I knew I was in trouble when I checked how far along I was at the 5% mark in Winter Lost, the fourteenth instalment in the Mercy Thompson series. It’s never good when you’re worried about page count at the beginning of a book. Fortunately, things pick up after the thirty percent point, but if you choose to read this, settle in for a slow-paced first third.

This book and this review can not be understood without knowledge of the first thirteen volumes in this epic series. Both also contain spoilers for what came before.

Mercy meets Mary Jo at Uncle Mike’s for girl talk, although she can’t even manage to do that without nearly causing a riot. Fortunately, Uncle Mike comes out and warns his other guests not to murder her and personally escorts her to Mary Jo.

While Mercy and Mary Jo discuss the latter’s relationship woes, Adam, Mercy’s mate, finds himself in a fight with his brother-in-law, Gary. It seems Gary is under a spell that keeps him from speaking to and relating with the people around him. Mercy comes home to help with the situation, and her newfound sensibilities from the Soul Taker incident enable her to determine he’s enthralled by unusual, powerful magic. Zee is called in, and then Ymir, a fae who owes Mercy a favor. Ymir does tell them who performed the enchantment, but then he causes a ruckus and has to be thrown out. So Mercy and Adam head to Montana (where the spellcaster is) to see what they can find to free Gary.

I’ve left a whole lot of little things out of the above synopsis, like the phone call Mercy receives from Bonarta on her way to see Mary Jo, the trouble Adam’s company is having at a hush-hush military establishment in New Mexico, and the will-they-won’t-they love quadrangle mess surrounding Tad, Gabriel, Izzy, and Jesse. All this, and we haven’t even met up with our primary villain and the world-endangering conundrum that is the purpose of this particular narrative.

On the bright side, once we are in Montana to solve the mystery, the adventure unfolds briskly enough that the story becomes more engrossing. Also a positive is that Mercy and Adam get a chance to work as a couple. In a typical Mercyverse story, so many recurring characters are involved that it is easy for the books to read more like roll calls than stories. The fact that Mercy and Adam are working on their own circumvents that in this narrative, putting the spotlight on them, their relationship, and the growth of their paranormal superpowers. 

Those bright spots aren’t enough to completely salvage Winter Lost, though. One thing that just doesn’t make sense is that Mercy, who was raised in Montana, is apparently unfamiliar with things like thermal underwear, wearing gloves for even brief outdoor treks, and driving in winter. She has apparently also never heard of snow pants or boots that close at the top so snow doesn’t get in. Adam and Mercy are driving through a magic-induced storm of the century to meet a Frost Giant, and they are totally unprepared for snow, ice, and cold. This mind boggled.

Another problem is that Mercy switches magic more often than most people change clothes. The typical excuse given is that adventure A, which almost killed her, left lingering issues so that in adventure B, her cool superpower C is missing, but she is left with this new, cooler power D that comes at a price, but surprise, surprise, is more useful in this particular situation. That logic may work once, but the repetition of it makes it an obvious deux ex machina.

I’ll add that this happens across the board. Certain characters’ powers don’t work well because other characters’ powers conveniently counteract them, etcetera. This writing device serves as a magic eraser to ensure the characters can move exactly as the author wishes in her messy landscape.

My final negative is the overuse of Coyote and Gary. It feels as though these two characters have become regulars, pulling us away from the original storyline and making things chaotic for no good reason. In this particular instance, their presence highlights numerous flaws within the tale, such as overly complicated magical balances, callous cruelty by creatures the author writes with sympathy, and a weird disparity in the power and influence wielded by Adam and Mercy.

Fans of the series will probably want to read Winter Lost. Those of us who have made it this far into the series will finish it just to stay abreast of what is going on. I enjoyed it but didn’t love it; if you are taking a break from the series, this one isn’t strong enough to reinvigorate your adoration of the Mercyverse but otherwise, it’s about what one would expect from a new addition to this long-running saga.