Review: Silence Fallen

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A master vampire of Europe, Iacopo Bonarata, is told that Mercy is the most powerful person in the territory protected by the Columbia Basin Pack.

So, of course, he kidnaps her.

Bonarata is the kind of vampire who uses his power to manipulate the world around him. But who knows his true endgame? My favorite description of vampires in the book makes us think twice about trying to understand their motives: “Vampires think sideways. Old vampires think upside down with a widershins spin” (14). Fortunately for Mercy, he underestimates her. Despite being told she’s so powerful, he’s disappointed at her very fragility, and that assumption of a lack of innate powers leaves Mercy to sew chaos like no one else can.

In the meantime, Adam and his wolf have gone a little crazy when his mate suddenly disappears. When the call from Bonarata comes, Adam must travel to Italy to find his wife. For the trip he decides to surround himself with allies–powerful ones–who have a vested interest in Mercy’s retrieval.

Patricia Briggs is in fine form with SILENCE FALLEN. She has an excellent handle on Mercy and her personality, and it shines through as her character has progressed across the series. Again we get chapters from Adam’s point of view as he does his best to be diplomatic with the nefarious Bonarata. The interaction of characters in Bonarata’s Milan villa is well done as everyone negotiates themselves around vampire territory. We watch as Marsilia finally sheds the pain of her earlier life. Stephan takes a minor role, but his friendship with Mercy comes to the forefront. We learn about Larry and the Goblins (of which he’s “king”). And the witch Elizaveta, whose affection for Adam is what convinces her to come, but it’s her history and magic that makes her an interesting person to get to know. I love that Adam trusts female packmake Honey to help in the ‘negotiations,’ and we get to learn how kick butt she really is. We meet the werewolf pack in Prague, and they’re an interesting bunch, to be sure. We’re used to interactions between Mercy and Adam, but here they spend most of the book apart (/sadface).

This book is twisty with connections that could be considered coincidence, except that this is the daughter of Coyote, afterall, who uses her own brand of chaos to fix broken things, even if they are halfway across the world. She finds new allies and discovers the real nasties in this story. She’s the kind of woman who handles problems on the fly and doesn’t always think about the consequences–because who can really guess what they’d be, anyway? But it’s those very consequences, for good or ill, that lead to the solution, and eventually Mercy is able to fix what she needs to.

Briggs’ world of monsters, magic, and all the strange in between is a joy to unravel as she tells Mercy and Adam’s stories. Some of it is what you’d expect, some of it not. But it’s that mix of familiar and foreign that keeps me interested (seriously, I started five books last week and they’re still sitting on my nightstand once this book hit my mailbox). She makes it sound like this stuff could be real. While Mercy knows quite a bit about the supernatural world, there still seems to be much she has yet to learn, and she figures it out as she goes, almost like we’re figuring it out along with her.

My only real complaint is that the Mercy Thompson series is so popular they come out in hardback first! So I have to wait to get the paperback (ug, kindle is less sharable, and I like sharing this series as much as I can!). But it’s worth the wait so I can have a complete set.