Leah and Bran: Thoughts on Two of Patricia Briggs’s Most Enigmatic Characters
PLEASE NOTE: This post contains SPOILERS and I am opening the comment thread to spoilers as well. There may be triggers in the comment thread, too.
Dear Readers,
There’s a lot to talk about in Wild Sign, Patricia Briggs’s most recent book, and in addition to my review I wanted to write a separate post on the topic that fascinated me most in this novel: Leah, Bran, and their relationship.
Keep in mind, readers, that while I’ve read all the Alpha and Omega books, I’ve only read the first four Mercy Thompson novels and a few of the related novellas. I keep meaning to go back and read more, if only to flesh out my understanding of this world and of the Alpha and Omega characters, but four is as far as I’ve gotten. So it’s possible I’m missing key events or aspects of Leah and Bran’s relationship. If so I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
Leah gets quite a bit of attention in the latest Alpha and Omega novel. The wife and mate of Bran Cornick, North America’s ruling and most powerful werewolf, she has a history of being unpopular with readers. In some of the books in the series, especially the first few, Leah is awful to all three of the Mercyworld protagonists–threatening to Mercy (her adopted stepdaughter), hostile toward Charles (her stepson) and harsh to Anna (her daughter-in-law). But is she just a villainess or are there understandable reasons for her behavior? More and more we’re seeing that the latter is the case.
The senior Cornicks’ marriage is baffling to most of the other characters in the series. Why would Bran, in all other regards a dangerously intelligent and careful man, choose someone as shallow, vain, and self-centered as Leah for his mate? But as the series proceeds, we learn more about Bran’s reasons and more about Leah, including (in the last two books) that there is more to her than meets the eye.
Early in Wild Sign, during an outing that includes Leah, Anna, and two other women, Anna reflects on Bran and Leah’s relationship:
Anna was pretty sure no one else at the table believed the cold relationship Bran and Leah had was a good thing. It wasn’t abusive—not quite. Not physically abusive, anyway. But Anna would have lasted a month, tops, in a relationship where her needs were met with attentive care—and not an ounce of affection. (Patricia Briggs, Wild Sign, 2021, US kindle ARC location 203)
I was thrilled by that paragraph because it highlighted a darker angle of Bran’s marriage than has been acknowledged in past books. I have thought Bran’s treatment of Leah was emotionally abusive for years, ever since I read a scene in Cry Wolf, book one in the A&O series (there is an introductory novella, Alpha and Omega, that precedes Cry Wolf but Leah does not appear in it).
In the scene, which comes late in Cry Wolf, we see for the first time that Bran uses his mating bond with Leah to balance out his wolf’s mercurial and lethal tendencies. He does this for the good of the packs and they are all lucky that he has such an outlet—but the way he thought of Leah in this scene made me start wanting their marriage to be given further attention, even as unlikable as Leah was.
Leah wasn’t in her room.
He knew, before he got to his door, that she was sleeping in his bed. Silently, he let himself in and shut the door behind him.
Curled up on his side of the bed, she hugged a pillow. Tenderness welled up in him; asleep she looked soft and vulnerable.
He pushed the tenderness away in that there was too much danger. He knew his sons had never understood his marriage, his mating. It had taken him a few years after Blue Jay Woman’s death to find Leah, a woman so selfish and stupid he was certain he could never really love her. But love wasn’t necessary for the mating bond—acceptance was, trust was—and love was a bonus he couldn’t afford.
With Blue Jay Woman he’d found that the mating bond was the answer to the Beast—spreading out the cost of control. He needed the mating bond to hold the monster he could become at bay. But he could not afford to lose anyone else he loved the way he had loved Blue Jay Woman. So he’d found an acceptable compromise in Leah.
He stripped off his clothes, making noise now. Leah woke when the sweatshirt hit the floor. (Patricia Briggs, Cry Wolf, 2008, US Kindle edition p.292)
This scene made me wonder about Leah. She was not a sympathetic character, especially at the time, and in fact many Briggs readers (the majority I talked to about her then) hated her. After reading this scene, though, I felt that I could understand where she was coming from. If she loved Bran, and I thought she might, then to be the one person in all the world physically closest to him and at the same time the one person in all the world he was determined to feel as little as possible for had to be brutal.
I saw where Bran was coming from, too—loving Blue Jay Woman had destabilized him mentally and emotionally and his is a terrifying wolf to destabilize. The loss of the woman he loved nearly led him to commit mass murder (we see more of the fallout from Blue Jay Woman’s death in Wild Sign, where Charles remembers that even in childhood, he knew that Bran came close to killing him for taking Blue Jay Woman away). So Bran felt that for the safety of his packs he had to have a mate and, also for the safety of the packs, it had to be someone he could never love.
But even in the quoted scene which comes quite early in the series, Bran feels a tenderness for Leah, or there would be no tenderness to push away. He *works* at being cold to her.
So, although I understood his treatment of his wife was the price that came with ensuring the survival of all the werewolves in North America (and probably most of the continent’s humans), that didn’t make it any less cruel. For one woman to bear so much emotional abuse to ensure the survival of everyone else seemed a grave injustice no matter how necessary it was or how much sense it made.
(It reminded me of Ursula Le Guin’s famous story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.)
Of course, all these thoughts were predicated on the notion that Leah, Bran’s “selfish and stupid” mate, loved him. I discussed this possibility with other readers on Twitter once, several years ago, and most of them didn’t see this as the case. Even I knew I was only speculating, but it seemed like something that would explain (though not excuse) her coldness to her stepsons and her general bad-tempered, abrasive and prickly demeanor.
But then Burn Bright, the fifth novel in the A&O series, revealed that Leah did, in fact, love Bran and that this was, in fact, the reason she’d never liked Charles—because Bran loved Charles but not Leah, his own mate. I almost jumped for joy when the first mention of Leah’s feelings for Bran appeared on my kindle:
But if a death of another wildling would hurt her mate, the death of his son would do far worse. And though she knew Bran did not love her, knew that love had no part in their long-ago bargain, it didn’t matter. She loved her coldhearted, flawed bastard of a husband and mate with all of her selfish heart. If she could save Charles, she would. (Patricia Briggs, Burn Bright, 2018, US Kindle ARC location 4106)
Heading into Wild Sign, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Leah / Bran dynamic (I did like that Burn Bright’s ending suggested that Bran might have unacknowledged feelings for Leah and hinted that his policy of keeping her at an emotional distance could hurt his pack as well as protect it). So I was very excited to read Anna’s thoughts on Bran and Leah’s marriage as “not physically abusive, anyway,” because it was a signal that their dynamic would be interrogated further in this book. And it was.
I loved everything about that and I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated Leah’s characterization in this book. A traumatic past was layered in with her character in a way that I found utterly believable. With this added to her situation with Bran, Leah’s past behavior became even more understandable. By the end I felt that though she isn’t someone I would want for a best friend, there are things to admire in her.
And I have to give the author kudos for this: the fleshing out of Leah’s character was pretty consistent with her earlier portrayal even as it turned how we’d been invited to view her before upside down.
I also loved the role Leah played in his story. I didn’t love everything in her backstory (some of it was incredibly disturbing) but I loved the way that she came to Anna’s rescue. And I appreciated the questioning of Bran and Leah’s relationship and how it functioned (and malfunctioned) as well as the exploration of how other characters viewed her vs. who she really was.
In Wild Sign we see that she is tough, a survivor, but that doesn’t mean that she is incapable of being hurt. We see that she is smart enough to understand how Bran feels about her.
Although quite frankly I wanted Bran to suffer a lot more for his treatment of Leah over the decades, his hatred of her, his thinking her “a woman so selfish and stupid he was certain he could never really love her,” his determination to shut down the mating bonds and the possibility of love between them, his probable role in how the rest of the pack saw her.
I hope their relationship storyline gets further play in future books because I want Leah to make Bran suffer for a while. Not deliberately, but with fear of trusting him just when he needs her trust—that would be completely consistent and justified.
Of all the things to like about Wild Sign, the reframing of Leah not just in the reader’s eyes but also in the eyes of the characters was my favorite.
What about you, readers? How have you felt about Leah in the past and how do you feel about her now? Do you like the turn Briggs has taken with Leah in the past two books? What are your thoughts about what we’ve now learned about Leah’s past in Wild Sign and what do you think about how it’s shaped her? How do you feel about the recent developments in her relationships with Bran and with Charles? About her actions in this book with regard to Anna? About the brutal thing she had to do late in the novel? And what would you like to see happen in her relationship with Bran in future books?
A reminder to readers: spoilers are permitted in this particular thread.
I have always believed there was more to Leah . She is an excellent character you love to hate.
This explains why Anna scared her so much at first … she knew deep down Anna being an omega could change her and she was content with how things were.
She (Leah) changed as her story finally revealed itself to her and the others.
Before it did she was content with her relationship… she told them the most important thing was to choose a mate wisely…she didn’t ever again wish to be powerless … even though it made her seem selfish.
Even without the back story her character was evolving…Kara and how she treated her…
This was a great book and explained a lot!
Can’t wait to see what happens next !
@Lisa: Good point about Leah being scared of Anna at first. Leah had a lot of emotional armor and she needed every bit of it. One of the things Anna’s omega power does is dismantle emotional armor.
I had the same thought about why she felt a choice of mate was so important. It wasn’t as sexist a statement as it sounds. As messed up as the way their relationship began was and even with Bran’s ambivalence, it saved her from a horrific fate (that of the people in the cave). She had tried to save herself but she could not have done it without Bran (or Sherwood). She really did need him to step in. So it made sense that she would look at it that way, Feeling hated by your husband for 200 years must have been horrible, but she preferred it to what had happened to her earlier or would have happened to her without their marriage.
I also loved the way her manicure was worked into the story. It’s such a great little character detail. She has always (as far as I recall) cared about her appearance a lot and this gave it so much more dimension.
I too am curious about what will happen next. Do you have any things you’d like to see? I don’t want the difficulties in their relationship to be ironed out too easily. I want Bran to suffer some more first. Suffer, Bran, suffer!
I have a question (for any reader of the book). What did Leah’s statement to Xander “I thought I could give you a chance” mean? Even after reading that scene and some others with Leah I am confused. Was she saying that when he was born she had been confused and disoriented enough to believe that was possible? Or that she let him get away alive when Sherwood showed up and she helped Sherwood kill the others because she couldn’t bear to kill him and wanted to believe he had a chance? Or was she referring to the moment when she said it? That by killing him, she was giving him a chance to at last be free of the Singer?
(There were some other things in the book I didn’t pick up on until I read them a second time. Like why Coyote was humming “We will Rock You” near the end there).
I think there’s been a bit of “retconning” in this. You quoted above from Cry Wolf that it took Bram a few years to find a woman too selfish and stupid to be loveable. And yet this book says he found her starving and dying from the change. How could he possibly have had time to decide she was selfish and stupid between that and when he mated her? (Trying to be vague in my wording…not sure how spoilery these comments can be).
I did enjoy this book very much. But I have to treat the Leah we’ve seen in the last couple of books as an “alternative-reality” version of the Leah we met in the earlier books.
@MikiS: I can see feeling that way and I did see a bit of retconning in Bran’s backstory (for example Charles was more than a few years old though still a child, when Bran brought Leah with him).
However the aspect you mention didn’t bother me that much because Bran was in such a brutal tailspin from Blue Jay Woman’s death when he met Leah. It’s clear he was ambivalent about marrying Leah. While she wasn’t able to give consent I’m not sure he was either. He was so messed up he almost killed most of North America and he wanted to kill his own baby son. He admits he wasn’t thinking clearly when he yoked them together. So it makes sense to me that he would be ambivalent for as long as he has.
Perhaps her disorientation at the time allowed him to conclude that she was stupid. Perhaps her attitude toward their marriage (that it was all in finding the right man, though she did not love him at the time) convinced him she was selfish. She didn’t bare her soul to anyone but kept her true self closed off all these years so it’s possible he saw her as no more than her surface. That out of loyalty to Blue Jay Woman he saw in Leah what he wanted to see.
Leah later says in her POV thoughts that Bran has hated her for 200 years for not being Blue Jay Woman. To me that is not inconsistent with his view of her as selfish and stupid.
I discussed this with a friend and she pointed out the scenes in Cry Wolf where we get into Asil’s POV and it is clear that Asil views Charles as a not-very-bright thug. He’s not even sure if Charles is aware of his own father’s nature. His view of Charles as rather stupid doesn’t change in that book either. Or in any of the Alpha and Omega books that I’ve read that come later. So if Asil can be so wrong about Charles for so long why can’t Bran have come to equally wrongheaded conclusions about Leah?
I have not read this book but I recall Leah was an easy target to hate. I wondered why Bran picked her. Yours was an interesting analysis of Leah. Now I am invested in reaching back into this series and reading this book. Thank you.
@MikiS: I forgot to say earlier–spoilers are good in this thread! I have a note at the top of the post but have added another to the bottom. Spoil all you like here.
@Mag: You’re welcome! You may feel differently of course but if you go back and read them, I hope you enjoy the books. And of course, I’d love it if you come back and let me know what you think. I always love to hear what our readers think.
Janine and I had a long DM conversation about this book on Twitter so she already knows that I think! I had a very different reading experience. Janine suggested I come and comment to share my POV once her post went live so others could chime in too if they wanted.
I don’t think Leah’s representation in this book is at all consistent with what we’ve been told for the past 17 or so books. (I’ve read them all and I re-read the entire series in chronological order only last year so it’s all pretty fresh in my mind and I made a number of connections when I read them all at once that I hadn’t before.)
It was always that Bran’s wolf needed Bran to have a mate so he could control himself and not go berserker again. And it needed to be a mate Bran could not love, so that if something happened to her he would not go berserk like when Blue Jay Woman died. Bran referred to Leah as a woman “too selfish” for him to love and said that is why he chose her.
From one of the quotes above in fact:
“…to find Leah, a woman so selfish and stupid he was certain he could never really love her.”
According to Wild Sign, that’s not the case. He did not know Leah *at all* (and in fact he wasn’t even looking for another mate so it’s also nonsense that he’d “taken a few years to find her”.) She was only about 20 years old at the time and had been through unbearable trauma for approximately 5 years and was struggling to survive the Change, something which had been forced on her. Bran’s decision to mate with her was not about his wolf at all and it certainly cannot have been anything about her personality.
Throughout the series, Leah has been described as “stupid” (she is not) and mean. Bran told Mercy that the reason he had to foster her out to another family in the Pack and not raise her himself is because he was scared Leah would kill her. The context was jealousy.
And a few Mercy books ago, we learned that Bran himself had in the pants feelings for Mercy and that is part of why he sent her (Mercy) away too. Leah was always portrayed as jealous of Mercy because Bran loved her and not Leah but now that’s been changed too. Because he does love her (at least that is what is heavily implied by the ending).
I didn’t particularly think Leah needed any redemption. I thought she was an interesting and compelling character anyway. I liked her strength and speed. I’m really upset that the way she’s been “redeemed” is to reveal unspeakable trauma. On the basis of this new history, the way Bran has allowed Leah to be treated within the Pack for 200 years is also unspeakable. Him mating with her against her will, her being Changed without consent, after all the other things that had happened without her consent, it’s all just awful. Why do female characters have to be tortured to be redeemed? Even what she had to do in *this book* was more torture upon torture.
I’m also reminded of some conflict between Anna and Leah in the previous A&O book where Leah was portrayed as so petty that she would not allow musical performances merely because Anna suggested them and Anna had to manipulate her into it. The Leah of this book is not that Leah IMO.
The more I think about this book the more disturbed I am about it.
I found it engrossing and compelling reading at the time but there’s so much to unpack and the the more I do it the less happy I get about it all.
My comment at the end, when Ieft the book ungraded on Goodreads was “I am not okay”. I’m still not okay and I still have no idea what grade to give this book.
(And don’t even get me started on Samuel and Ariana!!)
I think that it’s entirely possible that it’s Anna’s very presence in Leah’s and Bran’s lives that has brought about this evolution/revolution of who Leah is, and probably Bran’s feelings towards her.
So what Bran thought at the time was true, in his mind. He saw her withdrawal and coldness when introducing her to Charles (while she was battling with her recent near death, change, and the loss of her memories) and decided she was selfish…and he repeatedly told himself that over the years as he intentionally tried to keep her at arms length. Maybe he saw small things that as a centuries old wolf he felt were stupid (but she was a 20 year old who was missing a chunk of memories) and so he labeled her stupid and and repeated that over the next two centuries. What we saw in Wild Sign is that we can’t trust Bran’s own recollections as Leah because he lied about their mating – and he’s previously said it’s easy to lie to a werewolf as long as you believe the lie.
As for Leah, 90% of our negative feelings for her come from anecdotes/comments that come from Bran, whether second hand through Mercy or Charles or directly from him. So again, how can we trust those? Even the direct observations from Mercy and Charles are based on opinions formed as children/teens – and they can be quick to judge based on their own expectations and slow to see from another’s perspective. And what woman would be mentally ok after 20 years of what amounts to being used by her mate? By the time Mercy meets her, the poor woman must be completely miserable but can’t even show that or any other weakness as the Marrock’s mate.
I don’t feel Wild Sign is a change of the history of these characters- I feel the kaleidoscope shifted and now we’re seeing more of the picture than we ever knew before, and I think that was only possible because Anna’s very Omega-ness allowed the cracks in Bran and Leah’s armor.
@Kaetrin: So glad you joined us! And yes, I hope readers feel welcome to join in whether they agree or disagree. I can be passionate in my opinions but I still want to hear other people’s thoughts.
With regard to Leah’s treatment of and threats toward Mercy, while it wasn’t an immediate fit in my mind with how Leah was portrayed in the book, after some reflection I felt it was possible that Leah was driven to a kind of madness by her past experiences. She refers to her past self (when Bran brought her home) as “very nearly sane. Very nearly.” Implying that she wasn’t completely so. And we see how when she looks in the mirror she sees someone who doesn’t look like her current self at all, which implies some kind of psychosis even into this book.
Add on top of it her unreciprocated feelings for Bran, her feelings of dependency on him for her safety and her life, and it’s not impossible for me to imagine that in her Singer-formed instability she saw Bran’s feelings for Mercy as a threat to her own life.
I would say that her thoughts near the end (“She deserved better. She should go out in the real world and find better. And then he could find someone he’d be happier with.”) may suggest that with her memories intact at last and the threat the Singer presented to her finally defeated and done with, she feels that much as she doesn’t want to walk away from Bran, she can, for the first time, do it. Where she could not have before she was freed by the Singer’s death. So it is not impossible for me to believe that this book’s Leah could be the Leah who threatened Mercy’s life.
I agree Bran has feelings for Leah but it seems like something he has only recently become aware of. It was hinted at in Burn Bright when Charles thinks about how his father meant to go to Africa so that he could be away when Charles killed Leah if she was the traitor but then only got as far as Spokane.
One of the reasons I thought Leah might love Bran even just after reading Cry Wolf for the first time is that in the same scene we are both discussing he found her in his room (it seems they have separate rooms), in his bed, curled up on his side of the bed, hugging his pillow. And then there’s the line about him pushing away the tenderness which implies that it is possible that he does feel something for her. Bran is a very complicated person and that’s why I’m not convinced these aspects of his character are incompatible.
With regard to the consent to marriage issue—yes, not a good thing, but it didn’t upset me as much as it did you because (A) it saved Leah’s life and so I’m sure she didn’t regret it (her comments that it’s all about having the right mate suggest that too) and (B) I don’t think Bran was thinking much more clearly even though he was the one whose idea the mating was. I don’t know if Bran’s part of it counts as consent either. Between Blue Jay Woman’s death in childbirth and what happened with the Singer, Sherwood and Leah’s baby they were both disoriented and fucked up. It’s very messy.
As to the rapey nature of her rest of her backstory I agree. It was too much at times.
I agree Bran’s treatment of her has been unspeakable and that is why I want him to suffer. He deserves to. But I’ve thought it was unspeakable for thirteen years so obviously that part isn’t retconning to me at all.
@Leah: That’s an interesting thought about Anna’s effect on them. I’ve thought for a long time that Leah was threatened by Anna’s omega nature because she didn’t want her armor taken away. But it didn’t occur to me that Anna could be softening both Leah and Bran already, despite resistance. It’s plausible. Bran certainly seems more human and less icy these days.
That’s a great point about Leah’s treatment of Charles seeding or at least reinforcing Bran’s view of Leah as selfish. And actually I think Leah has been selfish but when people are in a struggle for survival they do get selfish. They cling to whatever can shield them and many are unwilling to risk losing that shield to someone else. It’s not an attractive trait but it’s not inexplicable either. As I said above that I wouldn’t want her as a BFF even now.
W/r/t why Bran thought she was stupid my theories are different from yours but I have two.
(A) He saw what he wanted to see. He contrasted her with Blue Jay Woman (as Charles does early on in Wild Sign) and found her lacking—and he probably would have found her lacking no matter what because she wasn’t Blue Jay Woman. He couldn’t let go of his feelings for his late wife so he needed Leah, who was displacing her, to be someone he could never love. Not *only* for the safety of the pack (though that was a huge factor) but also for the safety of his loyalty to Blue Jay Woman. He certainly never opened the mating bonds that would have allowed him to see Leah more clearly.
(B) Leah was messed up by the Singer. She had had to help Sherwood kill her own baby so it wouldn’t become a monster. She was missing many of her memories. She could not see her own body as it really was. Under her cold surface she was barely holding herself together. She couldn’t think clearly under that prickly and defensive skin. All these things could have added up to an impression / approximation of stupidity in Bran’s eyes—particularly if that was what he wanted to see.
With regard to what you said about how Charles, Mercy and Anna saw Leah, Charles admits to himself early in Wild Sign that from the moment he met her his impression of her could have been misimpression:
However I also think that as the smart, cold-thinking leader of the pack (of many packs), Bran was trusted by his pack members to be able to assess pack members and his view of Leah colored the way they saw her. Attitudes in any group are usually set at the top. Not only that, I’m sure they thought that as his mate he knew her better than anyone and so they trusted his opinion. He bears a lot of responsibility for how others viewed her in my eyes.
@MikiS:
Yes, I agree with you. I get the feeling in general that the author changed her mind about where she was going with this character.
It’s not the first time, see also : Honey
@Elsa: Indeed.
One thing that the author has said several times is that some (all?) POV characters are “unreliable narrators”, so we get what they think they know, not necessarily what is true. That’s why I enjoyed this book so much; we finally got some of Leah’s POV!
@Debbie: Yes! That is what I meant about Asil’s view of Charles.
Your blog pretty much reflects my thoughts on Leah. I’ve read all of both series, and the short stories and novellas. From the beginning, I knew there was more to Leah than we were being shown, for two simple reasons.
First, no human (and every werewolf has a human component) is either all good or all bad. We’re all a mixture of both. So any characterization of a werewolf as all bad is suspect to me pending further information. The Beast of Gevaudan, sure, although who knows what we would see if we went back to his childhood. For Leah, I’m old enough to have found some explanations for the bad behavior of people I knew along the way. I knew there could be real explanations for her behavior, even though they might not excuse it completely.
Second, even the A&O series is written from the characters’ POV, not the omniscient authorial one. And none of the characters have enough information to understand Leah’s motivations. Even Bran hasn’t truly walked in her shoes. And if he had, they probably would not have fit him anyway, so he still would not experience the same things she did in the same way. Each one of us is unique in our hereditary nature, and in our environmental nurture. So without an omniscient author spelling it out outside the limitations of character POV, we can’t truly know who a character is.
Thanks for laying out my thoughts. Now I don’t have to do that. :D
I see you have not completely read the Mercy Thompson series. If I may suggest, start all over, reading the two series according to the Mercyverse chronological time line on Patricia Briggs’ website. The two series intertwine much more than they appear to do when read separately, but definitely connect when read in order.
This time line includes short stories and a couple of graphic novels, as well. However, the time line is currently missing two short stories which revolve around Asil from Aspen Creek. The stories are considered canon, but currently do not fit comfortably in to the time line. Ms. Briggs has stated that she is hopeful to have a novel published based around the Asil blind date stories in the future.
Here’s a direct link to the Mercyverse chronological time line on Ms. Briggs’ website:
http://www.patriciabriggs.com/books/printabletimeline.html
There are two buttons at the top of the time line. One will list whether a title is a novel, short story, or graphic novel; if a graphic novel, it lists what anthology/ies the story is found in. The other gives a brief descriptive summary of what each title is about.
Enjoy your full immersion in to the Mercyverse!
First of all, thank you for writing a separate post regarding Bran and Leah. Like many other readers, I felt there are inconsistencies with the previous description of Leah and Bran’s relationship/history and what was offered to us in this book. I felt like the author changed the direction she is going with Leah and rewrote some of the history, it bothered me during the reading. I wish the author would show us what Leah saw when Bran opened the mating bond. Can you imaging being closed off the mating bond for 200 years and being constantly compared to a dead wife? No wonder Leah had many issues besides the ones described in this book. I wonder if the author decided to move away from the Bran/Mercy icky bit, that she hinted at in the previous book. How did you feel about Bran feeling more than a fatherly feeling towards Mercy?
Regarding your question about Leah and her son, my interpretation was that it was her one more chance to kill him, something she did not do last time, and Anna was not able to do earlier in the story.
Overall, Bran and Leah’s story is fascinating, and I would love to read more about their journey. I really hope it is not going to be instant forgiveness and we would be able to see how they both deal with the fallout of a closed mating bond, his shitty attitude, and view of her. I actually was happy to see that Leah started to change the status quo in their relationship when she was thinking of leaving and when she was not readily accepting Bran’s help.
Not sure if I can ask this in this post, but what did you think about the epilog? At first, I loved it, but then I started to think that there are a lot of plot holes regarding secrecy. I thought the scent alone would be a problem in the pack full of wolves.
@Illume Eltanin: Thanks! I read the early ones not long ago (and some were rereads) so I don’t think i’ll read them again too soon but I do plan to read those I haven’t gotten to in the last couple of years.
@Nati: Great questions!
It didn’t bother me as it pertained to Leah’s character because I felt the pieces of her characterization mostly fit, but I did feel there was some retconning around the events of how Leah and Bran met. That did bug me a little but I was willing to overlook it more easily than some other readers, maybe partly because I hadn’t read the last several Mercy books but in the main because I loved the direction the storyline in Wild Sign was taking. I was excited to see how the nature of Leah’s character and of her and Bran’s relationship would be filled in. As I said, I suspected it was an emotionally abusive marriage for several books already so that part fit for me.
And to be clear, I don’t feel that Leah was changed unrealistically in this book or that Bran and Leah’s relationship as portrayed in the timeline that begins at the beginning of the series was altered unrealistically either (as far as I know from the books I’ve read). The part that bugged me a little had to do with the backstory of what happened between them two hundred years ago and not in the past fifteen or so years since the events of Moon Called.
Re what Leah saw when Bran opened the mating bond—I think the implication (particularly from the last two books) is that he has feelings to her and in this book he finally becomes aware of them. My guess (and I’m pretty confident of this) is that he shows her that to show her why he doesn’t want to lose her. However as to how Leah interprets what she sees and if she can trust him after the way he treated her, that I do not know and I’m eager to see what Patricia Briggs does with it.
I’m glad Briggs paused the Bran / Leah storyline exactly at this point because I hope that means there’s a lot more to tell about the conflict between them. If Leah had immediately seen, understood, and believed in Bran’s love after he showed her that would be very quick and I don’t want it to be quick. I want it to be drawn out for a while longer.
Of course, it’s also possible that what Bran showed her was something other than love. But even then, it would have to be something he thought would convince her to stay, so it has to be something positive and strong like admiration. And the fact that he opened the mating bond at all is a big step for him. So if he’s not yet at the point of admitting that he has stronger feelings than that, or if he is only just now in the process of developing those feelings I’m okay with that too because that also gives me hope that the storyline will be drawn out for a while.
On the Bran / Mercy thing. I didn’t like it and didn’t see the point of it. Keep in mind I have only read up to the first four books of Mercy and as far as this series I have only reread through Hunting Ground. So I say what I’m saying on the basis of those books and not the later ones.
I read / reread all these after reading Burn Bright so I played close attention to Bran and Mercy’s relationship. In those books I didn’t see anything that contradicted the idea that Bran was attracted to Mercy. In fact the time when she was a teen that he told her Samuel wanted her partly for her childbearing ability so that she would break up with Samuel and leave Aspen Creek seems like something that could also have been driven by attraction on Bran’s part.
The fact that Mercy saw Bran as a father figure doesn’t necessarily contradict it either. It doesn’t mean that Bran saw Mercy as a child. He may have taken her in because of her Coyote connection and also as he takes into Aspen Creek all these other misfits who need a place, rather than out of familial feelings. Werewolf couples often have big age indifferences—look at Charles and Anna. So that piece of it wouldn’t necessarily have been a barrier.
But I still don’t like it. I think it’s awkward for Bran to have had feelings for three women, Blue Jay Woman, Mercy, and by the end of Burn Bright (same book where the Mercy thing comes up) possibly Leah too (it’s implied in Charles thoughts that his father only got as far as Spokane when trying to go to Africa because he might love Leah). I don’t see much to be gained from this storyline unless it’s to explain why Leah may have wanted to kill Mercy in the past. Even so, I think it’s an awkward fit this late in the series—not because of retconning but because it’s a big adjustment to ask readers to make in their own minds—and (not having read the recent Mercy books) I don’t see what it has to add to Mercy’s storyline either.
This comment is already long so I’ll start a second.
@Nati:
Yes, I agree. But is the reason she didn’t do it last time was because she (and Sherwood) physically couldn’t—he was hidden somewhere, or the Singer protected him somehow? Or was it that she did have the opportunity to kill him and could have done it physically but couldn’t emotionally—couldn’t bring herself to do it because she loved him too much? She says to Xander that she always knew he was alive but hoped that he wasn’t, so I’m confused.
I couldn’t agree more.
Regarding the epilogue. I had mixed feelings. First, I’m worried about where it will take Anna’s character. As I said in the other post, I feel that Anna needs to be shown engaged in some interest, project or passion of her own, alone without Charles, so that I will know how she fills all the hours when he’s away. Right now Briggs hasn’t convinced me that she’s not just alone in the house waiting for him to come home and not doing much else. It seems like her life revolves around him and she hasn’t found something of her own. So I am worried that with the baby coming into their lives her life will now revolve around Charles and their child and there will still be nothing else that is just hers and not part of family life.
I worry about that because Anna was so emotionally vulnerable and professionally / personally adrift when she met Charles, and Charles is so much older, wealthier, more experienced. Even with her omega abilities and the way she makes him happy, the power gap still bugs me a little. And I think that for her to find something of her own would be a growth step that would show how much safer, more secure, happier and healthier she is now.
Understand the above is a minor point for me. On the whole I adore their relationship.
Second, I thought the exact same thing about the secrecy (almost immediately too). I don’t see how you can hide something like that from a pack of wolves. There’s the scent thing you mentioned and also, how will they explain the sudden appearance of a child?
Unless it happened in the intervening time between the Bran / Leah scene and Samuel’s arrival, Charles and Anna haven’t told anyone at Aspen Creek that they have been granted the right to adopt or are expecting to go pick up a baby fro an adoption agency or hospital. There was nothing about that. She’s a newborn too which means they can’t say they took in a foster child either.
And it would probably not be possible to pass her off as a biological child either. I imagine she will look more like Samuel. Charles is Native American and doesn’t resemble his father or brother much. Anna too has dark hair and eyes while Samuel’s hair and eyes are light. The baby is too young, I imagine, to be able to consistently cast a glamour and change her appearance. I don’t know what Ariana looks like and how that factors in to things but if she has dark hair and eyes it may work. If not then I don’t see how.
Third, will Samuel really never ask for her back? What about Ariana? Even if not, when they come visit, won’t they feel possessive of the baby? When do they plan to tell the child the truth, or is it never? What if she figures it out? It seems like something that could go awry very easily.
Lastly, I also thought Charles and Anna were too quick to take the child. They should have tried harder to convince Samuel to keep her. He loves the baby and Charles and Anna are supposed to love him. It seemed almost selfish for them to take her so fast.
I do want to feel happy for them, though.
@Janine
I actually think Wild Sign showed us that everyone’s impression that Blue Jay Woman was the great love of Bran’s life was…perhaps a bit blown out of proportion? We know (from the graphic novel) that Bran came upon Blue Jay Woman when she was dying from a moose attack, and changed her rather than letting her die.
In Wild Sign we find out that:
A) People’s recollections of the deceased can be a bit…embellished, if not incorrect. Ahem… Charles’ memory of his grandfather saying Blue Jay Woman was soft and dutiful before she met Bran and his uncles laughing behind their hands at that notion. So it seems to me that we now have to question the recollections others (including Bran) have passed on about Blue Jay Woman, as well.
B) Bran never learned Blue Jay Woman’s language while she was alive. I would think, if she was the great love of his life, he would have put forth more effort in that (at a minimum) nine months to be able to communicate more clearly with her. Charles “knows” the following (second hand, from his mother’s family): neither could speak more than a few words of the other’s language, their love had been rare and amazing thing to watch, and they managed to have battles that lit the forest with the fury.
I think what’s more realistic is that Blue Jay Woman helped center and balance his wolf, and the loss of his mate sent his wolf (already straddling the edge of control) even closer to losing control. However, as it is human nature to remember someone who passed with rose colored glasses, the story of Blue Jay Woman and Bran’s love took on an embellished life of its own. Who wants to tell a kid his mom (who died) and his dad were mated but could really only come together physically?
Bran still needed her family to help raise Charles, when he could not trust himself alone with his own infant son given his wolf blaming Charles for her death, as well as needing them to teach Charles to use his shamanistic powers. So when everyone around went on and on about Blue Jay Woman being the great love of his life, how would he ever be able to contradict them, especially her father? And how could he deal with his wolf wanting to kill his son without allowing himself to believe the hype around their mating?
So when he comes home with a new mate, which was a mating out of necessity and not a match made of love, how could he possibly tell Blue Jay Woman’s family that he changed another dying woman, like her changed their daughter/sister? He can’t, so he tells them he needed a mate to control the wolf, and the story remained that. He didn’t know what happened to Leah, but he knew it was bad and he knew her memories had been taken from her by Sherwood, and he felt guilt over how he changed her. So, he kept her at arm’s length for 200 years. The wolf didn’t care how he got his mate, he clearly felt strong ties to Leah since he wouldn’t let Bran leave for Africa as planned in Burn Bright.
I believe during those 200 years the human half was burdened with guilt and worried about loving and losing a mate and what his wolf would do, so he bought into the white lies and half truths he let everyone else believe in order to stay emotionally distant. I honestly don’t know why he bothered – while keeping his human half emotionally distant he clearly didn’t succeed at keeping his wolf emotionally distant, so the joke is on him. Too bad it’s poor Leah that had to suffer in a loveless mating she didn’t consent to before it was forced on her.
I hope he can redeem himself and begin to earn Leah’s love. Right now, he doesn’t deserve a drop of it.
I’m not saying Leah is a saint, or an Angel – who would be after all she went through? Despite her memories being taken, I have no doubt there were still mental and emotional scars. She’d been tortured, raped and forced to bear her father’s children for a creature she knew was awful. That kind of thing would leave traces behind. Then she’s changed without her consent (possibly) and forced into a mating, again having her choice removed. A mating with someone who keeps her at an emotional distance, twists things around to ensure he doesn’t fall in love with her while giving his love to others. That has got to mess with someone’s head.
I am also in the camp that the Leah in this book was completely unrelated to the Leah we saw in any of the prior books–even taking into account the fact that Mercy and Charles have justifiably negative memories of her from the get-go.
I’ve always seen Leah and Bran’s mating bond as having absolutely nothing to do with either human–that it was entirely on the part of their wolves and Leah and Bran were dragged along whether they wanted to be or not.
Considering how much Bran dislikes and distrusts his wolf, it would make sense he would rail against the choice made for him and in many ways against his will. It’s never clear in the earlier books how Leah feels about her wolf but my assumption is that she might well initially have feelings similar to Bran’s–she made the choice to remain alive, but didn’t appreciate being forced into it.
I always felt that Leah enjoyed her position in the pack, and disliked anyone who threatened her place within the pack–which is why she disliked both Charles and Mercy so much, because both have the ability to stand up to her and ignore her commands (and *also* because Bran obviously loves them unconditionally, while Leah and Bran were linked really only by their wolves).
Did Bran treat her fairly? No. But I also think of their marriage as akin to the historical political alliances, where people marry because that is what their families wanted. Because remember that both Bran and Leah spent the formative years where political alliances would have been the norm for families in power. So she didn’t get a love match, but she did get other things in compensation, from wealth to power as well as the ability to protect *herself* from the monsters.
I also have MAJOR issues with the idea that Bran has non-paternal feelings for Mercy. When Anna first suggested that a couple books previous it made me feel rather ill, because–foster parents or not–Bran did treat Mercy as a daughter from infancy.
And dear DOG why did we have to have so much sexual assault in this book?
@ Janine
Regarding Leah’s character during this book, I think it stays consistent with previous books. She did some questionable things in the past but nothing out of character for her. However, what bothered me during this book is Bran’s explanation/view of her in previous books (stupid/selfish) and his explanation of their meeting in this book. It just does not add up to me.
She says to Xander that she always knew he was alive but hoped that he wasn’t, so I’m confused. That is the part that confused me too. So, did she remembered him during all of 200 years or her memories just come back?
As I said in the other post, I feel that Anna needs to be shown engaged in some interest, project, or passion of her own, alone without Charles, so that I will know how she fills all the hours when he’s away. Trustfully I never gave it a lot of thought, and I see your point of view. However, I am under the impression that she is doing her own thing, independent of Charles. Because if you think about it, Lea is also not working I think.
The fact that Mercy saw Bran as a father figure doesn’t necessarily contradict it either. It doesn’t mean that Bran saw Mercy as a child. He may have taken her in because of her Coyote connection and also as he takes into Aspen Creek all these other misfits who need a place, rather than out of familial feelings. Werewolf couples often have big age indifferences—look at Charles and Anna. So that piece of it wouldn’t necessarily have been a barrier.
I kind of disagree with you there. Charles met Anna when she was grown up, not a baby. Bran was responsible for Mercy when she was a baby, so icky. I read almost all of Mercy’s books and I never once got an impression that Bran viewed her as anything but his daughter. In one of the books when they rescued her from a vampire, Bran told her in front of Adam that he loved her. It was done as a father figure, not as anything else (at least I saw it this way).
@Leah
Yes!!!! I had the same thoughts about Blue Jay woman and Bran when I was reading the book. How Blue Jay woman was made almost like a saint by Charles and Bran. But then Bran could not even bother to learn the language, the same goes for BJ woman. I think over time Bran made her into something way more than what she was because he was scared of his wolf actions.
@Leah: Your rewriting history theory is a great theory about Bran and it helps explain some contradictions in his accounts of what happened with Leah (e.g. it had taken him a few years to find someone like her vs. he wasn’t looking for a mate). I’ve always found it odd and jarring that Bran and Blue Jay Woman didn’t learn each other’s languages if they loved each other so much, too.
I do think that Bran loved her, though, at least some—or he wouldn’t have fought so hard with her about her decision to carry Charles to term. I agree he was messed up some by the loss of her because she helped balance his wolf but I can’t believed his love for her wasn’t a factor as well. But a combination of the two theories, yours and mine, is plausible too IMO. Even if she was a great love of his, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have revised history regarding Leah for the sake of others and then convinced himself of it too (the forgetfulness of wolves might also have played a role). I hope it will be explained further in the future.
Re Bran’s wolf being more attached to Leah’s than Bran was to Leah, I’m not certain. In Burn Bright there’s this:
@Random Michelle: I understand how your view of the things you mention are incompatible with this book’s portrayal of Leah, but not the part about Leah enjoying her position in the pack. There’s this toward the end of Wild Sign:
A person can be ambitious, jealous, and guarding of their position and still have traumas in their past and vulnerabilities as well as some heroic qualities like courage and determination. Even if they don’t outwardly show the latter qualities. We see this with portrayals of men in fiction (very much including romance) a lot but not so much with women. That doesn’t mean it’s not the case, though.
I’m curious, did you feel it’s plausible that Leah loves Bran based on how she was portrayed in the earlier books?
@Nati:
Re the consistency—okay, then our opinions are closer than I thought. I agree Leah was portrayed consistently. Bran’s backstory of how Leah and he met was less so. Our opinions there are not that far apart there. However the “selfish and stupid” part doesn’t bother me as I didn’t wholly buy into Bran’s characterization of Leah as selfish and stupid, even when it first came up in Cry Wolf.
Re Leah and Xander — IMO she remembered him at least off and on in the 200 years. When she says she didn’t, Anna thinks about how she won’t call Leah on that, implying that Leah is at least fudging the truth there.
The part I am confused about isn’t so much that but why she didn’t kill him 200 years ago. Was it the Singer that protected Xander or Leah’s feelings of maternal love? Does anyone have any theories there?
No, it is stated in Wild Sign that Bran needs Leah to “bear some of the burden of his various offices: Marrok, Alpha, guardian of the wildlings.” Those seem like big and significant jobs. We don’t see Anna doing anything like that. We don’t even see her thinking of it—not as a current activity. There was some talk at the end of Burn Bright about Anna taking Japanese classes in the future but we don’t see her studying Japanese or doing anything else that involves Japanese after that. And even the Japanese thing was going to involve Charles too—it wasn’t an interest of her own.
Granted that’s also true about Leah. But Leah’s relationship with Bran is dysfunctional while Anna’s relationship with Charles is supposed to be ideal. I don’t mind Anna doing a lot of things with Charles or only tentatively dipping her foot in a personal interest but at this point (three years in) I want to see something.
Re Bran and Mercy — As I said, I don’t like it either. But I think there are two reason I don’t mind it as much as some other readers do.
(A) I’m behind on the Mercy books and am not that invested in Mercy as a character. Charles and Anna are much more compelling to me.
(B) I have never seen Bran as a particularly good person. He’s a cool character because of his power as a ruler, his ability to make other wolves submit to his will, his scary monster wolf, his ability to communicate mentally, and the dichotomy with his outward harmless college student appearance. But none of these suggest that he is a good person in the sense of having humanity. In fact there are several scenes of him that suggest otherwise. So the idea that he could develop feelings for Mercy after she grew up isn’t so out of character.
I agree it’s disturbing but he is (to me) an unsettling character and his value system isn’t the same as most people’s. Some examples: He has made Charles, his own son, kill innocent people in the past when they found out about the werewolves, though he knew Charles hated it. He does not care that much if humans die so long as werewolves survive. And look at how he has thought of Leah (no matter if you think she was a different person, no one should think of their wife as “a woman so selfish and stupid he was certain he could never really love her.” That’s just cruel.)
So is it uncomfortable to imagine him attracted to someone he met when she was a baby? Yes. But he also didn’t personally raise her. He sent her away. He never acted on it as far as I know (I haven’t read the later Mercy books). He lives in a society where huge age differences are the norm, mortal / immortal marriages are the norm. There are big power gaps in these relationships. And he is not a good person.
This is such a great post and the comments have been so great!! I am sort of skim reading some of the comments because I havent read the new book yet, and I dont want to see spoilers. Having said that all that I just wanted to add my two cents—I like Bran a lot as a character, I think he is so intriguing and that Briggs has done a great job creating multi layered characters that defy simplistic labels of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Her characters feel more real and multi dimensional (than say stock fictional or imagined types) thatn some other writers because she draws them with some complexity.
What I always likes about Bran was that he was authorotative but loving–were told he has this backstory as a monster, but towards his wolves and his son he is loving and protective.
What always bothered me about his relationship with Leah was that it wasn’t tender or loving (although I see the evolution in it with that line you quote Janine about tenderness). I loved to hate Leah–she was a good side character and honestly, she is a good antidote to the almost Mary Sue goodness of Anna. I also like female characters who defy convention or stereotype–shes ‘bitchy’ and kind of cold and vain. But if that was in a male character, that might be thought of as sexy. Interestingly, Brigg’s heroes and male characters dont seem to follow that type. They are usually caring and warm hearted.
I havent read the recent book so cant comment on her evolution but I like that although she was cold, she was loyal. She always came to help or stood up next to Bran when necessary. and I like depictions of complex relationships–i’m not sure I would call thiers abusive.
Finally, I hate hate hate the suggestion that Bran liked Mercy in a romantic or sexual sense. I did feel if that was the case, that it was motivated by her potential ability to have children? Maybe I made that point up. But it seems to be her attrativeness–her uniqueness–to the wolves and to Samuel of course. I dont think that Briggs emphasizes this (thank god) because most of the time Bran is a father figure to Mercy. (although in that one book when he comes to her rescue , I think the one where she is in Europe, there is again the suggestion that he loves her). This whole potential father figure has romantic feelings dynamic is icky and nasty and I hate it!! I wish that Bran would have a partner that he loves so much that he wouldnt feel attracted to or romantically towards other women (younger women.)
@Janine: Janine, I love the point you make above about Bran being a cool character but not a good person. This explanation helps make sense of why it never bothered me that much either.
and i wanted to second that I agree with you about Anna–there is an increasing passivity to her character that I am starting to dislike. I didnt read the latest book, but the Anna from the novella was much more sharp and prickly. I’m happy shes more at peace and healing from her traumas, but I would like to see more from her, and not just when Charles or someone is put in danger. I would love to see a plot where she becomes a mom–I think she has great maternal warmth and potential. But who knows if Briggs will go there! I feel that she will….since that seems to be a main conflict in the world she created.
@Debbie: but can we trust Leah’s point of view. Even a werewolf has a conscience and so far Leah has not shown she has one. I realize that she has just regained her memories but in 200 years she hasn’t shown compassion towards anyone that we have seen. We hear stories about evil humans that their neighbors couldn’t be a murderer because he was such a wonderful person: went to church , was a deacon or a pillar of the community. Just because she couldn’t remember doesn’t mean her personality changed. Yes she was a victim but being a victim doesn’t give free rein to hurt those around her. Mercy was terrified of Leah and for good reason. Is Leah going to start acting like Mary Poppins? Bran isn’t much better than Leah but he protects those he considers Pack. I still don’t trust her as far as I can throw her. I think that time will tell and I’m not in a rush to trust. I realize that these are characters are in a world of fiction. A group that I belong to (different author) actually posted a notice criticizing the fact we were discussing her characters like we are doing in a group on this book. Her words were this is my world and my words don’t criticize my characters.
@Janine:
I’m curious, did you feel it’s plausible that Leah loves Bran based on how she was portrayed in the earlier books?
I think that Leah loved Bran in as much as she was capable of doing so in the previous books. Was it romantic love like Charles & Anna have? No. Was it parental love like Bran feels for Samuel? No. Was it a kind and gentle love, like Asil feels for his roses or even Cara? No. But it was a kind of love. From years of being together and from him protecting her.
I think Leah had been badly broken by her time with the Singer, and like Sherwood Post, had much of her memory taken from her, leaving her reduced–less than she had been previously. Perhaps leaving her unable to love anyone as both she and they deserved.
I have never seen Bran as a particularly good person. He’s a cool character because of his power as a ruler, his ability to make other wolves submit to his will, his scary monster wolf, his ability to communicate mentally, and the dichotomy with his outward harmless college student appearance. But none of these suggest that he is a good person in the sense of having humanity. In fact there are several scenes of him that suggest otherwise.
There is a novella in the anthology that is on the face of it Samuel’s story. But it also is Bran’s origin story, of who he became after his mother captured him and Samuel–and also of the monster he became after killing his mother but before Samuel allowed him to reclaim his humanity.
When I think of Bran, it is of the man who was able to survive all that. Of the man who told Samuel that he (Bran) would remember the name of Samuel’s long-departed wife and children when their names were lost to Samuel. That Bran will do anything to keep from becoming the monster again.
That Bran married Leah to give his wolf–his monster–something maintain stability. That Bran doesn’t want to place his peace and serenity in jeopardy again.
I think that he didn’t really want to love Mercy even as a daughter, because her death (assuming she would only live a normal human life) would be destabilizing to him–that was possibly his true reason for sending her to her foster parents. Because he could not come to love her the way he did Charles and Samuel. He used Leah as an excuse to cover his own weakness.
That didn’t work out well for him, but that’s what happens when someone is Coyote’s daughter.
@Ruby: I posted this to the other thread and this one seems like a more fitting place so I’m moving it here. I’ll delete your post over there since it’s a duplicate.
I disagree that Leah has never shown compassion. She saved Charles in Burn Bright for Bran’s sake, so that is at least compassion for Bran. And she worried similarly that the loss of one of the wildlings would hurt Bran. I don’t think she’s going to start acting like Mary Poppins—she had a strong motive where the Singer was concerned that she may not have in other situations. But I don’t think she’s evil either. I think she’s a complicated person and so is Bran. People have more than one side to them.
As for what the other author said, if it was said on the author’s group then I understand where the author is coming from. It’s her choice to moderate that group however she sees fit. People coming there know it’s the author’s place and they accept her running of the group when they join. Also, it is not like she can avoid being there or reading what is being said. So while I am not crazy about it I think it’s not inappropriate.
This is not an author group. This is a blog for book discussions and that’s a different ball of wax. If you joined a real life book club, would you try to stop people from discussing a book, the good and bad, including characters they liked or didn’t like? If you and a friend read the same book, would you not go into the topic if you wanted to? This blog serves a similar purpose but online.
Unlike with an author-run board, authors don’t have to hang out here. It’s a place for readers to discuss what they think with other readers. Authors can join in if they like but most don’t since they know it inhibits reader discussions.
As for “this is my world and my words, don’t criticize my characters,” outside of the author’s home that’s not something she can control. When you publish a book, you open the topic of anything in your book to other people’s discussions. You make the story public. If it’s public then how can it not be something that people can or want to discuss? If they want to discuss it and can, how can you stop them? Therefore you know when you publish a book, when you put it out there in public, that it will happen. That you can’t control it. Nor do I personally (and I am a writer with a handful of author friends) think it’s a good idea to try.
Finally, authors are not all in the same mold. They are different people with different opinions, so they don’t all feel the same about this issue or other issues. You shouldn’t assume that just because one author feels this way means all authors feel this way—in fact some authors want readers to discuss their books freely. And I have never heard of Patricia Briggs making such a request.
@Layla:
I agree with everything you said about Bran and Leah. I especially liked what you said about Leah as an antidote to Anna and how Leah defies stereotypes. And yes if she were a guy readers would judge her less.
Re. Anna— I don’t want to spoil the book for you but I’ll be curious to see what you think of her here.
I would love it if you came back and let us know your thoughts on these storylines after you’ve had a chance to read the book.
@Random Michelle: I don’t disagree with most of what you said about Leah except I think she might have loved Bran a bit more than you think (I come back to her sleeping in his bed, on his side of it, hugging his pillow, when he was out there in danger in Cry Wolf). And so I see more vulnerability in her too. The cold exterior doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not there.
I haven’t read that Bran / Samuel story but here are my thoughts anyhow. Yes, Bran is deeply devoted to his family and to his pack, as well as to not becoming a monster again, but that doesn’t mean his moral compass is screwed on right either. And as I said before their wold has different mores. But I would have to read that story to say more on the topic.
I still dislike his attraction-to-Mercy storyline. I don’t see it as out of character necessarily but it isn’t something I like.
I don’t see how these two things (and especially the latter) are incompatible with the Bran of this book. As you say he couldn’t protect himself (as well as his peace and serenity) from caring for Mercy. Would that not mean that the possibility also exists that he may not be able to protect himself (not forever, at least) from feelings for Leah?
@kspeare: Sorry I forgot to reply earlier. Co-sign! :)
@Janine:
I think we’re discussing a bit at cross purposes. :)
I think Leah loved Bran in her way, but that those limitations came from the damage done to her by the Singer. Much as the Singer damaged and nearly broke Sherwood Post (not taking only his memories but also much of his will to live) the Singer also damaged Leah, taking all her softness and leaving just a solid core.
I despise the Bran having inappropriate feelings for Mercy idea–partially because it’s so squicky, and partially because it just doesn’t match Bran the bard (which is what he was prior to his mother’s taking him and Samuel).
I find Bran and Asil similar in many ways, except that while Asil plays up being a monster, Bran plays up the non-threatening characteristics that served him so well as a bard.
@Random Michelle: I mostly agree on Leah.
With regard to Bran, I feel limited by not having yet read that short story you (or novella?) that you refer to. It’s certainly possible that my thoughts on this topic will change when I do. But maybe reading the story out of order will make me view it differently than you do? Hard to know until I do. Hopefully we’ll have another chance to discuss this after I read the story.
That’s a great point about Bran and Asil. I think of Asil as less stable than Bran, but is that really true? Maybe Bran just hides it better.
BTW does anyone know how Asil is pronounced? EI-sil or Ah-SEEL? Or something else?
@Janine:
In my mind I go back and forth on how it is pronounced: A-sill or ah-SEAL
And the audio books are no help, since the narrator for the Mercy books & the Alpha & Omega series don’t pronounce it the same way either. (They ALSO vary on how they pronounce Marrock. The audio books aggravate me greatly.)
And yeah, not having Samuel’s thoughts and words on his father would change things. :) Which now I think about it may be why those who have read only the Alpha & Omega books might think it possible for Bran to have weird feelings about Mercy–because they don’t have Mercy & Samuel’s views.
NBD about the spam filter. I was just freaking out that I had only imagined trying that whole post and hoping it was the blog and not me!
@Random Michelle:
I wish authors would provide audiobook narrators (and maybe even readers) with a pronunciation guide for character names and made up words. I have this huge frustration with Steve West’s narration of Megan Whalen Turner’s books because he butchers the name Eurydice, which is one I actually know how to pronounce. But he apparently doesn’t. With a mythological name like Eurydice, I’m sure there are plenty of explanations on how to pronounce it available on the internet, too.
Agree on the name pronunciations, but also I just really disliked the narrator of Wild Sign. I find most narrators smooth and comfortable to listen too, even sped up, but this was choppy and irritating. And when he was doing Bran’s and Charles accents, it sounded forced and mumbling.
@Kaetrin: Thank goodness someone else had the same response as I did. I too have read all the Mercy Thompson, A&O, and novellas. Patty laid a great foundation for Leah as a complicated, selfish, strong woman who Bran had purposefully searched for. Inside the Marrok’s pack everyone respected her and followed her lead (this was especially true regarding how the female werewolves mistreated/disliked Mercy). Outside of that pack, all the other North American packs respected Leah for being a tough werewolf worthy of Bran (this was referenced in the Mercy book #7 Frost Burned during Adam’s meeting with the pack). This book negates the information in every other book we’ve read since 2006 when Moon Called was published and we saw Leah try to murder Mercy in cold blood. I’m also having problems with yet another rape history. I’m not okay with it.
@Random Michelle: I’m going to take a stab at pronunciation but my understanding was that Asil is an Arabic name or has Arabic origin—if that’s the case, the correct way in Arabic to pronounce it is Ah-Seel more than the other way. In Arabic that S sound is a hard not soft sound. The name means someone with integrity.
@Layla: That was my suspicion too—that Asil was a name of Arabic origin (Asil is referred to as “the Moor” in Cry Wolf and maybe other books, too, although I think it’s also said that Asil isn’t his real name). I was leaning toward Ah-Seel for that reason myself.
When you say the S is a hard sound do you mean that the pronunciation in Asil’s name is closer to a Z or just an S with a longer and deeper emphasis on the consonant? In Hebrew we put more emphasis on consonants and less on vowels relative to American English, that’s why I’m wondering.
That is a lovely meaning for a name.
Is the stress on the first syllable or the second syllable in the name? Or are they stressed equally?
@Layla:
Oh! Thank you for that! I initially thought Ah-Seel “sounded” “more correct” but when I’m reading, I drift to more “English” pronunciations of things, because: English speaker.
I will endeavor to make Ah-Seel my default mental pronunciation. Because Asil is probably my favorite character in Alpha & Omega.
@Janine: I did some internet searching to supplement my knowledge of the name, and was surprised to see Asil come up as a popular girls name in Turkish!!
But as I said, I know the name to be Arabic in origin, as I described above. Janine the stress is on the second syllable. In Arabic we have a hard S sound–its not even really S but there is no equivalent in English. But its really beautiful, and Asil’s name is a beautiful sounding one in Arabic at least!
Speaking of Asil, I really love him as a character.
@Random Michelle: He is one of mine too!! I love his backstory and his description. I hope we see more of him!!!
@Layla: Thank you. That’s what I thought re second syllable stress.
I finished Wild Sign a few days ago and have had time to think about a bunch of things. So, here goes my dissertation:
1. Anna- We got to see that Anna has become more confident in her ability to protect herself. Even though she had the episode where she relived being in her old pack, she was able to recover and move forward. She was so much more confident in her dealings with the witches and showed that even though Zander blasted her with magic, that she was in the process of rescuing herself when Leah showed up (even if it might have taken awhile). It’s nice to see Anna’s growth from broken to healing. I feel like there has been a nice progression for her character.
2. The expansion of Leah’s character was a really welcome addition to the A&O universe. I loved that Charles recognized that he might have been unfair to Leah all of these years. I think that the author is not retconning the Leah/Bran relationship, so much as showing that the only perspectives of Leah have always been from three people that did not like her. It’s telling that Charles did not even know that Leah could sing and that Bran has to admit that he is not even sure that one of the dead babies was Leah’s. Neither of these men had taken the time to look below the surface to see who Leah is/was. Instead, were comfortable with how they had always perceived and treated Leah.
3. The Mercy/Bran attraction issue- I think that while Mercy views Bran as an authority/parental figure, Bran did not/does not view her the same way. I believe that Mercy reminds Bran of Blue Jay Woman. Mercy challenges him which almost no one else does. She probably is similar in coloring/looks, etc. and, most importantly, she could have werewolf children. Why else would Bran let her live by herself at 14? In a town with old, dangerous werewolves? Werewolves that are used to seeing teenage girls getting married and becoming mothers at very young ages. It wasn’t until Bran saw her with Samuel that he decided she needed to live with her mom. Can you imagine what would have happened if he broke his mating with Leah to mate with a teenage Mercy instead? In one of the previous books (Burn Bright?) Charles says that Bran knew that Leah picked on Mercy and did nothing to stop it. Why not? Maybe Bran enjoyed the battles between the two women?
4. Leah/Mercy- I think Charles acknowledging the attraction Bran has for Mercy explains a lot of what Leah has done in regards to Mercy. In Moon Called, Mercy says that Leah made sure that none of the women in Aspen Creek were nice to Mercy. Really? I don’t buy that. At the very least, Sage would have been friendly with Mercy just to spite Leah. And we have been pounded over the head that in the Mercy books that most of the female wolves in her pack don’t like her. There seems to be a pattern here that Mercy doesn’t seem to recognize or acknowledge. Did Leah not like Mercy because she was a coyote? Maybe. Did Leah think Mercy should be with her mother instead of living alone at 14? Maybe. Was Leah jealous of the interest Bran showed in Mercy and wanted her to go away? Probably. Add in how Bran treats Mercy versus how he treats Leah, it makes sense that Leah would hate her. (I actually like Mercy but think she’s a bit of a Mary Sue at this point). We haven’t been told Leah’s version of her relationship with Mercy. I’m not saying that Leah was justified in how she treated Mercy, but I doubt that it was as simple as Mercy described. I also doubt that Leah would have killed Mercy when she was a baby. I think that was Bran’s excuse for not keeping Mercy, probably influenced by the fact that Leah had killed her new baby right before Bran met her. Bran didn’t trust Leah.
5. Sherwood- I really want to see Leah & Sherwood’s relationship. I would love it if we got a book showing how they met, what happened at Wild Sign and what happens when they see each other again.
Sorry for the insane length. Like I said, I’ve been thinking about this books for a few days now.
@Lianne: The length is great; the longer the better since I could read forever on this topic. And wow! I agree with you on every single point.
I never thought of the fact that Bran might have feared that Leah would kill baby Mercy because Leah killed her own baby and he didn’t know the reason why. That is such a great point.
I agree 100% on Sherwood and Leah meeting again–something else I didn’t think of. I hope that reunion happens in a future book. I don’t even know Sherwood outside of what we learned in this book (unless he was in one of the early Mercy books and I have forgotten) and I still really look forward to that.
Thank you, @Janine and all the prior commenters. Lots of food for thought here.
Thanks, Kareni.
I chatted with a friend about the book a few days ago and realized something I hadn’t caught / thought through before. According to Leah’s account early on in the book she was fifteen when “he came” (the Singer). And she was twenty when Bran showed up and saved her life as well as Sherwood’s. She also thinks about how Xander was four or so at the time that she last saw him. All of this means Leah was raped by the Singer and her father when she was only fifteen. It had not occurred to me before that she was still a child (I only put the “child rape” tag on my review because I was thinking of the child trafficking that was mentioned in brief with regard to the villainous male witch). This book is even darker than I thought and that was already plenty dark.
Thank you for your kind words Janine. Thinking about the book some more, I had a few more thoughts I wanted to post.
1. Abuse/Rape- Upthread there was some discussion about the tendency of writers having their characters be raped/abused. I too think overall it’s an issue. Too many authors throw it in a book and either make it the central focus of the character or never talk about it again. When it’s done authentically and with sensitivity, it can add so much to a character’s journey. For example, I always felt that Mercy being raped was meh. I don’t feel like it was necessary for her character growth. But for someone like Anna, the trauma of her turning and subsequent rapes and abuse, is an integral part of her journey from the moment the character appears in the Cry Wolf novella. I also think part of this trend is that women are no longer being silent about the abuse they have suffered. We are seeing a paradigm shift (although very slow) in how rape victims are viewed. Just look at the number of states that have finally authorized funds for the ginormous backlog of rape kits. I also think that the staggering statistics of the percentage of women who suffer physical, mental, emotional and/or sexual abuse is being reflected in the books we read. Not every women has had a traumatic experience at the hands of men, but an incredibly high percentage have.
2. The A&O series-For some reason, this series has always appealed to me more than the Mercy books. Maybe it’s because the focus has been on relationships. For whatever reason, I think these books have explored this world to a greater degree than the Mercy books have. With Mercy, I feel like the basic plot of every book is “there is a vampire/fae/ occasional werewolf problem, Mercy rushes headlong in danger, she gets seriously hurt, she calls on her pack/friends for help and then she solves the mystery/defeats the bad guy”. With the A&O series, it’s more about the relationships that exist within this universe. Anna & Charles, Leah & Bran, Asil, Kara, Tag, the Wildlings, etc. I do agree that Anna & Charles seem to be running out of storyline, so I would be thrilled if some of the future books concentrated on the side characters.
3. Growth of the female characters- As others have mentioned, one of the main reasons why this book has really stuck with me is that Briggs is letting her characters grow. All too often, authors have female characters constantly in competition with one another or they are all “mean girls” to each other. While that has happened in her previous books, Burn Bright and Wild Sign gave us more than a shallow rendering of Leah. Actually most of the women in this series have been flawed and complex-just like women are in real life. You have Leslie who is not your stereotypical FBI agent. There’s Maggie who could have easily been a stereotypical mean girl, but is portrayed as a complex woman who loved two men. Chelsea who fought to save her children at the expense of her own human life. Who endured the change for the love of her family. Even Sage, who could have been a cartoon villainess, is portrayed as a woman shaped by her brutalization by werewolves at the behest of her family in order to advance the goals of the Hardesty witches. And of course, Anna.
4. The future of Leah & Bran- I hope Briggs does not have their relationship repaired & fabulous at the start of the next book. It would feel cheap. One of the things I noticed in Wild Sign was when Bran showed up at the end, Leah did not want him touching her. She even closed down the mating bond immediately after she shifted. When he does fully open the bond at the end, I hope she closes it down from her end. (Btw, I’m still not sure Bran opened the bond because he wanted to or if his wolf did it. The book does say that his eyes flashed wolf right before he opened it, so I’m still not sure). Personally, I would like to see Leah take some time for herself to figure out want she wants and what she needs. To find out that such integral parts of yourself have been stolen from you for 200 years has to be devastating. To never be able to properly mourn your children, deal with the rape by the Singer/her father and the loss of all of her family and friends has to change Leah on a fundamental level. I’m interested to see who she could become. It would be galling to have her swoon at Bran’s feet just because he finally admits that he does love her. She can still love Bran, but I think that she needs to love herself more going forward. That’s not something I see addressed in urban fantasy.
@Lianne: sorry for delayed reply. typing with one finger due to injury so can’t comment much. but several interesting points here. agree esp w/ #4.
I was looking forward to the next novel in this series, but after reading Janine’s review, this post, and the comments that follow both, I’ve decided I’m done with the series and this author. Thank you all for the needed spoilers regarding the use of more threatened or actual violence against women/children. @Kaetrin captured the key point for me when she asked: “Why do female characters have to be tortured to be redeemed?” I’m in my fourth decade of being a devoted reader of romance novels in all variations (suspense, paranormal, fantasy, science fiction, contemporary, historical, etc.), and I am tired of authors’ use of sexual violence against girls and women to move a plotline. I can see why that may be needed in some stories (such as serial killer romantic suspense novels), but more often than not, they can be off-page moments, or at least once in a series moments. There are many ways to elicit readers’ empathy for characters–many ways to show a character is a survivor of traumatic moments in life. Ms. Briggs’ repeated use of non-consensual acts against girls and women as a plot point in these two long-intertwined series shouldn’t be supported–at least by me.
Hey Amy–I have a different take on this topic. Years ago, Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse series of urban fantasy books (the inspiration for the HBO show True Blood), came under fire in one of our discussions here for reasons similar to the ones you cite. Many of her books and series contain the rape of at least one female character and the women are frequently affected by the experience so that it takes those characters in new directions.
Then another reader brought up the fact that the author herself was a survivor of rape. That thread has made me view the use of rape (seemingly as a character-building device) differently than I had before. For every reader who feels as you do, there may be another, a rape survivor, who is grateful that the book exists and that she read it. I have a friend like that, and Harris mentioned in an interview that she hears from readers like that in letters and signings. She also says, “Really it was the most important thing that happened to me in my life in terms of long-term effect on my writing.”
It’s hard to know how many readers are survivors who appreciate some of these books or how many and which authors are writing from a personal experience when rape is a recurring theme for them. Since so many survivors keep their traumatic experiences private (as they have every right to), we’ll never find out.
Some links to Harris’s words on the topic, and to one reader’s, for information:
https://www.mysteryscenemag.com/component/content/article?id=2112:charlaine-harris-books-of-the-dead&cati=
https://www.thepixelproject.net/2017/05/09/the-survivor-stories-project-2017-charlaine-harris-65-usa/
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2857885472?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1
Janine: That is a good point, and I have sometimes wondered whether certain authors were survivors themselves (based on recurring use of sexual assault in their stories). The problem for me is that I suspect there just as many non-survivors who simply use it for dramatic effect. More importantly, I read romance or novels with strong romantic elements to escape the real world; as a survivor of child SA, I’d rather spend my money or time with series that don’t overuse sexual violence as a character building device.
@Amy: Yes I’m sure you’re right and there are authors who use that plot point without having been raped. And of course you should avoid any books you don’t want to read, whether because they trigger you or for any other reason. I think books should come with trigger warnings and this book should come with a number of them. That is probably the publisher’s decision though. It was your use of “shouldn’t be supported” that bothered me, because I don’t feel that way. I know you added “at least not by me” and but it still bothered me. I should have paid more attention to the latter and I apologize.