Moon Called

There is always a question I ask myself when I start any urban fantasy book: how much does the exposition about established lore affect the main story? In any urban fantasy novel, one must remember that the reader has probably experienced vampires, werewolves, and whatnot in other novels, and so the author of this novel needs to distinguish how their world is different from others in order to make their novel seem unique. Did Patricia Briggs do this? Yes, and that is part of the problem.

You see, it is because she has too much exposition in her novels, talking about how werewolves and vampires relate to each other, and other magical being politics. It takes away the focus from the characters and the plot. I can hardly remember anything about the minor characters, let alone the main character, Mercedes Thompson, because their personality and growth is buried underneath piles of werewolf politics that I just didn't care about.Also, this novel has a major problem of introducing the reader to a character that is already familiar to the world at large: a major amount of exposition dumps that are only for the reader's benefit. This makes the plot go slow and even seem to stop to a screeching halt, just when I didn't need it to.

I think there is a good book buried under there somewhere, but be darned if I can find it. I think I liked some of the aspects of the characters, and the dilemmas they face, but after a while, I stopped caring. For that reason I will have to say I am going to stop reading it at 66% of the way through. If I were to rate it, I give it a two out of five.