chez_jae

Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I spent a good portion of my weekend engrossed in the book Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs. It's the 6th installment in her "Alpha & Omega" series. This one features werewolf Charles and his Omega mate, Anna.

When an entire village of people disappear on lands owned by the Marrok's pack, the FBI drops the issue on Charles and Anna, whom they have worked with before. Charles and Anna, along with Tag, one of Bran's damaged wolves, head to the California mountains to find out what has happened. When they arrive, they find the area steeped in magic and danger. Anna's affinity for music puts her in a particularly precarious position, as the entity dwelling there also has an affinity for music. She calls it the Singer. Throughout their investigation, the werewolves encounter enemies both old and new, but they also have allies, both old and new, whom they can rely on to assist them. Charles and Anna will need to pull on everything they have to destroy an entity that is on the verge of becoming a god.

I liked some aspects of this book and disliked others. It was interesting to learn more about Tag and about Bran's mate, Leah, whom I've never liked until now. However, for the most part what we knew about Leah was from Mercy's point of view (the coyote shifter from the author's "Mercy Thompson" series), and Mercy and Leah have never gotten along. It was also interesting to learn more about Sherwood (the damaged wolf in Adam's pack), even though he never had any screen time. Correction, he literally had one sentence of screen time.

What I didn't like was the lack of resolution for some plot points. While the overall story had resolution, there was that one sentence about Sherwood that just left the reader hanging. Also, what did Coyote do at the "assisted living" center? Has anything truly changed between Bran and Leah? And then there was the bombshell in the epilogue. Argh! Maddening.

Favorite lines:
♦ And they had added two and two and come up with twenty-two.
♦ There were things that grew more powerful when spoken of.
♦ The person who'd turned Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" into elevator music should have been shot.
♦ "You can feed your wallet, or you can feed your soul, but you seldom can do both at the same time."
♦ "It's not ideal, but it's the best of bad options."
♦ "At least it's not the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man."

Not my favorite of this series, but as I mentioned, it was virtually un-put-down-able, earning it five stars.