Customer Rating: 
Summary: Iron Kissed
Comment: Once again Mercy gets tangled up in trouble. The action starts when she agrees to help Zee and Uncle Mike sniff out the murderer on the Fairyland reservation to end a debt she owes the fey for helping her end the vampire demon from the last book.
Mercy determines that the murderer must be a human man named O'Donnell who works as a security guard at the Fairyland Reservation. This is puzzling news to Zee and Uncle Mike since no human should be able to kill the fey like O'Donnell managed to. Uncle Mike and Zee go to talk to O'Donnell but when they get there their suspect is already dead and the human police have just arrived and take Zee into custody.
Since Zee is a personal friend and Mercy knows that while her old gremlin friend is capable of murder that he did not kill O'Donnell. Mercy hires the best lawyer she can find and starts digging for evidence herself.
As usual the plot is complicated and Mercy gets in way over her head. The werewolves and her fey friends help out a lot but there is no mention of the vampires in this particular book. Once again the tension between Adam and Sam is present but in this book it comes to a head and Mercy has to make a choice.
I particularly appreciated the last few pages of the book where the author takes some time to ponder feelings of guilt that sexual abuse victims may carry. I was almost ridiculously pleased with the revelation about Ben (the snarky, usually snarly werewolf that was abused as a child and stood up to protect Mercy). I knew there was a reason that I liked him/didn't hate him as we were obviously supposed to. That part was also particularly heart-wrenching and added a whole new human emotional depth to the story that doesn't usually find it's way into urban fantasy novels.
I think this was my favorite of the three so far and now consider myself to be well and truly hooked on Patricia Briggs.
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Summary: Daring and Heart Wrenching
Comment: In Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson Series, Book 3), Mercy is called in to help yet another set of magical creatures- the Fae. A murderer is on the loose on the Fae Reservation and the secretive Fae know they must find the murderer quickly or the non-magical press will be breathing down their necks. Hence their call to Mercy- she's got a good nose and a vested interest- her mentor and beloved friend Zee is fae.
When Zee is arrested for the murder- the ante is upped. Mercy must find the true killer or the Fae will let Zee to take the fall- because they've got some secrets of their own.
As things are falling apart for the fae, things are solidifying for Mercy. The Samuel-Mercy-Adam love triangle is settled and just in time too because when the killer figures out Mercy is on to him he'll stop at nothing to stop her and she'll need her true mate to pull her through what happens in the ultimate confrontation.
Although this entry into the Mercy Thompson series seemed shorter, it pack quite an emotional wallop. Just when you thought there was nothing our feisty heroine couldn't handle, Briggs throws a set of circumstances at Mercy that not too many authors would dare do to a beloved, MAIN, character.
I read some reviews that slammed Briggs for doing what she did to Mercy, calling it a cliché. Cliché's are cliché because they're true- over and over again. And the reality of what happened to Mercy made the novel work for me. No I didn't like what happened- but that the author dared to go there- well, it made the novel that much better. And when a pack mate lets her man know what's really going on? It wrecked me. LOVED it.
Daring and heart wrenching, the author "went there" and Iron Kissed is all the better for it.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable, but a bit of a cheat
Comment: IRON KISSED is everything a reader of the previous two novels has a right to expect. Although elements of the plot are completely predictable -- Mercy will get involved in a dangerous magic-related situation, she will do it against the advice of friends and enemies, she will require the assistance of her friends, and this will put some kind of strain on her relationships with her hunky, handsome, much-much-older, paranormal sort-of boyfriends -- many of the details and some of the plot twists are not predictable. The latter are enough to keep a fantasy reader who is not a romance reader happy, but the romance portion is enough to make even some romance readers (I would think) a little bit queasy--not simply because the romance is important, and not because it is pukey (which it isn't, although it may come close), but because of the undercurrent of violence against women and capitulation to that violence.
When I talk about violence, I am not referring primarily to the rape that some reviewers have made negative comments about. I am talking about the violence that, Mercy tells us, is implicit in male-female relations among the werewolves she was raised with and hangs out with now. Females are expected to defer to males and they can be subject to male violence at any time, particularly when they don't show due deference. Females are not allowed to live alone--and trying to live alone could be a death sentence. Females may be able to choose their own mates, but only within certain constraints, and they must choose someone. Mercy is not technically subject to these constraints, but she would have to leave her current life and her business and friends to escape them. In making a choice to be with a werewolf -- which she does, although I won't say who -- she capitulates to violence.
Returning to the topic of rape, given the sexual subjugation of female werewolves and the constant undercurrent of violence, it would not be surprising if one of the male werewolves commit a rape. To have Samuel or Adam rape Mercy, for example, would have been much powerful (albeit devastating and cruel), and it would have followed logically from what has gone before. I think, however, that Briggs is actually fond of the violent edge of the werewolves and ambivalent about their sexual politics, and she doesn't want to spoil their edge by having one of their leaders commit such an atrocity. Instead, the rapist is a secondary character we have little or no attachment to. While virtually everything else in the novel reveals something about the world Mercy inhabits, this rape seems more like an opportunity for Briggs to be didactic. She gets to teach us that rape is at least as much a psychological violation as a physical violation, and that a woman who knows her attacker and doesn't resist is nonetheless not guilty of inviting the rape. Those are important lessons, but given the pervasiveness of violence (actual and threatened) against women in Mercy's world, they are (narratively) almost beside the point.
Anyway, my "real" rating is 3.5. It's a (mostly) enjoyable book with some interesting plot twists, but not more than that. People mostly satisfied with the series should pick this one up, but those who got bored with book 2 can safely leave it alone.
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Summary: Werewolves, Fae, murders, oh my...
Comment: Gee, how many times do I use that title? Anyway, Mercy is in deep trouble. Because somebody has been killing Fae and the Fae are not happy. But do they want help? Do they want a spotlight on them and their doings? Heck no. How do you solve a crime when it may mean becoming a victim yourself? A very action packed yet mature story. And while it may seem the final book in the series it is not. Number Four is already on the way!
Only problem I had - no vampires. Bummer.
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Summary: Angieville: IRON KISSED
Comment: Wow. So this series just keeps getting more and more intense. And in such unexpected ways. I love it when an author has the ability (and the guts) to slip in a real shocker without compromising her characters or the story as a whole. In a series, that's particularly hard to do without making it seem like a gratuitous plot twist inserted merely to keep the series going. Patricia Briggs has a 7-book deal for her Mercy Thompson series and book three has shown that not only does she know exactly what she's doing, but that we can trust her. To keep her characters and her world consistent. To take them down the right paths and introduce them to the right people...or werewolves and vampires in this case.
Mercy lives in a world where werewolves, vampires, and the fae exist side by side with humans. The first book, Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, Book 1), focuses on the werewolves. The second, Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson, Book 2), centers on the vampires, including Mercy's quirky Scooby Doo loving friend Stefan. In this third installment, coyote shape shifter and VW mechanic Mercy Thompson is called in to help the fae solve a series of murders on the local fae reservation. Soon after, her friend Zee is arrested for the murder and, just like that, Mercy's in the thick of it, determined to clear Zee's name no matter what. Add to that the increasingly imperative choice she must make between the two werewolves in her life: Adam Hauptman (the Alpha of the local pack who's already claimed her as his mate) and Dr. Samuel Cornick (the wolf she fell in love with at 16). In what is becoming classic Briggs style, IRON KISSED combines an intriguing mystery with a streak of compelling romance, interspersed with glimpses of your worst nightmares. The combination is the height of entertainment. And what holds it all together is Mercy herself. The girl doesn't know the meaning of the words back down. I absolutely love these books.
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