E08 Moon Called 6: Six Degrees of Mercy Thompson

Uncle Mike’s Book Club Discusses Chapter 16 of Moon Called, where we finally meet Gabriel; discuss Tad being away at school and Zee’s concern (which later morphs into worry about Gabriel in Winter Lost); Jesse’s hair, Warren’s questionable gay cowboy hair-cutting ability, and how awful Jesse’s mom is; why “nudge” is not really a secret word, does not pass the op sec test, and absolutely should not be their password; why Ben isn’t guilty but is still pretty unpleasant (and whether Kelly can get the uncensored version of Ben); and how Mercy is sick and tired of adulting, changes into sweats, and leaves Sam and Adam to one-up each other while she goes to work on cars with Stefan.

Then we wrap up with our overall impressions of Moon Called, which veers into a little pet peeve about the depiction of single-wide trailers in Blood Bound. Even though we do not officially start covering Blood Bound until the next episode, it does become a powerful running gag.

Random things mentioned: pagers and Apple products; hating the Dursleys from Harry Potter (trigger warning!); Astro vans getting up hills; a reference to Lando’s flirtatious line from The Empire Strikes Back; the Star Wars prequels and how unrealistic and unbelievable the characters become over time (I’m looking at you, Padme Amidala); Urkel from Family Matters; the Star Wars show Skeleton Crew; The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and their confusing names; Game of Thrones; and six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but for Mercy Thompson characters.


As always, there are potentially spoilers for every single book published in the Mercy-verse: the short stories, the Mercy Thompson series, and the Alpha and Omega series (everything through Blind Date with a Werewolf, anyway). It’s okay if you aren’t caught up, as long as you’re okay with spoilers for books you haven’t read yet.

And we have social links now, and we’d love to hear from you! Please be patient with us getting back to you or reading/playing messages on air, since we pre-record episodes. As of the release of episode 8, we’ve actually recorded 15 episodes.

Links:
* Follow us on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/shewhowrenches.bsky.social 
* Check out our for-now website: shewhowrenches.carrd.co 
* YouTube Channel: SheWhoWrenches
* Podcast subscribe link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2566095/episodes/18525659
* Other Mercy Thompson book resources:
    * Patricia Briggs' official website with complete book list: https://www.patriciabriggs.com/books/
    * Stories in the timeline order (how they happen for Mercy): https://www.patriciabriggs.com/books/printabletimeline.html

Recording Date: 2026-01-23

YouTube version of this episode: https://youtu.be/c8TvdYLcDPI

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Welcome to G Who Wrenches, a Mercy Verse reread along podcast. I'm Brittany. I'm Eric.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

And I'm Kelly.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Today we're mostly talking about Mooncult and maybe some of Blood Band. But everything through Blind Date with a Werewolf is fair game, including Fair Game. Spoiler howl. In case you don't remember, this is the one where we meet Warren, fall in love with Kyle, and discover that the true gift is the mercenaries we killed along the way.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

And now it's time for Recap Guy!

SPEAKER_04 0:38

Here's Recap Guy, everybody's least favorite. Okay, so the mercenaries uh drop Mercy and Sam off about a mile out from the warehouse because they're too cheap to pay for parking.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Also, they wanted to see the spaceship land.

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Yeah, yeah, so they could row one reference. Mercy strips down to uh Whitesnake, apparently, and puts an Acme backpack on and then takes a little siesta. John Julian then wakes her up and leads her through an amazing display of crates. Ow. And then they enter an office space where Adam and Jesse are held captive for not putting a cover sheet on their TPS reports. And there's a creepy card who takes Jesse to the bathroom. And she returns with a bruise on her face, and oh, that's not good. And then Adam stirs from uh his silver ware roofies, that's hard to say. I think I took a ware roofie. Then Mercy uses Zginsu knife to free Adam in chains. Yeah, see what I did there?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I do not appreciate it. I just recognize it.

SPEAKER_04 1:48

Yep. And then Adam has a seizure just like grandma used to make and starts sweating silver bullets. Mercy adds WD40 to coffee to wake him up. Housekeeping surprises the crew and then gets a heartfelt response, like three of them.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Belt it's right in the chest, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:07

Yep. Adam calls on the power of Grey Wolf. Evil beast man comes in through the door and breaks Mercy's arm and attacks Adam. Then a red wolf rockets and slams the attacker away. Mercy recognizes scent of the guard who hurt Jesse and shoots him three times for wearing too much axe body spray. Appropriate. Yeah, then Adam empties his clip into him, then lifts his leg on him.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

As one should. I get I get that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:30

Yeah, and the wolves show up. Mercy, Warren, and Jesse hot wire truck. Mercy does it with one arm broken behind her back, and they take the truck to get the keys for it. Mercy senses a presence of magic, but she's not sure which one. Shots get fired, Adam howls and forces the wolves to change and assemble Voltron. And then Jerry gets summoned, reveals his plan, and then gets his next snap by Samuel for it being too convoluted. And I think that's about where we're at.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

That's fair, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I believe last week we described it as a family circus comic of a plan.

SPEAKER_04 3:07

Yep. Yeah. And then there's one more recap where Brand takes Doc Wallace out for a run and a nice dirt nap.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

That was about as far as we got into the uh epilogue stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:18

So we have some more epiloguing to do.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:21

So hope it's clear cut. Epilogue. The best puns are when you have to explain them.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

We get to see some of the repercussions of the warehouse stuff. Mercy has to go to work, but you know, her arm's still broke it because those take time to heal, it turns out, when you're not a werewolf.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

When you're not a werewolf. Yeah, that's not a sleep it off kind of a thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

So uh she we actually meet Gabriel for the first time. And instead of just hearing people talk about him.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

He was mentioned repeatedly, and now we actually get to meet him. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Uh and she's like, Great, I didn't want to do this paperwork anyway. Here you go. Um, I thought one of the cute things was that she was like, he was like, no, no, no, I'm not gonna make that because you know she she did what many of us do and uh upped the price she was gonna pay him because it didn't look right and she felt bad. Anyway, he's like, I'm not worth that, but I will be by the end of whatever time.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Which I really liked. I I I also feel like that tells us something about Gabriel too in that moment, you know. Like he's not seeing it as strictly transactional. Like, I'm doing this to pay off what my mom owes on the car, but then also was like, you know, but this could be a good opportunity for me, so I'm gonna I'm gonna run with it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

But then it was it was like that's not what I'm worth now. So the realistic part, but also the confidence of, but I'm gonna get there.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah. Anytime anybody gives you a yet, like that should be a thing that you kind of pay attention to.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Unlike somebody that uh we've known in the past life who always insisted that he had those skills now.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Oh, I mean, everybody knows that guy.

SPEAKER_04 5:07

Yeah. Quite profession, haven't never done it.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

But he's talked about it a lot. Yeah. Anyway. They always have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:18

We watched a YouTube video on it, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Pretty much an expert. Speaking of people we keep hearing about but don't see forever, we also have a little bit where Z's worried about Tad off at college, like, oh, is he okay? She's like, I'm sure he's okay. Because he doesn't make his on-screen appearance until customed.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Yeah. Yeah. But also, this is one of the as yet, I think, um, unsolved mysteries of the books is um Tad was a fun, upbeat, you know, ray of sunshine kind of guy, and came back.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

A Faye of sunshine.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

A fee of sun. Oh a fee of sunshine. And and and came home uh completely goth, I think.

SPEAKER_04 6:08

Umps.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

He had a chemical romance apparently in taking after his dad a lot more than anybody expected, I think is kind of where we're at.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Which is interesting because we only hear tale about the other one, because again, other than a phone call, we don't actually meet him until Frostburn, which is post-honeymoon. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. It's a minute. I thought he popped up. I don't know that we're getting to Frostburn this year in 2026. It's a tad bit late. Oh no, I actually bet against us getting to Frostburn.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Anyway. The thing with him is that like we keep hearing about this. That's the reason I sort of remember it is. We keep hearing something happened while he was gone, and we'll never know what it is.

SPEAKER_04 7:01

He wants to get to the bottom of the state. Yeah, whoever did it, and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

We keep hearing that, and yet as long as we're on this tangent, I thought that might have been also one of the whatever happened to him is part of what's worrying him so much about Gabriel's sudden uh engagement and marriage that's happening. Um because he's like, What happened? He's right to be worried. It was also like, why didn't anybody else get an invitation that knew him? He's right to be concerned. I was concerned in the previous book about whatever girl he was dating all of a sudden. But I also wonder if like whatever jaded him is also making him wary, even if he doesn't think it's the same thing. If he's like, Oh, something I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Oh. I could see it being similar. Like maybe he was on the verge of getting engaged or something at college, and something changed and was like, oh no, no, and then Gabriel, and he's like, uh I've been down this road. I know how this ends. This is not this is not good for anybody.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

It is literally his job to keep Jesse safe.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah, but maybe something like that, like that I could see, like maybe being an issue that that they're debating about or whatever. But this is one of those things that I feel like we've heard about it enough in a non-humorous way. Like, this isn't Norm's wife on cheers, right? Like, this isn't a a running bit about somebody you're never gonna see. Um you know, like I feel like it's gonna end up addressed eventually. No, I mean the thing. Like Yeah, we've continued to talk about it and mention it, and then it's come it's come up over and over.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

When we see whatever nonsense happens with Gabriel's wedding or aftermath of it or whatever, I I assume that it will come out in that. But I don't know. I also know that she has backstories that she's not sure if she'll ever mention in the book, so maybe we're just being teased. What are your other names, Sherwood? Wink wink Rasputin.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Um It wasn't until we started actually talking about it that I realized that you know how sometimes like you have a fact in your brain and you have another fact in your brain, and then it at some point you end up putting them together and realizing that they don't add up. But like it doesn't occur to you for a really long time. You know, when you when when you're a kid and you find out like your grandparents are divorced and you have like grandma on somebody and grandpa on somebody, and then you realize at some point, wait, they were married because that's my mom's mom and that's my mom's dad. But they're not married anymore. You have that moment. I am now having this we saw the invitation. It's now Chekhov's invitation.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

It was Chekhov's.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

What is the wedding?

SPEAKER_01 9:58

There's not been a wedding in all of the time, in all of the things that have happened since this book, Gabriel never got married.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Oh no, the the wedding invitation was in the the storm one.

SPEAKER_04 10:13

Yeah, the last one.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Oh, it was?

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Okay. That's what I'm thinking of. Alright. Maybe we don't find out.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

This was us on a tangent about future books. There's no question. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

I feel a little better about it because I'm like, wait, we never did see how that turned out. And then I read, okay, no. We've only been waiting for like a book or two. So okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Which, in fairness, in our time is a year and a half.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

That's true. That's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Our timeline and their timeline's not as we've discussed, not the same.

SPEAKER_04 10:43

Patty writes her books in Underhill.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

But also, the books kind of have that timeline. Like a couple of the books are like, Here's what I did on my summer vacation, and some of them are like, here's what I did last weekend. Half of this book takes place over the series of 48 hours. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Yeah. And what's the timeline between the books? Like that too.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:18

I mean, now they probably have eye pagers and everything. Yeah, to bring the pagers in. That's what Apple needs to capitalize on. You need to get an iPager.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

We have it. It's called the walkie-talkie feature on our watch. Oh. So the first thing we hear Gabriel say after like as he's greeting his first customer is Hello. Hello. And it's Jesse. He's talking.

SPEAKER_04 11:48

Yeah, what have we here? Hey.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

He's into the uh short glitter-tipped hair.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

One thing I have appreciated about these is the evolution of Jesse's hair across the school series.

SPEAKER_04 12:04

You certainly belong here with us among the wrenches. Oh no. That hurt my head. Actually hurt. The Empire Strikes Pack. Oh. I'm full of them today. Yeah. I know. Out of the pack. I'll see. Get your coat. Now that I've sidetracked us.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

We we realize that Jesse should um never assume that just because somebody's gay means they have a particular set of skills. Um and I don't know why she asked Warren to cut her hair in the first place, but okay. Kyle would have been a better bet anyway, but whatever. I'm not saying he can cut hair. I'm just saying if you're asking the cowboy or the lawyer, I'm gonna go with the lawyer.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

Well, to be fair, Warren is quite old, and you think he might have cut hair or two. How to cut women's hair in that time?

SPEAKER_01 12:55

If it if it only needs to be short, I mean, like, he was home on the range for quite a while, as as we've been led to believe. Like I would feel pretty secure thinking that that fella's probably capable of cutting his own hair.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

His own sure. But a 16-year-old? Girls?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Maybe not. It's always about to change, so it's not like it's necessarily tragedy if it's a bad haircut for Jesse. It would not surprise me in the least if she looked at it and went nah. And shaved it all off. Like hey dad, you know how you got tired of me dyeing my hair? Watch this.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Alright, so what's gonna happen with Jesse, this character we've come to care about and want to rescue and not see hurt? Well, turns out she's gonna be staying with dad for a while because she finally told her dad about all the crappy stuff her mom's been doing.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

A character we will get to learn, we will get to know and hate.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Hate so much. So she's gonna stay for the summer and then we'll find out, and then the next book's in the summer anyway, and the first thing she does is come back to live with them.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

As a person who has a father who has made a questionable marriage decision in his past, um, I am here to tell you it's really fun to read about her.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Oh, yeah. I mean, I enjoy hating her. Let's be clear.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Very much, very, very much.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

But like back in the day when I was reading Harry Potter, I really loved reading all the parts with the Dursleys. Dursleys, because I enjoyed disliking them very much.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yes. Agreed.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

I love me a Dursley. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Honestly, the only the only sad thing about getting to meet Christy is um uh it made me realize all the things I could have done to the ex in question. Um, you know, the blue shampoo would have been amazing.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

If only we'd introduced you to that back then.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

If only it had existed even before pagers, let me say. Yeah. Um because yeah, teenage Kelly really could have used some inspiration like that.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

I'm just gonna leave it there.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

Jesse's like, hey, we're gonna buy you, we're gonna take you out to dinner. It'll be great. And he's like, great, go away now, because you're whiny.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

That's fine. Now shoot. Oh yeah, now here comes Tony. Yeah, yeah. Coolit man, the cops.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Yeah. What's up? And she tells him the truth, like in a silly way, and he's like, whoa, well, that must be terrible if you won't tell the truth about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

And I love when that works. Like I've seen that it's a it's a like a common thing you see in stories sometimes. Like, I'm just gonna tell you the actual thing, and you're gonna go, oh ha ha. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

It was a tactic I might have employed more than once as a teenager. Oh, really? I was doing blah blah blah, and then I wasn't questioned about it again. Yeah. Yeah. It works. Just saying. I hope my children don't watch this.

SPEAKER_04 16:08

Double parked in the Astro Van.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

I did learn to drive on an Astro Van, which can get up a hill, just for the record. Um with the right engine. Uh Gabriel comes in and sees Tony and loses his mind, because apparently he thinks it's the school bully, even though he already knows Tony, proving how much his disguises work on everybody.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

On the rest of the world, who is not Mercy?

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Um, and Tony's like, hey, we found this thing for Mac. This is this was his name, and blah blah blah. She's like, Yeah, I hadn't seen him since the last day he worked, and not alive anyway.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

Yeah, then the dinner date.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Where Jesse mysteriously needs to stay home so that it's an actual date.

SPEAKER_04 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

I'm sick.

SPEAKER_04 16:58

And they're they're flirting and uh Adam orders a fancy dessert. Mercy's like, oh, I'm not gonna turn that down. I wouldn't order it from myself, but if you insist Exactly, I'll eat that.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

So they're uh having a little uh flirty kissy stuff when um Samuel comes out.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

And I hope, listeners, that you are used to that and that you enjoy it because this is the dynamic of their entire relationship until the heat death of the universe. This is always going to be the two of them.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Oh, that they're doing flirty stuff? Oh, okay. I thought they were gonna get C3POs.

SPEAKER_04 17:41

Yeah, Samuel, C3POs.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Oh no, no, just the you know, will you pass the salt? You know, like everything turns into a like you can hear the eyebrows wiggling when they say a thing.

SPEAKER_04 17:53

Yeah, or the code word that isn't a code word of nudge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:57

It's not a code word if the whole package is. Everybody knows what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

If the whole world knows your secret, guess what, dude? It ain't a secret. I would think a fella who had been in the military would understand operational security. Ops needs to be the barest minimum. And this is not IT Kelly talking. This is just regular Kelly talking. If you were in the army and you were of any sort of rank, then you had secret stuff. You know what secret stuff is, you know how to keep secret stuff secret. Not anymore.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

All his devices keep getting hacked because his password is nudge.

unknown 18:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

And he was, oh, dude. Like he was alive in the era of loose lip sink ships and apparently does not understand the FS Pack is heading for an iceberg. Dude. All right, hold on. Let me get down off my soapbox now. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 18:55

Yeah. Wonder what they're going to go do.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Gee Willekers. If only we could guess.

SPEAKER_04 19:03

We'll throw them off and just use wink.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Say no more.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

I got that. I caught that reference.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

They flirt over dessert. We have a kind of an odd conversation about predators. Um at that point.

SPEAKER_04 19:23

They make a comment about Brandt, because Brand said, Add him to watch Mercy, and oh, just because I'm I'm not thinking about the this is kind of where it comes out. Yeah, not thinking about the lamb's mommy is like, well, kind of weird if you were.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah, it it got real weird real quick. Yeah. But then we get a little information about our friendly neighborhood swearist, Ben.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Yeah. Yeah. That that he wasn't guilty of stuff. Yeah. Which, I mean.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

The stuff everybody thought he did.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Him do!

SPEAKER_04 19:58

Still not uh been there, didn't do that.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

Yeah. But he's still got whatever, past stuff. Still not somebody you really want around Jesse.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

This does not make him any more pleasant of a human being, to be fair. Any more pleasant of a a person to be around, a creature to be a big thing.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Other than I don't love Ben later, but like at this point, we're still not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

As of now, yeah, as of as of now, he is still pharmaceutical grade a-hole, regardless of whether or not he's actually guilty of things he's been accused of. That does not make him that does not mean, well, he's just so pleasant the rest of the time. Like A-hole doesn't make you guilty. No, it does not. He he ends up being one of my favorites, even though I really want like I want to be able to pay an extra couple of dollars for the unfiltered version of everything that Ben said. I want the parental warning explicit lyrics version of the book, just so I can hear what Ben is actually saying.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Because I appreciate someone who works in profanity quite in that in in quite that fashion. And uh yeah, I mean, maybe I could expand my vocabulary. It pays to enrich your word power, your four-letter word power. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:15

And he is a swear wolf. See? That'd be a good book for for Ben. Swearwolf. Swearwolf. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, moving on. So where are we after that? I don't know. We get through the porch for porch drinks. Yeah. And Samuel's like, oh no. Comes out as C3PO.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Interrupting, and we we do occasionally call our toddler 3PO. So he he interrupts, and then Samuel and Adam are doing one upmanship things, and Mercy realizes this isn't really about her. And it's on something comfortable and leaving.

SPEAKER_04 21:57

I'm putting on sweats and I'm gonna. Go work on a Vanigan with a vampire.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Again, deeply relatable. I've been cosplaying as an adult for several hours in a row. It's time to stop. As far as I'm concerned, this is a very, very much a thing that is very dear to my heart. Like, yeah, I went and put on, I went and put on some nice clothes and got all gussied up to go do a thing. Okay. I've been an adult long enough. I'm gonna go put on some sweats and play Nintendo. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

So yeah, she's gonna go work with Stefan, who is like, yeah, that sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'd get into.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

I like that his reaction to the whole thing is very like, it's very on brand for you. Hand me a wrench. Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Even though this really is her first like wild adventure of this kind. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

But an interesting thing about that is that all of this is very logical. As we get to know her, it's not like you come back to this book and go, wow, current Mercy, you know, book six Mercy, book 11 Mercy would never have done what book one Mercy did. No, no.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

No, no, she's consistent. It's just her life events previous to this book are not the same.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Are pretty low-key, relatively. Yeah. But that is the thing I appreciate about her because I have read, I have been involved with series, book series, TV series, etc., where all of a sudden, just to shake things up, we get somebody um doing the exact opposite of what you've known them to do all along. They've been in this exact position before, and they've always gone left. And this time, just so that the story is more interesting, they're going right. They don't have any different reasons. We don't have any other external factors causing them to make a different decision, except somebody went, what if you did this instead? And it always makes me crazy because you need to give somebody, you need to give the character the character needs a reason to do the thing they do, just like people. And so when somebody has that flip like that out of nowhere, when you don't see it coming, you're not sure what it's for, you don't know why that's doing what they're why they're doing what they're doing. And I always find it very frustrating. And I have given up on a couple of series for this reason. Like you got to this point, and then every character that I have cared about is now doing the opposite of everything you led me to believe up to this point they were gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

I need their characters to be consistent. You can change world stuff. Right. We won't give any spoilers to Kelly about other things, but And give them a factor.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Like, well, now that I know this, now that I've done that, maybe my choice is. Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

A character may do something different in a different situation because their situation or like life circumstances have changed, or believably different.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah. This is not where I am now.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Not going from oh, look at me, independent queen and senator to ooh, Anakin, you're so great.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

I can't make any decisions without you. Oh.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yep. We can't, we can't, we can't. We're married. Uh-uh.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Well, then you you get you get to the third one, and she just there's no character left. It has been sucked out of the room.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

That is one thing I appreciate about these is that, yeah, this is all pretty mercy-y, and I think that's kind of what Stefan, Stefan.

SPEAKER_04 25:33

Um, there's two different ones. His cousin Stefan.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

His cousin. Oh, yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

I was like 10 and thought he was so hot. I mean, he wasn't bad. What do you mean you saw them skeleton crew? You're still like, they gave him such a crap roll in skeleton crew. They did. I love skeleton crew, but man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:57

They could have used him more. It was they could have.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

They could have used him better. I don't the number of scenes was fine one way or the other, but the the usage was bad.

SPEAKER_04 26:05

I I would have loved it if they had him do a thing and he's like, oh, did I do that?

SPEAKER_01 26:11

That would have been fun. Yeah. I like it. I like a nod like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

But no, it was just like, let's give a recognizable face so that the crummy lines for him are more up.

SPEAKER_04 26:21

Or he ends up helping the kids because family matters. I know. Out of the pack. Let's just get back to Moon Call.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

We've wrapped we wrapped up Moon Call.

SPEAKER_04 26:32

Spoilers for skeleton crew also.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

Do we dare try doing 10 minutes of Blood Bound? Or pagers.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

I think we just kinda maybe we should just wrap this one up. Like, you know, um like overall, overall. Because this was the one I think I read first when you were like, hey, you're from that area. Like, here's some fun books. Maybe check them out. Here's the first one. And I went and checked it out and enjoyed it. And what I liked about it was the the gradual of it. Like, we're gonna meet somebody, here's who she is, here's what she does, here's her deal. And then I liked how it unfolded, like the world building of it and and all of that. I really enjoyed getting into that like the first time through, which is way more recent for me than it is for you, obviously. But um, like I did overall I did enjoy this, and it did make it so that I was actually interested in reading more of these books and not just um uh not like that was fine. Like I kind of wanted to find out what the next thing was that was gonna happen. I enjoyed that. Eric, I think you came to them probably after Britney did too, right?

SPEAKER_04 27:40

Yeah, because she's the one that introduced me to them, and that's yeah. Normally not my jam, that's that kind of book, but you know, the coyote who's a mechanic and uh lives in a trailer, and like, okay. And it was well written, the mechanic part and uh trailer, though me and Brittany have been discussing it's a single wide trailer in three bedrooms. No, that's not a thing. You have to have a double wide. I grew up in a trailer, single wide, two bedrooms. You can't put a third max.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

This is mostly from the very start of Blood Bound that we started going on about this, but like it's a single wide, and she's like, Yeah, he had it gave him the larger of my two spare bedrooms. It's like not in a single wide, you're not. Stefan sleeps in her closet and he's a tall guy and can be stretched out.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

No, double wide, baby.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Yeah, like not this. I'm sorry, it's not a single wide.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

You can sleep, it's not just standing up at an angle towards the closet.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah. There it is. Yeah. Yeah, no, this is not a single wide situation. There's no way.

SPEAKER_04 28:46

I mean, I'd like to find a trailer like that, don't get me wrong, but wouldn't we all?

SPEAKER_03 28:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:53

Man, I dreamed of a double wide luxury. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, geez, double wide. Oh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Oh, that was the that was the dream. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:05

Oh, yeah. Still is. That is actually about the square footage of our house. Actually, what I always like, no, I want a double high trailer.

unknown 29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

That's what you need, a single wide with an upstairs.

SPEAKER_04 29:20

Yeah. They do great in the wind.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Yeah, that'd be fantastic. Oh, yeah. It's pretty far from my first reading of this book, so it's definitely a blur. Also, I wasn't sleeping that much in grad school. But like, I'll say, having been through a lot more of them now, this is not my favorite like climactic battle scene. Oh, like there's there's a lot of waiting, and although we're not forced to do the waiting, like my imagination fills in a lot of waiting. And like, it's it's not my favorite, but I liked it. And it it's a first one, like it is the introduction. I kept going.

SPEAKER_04 30:00

It lays a solid groundwork for yeah. Because we do meet a lot of people, but not in depth, like we meet Charles, but there's not a lot about him, other than he's terrifying.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

It's fun and low stakes, like it it ends on sort of a jokey note, like it's a very there's a reason we listen to them a bunch, and they're very comfortable books. Yeah. They're fuzzy.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Yeah, I like the and this one relatively compared to the a lot of the rest of them, is basically a cozy mystery because yeah, someone died, but it wasn't hugely impactful to the rest of the world that this was a person that died, which sounds terrible, but it wasn't the main bad guy in charge of everything. It wasn't if this person dies, then the world's gonna end. It wasn't, you know, any of this kind of stuff like we get later. So relatively to everything else, this is basically a cozy mystery. And it does wrap up at the end. This is what happened, somebody died, and now we get to the end, and by the time we get to the end, we know who did it, we know why. Kind of. Uh but also we get a lot of of introduction, and we don't get a lot of like, I'm very confused about what's happening, where did what's going on, you know, because we're not trying to jam too much action in and we're not trying to jam too much world building in. So it does a really nice job of telling you a lot about who the people are in her life, what her her world is like, how she moves through a day, how she interacts with all these other people, how she kind of bounces off the people in her life, and how they bounce off each other too. And we get a lot of that, and we get a little bit of backstory because we go back to where she lived when she was a teenager, and we get all of that along with a good introduction, like enough about people to not confuse anybody with anybody. Like, there's never a point when I'm like, wait, which one was the vampire? Which one was the guy that runs everything? Saruman. Yeah, it wasn't the hobbit where like all the hobbits have the same rhyming names, you know, and you kind of have to think Yeah. Like I didn't have to get a notebook and write everybody's name down and then figure out which one was which, like, none of that. So I really appreciated that in an introductory book because sometimes an author could get really caught up in trying to build the world because they think the world is really cool, or they can get caught up in introducing you to all the characters, which is how you get Game of Thrones, and it can be really hard to keep track and it can be hard to follow. And that was one thing I liked about this one. I know we meet other people later. There are a lot more characters to come populate this place, but I really liked the balance of it because like things are always happening and we're always meeting people, but it never feels overwhelming at any point, and it's never I was never confused about like what's what's going on, what are they doing, how does this work? Like, none of that was ever um up it up for debate. Like, I could always kind of follow everything along, and that felt a little better. So I appreciated it for that.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Because it's a first person, I still think I mean somebody might try Alpha and Omega first, but I recommend starting with Mercy Thompson because it's a first person, and even though there's tons of characters, you can like radiate them out from mercy, and when you need to learn and understand who they are, is not most of them right away.

unknown 33:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

She's like Kevin Bacon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Six degrees of Mercy Thompson.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Everybody in one of these books is only six degrees from Mercy Thompson.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Or or one, really, because from her perspective.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

The deal was no more than six. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

So, like, as as she gets to know the pack better, we will learn more people in the pack. But right now, that's what we've got. Something you said earlier, I do want to push back on, like, there really isn't ever a big bad that we get. I mean, yes, there is one that is bigger and badder and has a single name as opposed to a shared like family name. But as far as we know, Bona Rada ain't got nothing to do with the hardest-y witches. Right. Um, they're they're in it for themselves. Like, even though some like bad stuff comes from the Faye that we're not a fan of, like, it's mostly some people trying to survive and having like different ideas about the best way for their people to survive, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Yeah. But like we get a Frost Giant, we get a we get one of these, we get one of those, and we get yeah, and elemental whatevers and all that kind of stuff. Like, once we, you know, once we get to that stuff, like there would be a lot more fallout when something happens to one of those characters, you know.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

It's a little bit more like real life that the world is not necessarily organized into like here are good guys and here are bad guys.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Yep. You can tell by their hats.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Yep. Yeah. Yep. Thank you so much for joining us next time. We're gonna tackle Blood Bound and start the second book. I know it's crazy. We've only been on this one forever, but we're gonna try to do a new book next time. So thanks for joining us. Uh farewell howl.