Hunting Ground / Patricia Briggs

Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

2020 Re-read

Urban fantasy is such a great pleasure! I love these tales of werewolves, vampires, fae, and witches, all located in contemporary cities. I'm particularly partial to stories of the fae and vampires. They make such great main characters or wonderful villains. This story gives us both of my favourites as the bad guys, making Charles and Anna work hard to keep this summit meeting on an even keel.

Anna gets to show her resilience more than once. Everyone thinks she is a weak creature, but now she has back-up in Charles. More importantly, he is also hers to protect and she'll do whatever is necessary to accomplish that goal. The advantage to being an Omega is that she has all of the dominance without the need for violence. No need, but not prevented from violence. She is coming into her strength.

Daniel Dos Santos has redeemed himself with this cover. Someone who didn't know better might mistake it for a Lassie story, but at least Anna is dressed like a real woman and that makes her far sexier than the image on the cover of the first volume. Well done.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

I think I like this splinter series of Patricia Briggs more than her original Mercy Thompson series. The first Alpha & Omega book annoyed me because it assumed that I knew things that I didn’t. I hadn’t read the short story that kicked things off. But with that in the past, I can appreciate this second book for exactly what it is.

I always love urban fantasy that includes the Fae. They are far superior to vampires & werewolves in my reading experience. I’m not sure what it is about the fairy tale aspects that grabs me—maybe it’s my Scandinavian background that makes me love a good troll. And this story contains just enough Fae elements to keep me happy.

Then there is Charles and Anna’s relationship. It’s a done deal and it’s working well. There’s none of the “will s/he or won’t s/he” questions that occupied so much time and energy in the first several books of the MT series. This seems to me to be much more interesting—how do two people work out their differences and make a relationship work?

A very satisfying urban fantasy and I will definitely be moving on to the third installment soon.

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