Popular Culture Review Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer 2009 | Page 55

Werewolves, Vampires, and Fae • 51 Vampires, with their elaborate power structure and organization including the Seethe and the menageries of the strongest vampires • Fae—including gremlins, forest fae, selkies (seal fairies), ogres, and metalsmiths • Ghosts • Witches—magically talented and economically driven • Sorcerers • Demons All of Briggs’s preternatural characters are fully contemporary, use the Internet, may sell items on eBay, are well educated with degrees in teaching or research, and reflect diversity of race, ethnicity, and lifestyle. They fit into contemporary society better than Anne Rice’s famous vampire Lestat who confesses, in The Tale o f the Body Thief that common items found in a WalMart or drugstore leave him “enthralled for hours on end” despite having lived through two centuries of the Industrial Revolution (Rice 15). The werewolves have diverse backgrounds and talents, with their human characters holding research or teaching posts, owning small businesses, being employed as computer geeks, practicing medicine, or dabbling in national politics. One wolf/human character is gay; another was bom to a Chinese mother and an African father. While the wolf pack structure is the dominant hierarchy, Alpha werewolves meet twice a year at corporate headquarters, providing a distinctly civilizing but ironic approach to werewolf organizational life. Several motifs are woven throughout the three novels that complement the focus on evil and love. Most important is the interrelationship of power, control, and dominance. First, each of the preternatural species has its own unique source of power—physical or emotional/mental—and can use this power to control or dominate other characters. Power is also derived from sources of magic, the dominance of the species, or the assumed role of one of the creatures (such as the Alpha wolf of the pack or the Mistress of the vampire Seethe). Power can also be harnessed from the species when the leader needs more force and energy to overpower the enemy. The need for control is a second critical motif. Mercy has a great need to be in control of her person, life, and destiny. Her desire for control may evolve from an appreciation of her uniqueness. There are no other known coyote shapeshifters, a notion that makes her both proud and wary. So Mercy works very hard to retain her individual identity instead of becoming the possession of a werewolf. Throughout these three novels, she resists the relatively chaste but intense advances of werewolves Dr. Samuel Comick and Alpha pack leader Ada m Hauptman, each of whom want Mercy as a mate. As we learn in the third novel, Iron Kissed, a wolf that declares a mate does not necessarily love the creature in human terms, a factor that has haunted Mercy since she first fell in love with the werewolf Samuel as a teenager. Dominance is the third of the interrelated motifs of power and control. Just as each wolf pack has a dominant Alpha, with a dominant leader or Marrock