The Mercy Thompson series is still getting good reviews elsewhere on the reviewosphere, and every time I read about Briggs’s works, it reminds me that I’ve only read one book of hers. So I read a second — the sequel to the first — and I do still have plans to read stuff she’s written in related genres. Considering how much I enjoy these, it should be a treat.

Mercy Thompson is an auto mechanic, specializing in German cars. (Don’t make a joke about her first name, which is actually Mercedes.) In addition to that, she’s a walker — she can turn into a coyote, unrelated to the moon and its phases. She’s not a were-anything, but she was raised by werewolves and has strong ties to the community. Her next-door neighbor, for example, is the local Alpha. In any case, when her vampire friend Stefan, whom she owed a favor from book 1, shows up, she willingly helps him. He needs her as a witness, and also a sort of prop when he goes to confront another vampire. Well, things go spectacularly wrong, and now Mercy is hunting something that’s crazy and evil and causing other people to be crazy and evil in her hometown.

This volume is a lot darker than book 1. More people die, and die on screen, and in horrific ways. Although there is definitely violence in the first book, there’s more — and more revenge, more people eaten, and more vampires biting people. Mercy has to deal with a violation (not rape, but definitely assault) very early on, and her emotions felt real and heartbreaking. It was more . . . raw, in many ways. We saw the worst side of many people, and it was not always the bad guys.

Most of the same characters showed up in this book from the previous one; we see Zee the gremlin, a good deal of the same werewolves, a familiar vampire or two, and even humans we know. One nice thing about this book is that, while the alpha male werewolves are ALPHA, they’re not even the least bit like Anita Blake’s alphas — to wit, they are not whiny or self-loathing for no reason, and also, they obey their own rules without changing them. We learn a lot more about vampire culture in Blood Bound, as you might guess by the title, and how the seethe (it’s a seethe of vampires, rather than a kiss) works. The love triangle becomes more definite, and a rogue element is, perhaps, thrown in. The romance, however, is not the main aim of the book, but it adds another dimension.

Again, the majority of the elements in this book are things we’ve seen before. The werewolves have ‘come out of the closet’ (so to speak), and they are thought of as heroes. Mercy has a degree in history. So does Vicki Nelson, from Tanya Huff’s Blood series, made into “Blood Ties” on Lifetime. Again, though, these things feel fresh under Briggs’s mastery. I can’t decide, however, whether I have a problem with the pacing or not. What I expected to be the climax wasn’t . . . quite. There was another thirty pages after that, and another climax of sorts. While the second climax actually made the book immensely more satisfying, it felt a little bit strange. It doesn’t detract from my recommendation, though. I’ll give it 4.5/5 stars, and recommend it for anyone who enjoyed the first book, as well as fans of Kim Harrison, Richelle Mead, Kelley Armstrong, and Rachel Caine.