Fire Touched by Patricia Briggs

Fire Touched
by Patricia Briggs
Pages: 352
Date: March 8 2016
Publisher: Ace
Series: Mercy Thompson (9th in series)

Review
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0
Read: March 11 to 13 2016
Except for short stories, and short story collections, oh and all but one graphic novel, I have read everything published by Briggs (as far as I know – so many authors turn out to have written, or write under other names that I can’t ever really know if I’ve read everything a specific author has published). This is around 23 books. Including this book here. I think.

I had this specific book here on my ‘to read’ shelf since I learned of its existence. However many years before publication that might have been. I bought the book the day of publication. But then . . . I kind of was vaguely reluctant to actually go ahead and read it. Simple-ish reason – I’ve, for the most part, loved the books I’ve read by Briggs, and didn’t want to find out that she’s another author who I would need to move into a ‘no longer read’ column. Not because I suspected anything like that might occur, just that a lot of the authors who I loved from the era I started reading Briggs, have slowly fallen out of my reading rotation. So, I was reluctant to start the book.

Well, I hadn’t anything to worry about. It was kind of interesting, in its way, to read the book – and see a certain higher level craftsmanship in evidence – after reading and liking books by others of either lesser writing skills, or imagination.

*shrugs* - why am I doing another rambling review as opposed to any of my more organized reviews? Because the book came out on the 6th of March and there are already 506 other reviews on GoodReads. And 3,172 ratings. Anything I say will just drop into the sea and sink beneath the waves of others.

So I do a somewhat minimal review: 1) interesting to return to Briggs; 2) writes a high quality story; 3) enjoyable read; 4) brings to mind the difference between Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy (maybe in my own mind) – they might both deal with the same subjects, have the same ‘out there’ creatures, etc., but one seems vaguely obsessed with sex & romance (PNR), while the other might mention it, but only in passing (UF), or, at least, isn't the main point of the book. I’ve had this thought before, but this is one of the few times I’ve actually jumped back and forth between a PNR book and a UF book. Well, I didn’t read them at the same time; I mean read them back to back. Hmms. Well, I’d been thinking of more ‘Fashionably Dead Down Under’ (no this book 1) is not set in Australia; 2) involve someone who’s ‘down there’ is ‘dead’; 3) involve anything ‘down under’. I’m not actually sure why it has the title it has – yes, the main character goes to Hell, but there’s a huge point made that Hell isn’t ‘under’, heaven isn’t ‘up there’, but all three are just on different planes of the same location) & ‘Fire Touched’, but there’s a bunch of books in between. Okay, I’ll pretend I meant ‘Fire Touched’ and ‘Hell on Heels’. That one is even more obsessed with sex than ‘Fashionably Dead Down Under’ so there’s that.

So, yeah, I read this book, it was high quality; there’s no inherent need to recommend or not recommend since it’s the ninth in a series. A series that has an interconnected ‘other’ series that currently has 4 books in it. All of which occurred before this book here. So that means that there are 12 books in the combined series that occurred before this book here. And the books are connected, one thing leading to another, characters growing, relationships expanding/contracting. You can’t start with this book here, basically is what I’m driving at. So I can’t recommend it for that reason. All I can say is that if you’ve read the other books in both series before this one, then yes, I recommend this book here.

March 14 2016