Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs

Alpha & Omega, the parallel series to Briggs’ Mercy Thompson has advanced to a sixth book already and it’s still going strong. In Wild Sign, Charles Cornick, Mercy’s werewolf step-brother, and his wife Anna, the omega, are sent to investigate the disappearance of an entire village in the mountains between California and Oregon, in a land owned by Charles’s step-mother Leah.

Leah has been a staple character in both series, a constantly disagreeable figure with whom Charles and Mercy have a very conflicted relationship. Her mating with Bran has been a puzzle to the entire pack. Here we finally have her story and learn why Bran mated her, and why she’s been angry for two centuries. It involves a mysterious god-like power and Sherwood Post, the werewolf in Mercy’s pack who has lost his memory.

Playing with one’s memories is the godlike entity’s main weapon, and it accesses them through music, to which Anna as a musician is particularly susceptible. And it’s not magic that Charles can easily counter with his skills. The entity needs to lure women to it in order to impregnate them, so that it can gain power and become a god in reality. And Anna is there, no matter that as a werewolf she can’t get pregnant.

It’s not easy to battle a god, let alone defeat it. Great sacrifices are needed, and that’s where Leah has a role to play. She has to face her past in order to finally be free. For all that I’ve always disliked her, she became a real, relatable person with her suffering. Bran too has to face his past with her.

This felt like a shorter book than it probably was. It seemed like Anna and Charles were still investigating when the final battle was already on them. But the battle was complicated enough that the ending didn’t feel rushed. The emotional payoff was perfect too, especially in the epilogue. All in all, a good addition to the series that opens great new avenues for the series.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.