Silver Borne, by Patricia Briggs | Book Review #187

Silver Borne is the fifth (5th) book in the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. This review may contain spoilers.

“Mercy is smart enough to realize that when it comes to the magical fae, the less you know, the better. But you can’t always get what you want. When she attempts to return a powerful fae she previously borrowed in an act of desperation, she finds the bookstore locked up and closed down.

It seems the book contains secrets – and the fae will do just about anything to keep it out of the wrong hands. And if that doesn’t take enough of Mercy’s attention, her friend Samuel is struggling with his wolf side – leaving Mercy to cover for him lest his own father declare Samuel’s life forfeit.

All in all, Mercy has had better days. And if she isn’t careful, she may not have many more…”

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The first thing I thought of this book when I borrowed Silver Borne from the library was “Wow, this book is small.” The reasoning behind this is because I’m used to the Mercy Thompson books being a bit bigger than the 342 pages that Silver Borne is. Not letting the size of the book get to me, I dove into the story.

What I got from Silver Borne was just as much as  adventure and action as the last book (Bone Crossed), but this time I was surprised that it wasn’t the vampires that were in trouble, but the humans! — You see, when I first started reading the Mercy Thompson series, I caught on pretty quickly that there was a pattern within the books: either Mercy, or the humans were in trouble, then it’d be the werewolves, and the vampires or fae.

Throughout the series we’ve seen how much Mercy cares about humans and other species alike. However! There are some challenges and subplot development that has brought problems within the pack to light. These “problems” get solved quickly by the end of the Silver Borne.

In Silver Borne the main problem centres around both human and fae. As well as some problems within the werewolf pack. Which leaves me worried and on guard about the vampire situation. And I know, I know, that that sounds weird. Like why would I be worried about the next book? WELL, that’s because we the reader haven’t heard much at all of the vampires in the last few books and that worries me. I’m surprised that Mercy hasn’t caught on about this little situation either.

There are a ton of subjects that are touched on in Silver Borne –minus the vamp. situation– and I’m glad that not all of them were solved. This only leaves that these problems will be talked about in the next installation, River Marked.

All in all, while I was shocked at the smallness of Silver Borne, it was packed and punched with quite a bit of problems. To me there seems to be problems arising around every corner that Mercy turns. I have no idea what River Marked will be about, as I tend to not read the synopsis’ for Briggs’ books.

Silver Borne honestly feels more like a filler than anything else. And I know I said that there were a lot of problems that arose and some that were solved. That only means that there was a big step in Silver Borne. Howeverrrrr, my mind is a weird place, so I only ended up ‘just liking’ Silver Borne.

I ended up giving Silver Borne 3 of 5 stars on Goodreads.

Happy Reading!
Adele