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Whistle Stopper - Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson, Book 2)
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List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $1.85
Your Save: $ 6.14 ( 77% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Ace
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780441014736
ISBN: 0441014739
Label: Ace
Manufacturer: Ace
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2007-01-30
Publisher: Ace
Studio: Ace
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: HUH?!?!
Comment: These books are very confusing to me. Patricia Briggs would not make a good teacher, she does not explain things well, at all. The story opens up in a good way, presents a new bad guy, and a reason to go mystery solving and hunting. Then, there are about 200 pages of filler that give you no clue as to who created the bad guy, or where the bad guy could be hiding. There may have been a small cryptic hint here or there. Then, out of no where, Mercy figures out where the bad guy is hiding. How she figured it out makes no real sense, and when she is explaining it to other characters in the book, I see that it is supposed to be illuminating and is supposed to help the reader understand, but it doesn't. There is no building up to the solution or the problems, it just comes to her, and the bad guy is dead. Then we are offered some strange explanation of how she figured it out. Wait, it doesn't end there, we still have to figure out who made the bad guy, and how do we do that? Well, we follow some ghost lady, I think?
The lack of suspense, and magical solution to problems turned me off of this series. The only reason I could think of to read on is that at the end there is a new small mystery that we are presented. Why is Adam in that picture? Is it enough to make me read the next book? No, because I'm sure we would go through 300 pages of nonsense and then Mercy would figure something out and fail to explain it to me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Series
Comment: I picked up the third volume of the Mercy Thompson series in the library and loved it. I picked up another of her books through Amazon and realized that I loved that book too. So I bought all three of the books in this series so I could own them and read the series from the beginning.
I expected the first two books to be less well written than the third one, but I was wrong. All of the books in this series, and the related Alpha and Omega series are very well crafted. And reading the series from the beginning made a lot of things that I had not quite understood in my first reading of the third book a lot clearer.
This is really a review of the series as a whole. She has built a universe focused on Werewolves, although the main character is not one, but something else somehow not quite related. Mercy is a very strong female character, dominant although she doesn't seem to realize it. In the underlying story arc she is trying to find her own place in a very dangerous world, and also choose between two very dangerous men.
Each of the books in the series has a complex plot, moving through its own story while simultaneously moving through the multi-book arc.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wow! What a Great paranormal series!
Comment: Yes, I did read Moon Called, the first in the series & loved it! Why write the review for the second book? Because it really rocked me. Moon Called successfully shows Briggs as an inventive, captivating storyteller w/ intriguing characters in an interesting world. In Blood Bound, she took it a few steps further for me & intertwined a genuinely creative monster that actually gave me the freaks. And I don't scare easy. It was the perfect amount of mayhem added to this already gripping read. I thoroughly enjoy this series & anxiously/impatiently await the next book...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great werewolves, but the vamps are too nice
Comment: I like the Mercy Thompson books, though I remember liking the first one better than this; Briggs does a wonderful job of world-building here, particularly with the society of the werewolves, and Mercy's a great character -- the underhanded sneaky one in a world of serious power-brokers. I also like that she's a mechanic who lives in a single-wide, and that she has apparently no ability, or any particularly overwhelming need, to deal with romance. But in this book, it focuses on the vampires, and in particular on a demon-possessed vampire, and the vampires don't work as well. It's like Briggs wanted to make them evil, but she couldn't help but write them sympathetically; almost as if she chose people she liked as the mental models for some of the vampires. So while the vamps are certainly intimidating and alien, particularly the bad guy, Littleton, they're also pretty okay folks. Stefan painted his van like the Scooby Doo Mystery Wagon. Wulfe, the Wizard, is freaky and all, but he turns out to be a good guy. As nasty as the Mistress can be -- and was, in the first book -- she takes Mercy's side in this one, and comes off as much more human and likable. The whole seethe (and I like "kiss" better) are not the blood-soaked villains they are portrayed as, which is odd since Briggs is the one who portrayed them as the consummate evil.
But I like the chair of truth, and the way Mercy takes advantage of the vampire's traditional weakness to gain the upper hand, and Littleton, at least, was extremely scary -- I love the part when he's hiding under the floorboards, and Mercy shoots him, and he pushes the bloody bullets back through the holes. That's a great image. And to be sure, part of the problem I had with this book was that I've been spoiled, a bit, in reading the Anita Blake books, which have absolutely the best (IMO) depiction of vampires that I've ever read, so these end up paling in comparison despite having their own strengths. It was still a good book, and I enjoyed it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Addition, Superb Writing!
Comment: Book Two, "Blood Bound", of the Mercy Thompson story is just as good as the first book, while expanding the world Mercy inhabits. In "Moon Called", Mercy is called upon to repay her debt to Stefan, her vampire friend who helped in the first book. When dealing with vampires and other supernatural creatures, repaying debts is important. Honor matters.
Mercy repays the debt, but ends up getting more than she bargained for, as usual. What is nice about this novel is that mercy really doesn't want to be a hero. She tries to stay out of the main fights/investigations, but unfortunately, due to her specific talents and the nature of the evil they are facing, she has to throw herself into the fray once more.
Without going into the plot, as much can be ruined that way, this novel is just as good as the first, mainly due to pacing and Mercy. She is by far my favorite heroine in a long time. When reading novels I'm usually thinking "What doesn't she just do ?" Well, Mercy almost always does what a person with some common sense would do, while also going the extra mile to a bit more. I like it when the main character is intelligent enough to have contingency plans.
The romance is still there, but very much a back burner to the mystery and suspense of the story. My only complaint is that I have only one more book in this series before I have to spend 4 months waiting for book four, "Bone Crossed", to come out. Sad, that.
If you like urban fantasy or tough women, you should be reading this series! Heck, if you just like characters written as if they were real people, instead of supernatural creatures alone, you will love this entire series.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Mechanic Mercy Thompson has friends in low places-and in dark ones. And now she owes one of them a favor. Since she can shapeshift 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.
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