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Laurell K. Hamilton

A Kiss of Shadows (Meredith Gentry, Book 1) Mass Market Paperback – February 1, 2002

by Laurell K. Hamilton (Author)

1,641 ratings

Book 1 of 9: A Merry Gentry Novel

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Stunning . . . steamy . . . an exciting and original world.”—San Jose Mercury News

Meet Merry Gentry, paranormal P.I., and enter a thrilling, sensual world as dangerous as it is beautiful, full of earthly pleasures and dazzling magic, and ruled by the all-consuming passions of immortal beings once worshipped as gods . . . or demons.

Merry Gentry, princess of the high court of Faerie, is posing as a human in Los Angeles, working as a private investigator specializing in supernatural crime. But now the queen’s assassin has been dispatched to fetch her—whether she likes it or not. Suddenly Merry finds herself a pawn in her dreaded aunt’s plans. The job that awaits her: enjoy the constant company of the most beautiful immortal men in the world. The reward: the crown—and the opportunity to continue to live. The penalty for failure: death.

Praise for Laurell K. Hamilton and A Kiss of Shadows

“One of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field.”—Charlaine Harris

“Sexy . . . Merry’s adventures are engaging and keep the reader turning the pages.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“I’ve never read a writer with a more fertile imagination.”—Diana Gabaldon

Print length

480 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Ballantine Books
Publication date

February 1, 2002
Dimensions

4.3 x 1 x 6.7 inches
ISBN-10

0345423402
ISBN-13

978-0345423405
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Popular Highlights in this book

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The second you stop questioning yourself is the second that you become the monster.
239 Kindle readers highlighted this
Sometimes you just stayed numb, because anything else was not helpful. Sanity relied on numbness, sometimes.
182 Kindle readers highlighted this
They say not to look back, but if you’re not sure what lies ahead, what else is there but looking back?
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Laurell K. Hamilton and A Kiss of Shadows

“One of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field.”—Charlaine Harris

“Sexy . . . Merry’s adventures are engaging and keep the reader turning the pages.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Stunning . . . steamy . . . an exciting and original world.”—San Jose Mercury News

“I’ve never read a writer with a more fertile imagination.”—Diana Gabaldon

From the Inside Flap

"My name is Meredith Gentry, but of course it's not my real name. I dare not even whisper my true name after dark for fear that one hushed word will travel over the night winds to the soft ear of my aunt, the Queen of the Air and Darkness. She wants me dead. I don't even know why."

Meredith Gentry, Princess of the high court of Faerie, is posing as a human in Los Angeles, living as a P.I. specializing in supernatural crime. But now the Queen's assassin has been dispatched to fetch her back–whether she likes it or not. Suddenly Meredith finds herself a pawn in her dreaded aunt's plans. The job that awaits her: enjoy the constant company of the most beautiful immortal men in the world. The reward: the crown–and the opportunity to continue to live. The penalty for failure: death.

From the Back Cover

""My name is Meredith Gentry, but of course it's not my real name. I dare not even whisper my true name after dark for fear that one hushed word will travel over the night winds to the soft ear of my aunt, the Queen of the Air and Darkness. She wants me dead. I don't even know why."
Meredith Gentry, Princess of the high court of Faerie, is posing as a human in Los Angeles, living as a P.I. specializing in supernatural crime. But now the Queen's assassin has been dispatched to fetch her back-whether she likes it or not. Suddenly Meredith finds herself a pawn in her dreaded aunt's plans. The job that awaits her: enjoy the constant company of the most beautiful immortal men in the world. The reward: the crown-and the opportunity to continue to live. The penalty for failure: death.

About the Author

Laurell K. Hamilton is a full-time writer and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series and the Merry Gentry series. She lives in a suburb of St. Louis with her family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Twenty-three stories up and all i could see out the windows was grey smog. They could call it the City of Angels if they wanted to, but if there were angels out there, they had to be flying blind.

Los Angeles is a place where people, those with wings and without, come to hide. Hide from others, hide from themselves. I’d come to hide and I’d succeeded, but staring out at the thick, dirty air, I wanted to go home. Home where the air was blue most of the time and you didn’t have to water the ground to get grass to grow. Home was Cahokia, Illinois, but I couldn’t go back because they’d kill me if I did, my relatives and their allies. Everyone wants to grow up to be a faerie princess. Trust me. It’s overrated.

There was a knock on the office door. It opened before I could say anything. My boss, Jeremy Grey, stood framed in the doorway. He was a short, grey man, four feet eleven inches, an inch shorter than me. He was grey from his dark Armani suit to his button-up shirt and silk tie. Only his shoes were black and shiny. Even his skin was a pale uniform grey. Not from illness or age. No, he was a trow in the prime of life, just a little over four hundred. There were some lines around his eyes, along the thin mouth, that made him appear mature, but he’d never be old. Without the aid of mortal blood and a pretty serious spell, Jeremy might live forever. Theoretically. Scientists say that in about five billion years the sun will expand and engulf the Earth. The fey won’t survive that. They will die. Does five billion years count as forever? I don’t think so. Though it’s close enough to make the rest of us envious.

I leaned my back against the windows and the thick, hanging smog. The day was as grey as my boss, but his color was a cool, crisp grey, like clouds before a spring rain. What lay outside the window felt heavy and thick like something you would try to swallow, but you’d never get it down. It was a day to choke on, or maybe it was just my mood.

“You look gloomy, Merry,” Jeremy said. “What’s wrong?” He closed the door behind him, making sure it shut. Privacy, he was giving us privacy. Maybe it was for my benefit, but somehow I didn’t think so. There was a tightness around his eyes, a set to his thin, well-tailored shoulders that said I wasn’t the only one in a bad mood today. Maybe it was the weather or the lack of it. A good rain shower or even a good wind would have cleared out the smog and let the city breathe again.

“Homesick,” I said. “What’s wrong, Jeremy?”

He gave a small smile. “Can’t fool you, can I, Merry?”

“No,” I said.

“Nice outfit,” he said.

I knew I looked hot when Jeremy complimented my clothes. He always looked impeccable even in jeans and T-shirt, which he only wore if he absolutely had to be undercover. I’d seen Jeremy do a three-minute mile in Gucci loafers once, chasing a suspect. Of course, it helped that his dexterity and speed were more than human. When I thought I might have to actually chase someone, a rare occasion, I got out the jogging shoes and left the high heels at home.

Jeremy put into his eyes that look a man gives you when he’s appreciating the view. It wasn’t personal, but among the fey it’s an insult to ignore someone who’s obviously trying to be attractive, a slap in the face telling them that they’d failed. Apparently, I hadn’t failed. I’d woken up to the smog and dressed brighter than normal to try and cheer myself up. Royal blue suit jacket, double-breasted, silver buttons, a matching blue pleated skirt that was so short, it was only a fringe across my thighs underneath the jacket. The outfit was short enough that if I crossed my legs wrong, I’d flash the tops of my black thigh-highs. Two-inch patent leather high heels helped show off the legs. When you’re as short as I am, you’ve got to do something to make your legs look long. Most days the heels were three inches.

My hair was a deep rich red in the reflections of the mirrors. A color more red than auburn, a color that had black highlights instead of the usual brown that most redheads had. It was as if someone had taken dark red rubies and spun them out into hair. It was a very popular color this year. Blood auburn it was called in the high court of the fey royalty. Faerie Red, Sidhe Scarlet, if you went to a good salon. It was actually my natural color. Until it became popular this year and they finally got the shade right, I’d had to hide my true color. I’d gone for black, because it looked more natural than human red with my skin tone. A lot of people getting the dye job made the mistake of thinking that Sidhe Scarlet complements a natural redhead’s coloring. It doesn’t. It’s the only true red color I know of that matches a pale, pure white skin tone. It’s the red hair for someone who looks great in black, true reds, royal blues.

The only things I still had to hide were the vibrant green and gold of my eyes and the luminosity of my skin. I used dark brown contacts for the eyes. My skin—that I had to tone down using glamour, magic. Just a steady concentration like music in the back of my head, to never let down my guard and start to glow. Humans don’t actually glow, no matter how luminous they may be. No glowing, which was why the contacts covered my eyes. I also wove a spell around myself like a long familiar coat, an illusion that I was just a human with lesser fey blood in my background who had some psychic and mystical abilities that made me a really excellent detective, but nothing too special.

Jeremy didn’t know what I was. No one at the agency knew. I was one of the weakest members of the royal court, but being sidhe means something even on the weak end of the scale. It meant that I had successfully hidden my true self, my true abilities, from a handful of the best magicians and psychics in the city. Maybe in the country. No small feat, but the kind of glamour I was best at wouldn’t keep a knife from finding my back or a spell from crushing my heart. For that I needed skills that I didn’t have, and that was one of the reasons I was in hiding. I couldn’t fight the sidhe, not and live. The best I could do was hide. I trusted Jeremy and the others. They were my friends. What I didn’t trust was what the sidhe might do to them if I were discovered, and my relatives found out my friends had known my secret. If they were truly ignorant, then the sidhe would leave them alone and only hurt me. Ignorance was bliss on this one. Though I thought that some of my very good friends would see it as a type of betrayal. But if the choices were them alive, with all their body parts intact, but angry at me, or dead by torture but not angry at me, I’d take angry. I could live with their anger. I wasn’t sure I could live with their deaths.

I know, I know. Why not go to the Bureau of Human and Fey Affairs and get asylum? My relatives would probably kill me when they found me, but if I went public and aired our dirty laundry for the world media, they would most definitely kill me. And they’d kill me slower. So no police, no ambassadors, just the ultimate game of hide-and-seek.

I smiled at Jeremy and gave him what I knew he wanted: the look that said that I appreciated the slender potential of his body under his perfect suit. To humans it would have looked like flirting, but for the fey, any fey, it wasn’t even close to flirting. “Thanks, Jeremy, but you didn’t come in here to compliment my clothes.”

He walked farther into the room, running manicured fingers along my desk edge. “I’ve got two women in my office. They want to be clients,” he said.

“Want to be?” I said.

He turned, leaning against the desk, arms crossed over his chest. Mirroring my stance at the windows, either unconsciously, or purposefully, though I didn’t know why. “We don’t usually do divorce work,” Jeremy said. I gave him wide eyes, pushing away from the windows. “Day one lecture, Jeremy: The Grey Detective Agency never, ever, does divorce work.”

“I know, I know,” he said. He pushed away from the desk and came to stand beside me, staring out into the fog. He didn’t look any happier than I felt.

I leaned back against the glass so I could see his face better. “Why are you breaking your cardinal rule, Jeremy?” He shook his head without looking at me. “Come meet them, Merry. I trust your judgment. If you say we stay out of it, we’ll stay out of it. But I think you’ll feel the same way I do.”

I touched his shoulder. “And how are you feeling, boss, other than worried?” I ran my hand down his arm, and it made him look at me.

His eyes had gone dark charcoal grey with anger. “Come meet them, Merry. If you’re as angry afterward as I am, then we’ll nail this bastard.”

I gripped his arm. “Jeremy, relax. It’s just a divorce case.”

“What if I told you it was attempted murder?” His voice was calm. Matter of fact, it didn’t match the intensity in his eyes, the vibrating tension in his arm.

I moved back from him. “Attempted murder? What are you talking about?”

“The nastiest death spell that’s ever walked into my office.”

“The husband is trying to kill her?” I made it a question.

“Someone is, and the wife says it’s the husband. The mistress agrees with the wife.”

I blinked at him. “Are you saying that the wife and the mistress are in your office?”

He nodded, and even through all the outrage, he smiled.

I smiled back. “Well, that’s got to be a first.”

He took my hand. “It might be a first even if we did do divorce work,” he said. His thumb rubbed back and forth over my knuckles. He was nervous, or he wouldn’t be touching me this much. A way to reassure himself, like a touchstone. He raised my hand to his lips and planted a quick kiss on my knuckles. I think he’d noticed what he was doing, that his nerves were showing. He flashed me a white smile, the best caps money could buy, and turned toward the door. “Answer one question first, Jeremy.”

He adjusted his suit, minute movements to tug it back into place as if it needed it. “Ask away.”

“Why are you scared of this?”

The smile faded until his face was solemn. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one, Merry. Prophecy isn’t one of my gifts, but this one has a bad smell to it.”

“Then pass it by. We aren’t the cops. We do this for a very nice paycheck, not because we’ve sworn to serve and protect, Jeremy.”

“If after you meet them, you can honestly walk away from it, then we will.”

“Why is my vote suddenly a presidential veto? The name on the door is Grey, not Gentry.”

“Because Teresa’s so empathic she couldn’t turn anyone away. Roane is too much the bleeding heart to turn tearful women away.” He adjusted his dove grey tie, fingers smoothing over the diamond stickpin. “The others are good for grunt work, but they aren’t decision makers. That leaves you.”

I met his eyes, trying to read past the anger, the worry, to what was really going on inside his head. “You’re not an empath, and you’re not a bleeding heart, and you make dandy decisions, so why can’t you make this one?”

“Because if we turn them away, they won’t have anywhere else to go. If they leave this office without our help, they’re both dead.”

I stared at him, and finally understood. “You know we should walk away from this one, but you can’t bring yourself to pass judgment on them. You can’t bring yourself to condemn them to death.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“What makes you think that I can do it, if you can’t?”

“I’m hoping one of us is sane enough not to be this stupid.”

“I won’t get you all killed for the sake of strangers, Jeremy, so be prepared to walk away from this one.” Even to me, my voice sounded hard, cold.

He smiled again. “That’s my little cold-hearted bitch.”

I shook my head and walked toward the door. “It’s one of the reasons you love me, Jeremy. You count on me not to flinch.”

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books (February 1, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345423402
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345423405
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.3 x 1 x 6.7 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #291,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,089 in Vampire Romances
- #7,882 in Werewolf & Shifter Romance
- #8,174 in Romantic Fantasy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
1,641 ratings

About the author

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Laurell K. Hamilton

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Laurell K. Hamilton is the bestselling author of the acclaimed Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, novels. She lives near St Louis with her husband, her daughter, two dogs and an ever-fluctuating number of fish.

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3 star		5%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Loretta @ The Laughing Listener

This book is a trash fire.

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2018

Verified Purchase

Wow… What did I just read? This was a buddy read I did with my best friend and after hearing her awful first-hand accounts (since she started reading it first), I just HAD to read this to see if it was as crazy as it sounded. I signed up for a hilariously awful, twisted paranormal romance and uhhh, well, that’s what I got??? Maybe???? We’ve lovingly nicknamed this “The Trash Fire” and I wish I could just transcribe all our texts about this novel on here because they were amazing, unlike this book. BURN.

~| THE REHASH |~
Merry is half fairy, half human. People in the Unseelie court were trying to kill her for some reason, so she ran off to live a normal life in LA three years ago and is now working as a paranormal detective. She works a case that reveals her location to the Unseelie queen (who’s her aunt) and gets dragged back to court. The queen reveals that she wants Merry to inherit the Unseelie throne—apparently for no reason at all—despite the fact that the queen is an immortal who will out live Merry by centuries. LOGIC. The only problem is the Queen’s son Cel who’s a complete bonehead that has just as much right to the throne as Merry (probably more since he’s her son??). In the end, it’s a race to see who can make a baby first and continue the bloodline. Whoever makes a baby first will be crowned king or queen.

That is literally the entire plot. Half-human girl lives in LA. Half-human girl gets dragged away to make babies.

~| THE UGLY |~
Oh my god, where do I even start? FIRST OF ALL, I thought this was terribly written. I’d say a middle schooler wrote this if the subject matter weren’t so incredibly screwed up. The following is my interpretation of her writing style:

----------
I live in Los Angeles. There’s smog everywhere. I don’t know how the fey can stand living here. This isn’t where I’m from, but I can’t go home because I’d be killed. Jeremy is my boss. We flirt a lot, but don’t worry, it’s just how fairies are. He dresses in nice clothes. My skirt today is really short. I have to wear high heels to make my legs look longer. Now I’ll spend five paragraphs describing the color of my red hair.
----------
AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! *Throws book out a window*

Hamilton also spends next to NO time explaining the universe she’s created and I was so confused THE ENTIRE TIME. I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW INFURIATING THIS WAS. I already had a very basic knowledge of fairies going into this, so I could kinda follow along, but I had so many questions. She uses the word “Sidhe” every other sentence, but never get a solid definition of what it even means. And does the general populace know about the paranormal stuff going on?? Merry casually references a few government laws that pertain to magic and they even recruit the police to help with certain cases. There’s practically a whole chapter about how Hitler tried to recruit the fey to his side of WWII. I mean, the Unseelie court has a publicist! Merry even spends the last half of the book running away from an angry mob of journalists. But then they have to glamour themselves all the time when they’re out in public?? And at one point Merry goes into a description of fey hunters who are people that lurk around the gate of the Unseelie court to try and “catch a glimpse” of them. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!?! Aren’t there fey all over the media if so many journalists are after Merry?? Can’t humans just open a newspaper to “catch a glimpse” of the fairies??? Or walk around outside?? Do normal humans know or not?!?!? WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!?!

Eh, whatever, it doesn’t matter right??? Instead, here’s two pages describing how amazing Merry looks in this push-up bra! WHY ARE YOU OVER-EXPLAINING THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER? GIVE ME ANSWERS.

And for a plot that was centered around having sex, this book was shockingly devoid of it. There’s one confusingly weird scene in the beginning and one lame scene at the very end, but the middle is nothing but heavy flirting and some weird foreplay that never goes anywhere. Whatever, I don’t need sex in my books. It would have been fine if the plot weren’t filled with gaping holes and could carry the story on it’s own, but it couldn’t. Instead I found myself annoyingly bored, reading scene after scene of Merry doing mundane things like flying on an airplane and talking to her grandma. I waited ten chapters for Merry’s confrontation with the queen. TEN. And the payoff was sooooo not worth it. We wait the whole book for Merry to get the queen’s permission to get freaky with these hunky fey guards AND THEN NOTHING HAPPENS. The last chapter is a terrible rush job that just made me wanna light this book on fire.

Also, Merry is sooo narcissistic and I really don’t understand why everyone fawns over her as much as they do. All the men she speaks to are like OMG, YOU’RE SO HOT. HOW CAN I POSSIBLE RESIST YOU?! And she’s all, I KNOW RIGHT?!?! Merry spends the entire book making off-hand comments on the different ways she’s better than everyone else. My hair is beautiful, by body look great, my eyes are amazing, my clothes are awesome, blah blah blah. I think I was suppose to see her as a strong, independent woman, but to me she was just annoyingly egotistical. At one point, her boss Jeremy says something like “She really doesn’t know how beautiful she is does she?” I LITERALLY laughed out loud. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Are we talking about the same person?!

~| THE GOOD |~
I liked most of the secondary characters that we glimpse in the beginning. Uther is amazing AND DESERVED BETTER. I mean, did Uther ever find a lady friend to fill his lonely nights?? I’M VERY CONCERNED.

Oh, I also liked when it ended.

~| FINAL WORD |~
Nope.

70 people found this helpful

Helpful

Hamilton's best series

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2017

Verified Purchase

LKH has two series: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, and now Merry Gentry, Princess of Faerie.This is Book #1, on sale as a Kindle edition. I own all of LKH's books in book form, and I often re-read the Merry Gentry series. There is a much better development of characters in the MG series, in comparison to the AB series.

Note that not all of the MG books involve a murder mystery in the plot; much of the series revolves around the dangerous and uncertain politics of the Faerie courts that Merry must maneuver through. This book lays out her reasons for fleeing Faerie, but her position as a Royal means there is no permanent escape. She is dragged back into that dangerous world of intrigue, even as she tries to balance it with her human-world job as a private agency detective.

The MG series shows off Ms. Hamilton's writing at her best. You really feel Merry's fear and anxieties as she tries to be part of two worlds: the human world she knows well, having actually attended college and graduated with a degree, versus the beautiful but deadly courts of immortal Faerie, the place Merry almost died, growing up as a despised half-human but who could not be ignored because of her Royal blood. This tension of being between two worlds is gripping, and how Merry matures through the series is realistically handled.

There are multiple sex partners - a given with Ms. Hamilton - but the number is much more manageable in the MG books. Readers will find it easier to not only remember the names of her lovers, but their personalities and appearances. This is in sharp contrast to the Anita Blake series, which has gone on much too long and become overly complex, with so many sex partners for Anita it's almost impossible to keep them all straight, let alone care much about the last two dozen or so.

No so with the Merry Gentry series. Ms. Hamilton introduces the main characters and they will remain the focus through all the books, giving this series a much stronger storyline. Come along for the ride, it's an exciting and addictive read!

24 people found this helpful

Helpful

Erin Wolak

3.5 stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2019

Verified Purchase

Book clubs, you're either in them for one of two reasons; you really enjoy reading and have a group of friends you want to mentally mess up with your book choices or you're trying to look sophisticated when in reality you only want to drink wine and gossip. I fall into the former of those reasons. Now with that said that also means the rest of my book club coincidentally falls under that same reason, so when romance was picked as our next genre group I knew it was a race to find the best book that would scar the rest of us for life. We've had some books for this group that make me shake my head and wonder, then we got this one and I won't lie...I actually enjoyed it.

The plot was actually mostly interesting, the characters were decently fleshed out (hehe), and I found that I didn't mind the actual writing. What came as an utter shock to me was that I apparently liked it enough to finish it in two days. Do I actually care about whether Meredith becomes the next queen? Absolutely not. Do I care if Cel survives his punishment? Still nope. Do I want to find out however if she finally sleeps with my favorite of the guards Doyle? Uhh...YES.

I did struggle a little bit with the beginning of this book. I felt like there were things introduced, like the mention of Sidhe worship (which is forbidden), that was never really touched upon again. When it's first brought up it's made a huge deal that something like that is happening but once you reach the ending all of a sudden it's resolved with only one sentence and not mentioned elsewhere.

Would I have read this book on my own because of the synopsis? Nope. I honestly probably would have never taken a second glance at this. Am I glad that someone picked this for book club and I was basically forced to read it? Absolutely, and I will probably wind up picking up the next book so I can see if Doyle finally gets a turn.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Miss Hayley Watts

I tried, I really did but it’s a “no”

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 14, 2022

Verified Purchase

Mostly, I’m annoyed I bought a book when the WHOLE PLOT is the blurb. That’s all that happens in the whole book. Merry is an investigator. Merry gets caught. Merry goes back to the fae Court.
Equally, while I didn’t dislike her, I didn’t like her. I have absolutely no investment in what happens in the future so no more of this series for me. Loads of characters chucked in, all vastly different in looks and really hard to remember/ care what each looked like and how they related to her. The bonds between them seemed very shallow, as she did quite honestly. A ride in a magical limo with a weird spell and there’s not a single description of what it was like outside, what the world around her was like etc but I get a three page description of her underwear and makeup? No thanks, I’ll take some attempt at world building instead
BookTok sent me here for the spice. There isn’t any. There’s adult descriptions but because there’s zero tension or build up it’s completely not worth it.

There’s no grammatical or syntax errors but the writing jumps around horribly.

Kindle Customer

A book that got better as it went along

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2018

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I brought this on the back of the write up with no experience of Laurell's writing. And I have to say that at first this book was hard going. It took me over a week and several efforts to get past the first four or five chapters. However, once things started happened, and particularly when the Fae got involved and Merry returned to the Unsealie court the book clipped along and I was caught up in the story. Finishing it in a couple of days and late into the last night, I'm writing this at 1:30am after just finishing.
Once it got going the story is well written and captures your attention and imagination. The character are clever and believable. Merry is a good protagonist, likeable, nice without being weak or naive. The other far characters all are different enough to stand out in the mind. The action, mainly combat or political manoeuvring is well timed and we'll written. All in all I really enjoyed this, once I got into it.

Alt_kt

A kiss of Shadows

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2017

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I was very excited to read this book as i love Hamilton's Anita Blake series. However, i was slightly disappointed because i found it really hard to follow. If you don't have any knowledge of folklore, the fey or the seelie and unseelie court then this book is really hard to understand. I also really wasn't happy that within the first half of the book, the main character was sexual assaulted and it was kind of skimmed over. There was no emotional aftermath, no support for the police or her friends.
I don't think i'll carrying this series on, but i still think Hamilton is a genius writer... Anita Blake is the best book series i've ever read and that will never change for me!

2 people found this helpful

Mrs A Gordon

As awesome as I remember!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2019

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I read this series years ago and was so excited to find kindle additions! The story is everything a girl who loves RH and fantasy could ask for!

Amazon Customer

Wonderful read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2021

Verified Purchase

I've enjoyed laurel k Hamilton for a while, although I enjoy a paper book the feel of turning the pages as you escape, I've decided to add them to my kindle

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Buy new:

$7.99

FREE delivery: Thursday, Feb 3 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used:

$7.18