Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs

I’ve been a casual fan of Patricia Briggs since back when she was a mid-lister, with When Demons Walk and The Hob’s Bargain, but after she came out with the first Mercy Thompson novel, I became a more rabid look-up-when-the-next-book-comes-out kind of fan.  Silver Borne is the fifth book in the series featuring a coyote shapeshifter involved in pack, vampire, and fae intrigue and politics.  Of course, you already know this if you’ve read the other books in the series, and if you haven’t, you should definitely read those first.

The latest novel continues some of the plot threads that were left off in the previous book.  Mercy is the latest and only non-wolf member inducted into Adam’s pack, and in this book, she and Adam deal with the fallout as other pack members interfere with the mate bond and undermine the pack’s power structure.  In the meantime, Samuel’s terminal self pity finally comes to a head as his wolf takes control and puts them all in danger.  A third plot strand involves a book that a dangerous fae queen wants to take from Mercy by any means necessary.

The way Briggs handles these intersecting plot strands has some of my favorite scenes yet, as Mercy and Adam negotiate and strengthen their relationship, and deal with threats both internal and external.  And while Samuel’s happy ending seemed a bit abrupt and a bit of a deus ex machina as well, I was glad to see some resolution to his story line.  Ultimately, this was a really satisfying read for me, with action that was genuinely exciting, emotionally intense and romantic scenes, and a bit of humor that leavened the darker elements of the plot.

The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

Violet Ambrose has a dubious gift.  She can trace the echoes of a murdered body’s essence, which made for a lot of animal funerals during her childhood.  Her first human body was when she was eight years old and discovered a murdered little girl.  Since then, she has lived a mundane life, and only her family and her best friend Jay know her secret.

The first half of The Body Finder is really a teenage love story – boy and girl are best friends, girl’s feelings start to change, does boy feel the same?  The reader knows from the beginning that the two will end up together, but the real fun is getting there – the romantic tension, angsty jealousy, and barely suppressed passion of an evolving relationship.

Interspersed throughout this is the italicized viewpoint of a killer who is stalking girls in Violet’s small rural western Washington town.  In fact, the only quibble I had with this book was the overly liberal use of italics – sometimes I would see a phrase in unnecessary italics, and I would spend a second or two looking for the two or three other italics on the page.  As a reader, I would have liked the author to have a bit more trust in my ability to put appropriate emphasis on her words.

The fast-paced suspense part of the novel kicks into gear when Violet decides to use her gift to help catch the killer, and she draws an unwilling Jay into helping her.  By tracing the sensory echoes of the murdered girls, she offers valuable clues to her police chief uncle, but when the killer realizes that she knows more than she should, she becomes his next target.

Derting really shines in evoking the breathless anticipation of new love, and earns points for creating a unique addition to the pantheon of paranormal talents.

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Catherine Fisher’s Incarceron is a dystopian young adult fantasy which calls to mind other dystopian YA fantasies like Hunger Games and The Maze Runner.  Fierce teenage heroes and heroines join forces to reclaim their humanity from the huge faceless machine that robs them of individuality and freedom – which, incidentally, is not a bad metaphor for young adulthood.

Incarceron is also an action-adventure novel from the get-go, with Finn, our young hero, chafing against his bonds (both figurative and literal) from the first page.  Intrigue and futuristic technological elements help drive the plot, and while Fisher drops a pretty big clue about who Finn actually is at around page 50, it becomes increasingly clear that the bigger mystery is about what Incarceron is and how Finn got there.  From the cover copy, we know that Incarceron is a sentient prison, but what does it really want?  And what is it, exactly?  Another world, a parallel universe?

In at least one part of the novel, I felt the same frisson of excitement I experienced when Philip Pullman got mindbendingly philosophical in his masterpiece His Dark Materials trilogy, although the two stories are on the surface not very similar.  Of course, now that I’ve written that, I can think of a lot of themes and situations the two share.

Claudia, the heroine of the novel, is the daughter of the enigmatic Warden of Incarceron, who is playing a much deeper game than Claudia realizes.  As Claudia and her mentor, the Sapient Jared, discover more about what Incarceron is, they become drawn into a secret rebellion that rallies around a figurehead called Sapphique, the only person who has ever escaped from the prison.

Finn’s only goal is to get himself and his friends out of Incarceron and into the freedom of the mythical Outside.  Claudia’s corresponding goal is to cross into Incarceron and bring Finn back to his rightful place, but no one will get exactly what they want.  As it turns out, Outside is as oppressive as Incarceron, because in this novel, wherever humans are, they create their own prison.