TITLE: Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)
AUTHOR: Patricia Briggs
GENRE: Urban Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 01/01/2006
RATING: ★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Review: I read Moon Called for the first time when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, and I was an instant addict. I read books one through six as they were released and loved them all.
Book six, River Marked, was published in 2011. Which happened to be the year I graduated high school, took off for Finland, and got married (within the same month). Suffice to say, I lost track of the series –– I bought the new books as they came out, because I was a loyal fan, but I never read them. This year, having completed my Goodreads challenge (BOO-YAH!) I decided to revisit Mercy and her world.
I am disappointed to say that it has not aged well.
For those of you who are somehow unaware of this series, a short summary: Mercedes 'Mercy' Thompson is a skinwalker, capable of transforming into a coyote at will. She is also a car mechanic (who has heard every permutation of that joke you're considering) who took over her garage from a gremlin, lives next door to a werewolf alpha, and regularly works on the car of Stefan the vampire.
(Not, we are pleased to note, Stefan of The Vampire Diaries, although he shares book!VD-Stefan's Italian heritage).
Mercy's world is almost identical to her own, except that the 'lesser fae' - that is, those members of faerie who are not too powerful or too frightening for humans to deal with - are out of the closet. All the other supernatural beasties are still on the downlow.
Moon Called begins when newly turned werewolf runaway Mac shows up on Mercy's doorstep asking for work. Although she knows it's a bad idea to get too close to a werewolf who can't control himself, Mercy can't turn him away and gives him the job. Which means she's in the thick of it when the people Mac was running from catch up to him. In the process, Adam, her werewolf neighbour, is badly wounded and his young daughter kidnapped. So begins a race to figure out who, what, and why before it all goes to Hell.
Not, alas, literally. That might actually have been interesting.
I will begin with my number one problem with this book (this world, in fact). Mercy repeatedly states that werewolf culture hasn't yet heard of women's rights; most werewolves are men, because fewer women are capable of surviving the change, and when they do, they can't have children. The ramifications of this include nearly every werewolf we meet bossing Mercy around because she is female and thus someone to be claimed in some way.
Can we get rid of this gods-damned trope already?
Look, I don't know where this idea that werewolves = men started, but I'm genuinely sick to death of it. It's a stupid, lazy set-up that makes no sense to begin with (what, you think women who've given birth can't take pain like a man can? Dream on) and even if we accept the (extremely dubious) proposition that women are physically weaker and thus die during the Change more often, that's no reason to have an unthinkingly misogynistic culture. Natural wolves have alpha pairs, after all, with the alpha female being just as important as the alpha male (we see this done to wonderful effect in Ilona Adrews' Kate Daniels series - THERE is a shapeshifter culture to be impressed with), whereas in Briggs' set-up females merely take their status from their mates––or else are automatically placed at the bottom of the pack hierarchy. I can't think of a single good reason for this, nor can I see how a society like this would evolve. Even the one 'alpha female' we meet in the series, the wife of the Marrock (high-alpha of the USA, don't you know) is overshadowed by her two stepsons –– so even the idea that females take their mate's status is pretty weak.
And let's be blunt here –– once a woman IS a werewolf, you cannot convince me that there is any basis for considering her less. Why are female werewolves automatically dumped to the bottom of the pack's hierarchy? At this point, they've completed the Change and can turn into giant wolves, are enormously strong, and have become basically immortal. They have the exact same abilities as a male werewolf. So what gives?
These are all issues I never even noticed the first time I read the book, but they jumped out at me pretty strongly on a reread. Lazy misogynism isn't something I can't ignore anymore, I'm afraid. Sorry-not-sorry.
Then there's the love interests: the control freak neighbour who keeps a photo of Mercy in his bedroom (can we say f***ing creepy!) and the ex who wanted to marry her (when she was 16!) for her uterus.
OH HOW NICE.
But wait, it gets worse.
“My father told me what he told you.” His voice started calmly enough, but there was a tinge of anger weaving itself through his words as he continued. “But you should have known all of that already. I didn’t hide anything.”
There was no defensiveness in his voice or in his posture; he really didn’t understand what he’d done to me—as stupid as that made him in my eyes. It was still good, somehow, to know that the hurt he’d caused me had been unintentional.
WAIT
WAIT
WHAT.
So, you don't understand that wooing a 16 year old girl solely so she can have your children is hurtful –– and you're still not apologising––but you're a love interest?
HOW?
Not to mention that Mercy is happy to know that the hurt was unintentional. OH YES, THAT MAKES IT ALL BETTER. Please continue to be oblivious to your returning attraction for him.
At least she thinks he's stupid. But seriously: what is this crap?
There are some good moments –– such as when Mercy holds off a crazed vampire with her lamb necklace (a lamb for Jesus, obviously)––but the actual plot, the question of who is behind the attack on Adam and what do strange drugs have to do with it, is simultaneously over complicated and boring. I had zero interest in finding out who was behind it all (and not because I remembered from previously reading the book, either –– I had no memory of it, because it is that unmemorable) and skipped pages of the characters talking over the clues and red herrings amongst themselves. Ultimately one of the most important who's is someone we never even meet on-screen (so to speak). That's just bad writing.
It's odd, because Mercy as a character seems very self-aware and often comments on the problematic elements of things like werewolf culture –– and yet Briggs doesn't seem to make the leap to 'this is stupid and not okay, so write something better.' And I'm not going over the idiocy of the love triangle thingy again.
All in all, I'm really sad that one of my favourite series turned out to be a misogynistic mess. It's always a risk, rereading a book you loved when you were younger –– you always end up finding a whole lot you never saw before. Books are like Disney movies that way. Only, with Disney movies, what you find are a lot of grown-up jokes you didn't catch as a kid. With books, sometimes you find an unabashed disaster where you once had something precious.
Thank you for the comment! ^^
