Review: Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs
Title: Hunting Ground
Author: Patricia Briggs
Series: The third in the Alpha and Omega series (first is the short story Alpha and Omega, second is the novel Cry Wolf -- the novella A&O is really important; it'd be very hard to read the second two without the first) which itself takes place in Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson universe (in this order: Moon Called, Blood Bound, Iron Kissed, Bone Crossed)
Published: August 2009
Genre: Paranormal romance, urban fantasy
Pages: 286
Cover: Not really liking it.
Rating: 3.5/5
Planning to read more from this author?: Yes, though I wasn't as happy with this novel as I've been with her other recent books, I'm still looking forward to her next works.
Review: stream of conscious, no spoilers
First of all, I'm a Patricia Briggs fan. I've read all her Mercy Thompson novels (really enjoying her later novels) and I have been looking forward to this book since I finished Cry Wolf (which is my favorite book of hers). I was expecting something spectacular -- after all, her writing has just gotten better with time. I'd read positive, mixed, and negative reviews, which should have put me on my guard, but I'd assumed that those people weren't true Briggs fans and ignored them.
So this all amounted to me expecting something fantastic and getting merely . . . an okay book. Which really disappointed me. There's nothing specific I can point my finger to and say, I didn't like this/that; it just didn't have the appeal of her previous books. The characterization and romance that I loved so much in Cry Wolf isn't here. There's no stand-out characters; Anna fades into the background with the rest of the genre's heroines.
The plot does try to bring in more of the universe (bringing in the European werewolves, vampires [which we've seen with Mercy Thompson but not Alpha and Omega], and hints of South American/Asian/African tribes) and politics, but really sacrifices the characters.
Overall, this did not live up to my expectations. Hopefully, her future books (Silver Borne, of the Mercy Thompson series, is coming out February 2010 and the next [untitled] Alpha and Omega comes out August 2010) return to her previous quality.
On an unrelated sidenote, I love when authors give dates & titles for the sequels to their books early on. I hate finishing a book and only hearing hints of a planned sequel and no mention for dates (I'm looking at you, Ms. Cabot and Ms. Collins).