One of the first things he’d noticed about Mercy was that she understood people. She really knew how to get under their skin. Under his skin.

It’s time for my every year or two re-read of the Mercy Thompson books, especially with a new one out! That’s getting longer and longer each year, and I’m here for it. I think these two series (including Alpha & Omega) are now my favorite Urban Fantasy series, beating out even the Dresden Files (although it is close).

Now, specifically for this book…

Man, we’ve come some ways. The last few books have gone thoroughly into ‘woo woo’ territory (as Mercy increasingly calls it), with Mercy learning and gaining all sorts of new and interesting powers over the dead (Storm Cursed), learning more than she’d likely ever wanted about Wulfe (Smoke Bitten), and even more powers and Fae artifacts (Soul Taken).

With Mercy, everything that can be worse is. Always.

Things have gotten so big, so it’s nice to have what actually turns out to be a relatively self contained book in Winter Lost. For the most part, we have almost a closed house murder mystery. Just Mercy, Adam, and a handful of other wild and strange folk stuck at a lodge in a winter storm.

She was staring at him.

“I could not live with losing you,” he told her, his throat tight. “There are times when I have had to let you go out into danger without me. More times when I haven’t known about threats to your life until they were long past. But this time… this time I have the privilege of being backup while you head out to see if we can rescue your brother.”

I love the focus this brings the book. And it really does give the two a chance, I hope, to love and trust each other. Adam has got some severe baggage from those witches a few books back (plus all his other baggage I suppose) and Mercy has some serious wounds to deal with. This gives them that time. With a wild story that at once feels huge and world ending–and at the same time snug.

I love it.

We do also get a few fun peeks into what else is going on on the Mercyverse, primarily through flashbacks and asides told from a bunch of other points of view, which makes this structurally more interesting than any of the other books thus far.

I’m really looking forward to what comes next! (Although I’m personally hoping for an Alpha & Omega book next! What the cliffhanger).

Onward!