Book Review – Moon Called

Disclaimer: As with all my reviews there is the possibility of spoilers, though I work my hardest to avoid them when I can.

You Can’t Get Me Out of My Skin

I’ve had a crazy stint of Urban Fantasy lately, and after reviewing a smaller time series with an Elemental main character, I really wanted to get around to the Mercy Thompson series too. Unfortunately I’ve only gotten through the first book, but it is a start at least. So I figured it would be useful to throw up my thoughts on the Mercy series first book before I get around to the others. (which at some point I will eventually).

I went into this series knowing little more than ‘it is about a coyote shapeshifter mechanic’. Seriously, and originally I wanted to get the third book I think it was, because I liked the cover on it better than the first one. But someone convinced me I should start with the first one, since I have a nasty habit of starting in the middle of a series and never going back.

So let’s begin with Mercy. She is what is known as a skinwalker, though everyone seems to know what a skinwalker is, except her (including me). She works on the cars of vampires, after taking over her garage from a fairy, and lives near a werewolf alpha. So as could be expected, somehow she ends up getting roped into quite some ridiculous situations, including some people trying to kill her and needing her garage cleaned up by a witch. But it isn’t all bad, before long Mercy is brought back to her old roots with the werewolf pack she grew up with and gets caught up in trying to help a lot of people even though she really didn’t need to.

And this is just about as general as I could get with it. Eventually she does fight some big baddie and puts an end to a plot for werewolf pack domination (not quite world domination, but close). Overall, Mercy was a well done character and interesting, I was a little disappointed in one major area with werewolves being largely just as sexist and misogynistic of a society as humans are, and that Mercy even still gives into this area (despite protesting against it with her words). But it’s at least still something that is acknowledged by the character, but I feel showing her giving into that submissive quality she is ‘supposed’ to possess wasn’t exactly an awesome thing.

Still, it’s only one major thing in the first book of a series, which I can honestly understand a lot about the first book not always being what you want it to be, which is generally why when I start a series I will actually start further along than the first book (I had planned to read the second book first). But it was still a decent one to read and it had a good flowing plot and plenty of fun characters. In fact there was some degrees of diversity with a few gay characters (though once again suffer from a very… heteronormative werewolf society).

Overall, this is a book I’d definitely recommend to anyone interested in Urban Fantasy, it manages to be just different enough with a character not focused on a job around snooping on people like many other Urban Fantasies do, and even defies the gender norms in multiple ways like being a mechanic. Together with a well done plot, that uses the damsel in distress trope unfortunately at one point (at least a wife didn’t die). It’s a good solid beginning for a series that I’d love to see more of, and I really hope to see the heteronormative, misogynistic werewolf society broken down for once instead of Mercy just becoming the ‘mate’ of one of the men.

As for my imps, three of them stuck around for this one, totally getting sucked up into the action and the third one especially liked the vampire scenes. My fourth imp stuck around for some of it and flitted away for others, but mostly enjoyed it and so I wouldn’t let him get away with trying to be half again. My fifth imp didn’t put up with any of it really, as she felt there could have been more diversity and it’s definitely not a book for everyone.

Four out of Five Imps