Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overview:
Frost Burned is the 7th installment of Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series. If you are a fan of urban fantasy and haven't read the series yet, you absolutely should, but don't start here. Go back to the first book, Moon Called. The story of Frost Burned was intriguing from the beginning, lost a little momentum in the middle, then picked up in action at the end, making it a satisfying read overall. The resolution section of the story was a bit disjointed, jumping between scenes, times, and tenses.

Characters & Voice:
This book, as well as the series as a whole, circulates around Mercy, a coyote walker, and her husband Adam, alpha of the local werewolf pack. Aside from these two, the werewolf pack is full of well-established characters who we get to know throughout the series, but not all of them made a significant appearance in this installment despite the whole pack getting nabbed at the very beginning. Aside from Adam, Mercy mostly interacted with Ben, Kevin, and Honey. She also works closely with Asil, a wolf who is not a member of their pack but is a character readers might recognize from Briggs' Alpha and Omega series.
Mercy didn't have as active of a role in the first two-thirds of this novel as I expected. By her own admission, she spends most of the story driving back and forth while the wolves save themselves. She does, however, make a good showing during the climax, when she gets to totally rock her special walker powers and save the day.

World-building:
Mercy Thompson's world has been pretty well established at this point by the previous books. There is not much added about the fae or werewolves in this book, but we do learn a little more about the hierarchy of the vampires in the surrounding area.

Language & Mechanics:
As always, Briggs' writing was smooth and vivid, with just the right amount of detail to keep me grounded in the scenes without slowing down the action. The book keeps up a good pace, with enough intrigue to keep the pages turning even in the lulls between action.

Digging Deeper (spoiler alert):

The spell to make Mercy compliant was a good callback to her rape and subsequent fear of being powerless, but it didn't really go anywhere or affect anything. I feel like it should have either caused a real issue that impacted the story or been left out.

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