Kalyan_Writes

It's finished.

I didn't post it up earlier because it was a Birthday gift for my partner and I wanted him to see it first. ^_^

I'm very pleased with the result.

I have finished Moon Called, and I have to say it was a very decent read.

Aside from the couple of things that I pointed out about every female in Bran's pack hating her because she can get pregnant and they can't (really, I just...), I did enjoy the story.

As it happened with Cry Wolf, Patricia is a better adventure storyteller than a romance storyteller. Romance wise, the book doesn't have much of that, and it really doesn't need any. Basically, what drives the story is a kidnapping, very much like Taken, and that's awesome.

Adam is the alpha of the Columbia Basin pack. His daughter gets kidnapped by a bunch of werewolf and military type guys who seem to be experimenting on werewolves. Adam is left badly wounded, making Mercy (the main character, and a Walker, a coyote shapeshifter) drive him to her old pack to get him mended.

Long story short, the story becomes an investigation to find out why Adam was attacked, why Jesse was kidnapped, who are these people, why they're experimenting on werewolves, where they're hiding and how to rescue Jesse. To achieve this, Mercy will have to use all her contacts to find information from the fae and dangerous local vampires.

It's honestly a very fun action-adventure read.

Mercy herself is very proactive. She's fun, brave and cunning, and she has no issue taking the lead. I was a little scared when Samuel appeared that she would become passive as he took the reins, kind of what Anna and Charles were. Nope. Mercy is such a strong character, it's Samuel who becomes overshadowed by her all the time, to the point I'm not even sure the story would change much if he got removed. Not that he needs removing, but he's really not that important to the bulk of the story.

There is a lot of talk about "DOMINANT WOLVES", which basically meant that all the wolf males where clashing antlers like rutting deer, while she remained the most logical and focused one. To be fair, it made me roll my eyes a bit because every time characters like Adam and Samuel were in the same room, they were tense because they're both so dominant. Yeah, that got old after the third time it happened.

All in all, I very much enjoyed the investigation and the race to find Jesse's captors and free her. Also, how the mystery gets unravelled and we get to see who is behind all that and why. There is some attempt at romance by the end of the book where Mercy goes on a date with Adam that I found it came out of nowhere, because there honestly is no romantic tension between those two characters. If anything, Adam felt to me like an old, war veteran, 20 or 30 years older than Mercy, and Mercy like a barely thirty years old car mechanic living in a small, modest prefabricated house somewhere.

I think Patricia Briggs is a good adventure writer. Romance... not so much. I just don't get the feeling between the characters.

She does create a diverse cast of interesting secondary characters that make the world feel fleshed out, like the homosexual werewolf dating a human who knows nothing about what he is, which is causing tension between them, or David Christiansen, the war veteran who got the curse alongside Adam when their whole company was wiped out by a werewolf in Vietnam (I think it was Vietnam). David is a lone wolf who rejects what he's become and wants nothing to do with a pack.

Mercy herself has a complex story (far more than Anna from Cry Wolf, who is way more flat and boring), and she's a very interesting character.

I recommend this book.

I made a bit more progress on this painting. It's still basically values, with no detail yet, but it's starting to show what it's supposed to look like once finished. ^_^

Early WIP and one of the reasons I'm not writing at the moment. I'm working on multiple of these right now.

Oil on canvas, meant as a gift. So far I have set down the values of the dark coat, and will continue today with the rust from the legs and muzzle and the colors from the bottom side of the painting.

Another update about Moon Called. I want to scream. (Spoilers ahead)

First; I hate Samuel. On many, many ways. If that's the love interest, I couldn't care less about him, and I'm so totally not invested in a romance, if there is one. I'd rather the story just continued with trying to figure out what's going on, because so far, Patricia's mysteries have been far more compelling and interesting than her romance subplots.

So, long story short, and sorry, I have to do spoilers.

So, basically, someone has attacked the alpha from Mercy's local town, they've killed a freshly shifted pup some agency had been using to test drugs on him (and he ran away), and they've kidnapped the alpha's daughter. Mercy, suspecting the pack could be involved, terrified, and pretty much not knowing what to do, takes the alpha and drives all the way to Montana to get help from her old pack, the one she was told to leave (we'll get there).

Once there, the first thing Samuel does is yell at her.

And Mercy lowers her head and is all "it's all my fault" (OMG!!!).

The coyote who unalived a rampaging werewolf to save a boy is now all meek and submissive because the love interest is there, and in her haste to flee with a dying werewolf in her car after seeing the boy she tried to protect dead on her door (very mafia style warning), didn't think about setting the bone of the wolf's broken leg straight.

He then goes to apologize and tells her something like "I just don't like hurting people", because he had to break the werewolf's leg to set it up straight. Hurting Mercy is a completely different issue, I guess. She's not people.

Now, for the part that really made me want to scream and throw the book across the room (and I'm honestly done with this author after this).

The reason why the females hate her.... because she can get pregnant. YES. THAT'S IT!

SHE CAN GET PREGNANT.

Apparently, in this lore that seems to be ripped out of Bitten and Twilight, female werewolves are very rare because women rarely survive the bite.

...........

Look, I'm going to be crudely honest, I am no feminist and I don't care if female characters are weaker than male characters, but female bodies are literally configured to resist a pregnancy. We undergo all manner of changes as we grow up. What is the logical reason why women die because they're so weak their bodies, biologically configured around allowing very extreme changes, is not able to handle the infection?

I'm not saying they should be more apt, but why not just make them equal? What is even the point of making women less capable of enduring the transformation?

Apparently, they can get pregnant, but will miscarry after the first full moon because of the violence of the shift. I don't like it, but okay, I can buy that.

What I'm not buying is every single female in the pack hating Mercy over such a petty thing. What is wrong with you, Patricia?

Oh, and to finish this rant, when Mercy was sixteen, the alpha caught her and Samuel kissing in the forest. Samuel is like 40. He looks younger because Sue Werewolves are immortal, but he's like an adult man. She was going to run away with him, which is the kind of dumb thing sixteen year old kids do. Samuel was interested in her because of her breeding potential, and I'm really done with this author.

I've read some more from Moon Called, and I'm still enjoying the book.

Be ware, there will be some spoilers ahead.

There is a character that dies, and I have to admit I did not expect that. It was well executed, in that, it caught me by surprised and I had already made up my mind that this would be a relevant character in the story. It bothered me a bit more than it should have, because of the whole situation surrounding the character. It deserved better.

There is a small paragraph that was deeply touching, where Mercy breaks down crying and thinks about the character's family "waiting besides the phone waiting for a call". That sentence alone was enough to summarize the emotional depth of this loss.

The thing I don't like so far are a few comments here and there that make Mercy a bit "sueish". To be more specific, Mercy is a coyote walker, a shifter, but not a werewolf. She was raised by a werewolf pack. There is a point in the story where Mercy says that "all pack females hated her". I'm not going to judge too fast, but I did roll my eyes a bit at that because it's very "Mary Sue".

I don't mind the werewolves hating her, as wolves have a strong "unalive on sight" aversion to coyotes, so that makes a lot of sense. But only the females? Erm... that's sus.

Anyways, I'll see what becomes of that. So far, I like Mercy. She's proactive and is constantly doing stuff. She has faced werewolves she couldn't take down, and she's done it to save others. She's shot down two others to save a friend, and has taken such wounded friend in her car to drive him to where he could be helped. Once there, she went looking for the werewolf who took her in, knowing there were risks involved. She has her own auto repair shop.

She's a good character so far. I hope that, now that she's reunited with the guy she has a crush on, she doesn't stop being proactive in exchange of him taking the lead. I've seen that way too many times.

I'm currently reading Moon Called from Patricia Briggs, since I had already bought that book along with Cry Wolf, and I've gotta say I'm enjoying it so far. I don't know if there is a romance there, but I honestly don't care, because the whole action-mystery surrounding the arrival of Mac to her shop, the weird guys who have been experimenting on him (this is as far as I've gotten), has really hooked me.

This book, while not flawless, is well written. There are several moments of infodump that I honestly didn't need, but it's otherwise fine.

As usual, I frown at the fact most of these writers seem to be allergic to basic research, and I honestly don't get it.

"Hey, I'm going to write about this cool, mythical creature that's totally based on a real life animal I don't give three damns about"

I don't get it. It's as if I wanted to write about a country where the depth of my knowledge is nothing but a collection of clichés, like the Spanish sleeping siesta (we do, but it's not as common as people think. I sleep siesta only a handful of times a year), the French saying "o'lalá" all the time, or the Italian eating only pizza and pasta.

The wolves are described as aggressive and short tempered, when in reality they're one of the most socially competent animals in the world. Patricia also states that females take the Alpha role from their mate because males are higher ranking than females and so on, which is utter BS.

I honestly wouldn't mind if this behavior was due to the HUMAN part. Primates are the ones who, in many cases, the females are lower ranking than the males, with the males valuing prowess (chimpanzees), or males being literally protectors and caretakers (gorillas). Then there are the bonobos who live in a hippy community. Anyways, even in those cases, females have their own hierarchy, and sometimes, some females rank higher than some males.

HOWEVER, this whole "males outranking females" and "males clash antlers like rutting deer" is because of the wolf side, not the human side.

No, I do not care that these are mythological creatures. Wolves exist. Yes, writers can do whatever they want, and I also am within my right to cringe when someone kicks Mech's and Boitani's research down a steep slope.

I still do not understand wanting to write about wolves while giving so little effs about them.

Hello uh sir, really sorry for causing inconvenience, I didn't see the rules there, I just joined today so uh anyway I deleted my post and I will be careful from now on. Thankyou so much for telling me.

Are they using ChatGPT to answer? WTF?

Writers; posting your book's link everywhere makes you seem desperate, and readers aren't eager to read stories from desperate, frustrated writers.

People are more likely to check a story out with a well placed aesthetic or a well placed comment, than if you post your cover and blurb in EVERY-GROUP on the site.

You're throwing rocks at your own roof.