Storm Cursed

The suspenseful 11th Mercy Thompson urban fantasy opens with the Columbia Basin Pack of shape-shifters contending with a plague of zombies and the unfamiliar witch who must be creating them. When they go to their local gray witch for help, they find her family massacred and evidence that she herself has been practicing black magic. As they dig deeper into the mystery, the pack turns to the local vampire seethe for answers, leading Mercy to reunite with former allies and discover that events from the past may tie in to the zombie incursion. This story brings together a lot of seemingly unrelated plot threads from past novels in a way that feels organic and that doesn’t impede the pacing of the current mystery. Fans of the series will enjoy this solid addition, but new readers might find that there’s too much history to make this story work as an ingress point. (May)