Blood Bound (Mercedes Thompson #2) by Patricia Briggs

 
Rating: 5 Stars

Goodreads blurb
Mechanic Mercy Thompson has friends in low places-and in dark ones. And now she owes one of them a favor. Since she can shape-shift at will, she agrees to act as some extra muscle when her vampire friend Stefan goes to deliver a message to another of his kind. 

But this new vampire is hardly ordinary-and neither is the demon inside of him.

The Cover
Would you look at all them tattoos!I was never one for them,uh-uh.But Mercy pulled it off nicely and she has this don't-mess-wid-me-look!But still ... I think the tattoos were a bit too much.


My review
You will find that a majority of this review may consist of my opinion of the supposed love-triangle. Blood Bound was more fast paced than Moon Called.It had me day-dreaming more than I care to admit.I don't like love-triangles and the one in this series has me almost screaming to Mercy,"Pick one of 'em already,woman!" Honestly,I'm not sure to say who I prefer Mercy to choose, Adam or Samuel,not that my choice matters because Mercy doesn't take my advice.

Adam and Mercy had a rather bumpy-smooth relationship, pissing each other off every other day but things visibly change in the previous book.It turns out that Adam had a thing for Mercy for a while now and his feelings came out into the open by the end of Moon Called.Mercy has this attraction towards Adam too but she's afraid of her reactions towards him and tries to avoid him.He had admitted that it was his alpha power thingy was what was responsible for Mercy feeling that she wanted to submit to him and told her he tries to withdraw that part of him when he's with her away from the pack, well most of the times.

As for Samuel who had nearly ran away with Mercy some 15 years ago, only wants her so that she could give him living children.He broke her heart but he apologized to her for using her like that but he also makes it clear that he's still interested.I dislike him for his motives, but wanting children that would live after he's seen the ones he had died doesn't make him evil and loathsome, he should have been more open and honest with Mercy in the first place ... but she was around 16 then and probably more unstable back then than now.
 She had mentioned that he was the only wolf there,excluding Bran I think, who had stuck up for her because the others had hated her for being a walker.Maybe that was due to her being his almost-mate but he still stood up for her nevertheless.But in the present, I have a part of me that thinks  he's actually developed feelings for her.

Long story short, I sort of like them both but what made me pause is Stefan's rather peculiar behaviour,I mean he's supposed to be a really good undead friend of hers but I, and I'm sure others as well, had noticed that Stefan has been making some moves towards Mercy, or that could just be him being all charming,ya. So if he likes her more that a chummy Scooby-Doo loving vampire would, it wouldn't be a love-triangle anymore ... I still don't like this, not one bit.But I still really like Stefan because he seems to be the only decent vampire in the series.

The culprit wasn't totally obvious but I had a tiny-weeny suspicion who it was.I think 'Littleton' is kind of a funny-ish name for a vampire,don't you think?  Briggs sure didn't spare us the gory details. Just when you thought werewolf pack structure and terms and conditions are complicated, vampire politics just gives me a migraine!

We see again that Mercy is willing to risk her life so that others wouldn't have to suffer. Butt-kicking, headstrong,selfless,stubborn coyote/mechanic and a disobey-er of direct 'orders', that's Mercy Thompson for you,don't we just lover her?

Link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/285205.Blood_Bound

Magic Burns (Kate Daniels #2 ) by Illona Andrews

Rating: 5 Stars
Read on July 21, 2011

Goodreads Blurb
As a mercenary who cleans up after magic gone wrong, Kate Daniels knows how waves of paranormal energy ebb and flow across Atlanta like a tide. But once every seven years, a flare comes, a time when magic runs rampant. When Kate sets out to retrieve a set of stolen maps for the Pack, Atlanta's paramilitary clan of shape shifters, she quickly realizes much more is at stake. The stolen maps are only the opening gambit in an epic tug of war between two gods hoping for rebirth, and if Kate can't stop the cataclysmic showdown, the city may not survive.

The Cover
Kate looks ready to kick butt (words you'll see very often during this review) and Curran ... well he looks just plain weird, not awful, but just weird but I've seen better lions.


My Review 

  Illona Andrews gets better and better with every new book in the Kate Daniels Series!

I don't want to give anything away so I'll just skim over a bit.

In this second installation the flare, a huge wave of magic that will hang around for a while, and all things magic are will be juiced up while it lasts.It's an opportunity for all things evil to wreck havoc, and believe me, evil never misses an opportunity especially one as good as this.

Not surprisingly Kate's in the middle of things when a wanna-be-God takes advantage of the flare.It's during an investigation Kate comes across a wisp of a girl,Julie, who had a mother who's gone MIA.One thing leads to another until they kick bad-guy butt and save the day but one without the inevitable event of water-works (tears). Of course there's gonna be lots of Curran to go around and and all sorts of were-things!

Fast paced.Magic packed, a lot of butt kicking,witty comments and much bloodshed(the way Kate goes about doing business),it's a highly enjoyable, end-of-your-seat read!

Link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8166133-magic-burns 

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

My Rating: 4 Stars

*Minor Spoilers*

Goodreads blurb
Werewolves can be dangerous if you get in their way, but they'll leave you alone if you are careful. They are very good at hiding their natures from the human population, but I'm not human. I know them when I meet them, and they know me, too.

Mercy Thompson's sexy next-door neighbor is a werewolf.

She's tinkering with a VW bus at her mechanic shop that happens to belong to a vampire.

But then, Mercy Thompson is not exactly normal herself ... and her connection to the world of things that go bump in the night is about to get her into a whole lot of trouble.

My Review 
I've been itching to read this for a while now and I must say it was an enjoyable read.But it felt like something was missing, don't ask me what if I knew I'd tell you.

I'll be totally honest though, I love Mercy!I mean she could be a badass but she knows where to draw the line.She may be physically inferior(which might be too strong a word) but she makes up for it in mouthing off to authority and those above her ,but hey I can't blame her with all of those overbearing werewolves around, she had to stand up for herself.

Mercy's an okay gal, she's tough, funny, caring and doesn't like to be out of the line of fire when she knows that she could be helping.She doesn't have tons of magic (or any of it so to speak)so that she could just wriggle her pinkie and WAM leveling the street with vampires, nope,that's what makes me like her even more, she relies on her instincts and quick thinking rather than power.

Another thing I like about Mercy is her faith in God, she didn't like the crucifix because it was an instrument of pain that had led to our saviour's death so instead she carries a lamb around her neck because Jesus' other name was "The Lamb of God". I admit that's also clever I mean which vampire would have thought that they'd be knocked out by a wee little lamb?

Stormbreaker (Alex Rider) by Anthony Horowitz

Rating: 5 Stars

Goodreads blurb
They said his uncle Ian died in a car accident. Alex Rider knows that’s a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle’s car confirm the truth. But nothing can prepare him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for Britain’s top-secret intelligence agency. Enlisted to find his uncle’s killers and complete Ian’s final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with no way out. The original novel that started the worldwide phenomenon is now a major motion picture!

My Review
The chances of me becoming a spy tomorrow is nil but Alex was the one with the luck,and up to now I haven't figured out whether he thinks it's bad luck or good.
Alex Rider woke up 3 o' clock one morning with the news of his Uncle Ian death in a car accident,he didn't have his belt on.This was strange because he knew what a safety freak Ian was.

Alex being the curious kid he is,he didn't sit on his behind mourning his loss,nope he didn't, instead he got up and sneaked into the scrapyard where Ian's car was to be laid to rest.Things didn't add up when he saw bullet holes that dotted the side of the car.
 He thought Ian worked for some big-shot bank but as it turns out good ol' Uncle Ian was a spy for MI-6 as it's head,Alan Blunt, filled him in.Now they want Alex to continue the mission Ian had started,the one he got murdered trying to complete.

Without him knowing it his uncle had been training Alex all along,with the hiking,martial arts,flying,and he speaks about a handful of different languages amongst other things, to become a spy himself, or so I deduced.We learn that Alex is smart and resourceful and him being a 14 year old that's saying something.

For a boy who had lost his parents to an accident at a very young age,in a plane crash (I don't believe that rubbish,I suspect that they were spies as well)  he didn't cry about why it had to be him,what did he do to be dragged out of his boring life to do something so risky,nuh-uh, he accepted he had to do, albeit skeptical at first and along with those little threats Mr.Sunshine and Flowers Blunt smoothly laid out, but he did what had to be done, and moved on to the next task ahead.