It’s not just in Mercy and Adam, but also in Zee, a powerful fae who is Mercy’s longtime friend, Zee’s son Tad, and several others. Offsetting this darkness is the moral bedrock and decency of the key characters. (Sensitive readers are advised to tread carefully.) That willingness to commit appallingly evil acts for the sake of power is front and center in Storm Cursed, and Briggs doesn’t pull her punches. Their willingness to torture and kill both animals and people gives them a far greater boost to their magical powers than white and gray witches can access.

Black magic witches are the most powerful of all witches in this world far more powerful than white or gray witches. government to negotiate a peace treaty, but the witch problem is threatening this process as well.īlack magic makes for a compelling but harrowing plot in Storm Cursed. Meanwhile, the Gray Lords of the fae are reengaging with humans, offering to meet with the U.S. When Mercy calls the witch family of Elizaveta Arkadyevna to help with the zombie goat problem, a strange woman with a soft Southern voice answers the phone and tells Mercy that Elizaveta’s family is “all tied up right now.” Not ominous at all! And then the family that owned the pygmy goats tell Mercy about a woman with a Southern accent who tried to buy the goats … and to get their young son to come to her car.Īs Mercy and Adam investigate what has happened at Elizaveta’s house, and where the zombies are coming from, they find threats from both without and within their territory. Indirectly this goblin hunt leads to a police request to help with a bunch of pygmy goats that someone has turned into zombies using witchcraft (interestingly, the pygmy goats are still adorable even though they’re dead and zombie-fied). What this event discloses about Mercy’s evolving relationship with Mary Jo, and about a secret power held by goblins that is apparently unique among the fae, may have important repercussions in the future. She calls Larry, the goblin king who we met in Silence Fallen, to help.

Storm Cursed begins with a seemingly tangential event: Mercy has tagged two of her husband Adam’s werewolf pack, firefighter Mary Jo and computer nerd Ben, to go on a goblin hunt with her, tracking down a goblin suspected of killing a policeman.

Mercy, a coyote skinwalker and the shapechanger daughter of the god Coyote, is back in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state after her hair-raising adventures in Europe in Silence Fallen. Storm Cursed, the eleventh book in Patricia Briggs’ MERCY THOMPSON urban fantasy series, kicks the series up a notch with some clashes with black magic witches, and no one is safe. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature: 4.5 stars for this Mercy Thompson fantasy, brimming with black magic.

Patricia briggs storm cursed