A Spoiler Free Reread Review
Blood Bound was pretty good. I’m not nearly as high on it as I was on first read, but it’s still really good. I had a hard time putting it down at points. I feel like the Mercy Thompson world is very lived-in. It feels very real. Lots of moving pieces that don’t just stop moving because Mercy isn’t “on screen.”
I’m not super into this love quadrangle Mercy seems to have found herself in, through no real fault of her own. I don’t think we needed to add Stefan to the mix, having Samuel around already was enough. That said, Mercy isn’t as confused or even questioning like most female protagonists in these things, so that’s a welcome change.
Here we get a distinction between what Mercy is and the Skinwalkers of Native folklore/religion. I’m glad there is a clear distinction because Mercy is definitely not a Skinwalker. To that point, I feel like Mercy needs to sit down with Stefan and make him tell her what he knows about her abilities. He keeps saying things to her about her abilities that she doesn’t even know.
I really appreciate that Mercy’s fairly practical. Vampire Sorcerer who would definitely kill me? No thanks, think I’ll stay home and let other people deal with it. Well, until she basically get baited into going after Littleton via Marsilia. I’m glad it took Mercy a little while to figure out her ghost thing, since she’s so not used to actually using it actively. I’m even glad it took her a while to figure out the mystery of where Littleton was and all that. She’s a mechanic, not a detective and it shows in a good way.
I thinking bringing up the issue of young, untrained, attacked werewolves, especially female ones, was an interesting addition to the book and lore. Blood Bound has a lot of trauma in it. Mercy’s trauma with the sorcerer, Samuel’s trauma with his girlfriend in Texas and the car crash that made him remember it… I also think Mercy was the best person Tom Black could have come to about his daughter. I feel like she was most likely to tell it how it actually is, rather than lying or upselling anything. That he was more integral to the plot was a little bit of a surprise, but done pretty well.
I like that we get a bit more about the Fae. Mainly about how they’re not actually as powerful as Mercy thinks but also that they’re a lot closer to extinction than anyone would have guessed.
So, I’ve read a lot of vampire books over the years and in every universe, vampires are different. Even our own mythological vampires are very different depending on which you’re looking at. I find Mercy’s mantra of “Vampires are evil” a little bit hilarious because of this. Overall, the reason vampires are “evil” is because they’re pretty much just people with a few extras tacked on. It’s not usually the bloodlust that makes vampires “evil,” it’s the people-y-ness. People are capable of a lot of bad and when you essentially take away the governance that keeps us in check, we get worse. That’s vampires. Vampires are “evil” because people are “evil.” On a slightly separate note: these are the slowest reproducing vampires ever. I’m glad we basically got an info dump from Stefan’s menagerie. Good to have as much info about the people we’re dealing with as possible.
I really, really appreciate that killing vampires doesn’t come super naturally to Mercy. I feel like that initial period of killing vamps gets completely skipped over in most, if not all, cases of vampire hunters. Either that, or the hunters are already super cool with just taking out vamps left and right. Not so with Mercy, and I’m glad of it.
I don’t really have a conclusion to this thing. Blood Bound was a good sequel and I’m on to the next one.
Favorite Lines
"Never thank a fae or you'll be washing his socks and paying his rent before you can say effluvia ten times." - Uncle Mike
"Look. The wooden stake thing works, but it's better if it's oak, ash, or yew. And if you kill them that way, you have to cut off their heads or burn the body to make sure they stay dead. Remember, a dead vampire is ashes. If there's body, it'll come back -- and it'll come back angry with you. Cutting off their heads is pretty good, but difficult. They're not likely to stand around and wait for the chainsaw. Sunlight's good, too. But the stake and sunlight, they're like kicking a guy in the balls, you know?" - Rachel
"Dracula, he isn't, but where there's werewolves, there certainly ought to be vampires." - Gabriel Sandoval
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