I now get why a lot of reviewers complained about how slow this book was. Oh lord it was slow. I think all of the interludes just were unnecessary. I will post a full review later.

Full review: Well. That was a book. I don't even know what to say anymore about the Mercy Thompson series outside of saying, well it's better than the Alpha and Omega series. And I swear at times two different people are writing this series because in this one, we have Mercy being the same as always, but Alpha and Omega went south when they acted like Mercy wanted to be with Bran like a woman and man and not like a daughter. I will not rehash that whole mess. But the readers were in revolt.

In "Winter Lost" we still have Mercy dealing with the effects of the Soul Taker. She's wide open to everything and she is not herself. Those around her worry she's going to eventually lose her mind if they can't block what is being done to her. With the Pack still being the absolutely worst (yeah I said it) Mercy and Adam are thrown when Mercy's brother Gary shows up and he can't speak and tries to attack Adam. When Mercy realizes something has been done to them, here we get some more of the Norse gods/fae (yeah I don't know, I just gave up). 

I have to say that I loved the overall plot and if we had just jumped between Mercy and Adam I would have given this 5 stars. But my goodness, the interludes people. The interludes outside of some key players should have been cut. Off the top off my head, Jesse, Tad, Warren, Sherwood, etc. etc. I was like what is going on? This is not remotely interesting. Each time Briggs did that it made the book slow to a crawl. I wanted to stay with Mercy and Adam investigating and being in love. It reminded me of "River Marked" in a good way and I wish we could have stayed with that vibe throughout. Also, just realized that book was 8 book ago (sheesh). I would have saved these interludes for a short story collection because that is where they needed to be. 

The setting of this one changes to Montana and once again Norse fae/gods and original spirts of the land. I liked it and was very interested in the cast of characters we get involved with though and would love to hear about them again. It sounded very very messy. 

The ending was really good. Look I love Coyote. He's the only one so far that hasn't driven me up the wall. I also find myself bored by a whole threat via the "supreme" vampire and I am just sick of hearing about Bran. He's a terrible father/figure and him popping up in the last book was not appreciated at all. I sadly keep rooting for him to get murdered and be done. 

The book still leaves a lot of things unresolved. I just wonder how much longer this series can keep chugging along.