Mistral's Kiss (Meredith Gentry, Book 5) (original 2006; edition 2006)

I don't know of anyone who writes about sex and magic any better than Hamilton in this Meredith Gentry series. This installment moved slightly slower than some of the earlier books in the series, not advancing the narrative so much as exploring relationships and showingcasing some massive conflicts, but it will still be enjoyable for fans of the series. Truthfully, I should add that the early part of the novel had me wondering whether there'd be anything in the book But lovely description and sex, to the extent that I wondered whether I'd ever classify a Hamilton book as verging on porn, or just pornographic....But, I'm glad to say that the second portion of the book moved on in a fashion that left that worry to the earlier sections, focusing instead on magic and character and narrative. All in all, this isn't one of the books that keeps me coming back to Hamilton's work, but I enjoyed it for what it was. And, then again, it is her fascinating characters who keep me returning to her work again and again, so maybe it is all the same. Regardless, I don't think anyone who hasn't read the earlier books would get anything much out of this book, but I still recommend the series to lovers of dark fantasy who don't mind an R-rating (for sex and violence, as is always the case with Hamilton in this series) on their entertainment... ( )

When A Stroke of Midnight left off, Meredith and company are still holed up in the underground fairy mound of the Unseelie Court, with the princess still trying to get pregnant. Mistral, one of the queen's guards, is on temporary loan to Meredith after the recent attempt on her life. The powers that they stir up affect some serious changes in the land of faerie, none of which make Queen Andais happy. Sholto, King of the Sluagh, comes to terms with Merry and awakens the Wild Hunt. Again, the book takes place in approximately one day. ( )

This book starts with a dream-vision. As usual, Merry has plenty of sex that restores lost power or gives power where there had been none. Merry also has plenty of comforting to do. There's deadly danger and cruelty as well as magic. There are also dogs, lots of dogs. This is the book where Merry figures out which of her lovers is her favorite. Sholto fans may enjoy the developments in his life. There's dark doings at the Seelie Court. A couple more enemies bite the dust.

I really like this series, but Merry's sex life seems just too helpful for her people.

SPOILER ALERT-- the following facts are meant to help my memory, but if they help you, too, great:

CHAPTER 1:

Merry has the cookies and sex dream.

She no longer lives in her L.A. apartment.

The dream changes and she's in the snow with a cute white piglet that swiftly grows. This is also the dream with the gold-striped tawny piglet. She meets her god who hands her a horn cup with a white knife in it. He bids her to drink and be merry.

Merry tells us that power is the most intoxicating drink of all.

CHAPTER 2:

Merry awakens in her aunt's bed with its black silk sheets and fur covering. She's surrounded by a circle of faces, but Crystall's isn't among them. There are 15 men around the bed.

Kitto was more than 1,000 years old before Christianity was a word.

Kitto gets nervous when Merry silently stares at him.

In Merry's right hand is '...a cup formed of horn, the horn ancient and yellowed, held in gold that bore symbols that few outside faerie could read now.' (The white knife isn't in her other hand.)

The cup used to be Abe's.

Merry figures out that Abeloc wasn't thrown out of the Seelie Court for seducing the wrong woman, as believed, but because he lost his power.

Abe's tear falls into the cup, which fills with liquid.

Abe gives his speech about belonging to a king once and then a queen, but never belonging to a princess before. Merry and Rhys get to reassure him before he drinks.

Rhys tells Abe that the princess has very American ideas about free will.

We are reminded that Doyle was once Nodens, a god of healing.

Abe drinks and becomes the intoxicating cup of honeyed mead, so to speak.

This is the chapter of blue lines forming on the skin of many of the guards. No lines cover Nicca.

Mistral's eyes turn the 'swimming green of the sky before a great storm breaks, destroying all in its path.' Only great anxiety or great anger can turn his eyes that color, Long ago the sky would change to the color of Mistral's eyes.

At the end of the chapter Merry finds herself in the dead gardens with Mistral, Abe, Galen, Rhys, Frost and Doyle.

CHAPTER 3:

It's a sex scene until Auntie Andais shows up to kill the mood. She was looking for Mistral. Since he was in the dark, she found him. There was a wind blowing. It dies. No wind has blown there in centuries.

Andais pulls a blade on Mistral. It's Mortal Dread.

Rhys has a pale blue salmon mark on the underside of his right arm. Merry explains the significance of salmon.

Because Merry drank of Abeloc's cup, he should be able to persuade her of almost anything -- if she were human. Abe figures she's not human enough.

Essus never told Merry about that salmon mark for the same reason Galen doesn't know. The younger ones have never been told. We're hearing about the significance of the marks and human followers painting them on again. (see chapter 36 of A Stroke of Midnight.

Rhys hasn't had that mark in 4,000 years.

Frost bears the mark of a small, dead, leafless tree in what might be a snowbank. He's never held such a mark before. He wasn't fully sidhe the last time the sidhe held such favors.

Most of the guys have a sword or dagger on them, but only Doyle and Frost have guns. Rhys left his gun in the bedroom -- with his clothes.

Andais is a creature of her temper, which she always indulges, but not now. Such self-restraint from her is rare.

Mistral came to the bedroom to intercede for Nerys' clan.
Andais speaks of the Nerys clan's murder attempt in Seduced by Moonlight as taking place 'last night'.

Because it was Mortal Dread that made the small cut on Mistral's throat, the cut will heal as slowly as a human cut.

Andais likes people to be afraid of her.

Andais has had metal chains put on the members of Nerys' clan so they can't work magic. Andais offered the men a chance to join her Ravens and the women a chance to join Cel's Cranes. If they refuse, Ezekiel and his helpers will wall them up alive. In short, Andais is pixieing on the bargain she made with Nerys, but not breaking it because the clan won't actually die, just suffer terrible hunger and thirst.

Rhys brings up that obviously false statement that the sidhe never lie again.

Doyle bargains with Andais to have Meredith alone choose Nerys' people's punishment.

Despite the oft-repeated bit about older fey being offended by being thanked, Merry thanks her aunt and isn't punished for it.

Andais likes to give pain, not receive it. She likes a little teeth, a little nails, but not as much as Mistral caused when he bit Merry on her breast.

Merry likes being bitten just short of breaking the skin and she likes being scratched by fingernails harder than being bitten -- so long as the foreplay has been done.

Abeloc is going to be the foreplay, in this case, sex not as hard as Mistral intends.

CHAPTER 4:

It's a sex chapter, but Merry brings up the car door punch again (bloodied her hand but didn't break it), and finds a way to let Mistral know he's hurting her too much.

CHAPTER 5:

There's a description of what's happening to the other men. Galen's body is convulsing.

At one time Abeloec gave the power of sovereignity to queens, as Medb did to kings, but was forgotten when there were no more votes for queens. He was just Accasbel.

Mistral is bringing up a storm.

CHAPTER 6:

Mistral cries after he has sex with Merry -- at first she thought it was the rain.

Lines of blue, green, and red encircle Merry, Mistral, and Abeloec.

More sex for the rest of the chapter.

CHAPTER 7:

There's a soft spring rain and sky.

Only Doyle, Frost, and Rhys are still outside the circle. The garden took the other men.

Merry has to order her remaining men to move so she can see what they're seeing. They don't move until Frost orders them to do what she said. Aisling's chest has been pierced by a tree branch.

There are no stories about sidhe living after the heart is gone.

CHAPTER 8:

Galen was swallowed up by the ground. Frost couldn't hold him. According to Mistral, sometimes, on this side of the veil, being consumed by one's power is not as gentle as vision.

Merry forgets and wishes aloud the rain would stop. It does. Doyle reminds her and she corrects that.

Nicca vanished as if he became air. Mistral says he was taken by his sphere of influence. Air, earth.

Hawthorne was engulfed by a tree. He went smiling. Galen and Nicca didn't, but Doyle explains they were never worshipped. They didn't know how to relax into the power. If you fight it, it fights back.

The sidhe were able to travel by air, earth, and trees a thousand years before Merry and Galen were born. Nicca was too weak to be a god.

Abe says once he didn't just make queens, he made goddesses. Drink the drink of the gods and sometimes become immortal, the Greeks believed. Abe and Medb's power gave the gods and goddesses of their pantheon their power. The colored lines paint the skin.

Rhys' faint fish mark isn't faint anymore. It also has a companion fish swimming in the other direction, both forming a circle. (one down, one up)

Celtic death deities were also healing deities. Rhys gets to try to bring Aisling back. We get to read about what happened to his followers when he lost the ability to heal. He never lost the ability to kill small creatures with a touch.

Rhys brings up if he thought Merry really loved him...

Aisling's body transforms before Rhys can touch him. The cavern walls are farther away. The dead gardens were once a whole world -- forests, streams, lakes, and wonders. It's been centuries since Rhys has seen anything like this in any faerie mound.

Doyle is jealous of Mistral.

Doyle has red lines on his chest. (Hope they don't interfere with Merry's mark on his chest that he got in chapter 37 of A Stroke of Midnight.) Andais will trace them and say 'Puppy dogs'.

Queen Andais shows up in time to hear Abeloec tell Doyle he found Andais' service cruel. Oops!

Andais is happy with the sky and rain, but not the mud.

Merry's moth is just a tattoo now.

Sex and hatred have always mixed well for Andais.

Andais thinks Merry will make the Unseelie Court a pale imitation of the Seelie Court.

Once every Faerie mound had a garden or forest or lake at its heart. Every court had another heart, one that reflected the kind of magic that court specialized it.

Mistral doesn't think it would be wise for Merry to reawaken the other, the Hallway of Mortality. He explains. It's scary. (Currently, the torture hall is a null place where most magic doesn't work.) The terrible creatures that could drive mortals insane if even glimpsed disappeared a thousand years ago.

Merry's hands of power are not Seelie magic.

Nerys' house has honor, but Doyle isn't sure they have gratitude. (What about what Elen of the House of Nerys said about them being wrong in chapter 24 of A Stroke of Midnight?)

CHAPTER 9:

There's no longer a door leading to the dead gardens. Sadly, Merry asks for a 'door that leads out of here'.

A golden door appears. Merry remembers not to thank the sithin in time.

An 'invisible finger' carves vines in the doorframe. When they enter, the hallway is black. Rhys remarks that they haven't had a black corridor like in the sithin for years. It's the same kind of rock as in the queen's chamber.

Frost mentions that the hallway where Merry and Mistral had sex is turning into white marble.

Whoops, they're in the Slaugh's mound.

Now they're in a nearly dry lake with bones littering its floor, bones that can cut sidhe flesh (Abe's). They're the bones of the most magical of the Slaugh. When the Slaugh started to fade, there wasn't enough magic left to keep them alive. In short, Merry and company are in the Slaugh's dead gardens.

(Why did Doyle bid Frost to bind Abe's wound instead of licking it healed as they walk along? Need to be ready to fight?)

Rhys spent the 1500s as drunk as he could get.

The stones of the cave wall they're in are warm, not cold. There's a description of the various skeletons.

Sholto appears.

CHAPTER 10:

Sholto has one arm in a sling and his face is bruised. There are four robed figures behind him.

Black Agnes says this is the beginning of their [the sidhe's] invasion.

Merry figures that the shorter robed figure can't be a nightflyer despite speaking in their high-pitched twittering because the guard walks upright.

At some point the nighthags taught Abeloec to be more cautious about where he passed out.

Segna's cloak is yellow.

The tearing of white sidhe flesh amuses the nighthags almost as much as sex.

Merry swears on her honor and the darkness that devours all things -- that second bit is an oath no sidhe would willingly break because of the curse that goes with it.

That the nighthags hide their ugliness is an exception among the Slaugh.

Mortal flesh cannot control any sithin -- so is Merry still mortal?

Most nighthags have a cackling voice, as if they'd swallowed gravel, but Black Agnes has a rich voice.

Sholto's torso has bandages around it.

Agnes is overstepping herself and Sholto is losing patience.

Merry bows to Sholto, which surprises him because she's a princess of the Unseelie Court.

Sholto rips open his bandages. He's been mutilated.

CHAPTER 11:

The look on Merry's face as she saw what was done to him convinces Sholto that she didn't know.

The Seelie mutilated Sholto. How it was done is described.

There's description of what would happen if the sidhe went to war and what Taranis, King of the Seelie, did in A Caress of Twilight.

Merry sees the face of one of Sholto's male guards. He looks like a combination of humanoid and nightflyer, with goblin eyes. Ivar is half goblin, half nightflyer. So is the other male guard, his brother, Fyfe. They're Sholto's paternal uncles.

Agnes brings up the fact that Merry killed her sister, Nerys the Grey (not to be confused with the sidhe lady who gave up her life for her house in chapter 33 of Seduced by Moonlight. For the details about how Merry killed Nerys the Grey, see chapters 14 and 16 of A Kiss of Shadows.

Segna the Gold tries to attack Merry and Sholto's attempt to stop her has unfortunate consequences.

CHAPTER 12:

Rhys remembers a time when Black Agnes was not part of the Slaugh. She remembers when he had other names.

Sholto feels real grief about how severely inured Segna is.

Abeloec's wound is still bleeding.

Sholto asks Segna if she asks for healing or death. She says she wants healing, but she's too far gone. Black Agnes insists that Sholto and Merry do the mercy killing.

Because Merry is a sidhe of the Unseelie Court, she's to be considered a warrior because all such sidhe are warriors.

Merry has had the flu before. Her father made sure she had all her childhood immunizations. There's more talk about duty, etc.

Merry can't bring herself to hate Segna.

CHAPTER 13:

Frost and Doyle enter the water to help Merry get to Segna and to guard her. The water comes up to Merry's shoulders.

Agnes wants Merry dead and Sholto warns her he'd be done with her if she ever raises a hand to Merry again.

There's some negotiating to get the best oath they can that Agnes won't harm Merry while they stand in the dead gardens. (What about sitting, kneeling, or lying down?)

Sholto is weeping for Segna. Agnes and Merry both remember that he didn't weep for Nerys.

Good thing the water comes up only to Merry's chin at the place where Segna is because she has to be standing on her own feet to make the kill.

CHAPTER 14:

Sholto finds the white spear of bone, one of the signs of Kingship for his people, at the bottom of the lake.

Sholto and Merry are on the Island of Bone, which had become merely legendary.

Merry smells roses and Sholto smells herbs before the chalice shows up.

Danu, their goddess, shows up on the island.

A bone dagger, the match for the spear, appears. The dagger was used to slay the old king on the Island of Bone,which was the heart of the Slaugh.

Sholto has to make a choice in order to bring the Island of Bones to life. He doesn't want the first choice. This being a Merry Gentry book, choice 2 is sex.

The Consort shows up, too. He warns Sholto that choice 2 will change the heart of the Slaugh. Merry makes Sholto understand what that means.

CHAPTER 15:

It's time for the sex. They're doing it with the spear and dagger on one side and the chalice on the other.

The ring comes to life and Merry describes it as being like being plunged into water with an electric current.that's strong enough to hurt but not strong enough to heal in it.

Sholto is healed in a way that won't force Merry to worry about his Nightflyer tentacles' appearance anymore.

The spear and the chalice are rolling toward them and will touch them at the same time.

Merry explains that their goddess sometimes pulls them by hand down their path and sometimes she gets behind them and pushes them off the cliff edge.

CHAPTER 16:

Shoto and Merry wind up in a blast of power that splashed the lake over the island.

Doyle reaches Merry and Sholto first. Frost and Mistral's reaction to seeing those three together shows Merry there's bad blood between Doyle and Sholto.

Herbs are growing on the island. Merry thinks of the different types of thyme in her grandmother's herb garden behind the house where her father reared her. Some of the thyme changes to silver thyme, lemon thyme, and golden thyme.

There's an outline of herbs where Shoto was sitting -- basil and peppermint.

Sholto is wearing a crown of herbs, a wreath of thyme and mint. Merry is wearing an anklet of living thyme. A moving plant forms a ring on Sholto's hand and his crown blooms.

Faerie is responding to Sholto, too.

Agnes asks (shouts from the shore) Sholto if he'll give his people their lost power back while the magic of creation burns through him.

Sholto's uncles what to be what they once were.

Agnes says something to which Sholto tells her what he once thought of her and what he now knows. He pronounces a curse upon her. She screams.

Sholto wants the the Slaugh to be powerful again, etc. He wants them [us] to be a fearsome thing. After Merry speaks he adds that he wants them [us] to have a terribly beauty.

Merry's thought brings fireflies to the Island of Bone. She's able to, although she is not Slaugh, because tonight she is queen to Sholto's king.

Sholto calls the Wild Hunt. If you're sidhe, run for your lives!

The dark near the roof of the cavern splits and things boil through.

CHAPTER 17:

Merry talks about crime scenes and how the mind can refuse to make an image out of what it's seeing.

Merry calls for a door and Sholto, the twit, commands no doors.

We have only a hint about how Black Agnes dies.

Merry, with suggestions, creates a place of safety for herself and her men.

Whatever Merry thinks of Mistral, she knows that Frost and Doyle see him as a rival.

Sholto has to flee what he called up because he looks too sidhe.

Rhys figures out how they can escape even with no doors.

At this point, Merry feels she can't leave anyone to the Wild Hunt that's chasing Sholto. Keep that in mind while reading Swallowing Darkness.

Because he's trying to escape the Wild Hunt, Sholto must have changed his mind from chapter 16 wherein he told Rhys that if by his life or death he could bring power back to his people, he would do it.

CHAPTER 18:

They're outside in the snowy parking lot.

The wounded Frost is placed in a car. He and Merry are to be driven to safety, but Merry doesn't want to leave Doyle. Merry uses her power to get away from the car to safety -- no, not either of her fearsome hands of power.

Merry can't see which of the half-Goblin twins is which because it's too dark to see their eyes, but she guesses Holly by his attitude.

The goblins are reluctant to fight since the Wild Hunt is the enemy.

The fey's god and goddess still speak to Jonty the Red Cap.

CHAPTER 19:

Ash and Holly are there, but Merry can't see which of the half-goblin twins is which because it's too dark to see their eyes. She guesses which is Holly by his attitude.

The goblins are reluctant to fight since the Wild Hunt is the enemy.

The fey's god and goddess still speak to Jonty the Red Cap.

CHAPTER 20:

Ash is using his blade and Merry's blood to call Kurag.

Ash, Holly, Jonty -- whoever gets to the rendezvous first will lead the goblins without argument.

Merry finds out that Kitto told the goblins what she did to the Nameless. (see chapter 44 of A Caress of Twilight)

Holly is skeptical that a sidhe could have the full hand of blood.

Jonty's cap is really bleeding -- not just a trickle. Some of that blood is on Merry. Holly is looking at her as if she's wearing perfume and lingerie.

CHAPTER 21:

A dozen Red Caps are out, but only one has stayed back with Merry and Jonty. On the way, they kissed Merry's shoulder. Jonty speaks to them in Gaelic so old Merry can't follow it.

Merry's magic makes blood flow from the caps of the Red Caps. She can't recall the name of the one who explains that to her, but for this magic he'll follow her nameless.

A goblin comes back toward Merry and abases himself. In goblin society, the lower you go, the more respect you feel for the person you're addressing. Merry doesn't usually get that kind of greeting from anyone.

Merry doesn't try to lead the goblins because she doesn't have their respect yet, it would have undermined Ash and Holly without gaining her anything, and battlefield tactics isn't her strong suit. Her father had drilled into Merry the need to know her strengths and weaknesses starting when she was at an early age. He told her to find allies who complement her. True friendship is a type of love and all love has power.

Part of the Wild Hunt changes because of Merry's thoughts. There are birds, swans, geese, cranes. The swans wear chains and collars of gold. There's more than 20 of them, Merry figures.

This is the chapter where Merry figures out which of her men would be her king, if she could choose.

Doyle shows up with dogs.

CHAPTER 22:

Abeloec gives a drink from his cup to those cops who were driven mad by what they'd seen. Read here for what that will do for them.

The black dogs that were with Doyle change according to who touches them.

Abeleoc gets lapdogs, white with red markings.

Mistral gets the kind of Irish Wolfhounds that the Romans feared.

Someone's touch changed a dog to a green Cu Sith that runs off.

Galen comes running toward them, the snow turning to flowers. Everyone who had vanished in the dead gardens is with him.

Ameatheon has a tattoo of a plow on a chest.

Aisling, wearing only the veil of black gauze over his face, walks in a cloud of singing birds.

Onilwyn hasn't come toward Merry because someone else is shrieking her name. Merry is very unhappy to hear that voice.

Tsk -- Andais was walling up Nerys clan alive (even after what happened in the dead garden? or is this the wonky time bit again?). Galen had hated his time buried in the ground so he said four words that did something to the Hallway of Mortality.

Andais has admitted before her nobles she can't guarantee Merry's safety, according to Aisling.

Galen gets a white and red hound when he touches a black mastiff.

Andais is dressed as if for a Halloween Ball.

Rhys touches the dogs and gets white and red or black and tan terriers of breeds long forgotten (not like Maggie May's terriers, then?).

The black mastiffs are Hell Hounds. Andais tries to call one to her.

Merry has two hounds.

Queen Andais would rather Merry had brought back faerie horses or cattle than dogs. See chapter 8 of Seduced by Moonlight for the vision Merry had in the Western Lands.

Andais wants Merry to return to the Western Lands. Merry won't go unless she can take all the guards who want to come with her. Merry can't have Mistral.

Sholto's wound has transformed again.

Those dogs are still part of the wild hunt.

Andais has never been a gracious loser.

Sholto willl bring all the guards who wish to come with Merry.

Check this chapter for Sholto's joke about flying on an airplane.

Sholto explains his power to go the between places.

Andais calls Sholto by the nickname the sidhe call him behind his back but even she's never used to his face before.

Frost touches a dog and gets a white stag that runs off.

Rhys uses a power he has tonight, but knows will be gone by morning light.

I wonder why Merry is surprised about Sholto's power over taxis considering what he did in chapter 10 of A Kiss of Shadows. ( )

this is a very good book, i really enjoyed reading it, i would recommend it to anyone who like's to read :) ( )

If I had paid the hardcover price for this, I would have been Not Happy. As it is, I got it from the library for free and am Slightly Annoyed. It's not like my expectations for this series are high, but nothing happens! Well, Merry's magic hoo-haa continues to get a workout with a bunch of random characters and somehow doesn't ever need to bathe, but ... I just don't care. I think maybe one day passes in this book? Whatever, I'm done. ( )