★★★★★ Wulfe's story

Soul Taken

Patricia Briggs

Wulfe is someone we've known from the very beginning of Mercy Thompson's story. He's a vampire, second in Marsilia's seethe. He's quite possibly the most dangerous vampire in the Columbia Basin, or even North America. He looks like a teenage boy because that's what he was when he was made a vampire, but in fact he's very old. We know that he made the European vampire lord Bonarata, who is hundreds of years old, although Bonarata later managed to shake him off and is no longer under Wulfe's control. In Storm Cursed Wulfe hinted that he is both a White Witch and a Wizard. What makes him especially scary is that he appears to be insane. I say "appears to be" because it's never been clear to me whether Wulfe is actually crazy, or merely strategically faking it.

I've long wondered if Wulfe is a bad guy or a good guy. Now that I've read Soul Taken the answer is clearer, and, Surprise! Surprise! that answer is, "It's complicated."

Mercy can see, talk to, and sometimes command the dead. Vampires exist in a semantically awkward dead but not-quite dead state. They walk around and fight, and they can be killed, or at least destroyed. In the final battle of Storm Cursed Mercy and her allies were beset by an army of hundreds of zombies controlled by the Hardesty witches. Mercy fought back by gathering the life-threads of all the dead on the battlefield and releasing them, thus neatly disposing of the zombies. But Wulfe was in the battle, fighting on Mercy and Adam's side. When Mercy set the zombies free, she inadvertently released something in Wulfe.

Wulfe is not dead (well, he IS dead -- he's a vampire! but not destroyed), but something was broken in him. When we last saw him in Smoke Bitten he was mooning around Adam's house, stalking Mercy. In Soul Taken we learn what Mercy did to Wulfe.

That was all background. As Soul Taken begins, Wulfe has disappeared and bodies are beginning to pile up around the Tri-Cities -- why? Mercy and Adam set out to find Wulfe. Where is he, and what is he doing?

One big clue: The cover image shows Mercy holding a sickle. At first I thought this might be a new form taken by Lugh's walking stick, an old friend who reappeared at the end of Smoke Bitten. Turns out it is not. However, the idea was not so far wrong -- Lugh's walking stick and this sickle are objects of the same general type.

Overall, my two-word summary of Soul Taken would be my header phrase above, "Wulfe's story". Here we learn much more about how Wulfe came to be what he is, and also about what he is. There's also an intricate plot involving that sickle about which I will say almost nothing, to avoid spoilers. Just a couple generalities. First, the cast is large. Most of the familiar players of Mercy's community show up. Second, as is typical in the Mercy Thompson series, there's a lot of magical creature politics involved. Third, It's a great story!

There was a weird pacing issue with the book. For about the first 60% it feels like a leisurely investigation of a mystery. Wulfe pretty much vanishes during this part of the novel -- not only from sight, but also from everyone's thoughts. Then between 60 and 70%, there are a whole bunch of big infodumps in which various parties just show up and tell us what's going on and how Wulfe is linked in, and the mysteries are almost fully revealed. This is followed by a story in which Wulfe fully participates.

Now, of course I don't pretend to understand Patricia Briggs' thought processes. But it felt to me as if Briggs started telling the story as a mystery novel, then at one point said to herself, "Whoa! This is taking 'way too long!" So she just told us what was going on and picked up the pace.

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