REVIEW: Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs
A Reviews / Book Reviews / D Reviewshorror / Shifters / Urban fantasy / werewolves14 Comments
CW: sexual assault, incest, infanticide, forced pregnancy, child death, graphic violence, pet death
Dear Patricia Briggs,
I’ve been a big fan of your books for many years now. In fact, in the hell year that was 2020, I did a comfort re-read of all of the Mercy Thompson world books (including the graphic novels) in chronological order.
Anna and Charles are two of my favourite fictional people and I was excited to dive into Wild Sign. I did find it completely engrossing and compelling. I ripped through the book in about 48 hours and the only reason it took that long was that I was limited in the time I had to read.
The atmosphere of the novel is super creepy – it could reasonably be described as a horror story in fact. There are a number of Lovecraft references and, while I’m far from an expert in things Lovecraftian, I know enough to know that it was a big factor in the tone you were going for here.
Anna and Charles’s love for one another continues to grow. Anna went through some pretty tough situations and the way Charles was there for her tugged at all my heartstrings and made me happy sigh (even though the situations that caused it did not.)
I love the way Charles is so strong and gentle with Anna and so fiercely protective of her even while he fully recognises that he cannot wrap her in cotton wool. He stands at her side or at her back so she can do what she has to do.
But I was, and still am, deeply conflicted about certain things in the story.
I won’t go into the plot here too much – Anna and Charles are sent by Bran on a mission to find out what happened to a community of people who live “off grid” and on some land owned by the Pack. There’s a connection to Leah and her history. More is revealed as the story goes along – however, to explain, even briefly, what troubled me I necessarily have to disclose some spoilers.
Almost all of the female characters in Wild Sign have been or are sexually assaulted during the course of the book. Anna’s own history of sexual assault is more graphically depicted than even in Alpha & Omega or Cry Wolf and there are other assaults that occur to her in this book as well. Some aspects of this book reminded me uncomfortably of what happened to Mercy Thompson in Iron Kissed (although I hasten to add that it is only some aspects, far from all). Leah’s history is full of sexual violence and unspeakable trauma and multiple instances where her consent was violated. Other secondary characters are also raped. Having read the entire series again last year, much of it was still fairly fresh in my mind and it is difficult to not notice just how often sexual violence is used as a plot point or character device. But in Wild Sign there is so much more of it. It was difficult to read. Compelling, yes. My heart was in my throat and I was afraid for the characters and heartbroken for them – but it sometimes felt like easy manipulation and other times it just felt gratuitous. I feel like I have a fairly high threshold of what I can comfortably read – although I’m also noticing that it is lowering over time – but this was beyond my comfort levels in many ways.
There is also the matter of what I saw as Leah’s characterisation being almost completely retconned. The story told to readers about how Bran came to marry Leah over the past 17 or so books is simply not true. (I discussed my thoughts more fully in Janine’s spoilerific post about Leah and Bran’s relationship so I won’t go into it again here.)
And I found the epilogue profoundly upsetting and unsettling. Arguably, the HEA of one of the couples from the series has been broken or at least deeply damaged (not Charles and Anna – though there is a flow-on effect there too I think.) The Mercy Thompson books aren’t romance books. They’re urban fantasy and as I understand it, the UF genre doesn’t promise a HEA. But I am a romance reader and I approach the series through that lens. The romantic relationships are very important to me and, even if it is perhaps unfair given the series is not romance, my reading experience is filtered through those rose-coloured romance glasses.
After I finished the book, I wrote on Goodreads “I am not okay”. That remains true. I don’t know how to grade the book. Based purely on how engrossed I was it would be an A. However, based on how much it disturbed me (and not in the way I want to be disturbed by a book) and the extremely bittersweet epilogue (which emphasis on the bitter), I’d have to give it a D. I don’t know how to put that together.
It’s also true to say that no matter how much this book disturbed me and how upset I was and am about some aspects of the story and all the sexual violence, I will still read the next book. I do hope that Anna’s experience with sexual assault is now at an end. While I know it is not up to me, of course, I would most definitely like to see far less rape in any future books in the Mercyverse.
I think the reading experience for others will be heavily influenced by how high their squick-meters goes, what their triggers are, what value they place on the romantic arcs/HEAs, perhaps how much of the rest of the series is fresh in a reader’s mind and how that all gets mixed in with a reading experience which is nonetheless riveting and completely holds the attention – even for long after the book is done. If I didn’t care so much about the characters in this book, it would not have affected me as much. And that I care about the characters as much as I do, is all down to you as well. So… [insert shrug emoji here]
Regards,
Kaetrin
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Thanks Kaetrin for this really thoughtful review. You have helped me out here as I was continually walking around this one. I agree with so much of what you say about these excellent series & think we share that same romance filter. I’m pretty sure I will find the content that bothers you will stain the previous books for me… so I’m probs giving this a pass. I didn’t like the suggestion in one of the Mercy books that Bran had thought about her in a sexual way & the throw away explanation, I think, that it was pragmatic didn’t sell it either…
I particularly dislike the fad for authors to retro redeem problematic or downright awful characters ( Ilona Andrews – Hugh ) no matter how appealing it is for them to successfully flex their writing skills…
i think I am glad I drifted off from this series.
The scenes Anna relived were extremely disturbing and difficult to read. (BTW, I have not read the other Leah and Bran thread so I may be stating things already discussed.) I worried about the affect on their relationship if she couldn’t “survive” it a second time, but then wondered if this was to show us Charles’ complete steadfastness and Anna’s strength. A tough, perhaps unnecessary, road to push characters and readers down, especially when we know they are each other’s constant. Storytelling? Tension building? I don’t know, I’m shrugging, too.
The whole story was creepy AF. I will read the next, in both series, but there will be some serious side-eye for Bran. Although some things were explained, there’s a whole lot more than needs to be addressed.
Great review, Kaetrin. Thanks.
Kaetrin, I’m sorry this book was so hard for you. To be honest, I guess I’m not overly sensitive to some things (that are trigger warnings for many) and the only thing that would have really bothered me (spoiler alert) would have been Anna being raped by the villain in this book. I do skim over the rape in Iron Kissed when I reread the series. I think Patricia Briggs was channeling Lovecraft a bit, and I’ve read him myself. This is what Lovecraftian “gods” want to do: reproduce. Finding the books in the yurt gave me a hint that she was telling her own Elder Gods kind of story.
I really did enjoy the book, and I wasn’t as bothered by the epilogue, but I did find it rather soul-shattering. However, I think that she may have been planning this plot twist for a long time because of all the little things leading up toward it. Even as early as Moon Called, and especially in Dead Heat. I may be reading too much into Samuel’s back story, however.
I didn’t have a problem with Leah and Bran, either, but that wasn’t the focus of my interest. I was more intrigued by the epilogue.
By the way, I loved the way Ilona Andrews took Hugh and turned him around. Sometimes this happens to a writer; I know it did for me when a character I thought wholly despicable showed me his side of the story, and he wasn’t weak and evil after all. (I am not a pro author, but I have been working on and off on my own saga for about thirty years. Characters can surprise you!)
I just tried to leave a comment and it hasn’t appeared…
@Raine Cole: I actually liked Hugh’s book but I know what you mean. I thought Leah was fine being “difficult”. I actually didn’t mind her character. Sometimes she was petty and mean but other times she put the pack first and was a great leader. People (even fictional characters) can contain multitudes. If the “redemption” had not involved the excessive trauma Leah experienced and happened more slowly perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed so much or been so troubled by it.
@Jennifer: I’ve heard that from a few people. I’m still in but I can’t say I’m not conflicted by it!
@Darlynne: Thank you Darlynne. Yes, definitely creepy AF.
@Kari S.: I think one’s approach to the epilogue may have some relationship to how dear the HEA is held. I know it will be prised from my cold dead hands so I’m a harsh critic there! I’ve never read Lovecraft; I’m not a horror reader (I don’t really watch horror movies much either) so what I know (apart from that he was a racist bigoted jerk) about Lovecraft is more by osmosis than anything else. You did provide some extra context that makes things clearer but I don’t know it tempers my reaction to the book as such. It does put it in a better frame I suppose so thank you for that.
You’re not the only one to be disturbed by the parallels between the Singer and the events in Iron Kissed. I was distressed that coercion and assault would again happen to Anna–even if the assault wasn’t “completed” what did happen to her was damaging enough.
I mentioned on Janine’s thread that I wish Anna would have been sent to counseling. I don’t think she’s ok (although she is better) and I believe that this incident would have causes a major setback to her–especially if she didn’t have to mental tools to deal with it, besides her wolf.
As I said to Janine, I think that having Anna and Mercy “work through” their issues on their own does a disservice to the characters AND readers, who may read this and think they should be able to work through or get over trauma all on their own.
@Random Michelle: Totally agree.
@Kaetrin, thank you for your thoughtful review. I enjoyed reading it and the thoughts of the other commenters.
This is super-unusual for me, because I can almost always see multiple perspectives on almost any issue. But I completely disagree with almost all of these comments. Just finished the book (which I made a point to read during the day only, and to break up the reading with other activities, in order to avoid the lack of sleep/bad dreams thing). And all I could say is “Wow.” This book packed a wallop. I don’t see any retconning. What I do see is character development, including multiple characters (especially Bran) facing a totally normal human tendency: to lie to ourselves, or at least willfully to wear blinders, so we won’t have to deal with things that feel to big or emotionally overwhelming. To me, essentially everything in here was recognizable response to trauma (Leah’s of course, and Anna’s, and Bran’s, and even Charles growing up with the knowledge that his father – or his father’s wolf – wanted to kill him). Take multiple horrific traumas, add in trying to cope with very long lives and an inherent and increasingly unstable urge toward violence, the constant need to fight for internal control over the wolf, the absolute requirement of living in disciplined hierarchy to control the wolf but the human nature fighting the inherent unfairness of such a hierarchy… IMO, this all just fits. The process of dealing with trauma, facing ugly truths, etc takes an incredibly long time and is emotionally exhausting; totally normal for people to have to deal with one thing at a time (suppressing other issues sometimes for decades). Also, about the counseling thing: this has come up more than once in the Mercyverse. There are no werewolf counselors, unless you count Omegas; the need has been discussed. And what jobs do you think would be available for Anna in a town the size of Aspen Creek? Looks to me like she’s had her emotional plate rather full with dealing with her change of circumstances, learning about Omegas and gaining control, helping Charles with his role in the pack, various investigations, learning to trust Charles and how to be married to someone, dealing with Leah and Asil, etc. Oh, and she has learned to knit (and maybe quilt?) and has reclaimed her music. Sounds like she’s accomplished a lot in just 3 years for an initially horribly traumatized and half-starved woman. And we’ve been seeing signs that she is ready for more, so again: this whole book made sense to me. Now, some of the scenes I definitely skimmed because ick. But overall, even the amount of sexual violence is consistent with what we’ve learned about werewolves in the Mercyverse. Plus, consider the rates of rape and sexual assault in the contemporary US, for example. Now consider cultural assumptions of past centuries, and also the much higher rates found in highly patriarchal societies, in war zones, etc. Now factor in how long many of these women have lived. Given all that, I’d be rather surprised if ANY female werewolves over the age of, say, 50 have avoided some degree of sexual violence.
@Ann: Obviously we disagree on our take of the book. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
My only comment is that just the fact there’s a lot of sexual violence in real life is, to me, not an excuse to have so much of it in fiction. There have been similar arguments about other things in a historical setting – “that’s what it was like back then” but authors change things for their convenience all the time and are not bound to include something just because it is believable – it can be just as believable for there to be little or none of a particular thing. If you’re okay with the level of sexual violence in the story (and that’s perfectly fine – many people are and that’s okay) then great. We can like things which are problematic – all of us do in one way or another. For me, as I get older, my tolerance for sexual violence in books is diminishing – perhaps as a direct result of how much it is on my radar in a real life setting.
@Ann: I disagree with you on Anna but we are so much on the same page re. Leah. I wrote a whole post here about Leah and Bran a couple of weeks ago and there were many people who felt as Kaetrin did but also many who feel as you and I. It was pretty much a right-down-the-middle split. Kaetrin and I also discussed the book in Twitter DMs and that was a very lively discussion too, we disagreed on so much.
I’m with you on the sexual violence issue too. I understand it is triggering to many readers and trigger warnings should always be applied to such books (and reviews of them). And in that matter I do think readers who object have a good point. But as far as the content itself, outside of books where one of the protagonists commits rape I don’t see a social justice reason to object (not saying that’s what you are doing, Kaetrin). It’s not contributing to rape culture because the books take a very strong position that rape is deeply harmful and wrong on all levels. I’m baffled by that aspect of conversations about rape in books. More generally I tend to prefer books that while having a happy ending, also reflect life including the problematic aspects of society. They feel more real to me and thus resonate more. I do however absolutely respect anyone’s right to avoid reading them.
Thanks for sharing this. I’m glad to see it’s not just me.
I just finished this book and I couldn’t help being disappointed. The Mercy Thompson/A&O books used to be comfort reads but the evolution of Leah’s character and the repeated use of sexual assault as a plot device disturb me. I don’t think Leah needed this kind of redemption. Her character worked well before. I feel like it has been completely rewritten in the last couple of A&O books. And now, after all she went through, I want to see her leave Bran and build her own life even more than before. Not all relationships need to end with an HEA. Instead, their relationship is probably going to get fixed. I’ve seen too many people stay in abusive marriages IRL to be okay with this. I used to find these books empowering. I’m going to keep reading them but it won’t be the same.
@Caroline: I think the views of this book are fairly polarised. I’m glad I was able to share a view that resonated with you.