I had read lots of positive reviews about Mercury’s War and couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. In a way, it’s a change of pace from LL’s usual fare because the mating heat took a back seat to real relationship development, which is a good thing in my opinion. It makes a reappearance toward the end of the book but by that time, the relationship between Ria and Mercury is already fairly well established.

Mercury is a lion breed that was given drugs at a young age to quell the animal within him, due to killing a bunch of lab scientists with his bare hands. This happened because a young female that he had considered part of his pride, was killed while on a mission, which sets off his rage. He also showed signs of the mating hormone at this time, and so it was said that he lost his mate, and would never have a family or happy relationship again, because Breeds only mate once.

Enter Ria, who is undercover and investigating a possible traitor within Sanctuary, who is sending out information on Mating Heat to a pharmaceutical company. She and Mercury share some explosive chemistry but Ria knows he can’t actually mate her, and she’ll never be happy unless she can be his one true mate. But they can’t stay away from each other, and what follows is fairly predictable, minus a couple of small surprises (but nothing earthshaking). They did have good chemistry which made for some steamy scenes.

For some reason though, I felt as though I could never fully get into this book. Part of it was the technical jargon and many of the non-relationship related plot elements; they just bored me. The relationships between the breeds and the hierarchy they fall into became more complex and it was difficult to keep some characters and their positions and relationships to others, straight. Mercury and Ria seemed to be a decent match for one another, but I thought that the drama about Ria’s appearance and dress (and Mercury tearing up all of her clothes) was totally ridiculous and stupid. Not to mention a sign of an abusive relationship (not that Mercury was actually abusive, he just had his moments of behavior that probably wouldn’t be acceptable in a normal human relationship). Also, the (view spoiler)[ “mate” not really being dead and also not really being his mate (hide spoiler)] really seemed like a cop-out to me. I mean, I really think that LL needs to start exploring some more intense and complex relationship situations rather than repeating the same formula over and over for each couple in each book. What about a breed who really does lose their true mate but falls in love again? What about two mates who are evil together? Or a couple where one is genuinely evil and the other isn’t? Or even a same-sex mating story. I just think she needs to get a little more creative after writing nearly 20 books with the same formula of “We’re fated mates but we can’t get along” or some variation thereof, where everything ends nice, clean, and happy for every couple.