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Silence Fallen A Mercy Thompson Novel Patricia Briggs Books

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Silence Fallen A Mercy Thompson Novel Patricia Briggs Books

Great book and great series.


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Silence Fallen A Mercy Thompson Novel Patricia Briggs Books Reviews

The latest addition to the Mercy universe, "Silence Fallen" is a wonderful story where the reader learns more about Mercy, Adam, and other people in their lives. Plus we finally meet the Master of Milan, one of the scariest and strongest vampires around. I won't bore you with a summary of the book. But I can say that Briggs delivers one huge twist and one incredibly subtle clue to the twist. The writing is smooth, flowing between Mercy's point of view and Adam's point of view to maintain the story from each person's perspective. I feel like I met everyone that Mercy met, and I wanted to smack Jacob a few times with Adam. Overall, this is an excellent new story and shows that even long running series can maintain a high standard of storytelling.
It’s the sort of thing that happens to Mercy—she’s playing a jolly RPG of pirates, and her stepdaughter Jesse (as “Barbary Belle” “kills” her early on, so she decides to make a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies for the crowd. Only she doesn’t have enough eggs of chocolate chips, so she goes to the nearest convenience store to pick up more. On her way home her SUV is T-boned by a semi, and the next thing she knows she’s a prisoner of vampires somewhere in Italy. Being Mercy, she escapes in coyote form and stows away in the luggage compartment of a bus that ends up in Prague. Adam, meanwhile, knows some-thing bad has happened to her because he’s lost their mating link; he figures out that she’s in Italy being held by the powerful Lord of the Night near Milan, and organizes a rescue ex-pedition. Meanwhile Mercy gets involved with the Golem of Prague, along with local vam-pires and werewolves, although she manages to get word to the pack that she’s in Prague. Just another ordinary couple of weeks for Mercy…
Ever since I discovered it this has been one of my favorite UF series. This is already the 10th installment of Mercy Thompson, but it’s one of those series that just keeps getting better and better.
In a way Silence Fallen marks a departure from previous installments in several ways. First of all the action is transported from its usual setting of the Pacific Northwest to Europe and takes place almost exclusively in the Northerly region of Italy (from the descriptions either Tuscany or Lombardy) on the one hand and also in Prague, both places imbued with a rich and long history, which also partly feeds into the plot.
Also, practically from the start until the very end Mercy and Adam are separated, and the story is told with a changing POV, following both her and him, but not always in a chronological manner.

On a surface level it appears a pretty simple and straight-forward story Mercy is abducted (and in the process almost killed) by a European crazy-ass Vampire (Iacopo Bonarata, also going by the more anglisized Joseph) who wants to get his hands on the most powerful person in the territory (which initially, considering Mercy’s relative fragility and physical weakness, might be viewed as a gross misrepresentation), in order to have bargaining power. Naturally Adam, with the help of friends and allies goes after her, but when he arrives in Italy, Mercy has already succeeded in escaping by herself, because her adversaries have underestimated her, as usual. Going forward Adam and Mercy’s abductor find themselves in a race of who can get to Mercy first, while having to do a political tap-dance (not exactly Adam’s forte), while Mercy gets involved in supernatural business in Prague while waiting to be retrieved by Adam and at the same time evading Joseph’s goons.

Although this story is disguised as “simple” Urban Fantasy novel, I felt that on a meta-level it incorporated philosophical ruminations on a variety of topics. I don’t want to go into a discussion of whether that is what the author intended (I don’t know), but it is the way this book spoke to me and in the following I will try to give some examples of where I found this to be the case.

Reflections on the nature of power when Iacopo first makes his inquiries into who is the most powerful person/creature in the Tri-Cities, Washington area he is told it’s Mercy. After he captures her quite easily and realizes that she has neither physical strength nor any sort of powerful magic he comes to to conclusion that he has been had by his informant, because for him power means physical strength and/or strong magic. He does not realize that Mercy’s strength is different it is in the people she cares about and who care about her and who therefore are willing to go to war for her, it’s in her resilience, in the fact that she always manages to survive, and in the quickness of her mind that lets her outwit and evade opponents stronger than her. So finally he has to learn the lesson that power does not necessarily equal brute strength or strong magic (although she has quite a bit of that, too).

Allegory of Good Government, Bad Government there is a famous fresco by Lorenzetti in the town hall of Siena, depicting good government as opposed to bad government. Siena was one of the cultural and political centers of the Renaissance in Italy, vying for preeminence with Florence, the other great Renaissance city. It’s during this time that Iacopo Bonarata (whose name reminds me of that of famous Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti) grew up and naturally he would have been familiar with Machiavelli’s famous treatise on how to best govern. So he spins his intrigues and plots within plots and plays off enemies and followers alike against each other. As his style of leadership is contrasted against that of Adam (they even have a discussion about it) it does not appear in a favorable light. The question of governance is not only examined by contrasting Joseph and Adam, but is taken up at other points in the novel, for instance when Kocourek, the (former) Master Vampire of Prague protects his human servants, by putting himself between them and potential harm.

Juxtaposition of a naturalistic, Judeo-Christian worldview and an animistic belief-system associated with traditional cultures around the world. This is played out in the subplot with the Golem of Prague only after acknowledging that the Golem, a being created out of inanimate matter (clay) is in fact animated by a spirit and thus “alive”, is Mercy able to defeat it.

Last but not least Briggs also employs a highly reflective device metafiction or autoreferentiality, which is the literary equivalent of what in theater is called “breaking the fourth wall”, when – during a play - actors address the audience directly, thus breaking the perceived boundary between the world of the play and the world outside.
Each chapter starts with a sentence or two that seem outside the flow of the narrative and in a way address the reader more directly. In the beginning I was kind of dubious about this device as I was afraid it would disrupt the narrative having the boundary between the world of the book and the outside world blurred. I needn’t have worried as it had rather the opposite effect; I felt even more intimately drawn into the story.
So 5 stars for a fast-paced and entertaining UF read that also displays reflective depth.
First, my only real criticism (and this is for the book specifically as well as the series generally) the book basically opens with Mercy getting kidnapped. Again. There are really only so many times a woman should be kidnapped in her life. (I read a book once where the MC was kidnapped at least four times in one book. That's bordering on ridiculous.) Mercy has spent a lot of time in this series getting kidnapped and assaulted. The saving grace is that she does get to spend some time rescuing her wolves from kidnapping as well.

Sidebar I would love to read a PNR or urban fantasy series where the main female character is never once kidnapped or sexually assaulted. (I'm totes okay with physical assault, because violence is part of the genre...sexual violence doesn't need to be.)

ANYWAY - the best part of this book? Mercy is a self-rescuing kidnap victim. (The other best part? Bran. I love me some Bran. He is terrifying and awesome, which is exactly as he should be.)

Oh wait! There's a third best part! Larry!

[Elizaveta] "The blue room should be adequate for the goblin king.

"We don't call ourselves that," said Larry dryly. "That was just that one movie. I mean, 'Larry the Goblin King' just doesn't have the right ring to it."

Ooooh - and Stefan and Marsilia! I do enjoy the vampires (Wulf gives me the wig, though.)

One of the interesting parts of this book was that the chapters were split up between Adam and Mercy chapters, and that made the timeline...a bit wibbly-wobbly (Ms. Briggs is a Whovian; there's a Matt Smith in the book who is definitely not the Doctor). I enjoyed it immensely and thought Ms. Briggs did an exceptional job with that. It was also fun that most of the action took place in Europe - particularly Prague.

The Verdict

It's hard to keep a series and characters interesting and fresh, and Patricia Briggs has managed to continue to do so. This was more than worth the time and money spent for the latest in the series and I'm definitely looking forward to Mercy's next adventure.
Great book and great series.