Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs
Making Cookies, Because She was Already Dead
She had died about a half hour before.
The only thing to do now was to bake some cookies for the pack.
In Patricia Briggs' Silence Fallen, a novel of the highly popular Mercy Thompson series, the book this time begins with Mercy's sarcasm front and center stage from the first sentence on the page.
The werewolves in Adam's pack loved to play their computer and role playing games, making them among the nerdiest of the were creatures to boot. Playing a pirate game that they loved, Mercy was taken out nearly instantly by her stepdaughter, the human daughter of Adam.
With nothing better to do after Jesse had slaughtered her character while doing a terrible wench accent to boot, Mercy was sent upstairs to prepare some snacks for the pack.
Used to the house being somewhat of a club house for the entire community, Mercy was not surprised when she found very little that she needed in stock for the recipe as everyone was welcome to help themselves to the fixings in the cabinets and fridge.
Dismissing herself to hit the corner store, Mercy never thought this would be the last time that she came home for a very long time.
Someone had eaten all the chocolate chips and used up the eggs, which was not surprising as half the pack lived out of the refrigerator at Adam's. Since their wedding, Mercy had become part of the pack and while she ranked highly as Adam's mate, she sometimes would rather sit in the background and supply the snacks rather than deal with the daily politics of the pack life. Somehow her associations always got her sucked back in though, even if she didn't like it.
The Night Employee
Taking the SUV as her beloved VW Rabbit was beyond repair even to a Volkswagen certified mechanic, Mercy has been deciding on a new classic to repair as her daily ride.
She didn't mind Adam's hulking SUV but it wasn't the same as her zippy little car.
Pulling into the corner store, she put her thoughts of cars aside and starting to move around the store. She noticed the new cashier taking stock of her as he filled the cigarette bins behind the counter.
It was probably standard practice she figured, watching for shoplifters.
Being friendly she addressed the cashier, who seemed shocked at who she was.
Mercy was used to the looks as Adam was as high profile for his business dealings as well as the wolves now being public. She introduced herself and asked the man if he was new to working at the store.
He mumbled something about just starting the week preceding, and Mercy gave him one of Adam's business cards, as since the police had begun to call on the pack more and more for help, the community did as well for everything from missing persons to pets that had gone missing.
Mercy left the store and began to head home.
It was the last thing she would remember.
Convinced there hadn't been another car, Mercy lifted her head. There was no on coming lights, no sound of a horn. Whatever she was smelling she thought was the eggs breaking loose from their carton but soon realized it was the smell of the airbag after it had impacted with her aching skull. What had hit her? They had to have come out of nowhere. Aching as she tried to move, a rush of blackness surrounded her and took her steadily under its wave.
Good Vampire, Bad Vampire
She hadn't recognized the vampires around her. They both had very European accents, old tones that the bravado didn't seem to fit modern times as if they were from and old Romanian movie.
She wasn't sure where she was but she could smell the magic all around and that was scary enough. Vampire magic was one thing, but somewhere there was a powerful witch at work.
She tried to call out to Adam through their mate bound but something was stopping the flow out of her. She realized whatever this place was it was sealed from the inside to keep magic from escaping.
Realizing the vampires were keeping her in an old walk in refrigerator was less than pleasant.
The two of them tried to play good cop, bad cop, or vampire I suppose, against her convinced that one would rip her apart and the other only wanted to protect her if she would give the information needed.
Only Mercy had no idea what they were going for.
Why had they taken her?
Finding out that one of the vampires was a former lover of one the master of her friend, Stefan, a local vampire that was more than fair to his harem of humans that kept him alive.
Mercy explained that she had no ties to this vampire.
The vampire still didn't believe her explaining that from his information she was one of the most powerful and dangerous people around. Mercy tried to convince him otherwise but she couldn't convince herself that wasn't true given the facts.
Married to an Alpha wolf, daughter of another Pack Leader, a skin walker who's powers had come from her linage to the Coyote. Friend of vampires and fae alike, maybe there was something to Mercy having a bit of powerful in the supernatural world. But she hardly felt that way. The type of person this vampire had their sights set on was nothing like her. Not really. She could take on anything in her coyote form and win but that didn't make her an enemy, did it?
Fight And Flight
Guarded by a hungry werewolf that had clearly been mistreated, one of the vampires had urged Mercy to run, just to see if she would have the gall. She accessed the situation.
There was a door left unlocked that would be easy to escape out of and the only thing standing in the way was their weary wolf that looked so starved if she had the energy to even fight, she may be able to take down the small coyote.
Still with nothing to loose, Mercy changed and took off running.
Chased through a field and then a small town with roads of cobblestone, Mercy realized in horror she was no longer in the United States for the first time and that this seemed like a small village in Eastern Europe.
Weaving in and out of plant life and finally escaping into a space too small for the wolf, Mercy had the lead. She darted out across a street where a car appeared out of nowhere on the too small road and took out the wolf.
This was her moment to escape.
Scampering into a village and then onto the storage compartment of a bus, Mercy changed back to steal some clothing, money, and an E-reader with internet leaving notes to the owners about her plans to mail back the items.
With nothing to her name, she manged to scrape up a small meal and get enough of a WIFI signal to send some cryptic emails home.
One of her pack instantly answered her and she could only convey a short amount of information about her plans to hide out in Europe until Adam could come find her.
Given advice to seek a wolf that had known her foster father, she was told to beg for their hospitality until the others could arrive to help.
A Race Against Time
Changing up the scenery for European landscapes, Silence Fallen is a race against time to save Mercy, dividing the chapters between the perspective of both Adam and Mercy.
While sometimes the overlap in story telling changes the timeline slightly due to perspective, following what happened around when is no trouble in this book.
The only downfall is that Adam's sections sometimes retell some of what has already happened and while we get more insight with the added cast of characters on Adam's team including their pack witch, other wolves, fae, and vampires, the story from only Mercy's telling is a little more enjoyable, but over all makes sense why they feature the coupling.
I think though I would have rather imagined what was going on in the meantime with Mercy only seeing the signs Adam was nearing from the mated bond or from email or other communication as it took away the feeling of isolation for Mercy knowing someone was close enough to save her in time.
Silence Fallen is another great novel in this series, but I felt like the split perspective took a little of the punch this book could have had away from it.
