstandings would be tiresome, but allowing the romance to dominate the wider story would be no improvement for me. For now, the conflict over Mercy’s place in the pack is a more interesting development than another round of uncertainty about whom she will choose.

The Weight of Five Books

What I had forgotten most thoroughly was not the plot of Silver Borne but the amount of history behind it. The fae book, Samuel’s condition and Mercy’s shifting position within the pack all depend on earlier novels. Read close together, those developments feel earned. After years away, they are harder to reconstruct. Even a trilogy can become difficult to resume when a year or two separates its installments; five interconnected books already contain enough grievances, loyalties and half-remembered characters to blur together.

I have been thinking about this while considering how long-running urban fantasy changes. Once a protagonist has acquired friends, enemies, obligations and some knowledge of the hidden world, the next adventure cannot convincingly treat her as the same outsider who began the series. That accumulated history is what now gives Mercy’s world much of its appeal. It also explains the inertia of returning to an unfinished series after a long absence: the more rewarding its continuity becomes, the more one has to remember to appreciate it.

If Iron Kissed changed the emotional stakes and Bone Crossed tested whether the consequences would last, Silver Borne brings several older threads towards genuine change. I still prefer Samuel to Adam, and Samuel’s resolution feels slightly tidier than its long preparation warrants. But the world has grown more interesting, especially where werewolf relationships and fae history meet. I cannot remember whether I made it this far on my first attempt, and I remain unsure how long I will continue. For now, Briggs has given me better reasons to keep reading than simply wanting to know which monster Mercy will face next.