Patricia Briggs – Iron Kissed

The third book in the Mercedes Thompson series, published January 2, 2008.
Genre: urban fantasy
Cover: I love it.



I could smell her fear, and it satisfied something deep inside me that had been writhing under her cool, superior gaze. I curled my upper lip so she could get a good look at my sharp teeth. I might only weigh thirty or so pounds in my coyote shape, but I was a predator…

Mechanic Mercy Thompson can shift her shape – but not her loyalty. When her former boss and mentor is arrested for murder and left to rot behind bars by his own kind, it’s up to Mercy to clear his name, whether he wants her to or not.
Mercy’s loyalty is under pressure from other directions, too. Werewolves are not known for their patience, and if Mercy can’t decide between the two she cares for, Sam and Adam may make the choice for her …


Mercy Thompson is just enjoying a quiet movie night with her two best friends, Warren and Kyle, when Zee calls and asks for her help. Someone has been murdering Fae at the reservate, and he needs her good nose to see what she can sniff out. As she still owes Zee a favor for using the Fae artifacts for killing to evil vampires instead of just the one she was allowed, Mercy agrees to come right away. She has never been to the Fae reservate before, and is surprised there is a guard at the gate. And an obnoxious one at that, who treats them as very inferior.

Zee takes Mercy to the houses of the murdered Fae, in the hope she can sniff out a common visitor or something they missed. But Mercy is a walker, with even to her unknown skills. She has some kind of partial immunity to most magic, and concentrating on her sense of smell, she manages to break through the glamour that has been hiding the true Fae world from human eyes. Scent is the one thing that glamour cannot correctly duplicate. And so she sees more than she is supposed to, and even stumbles into one of the Gray Lords. And drawing the attention of the Gray Lords, is not a good thing.
Lucky for Mercy, Zee and Uncle Mike find her, and take her back to the mundane world. After four houses, she has smelled the one person that has been to all of them, the one person who should not have been inside at all. The guard at the gate. Zee sends Mercy home in his van, while he and Uncle Mike go and “talk” to the man.
But the next morning Mercy finds out that Zee and Uncle Mike were too late to talk to him, he was already brutally murdered. And Mercy is to stay out of it; she is not to put herself in more danger. Of course Mercy hates following orders, so she arranges for a great lawyer for Zee, she refuses to have him sacrificed for something he did not do, while Uncle Mike hid behind his glamour and was overseen by the police. Of course, they had all the intention of killing the man themselves, but they did not. So who is the real killer? No human would be strong enough to literally rip a man’s head from his shoulders.

Finding the real killer is not the only problem Mercy has to solve. She needs to make a choice between Samuel and Adam, before they get into a fight together. They are both very dominant alpha wolves, and they both want her as their mate. But Mercy doesn’t want Samuel as her mate, she is not that naïve 16 year young girl anymore, and he would completely smother her if she accepted him. She has come to love who she is, and her own independence. But Adam frightens her, his power makes her want to give up control to him, and she doesn’t want to loose herself to him either. Although he would not keep her locked in the house, he doesn’t hesitate to ask for her help when it is needed, Adam also does not think she is strong enough to fight others.


Okay, I won’t spoil the rest of the story. The mystery part was very well written, and absolutely heartbreaking. The dead guard did not just kill Fae, he stole Fae relics, and now his crony is abusing them. Making Mercy do as he wishes …
I cried buckets over the ending, but I am happy to say, it does end well. I love all the many characters in this series, they are lifelike, and some are nice and some are not. One of my favourite’s is Adam’s daughter, it is not easy growing up with a father who is a werewolf, and a mother who forgets you when it is more convenient. She is fun and smart and resilient.

I enjoyed learning more about the Fae, who really are not nice and friendly at all. Well, except for Zee. I am looking forward to re-reading Bone Crossed soon.

10 stars.

© 2013 Reviews by Aurian