Review:
Dear Patricia Briggs,
Leslie Fisher is awesome. Can she get her own series?
Sincerely,
Marigold
After the last Mercy Thompson book I read, I was looking forward to going back to Alpha & Omega, which I thought of as more my type of thing: it seemed to have more magic and mystery. This book delivered on that but… honestly, I would have preferred to see the whole thing through Leslie’s eyes.
Charles and Anna did some random boring couple stuff, which I found boring, of course. It also seemed really misplaced at the start of the book: they had just finished this meeting with FBI about these horrible murders that were going on, and they both vowed that even if the FBI didn’t want their help, they were going to try to solve the murders anyway. AND THEN THEY GO SHOPPING.
WTF.
I get that Charles was having issues and Anna was trying to distract him, but hadn’t everyone agreed that getting Charles to play detective was going to help his state of mind. Why ignore the very thing that could quite possibly help Charles?
Seriously, the first thing I thought of after getting the lowdown on the mystery was: let’s go see the crime scene of where the last body was found. It had been found several days ago in a public area, so there was absolutely no restriction on why they couldn’t go there by themselves, FBI approval or not (just look it up on an online newspaper to find the site). I mean, if you really want to solve a crime, you GO TO THE CRIME SCENE.
It took the almost two-thirds of the book for them to get there, and then do you know what happens? THEY DISCOVER A CLUE. I’m not even going to put in a spoiler warning for that because it’s so stupidly obvious.
AND THEN THEY RANDOMLY HAVE SEX.
Now that I’m looking back at the story as a whole, well, there just seems to be a couple of holes. I won’t be pointing out any more because then I would need some spoiler warnings and I like to avoid (not completely obvious) spoilers in my reviews.
It’s still Patricia Briggs, so the book isn’t all bad. Actually the mystery is pretty good but it could have been better if the werewolves were a little more sensible about… everything. The ending was good but also bad because… more spoilers! Let’s just say it had to do with one all-powerful fae who for some reason couldn’t obliterate a minor fae when he could control the lives of 50+ humans at once.
Patricia Briggs… do none of your beta readers/ editor point out the flaws in your stories before they’re published anymore? Have you just become so legendary that no-one can tell you no? Sure, your books are still getting great reviews overall and like others I’m willing to forgive a few things that didn’t work but this is starting to get glaringly obvious. Despite it’s flaws, I still enjoyed Night Broken, but going from that book to Fair Game I’ve found myself far less forgiving. I suppose it could be that I just don’t like these stories anymore.
I have to give this a thumbs down despite, like Night Broken, the actual mystery being good (retrospectively, maybe I should have reviewed Night Broken harsher but, like I said, I was more willing to forgive the annoyances and shortcomings at the time). I can only recommend it weakly to those who are fans of the Alpha & Omega series already. I am disappointed enough not to be looking forward to any new Patricia Briggs.
Maybe I’ll read Dragon Blood now. It’s an older book (published 2002 according to goodreads) and I’m hoping that it’s a worthy sequel to Dragon Bones, a book that I loved. It would be nice to go back to coherent and creative Briggs storytelling.
Fair Game
Patricia Briggs
Alpha & Omega #3
Adult
Urban Paranormal Fantasy
293 pages
According to the Blurb on the Back:
It is said that opposites attract. And in the case of werewolves Anna Latham and Charles Cornick, they mate. The son – and enforcer – of the leader of the North American werewolves, Charles is a dominant Alpha. While Anna, an Omega, has the rare ability to calm others of her kind.
Now that the werewolves have revealed themselves to humans, they can’t afford any bad publicity. Infractions that could have been overlooked in the past must now be punished, and the strain of doing his father’s dirty work is taking a toll on Charles.
Nevertheless, Charles and Anna are sent to Boston when the FBI requests the pack’s help on a local serial-killer case. They quickly realise that the last two victims were werewolves, and identify others originally thought to be human as fae. Someone is targeting the preternatural. And now Anna and Charles have put themselves in the killer’s sights…
Versus Blurb 