Hugin & Munin Journal

Patricia Briggs’s Iron Kissed , the third Mercy Thompson novel, begins as a recognisable urban-fantasy investigation: a series of murders, a concealed supernatural community and a protagonist whose unusual senses can find what the authorities have missed. It ends by challenging one of the genre’s most convenient assumptions—that surviving violence returns the hero to herself. The novel repeatedly presents danger as something that has been contained. The human government has placed publicly known fae on reservations. Mercy believes experience, competence and independence can protect her. Serial urban fantasy generally restores enough physical function for its protagonists to begin the next investigation. None of those arrangements proves as secure as it appears. Iron Kissed is not literally shorter than its predecessors, but it feels more compressed. The murder case moves rapidly, the investigation remains geographically contained, and the final movement abruptly changes what the s...

Patricia Briggs’s Blood Bound , the second Mercy Thompson novel, expands its world by narrowing its attention. Moon Called introduced Mercy primarily through werewolves: their hierarchy, instincts, politics and uncertain place in human society. The sequel turns towards vampires and shifts the main pressure point from belonging to predation. The change produces more than a neatly structured second adventure. Vampires organise, bargain, enforce territory and manage their reputation. Demons are not metaphors, and faith can exert physical force. None of this makes the supernatural world easier to understand or morally safer. Order can contain violence without making the system that contains it just. That is what makes Blood Bound harsher than I remembered. It gives its monsters institutions and relationships without allowing familiarity to domesticate them. It also raises one of urban fantasy’s most uncomfortable questions: if holy power demonstrably works, why does the world still l...

Returning to Patricia Briggs’s Moon Called , the first Mercy Thompson novel, as part of a broader urban fantasy reread has been a slightly strange experience. The book is still enjoyable. What feels strange is how neatly it complicates the distinction I was trying to draw between older, investigation-driven urban fantasy and the more relationship-centred fiction that became increasingly prominent around it. Moon Called contains a murder, an abduction, hidden experiments and a conspiracy that must be uncovered. It is recognisably a supernatural mystery, but Mercy does not solve it as an isolated detective following a clean chain of clues. She moves through a neighbouring alpha, the pack that raised her, a former lover, a vampire customer, a fae mentor and several communities that trust her only partially. The relationships do not interrupt the case. They make the case solvable. Spoiler note: This review discusses the novel’s opening deaths, the kidnapping plot and the broad struct...