These books just keep getting better. Hamilton has hit her stride, and I can't wait to see how she will carry it through. ( )

Merry is in LA. Working at staying alive and trying to get pregnant with the various candidates for the job of King. She's now facing the fact that Taranis wants her and isn't very stable. If he's deposed she's also a good candidate for the throne of Sidhe and she's not sure she wants that job.

It's pretty much sex with a touch of plot but it kept me engaged while I was reading it. Some of the roles and uses of the various men in her life are resolved. It's a paper thin plot that doesn't cover many days but it kept me reading. ( )

There was a time when a new Laurell K Hamilton book was time for celebration - curling up, switching off my phone and reading until the last page had turned. Her character Anita Blake was a kick ass heroine with principles and spooky abilities. Over time (since around book 9) the Anita Blake series has headed downhill - round about the time Merry Gentry came on the scene. Originally Hamilton created Merry Gentry to get out of her system all the weird sexual kicks she clearly has, and to take the fantastical elements of her stories to new areas, but gradually both series became filled with sex, the plots collapsed and eventually my reaction to a new book in either series was 'meh'.

So I picked this book up without many expectations and only because I found it cheap in a charity bookstore. However, I was pleasantly surprised. It still wasn't the page-turning supernatural horror of the early Blake books, but the story sped along and there was actually some plot to speak of.

The plot is still pretty slight - in fact, it is hard to delve into any of what happened without giving away some pretty big spoilers, so I am not going to even try!

I also have some other big complaints - the cast of men 'belonging' to Merry is hard to tell apart, except for a select couple. There is very little character development barring the usual monologuing that Merry does about how hard her life is. The sex is uncomfortable rather than titillating to read - especially when Hamilton adds in all the rough stuff. Finally, Merry (and Anita, to be perfectly honest) are complete Mary Sues, and it is difficult to hear about how perfect they are at everything they do.

So, huge improvements on recent books, but still a lot lacking from earlier books by Ms Hamilton. ( )

After reading Mistral's Kiss, I was much, much, MUCH happier with this book. This was the most plot the series has seen in awhile, and a few of the plot threads got taken care of.

The second half of the book is really what sticks in my mind. While it wasn't the best plot development ever, I was still happy to see Tyrannis and the Seelie court dealt with decisively. I was also happy to see some of the power that's been hinted at in Meredith come to good use, though the scene where she uses her ring again does have some pretty ridiculous results.

While there are still a lot of men around, most of whom are interchangeable, much of the volume focuses on Frost, and for good reason. I'm mildly upset as to what happened to him, but... well, there are a lot of characters in this series.

The book left off at an awkward cliffhanger, and I am kind of wondering how all the ludicrous stuff that happened will be resolved and/or dealt with in the next book. ( )

I'm impressed! I made it more than halfway through the book before there was any sex at all, and there were no freaky faerie orgies! I feel like there was actually some plot in this book. I like that Hamilton has finally crawled out of that dark, sweaty hole she'd dug herself into with both this and the Anita Blake series. There's some heavy foreshadowing about Merry's health, so it's not a surprise when the truth is revealed, but leave it to Hamilton to put her own special twist on what's normally seen as a pretty standard part of life. ( )