River Marked by Patricia Briggs

A Spoiler Free Reread Review

It is really amazing to me how your brain can just discard information on a whim. You can read a book and really like it, only to forget pretty much everything about it in the space of a few years. Makes rereading more fun, I guess. I remembered the otters, well otterkin actually, in River Marked and that Adam and Mercy were on their honeymoon, but virtually nothing else. River Marked is chock full of lore pertaining specifically to Mercy and Mercy's heritage... and I remembered none of it. Well... a tiny bit... but that tiny bit is spoilers, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

I teared up twice during River Marked. Once during Adam and Mercy's wedding and the second time reading Mercy's letter to Adam at the very end. I am a sap for people coming together in unexpected ways and for the love letters, apparently.

So, the lore. I love me some lore. I'm not sure how true-to-life this particular lore is, given it's Native American lore or based on it anyway. I haven't done much research into that area of things, though given I've heard basically nothing in the way of controversy on how Particia Briggs handled it, I'm willing to bet she did. It definitely seemed authentic enough to me. Insert much ignorant white person shrugging here. I am very glad they spent a bunch of time here making damn sure we knew Mercy wasn't anything like a skinwalker. 'Cuz yeah, definitely an entirely different thing than what Mercy is.

Coyote really reminded me of The Doctor from Doctor Who, complete with the whole "thinking out loud while problem solving" thing. I quite liked him and his characterization makes loads of sense. Again, insert ignorant white person shrugging here. Oh! The Maryhill Museum and Stonehenge replica are real places that you can visit and they've definitely earned a spot on my "I would like to go to there" list.

I quite enjoyed River Marked. The story was fun and pretty much ran a mile a minute, so it was also a fairly quick read the couple of times I had time to sit down and actually read it for long stretches.

Favorite Line 

"Wal-Mart is the Happy Shopping Grounds for the financially challenged." - Mercy Thompson Hauptman