Masques

Mercy and Adam are here, in their first draft version. They're still a few iterations short of being interesting full fleshed characters. The story is dull, the characters are blend. Its basically just a bunch of actions happening, it doesn't feel like a proper story.

“So I was the best spy in the Kingdom, but some day my boss started to act a little weird. So I was sent to a remote place to spy on as a punishment for something I did. There I found out the bad guy was influencing my boss, so I joined the rebels...“

I wanted to finish this to see if I would enjoy the sequel, written much later in Patricia Briggs career, but it was too painful, and the reviews of the sequel, Wolfsbane, were not stellar to make the effort worthwhile. I felt like Mercy Thompson is everything this book is supposed to be.

Read 05:00 / 09:43 52%

This book was a little rough around the edges, but it was fun!

The pacing was a little strange moving from fast to slow unexpectedly (something which Briggs handles very well in her later books).

It was a neat world to visit. The magic systems were intriguing. Aralorn was the type of character I enjoy reading. She preferred swordplay to needle work, but she was still emotionally complex. she could kick ass when needed and cry when it all went wrong.

I enjoyed the story for the world-building, the characters, and the plot. The writing was all right, and the pacing was quick enough that it made for a quick fast read. The genre was more fantasy than I was expecting and that aspect definitely added depth to the world-building. Overall, an enjoyably quick fantasy read.

C+

I didn't know what to expect out of this. Between the fact that this is a different genre than I'm familiar with Briggs writing in, and the way she lowered expectations in the forward about this when it was reissued, I came into it not expecting a lot.

I should've known better. Not unlike her protagonist, Patricia Briggs knows how to tell a story. This was not the best fantasy I've read recently, but it was a very enjoyable tale.

Briggs' strength has to be her characters, and even here in her first novel, she nailed ‘em. They were people you cared about, or could easily see yourself caring about, if you got to spend some more time with ‘em.