Wednesday, March 07, 2018

Review: Burn Bright (Alpha and Omega 5) by Patricia Briggs


Burn Bright
Author:  Patricia Briggs
Series:  Alpha and Omega 5
Publisher:  Ace, March 6, 2018
Format:  Hardcover and eBook, 320 pages
List Price:  US$27.00 (print); US$
ISBN:  9780425281314 (print); US$

In her bestselling Alpha and Omega series, Patricia Briggs “spins tales of werewolves, coyote shifters, and magic and, my, does she do it well” (USATODAY.com). Now mated werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham face a threat like no other–one that lurks too close to home…

They are the wild and the broken. The werewolves too damaged to live safely among their own kind. For their own good, they have been exiled to the outskirts of Aspen Creek, Montana. Close enough to the Marrok’s pack to have its support; far enough away to not cause any harm.

With their Alpha out of the country, Charles and Anna are on call when an SOS comes in from the fae mate of one such wildling. Heading into the mountainous wilderness, they interrupt the abduction of the wolf–but can’t stop blood from being shed. Now Charles and Anna must use their skills–his as enforcer, hers as peacemaker–to track down the attackers, reopening a painful chapter in the past that springs from the darkest magic of the witchborn…



Doreen’s Thoughts

While Bran, the Marrok and packleader of the Aspen Creek werewolves, is absent, son Charles and his mate Anna are in charge, including responsibility for those werewolves who are too broken to live safely among others, even of their own kind. When one of the wildings is killed, it becomes apparent that there is a conspiracy to track down some type of information from one or more of the wildings, and that there must be a traitor among the pack.

As Charles, Anna, and a few other select pack members begin tracking down and contacting the wildlings, they continue to run into evidence of witch magic, one of the few forms of magic that can possibly affect werewolves negatively. It also become more obvious that the reason Bran has excluded himself at this time is because the traitor is someone at the very highest level of the pack – and someone the Marrok cannot bring himself to kill.

This is Briggs’ fifth novel starring Charles and Anna, the pack’s enforcer and its Omega. While Briggs has brought up witch magic tangentially in her other novels, this is the first one where it stands front and center. Although the traitor is found and handled, the primary group that attacked the pack has not yet been addressed, and so I expect to see that in her next novel or I will be greatly disappointed.

Otherwise, Briggs writes a tight novel, with small conversations and actions occurring in the beginning of the book becoming critically important later in the story. Her characters, Charles and Anna, are more fully formed now, after five novels, and the readers understand why Anna is so sensitive to being touched or grabbed unexpectedly and how Charles and his Brother Wolf become distracted by Anna’s comments or a slight touch. Other characters such as Asil and especially Leah are more fully fleshed out, with the reader becoming more understanding of the odd relationship between Bran and his mate, Leah.

Overall, this was a quick read, well-written and fast-paced. Again, I look forward to seeing how the protagonists deal with the entity behind the attacks that occurred in this story.

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