So I dug into the Ginny Box (which is officially its own tag now) and pulled this beauty out. And actually, it’s pretty decent, which I know is a welcome change of pace around here.
Moon Called follows Mercedes “Mercy” Thompson, who despite growing up with werewolves and having one for a neighbor, is in fact not a werewolf. She’s something a little bit different (spoiler: she’s a play on the Native American walker myths, more on this later). But that doesn’t stop her from getting snout-deep in werewolf politics. When a runaway new wolf shows up on her shop’s doorstep, it drags her back to a world she thought she left behind and into a future where werewolves are no longer a secret…like a lot of fairy kind.
I’ll start with the elephant in the room. What the heck is a walker? Well, in Native American myth, it’s someone who has the ability to walk in another skin (usually a coyote or mountain lion). Now, this is the first real issue I have with the book. I don’t think that Natives have first dibs on their own stories, to a certain extent. There are some universal concepts that I think all writers should be allowed to play with. The walkers, for example, are similar enough to werewolves that I honestly feel like that as long as they are treated the same and don’t have ethnic ties, we’re cool. So instead of being “walkers,” with the Native ties, they are all shapeshifters, just some are wolves and some are coyotes and others mountain lions. The other alternative is if the writer his/herself is Native, in which case I back off, since I’m obviously not in a place to argue about Native culture and it’s all on them at that point if they link it to their culture or not.
Not the case here. Not only is Brigg’s a non-Native as far as I can tell (feel free to correct me, folks), but her character is supposedly half Native but ignored by her father’s family and people. That irks me. That beyond irks me. Maybe it’s because I’ve taken enough Native American studies/literature courses to know the boundaries, maybe it’s because I’ve grown up more culturally aware because of where I’m from. I don’t know. I just know that the Native aspects of this story really weren’t given the respect they deserved. If you are GOING to go there, you need to be respectful of the culture and at least attempt to give them some sugar with the bitter…instead of just bitter. At least with the first book. Maybe the rest of the series gets better?
Okay, enough with the pessimism. The good news is that Mercy is awesome. We have several powerful male characters in this book, and not only does Mercy stand up to them, she thumbs her nose at them a couple of times, which I always appreciate seeing. She’s also in an unconventional career, and even before her degree change to history, she was in engineering, which is another (sadly) unconventional choice. In the process, she never lost her femininity or her own integrity as a character, which I value. The only thing that I wish was that there were more like her. Like, we sort of get hints about the vampire lady and one or two of the females being on the same level of Mercy. But most of the attention that isn’t on Mercy is on the boys, so we don’t get to see it.
As far as the plot is concerned, it gets a little tangled up in the middle, which is normally for the first book in a series where the writer is trying to blind side you. There were just too many false trails being placed to figure out what was going on with Mac, made further complicated by the attack on Adam and Mercy going back to the pack that raised her. Add the vampires and it became an absolute monster to keep track of, especially since most of the names are on the forgetful side. Don’t get me wrong, this is much preferable to Lucas making syllables up. But it did make keeping everyone straight in their allegiances…entertaining, to put it mildly. It was full of action, though, and the main character is constantly sticking her nose into things, so you aren’t being told what happened. You’re seeing Mercy figure it out herself or being an active part of it.
This is not the first world where the fae/vampires/werewolves/whathaveyou have come out of the supernatural closet, even for someone like me who doesn’t read much urban fantasy. I do think the approach was interesting, with the set up of fae reservations and the way some fae were forced out while others made the decision for themselves. Again, I feel like this could have been awesome to relate back to Mercy being half-Native and could have been a really cool tie in, but…nothing was done with it. I’m not even sure of its place in this world, other than Briggs thinking it was a logical/cool idea. But the dynamics of the werewolf pack (as misogynistic as it is) were well-thought out, I thought, though obviously females being set as submissive annoyed me.
Overall… Eh. It didn’t completely blow my mind, but I didn’t want to throw it against the wall. It was fairly well written, if a bit troubled in places because of plot, with more zigs and zags than it needed but plenty of action. I liked the main characters fairly well, I just wish we had another strong female on Mercy’s side, rather than lurking in the shadows as existing, just not relevant. And the concept had good legs, it just…wasn’t strong enough to stand on its own. Maybe the second book will be better? We’ll see if it’s in the Ginny Box!
Rebecca M Horner 