Iron Kissed
Patricia Briggs

You never really attach to characters until they’re broken. Sure, you may admire them, think they’re interesting, or funny — but the moment of truth doesn’t come until they’re pushed past their yield point, squeezed until they shatter. The yield point, in material science, is the point when the plastic deformation is to some extent non-reversible. Repairs, of course, will straighten out your twisted psyche, but some of the damage will be permanent.

And watching characters fighting to pull themselves together, to cobble their pieces into a functioning framework? That’s the most gut-wrenching, truthful experience you will find in literature. Because damaged characters are the most interesting. And as  says:

The only broken that matters is when you lie down and don’t get back up again.

Everything else is just a bend. *

Someone gets bent in this book. For that reason I think it’s the best of the three so far.

I anticipated the centrality of the Gray Lords to the plot, although by no means is their mystery stripped from them. I’m particularly interested in the sea Gray Lord who Mercy runs into, because we don’t see another mention of him. One might mistake Fideal for him, later, but Fideal is a selkie and the sea Gray Lord had no mammalian traces of scent.

Another Gray Lord, the Carrion Crow, takes a stronger role in the book, but her power seems to be weaker than all the hype about the Gray Lords would lead one to expect… I think that’s the reason I look to the sea Gray Lord, for a sign that there are further depths of power that haven’t been exposed yet.

The insight into Zee’s past is useful, especially the brief glimpse where we see his fae form. It’s funny how when he goes back to human appearance, Mercy says he resumes his "real form". Just habit, I suppose.

And, of course, the development of the Adam-Mercy-Samuel thing is quite beautiful, especially with the bending mentioned above.