A Kiss of Shadows

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Hamilton has an excellent imagination and ability to make the supernatural feel natural. The way she blends her fairy world with the real world is amazing. She reminds me a lot of Anne Rice and Rice's fans will appreciate this book. I felt the book could have been a bit longer at the end a followed up on Merry and what happens to her back in LA but that was the only bad side. Hamilton gives readers a good overall understanding of Celtic mythology especially if they have no prior knowledge of it.

Rating:
Summary: What a waste of time!
Review: I am so disappointed in this book! It seems the author wanted to write a book of erotica that could be sold to a wide audience. Nothing wrong with that, but it is not how the book is advertised. There is very little happening in this book in terms of coherent plot, it's all about sex with as many people as possible for our little Merry. It's obvious the plot is very much secondary, it doesn't matter to the author except as a thread to tie together all the S&M encounters. Again, nothing wrong with erotica, but label it what it is!

Rating:
Summary: Merry...Our New Heroine?
Review: Merry Gentry is a character who I think has the potential to become bigger than Anita Blake. When I started reading this new book I was captivated from the start. Merry is sassy, but sofisticated, and she is not afraid to embrace her magic. The book takes some turns that aren't expected, but all in all was mildly predictable as far as story goes, but this is the first book and the characters and storylines must be set up for any future books. I think that there was some overkill with all of the in detail sex in this book, sometimes a little should be left to the imagination. All in all I was very impressed with LKH effort in this new series, and I am sure that Merry, although she is not as brutal as Anita Blake was, will be the next heroine for all of us who love (or loved) Anita Blake.

Rating:
Summary: Hamilton gives us another strong female lead character
Review: Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series brought us a strong woman and a host of alpha males populating a world that is impossibly fantastic and yet gritty, dark and real.

Now Hamilton has done it again with her new series built around the fairy princess, Meredith Gentry. In this world, the fairy kingdom is real and maintains diplomatic ties with the United States. There is more bickering and backstabbing in the fairy court than you'll ever see in Washington, and "Merry" seems to be just as strong and conflicted as Anita Blake. It will be fun to see where Hamilton leads us with the future installments of this exciting new series.

Rating:
Summary: Suggestions for improvement
Review: Having read and (thoroughly) enjoyed all of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter novels, I am convinced that Laurell K. Hamilton possesses a strong talent for writing and an imagination that is a force to be reckoned with. However, "Kiss of Shadows" is a disappointment partly because I know what Laurell is capable of producing and partly because it is so weak.

The characters and the character development are the primary elements that draw me into a book, and unfortunately, I did not connect with the heroine, Meredith Gentry. After much considering, I think there are several reasons I did not connect with her character. 1) Too much telling and not enough showing. What I mean is that I felt there wasn't enough dialogue in "Kiss of Shadows." Through dialogue, not only do I learn about the thoughts and feelings of the characters but it can be much more captivating than when the characters just tell you, in narrative form, what they think or feel. Speaking of dialogue, I noticed that some of Meredith's lines were exact duplicates from Anita. I think it shows a weak effort on the part of the author when they copy exact dialogue from one character to another. 2) Not enough background about Meredith. I find that nothing can help establish a connection more so than describing the past in some detail. Yes, she does include some flashbacks, but I always felt entrenched in the present rather than taken back to a time of Meredith's youth. 3) The sex in the book. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the development of sexual tension and satisfaction in a novel. I enjoyed Meredith's emancipated attitude and behavior when it comes to sex. I don't even mind it so much when an author uses sex as a means for moving the plot along. I do mind it when the sex is so superficial, as I felt it was between Meredith and (fill in the blank).

The plot is another element that will sustain my interest. The plot in "Kiss of Shadows" is a weak one. The idea of Meredith fighting back against her aunt, the Queen of Air and Darkness, is very promising. However, there doesn't seem to be a grand confrontation, nor any surprises, nor any mysteries to figure out which is disappointing.

I enjoyed the opportunity to delve into a realm that blends fantasy, political scheming and confrontation (as when Merry lures the goblin into stealing a taste of her blood), sexual chemistry (between Galin and Merry), and the friendships between the characters. But overall, I did not feel satisfied or impressed or empowered after reading "Kiss of Shadows."

Rating:
Summary: Refreshingly different....
Review: _A Kiss of Shadows_ was quite enjoyable -- I wasn't sure I wanted to read another LKH book because the angst that Anita Blake has been going through (and, to be even more blunt, the over-done sexuality and clothes fixation of Anita) had burnt me out on her character and it seemed like the books were definitely in a rut. But once I started reading this first book in a new series, I was captivated. While the plot and characterization were on the thin side, I did feel that it set up a world very well, and that the next book should show some fascinating developments, given that we have (all? most?) of the players on the board and ready to strut their stuff in the next book.

While there was eroticism in this book, it felt appreciably different from the Anita Blake books -- more integral to the characters, less kinky, and definitely with a lighter hand than the last several Blakes! I enjoyed the depictions of the Unseelie court and found the interactions of the various fey consistent with the myths and legends that I've known.

All in all, a promising start, and I look forward to the next installment.

Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: Wow, is all I have to say. Laurell K Hamilton has moved into an entirely new realm of writing but has still managed to let me lose myself to the real world. Never before have I gotten lost so deeply in a book! This book is just as good as the Anita Blake series but in a different way. I look forward to reading the 2nd book! Way to go!

Rating:
Summary: The Sidhe are trembling in their fairy mounds
Review: Laurell K. Hamilton used to be one of my favorite writers. She combines the supernatural with erotica and dark humor in a way that few writers can match. Unfortunately, I think her newfound popularity has gone to her head and is causing her writing to veer down the same path that Anne Rice took when she stopped being interesting.

Still, when I read that her new novel was about the Sidhe, I was totally psyched. Irish mythology has always fascinated me, and there are few writers who can do it justice. One of the best novels ever written about the Sidhe is "Winter Lord" by Jean Brooks-Janowiak. It's long out of print, and the writer disappeared from view.

OK, so what about this book? Well, Merry *is* a new character, but she's not nearly as interesting as Anita Blake. She's short and has red hair but seems rather helpless at defending herself and is far more adept at having sex with every tom, dick, and selkie that comes her way. I am no prude, and I am far from an unsophisticated reader (as one reviewer would like you to believe if you found the sex offensive), but this book is so polluted with gratuitous sex that it overwhelms the rather tenuous plot that Hamilton offers up. Oh, right, I don't get it. Sex magic is what the fey are all about, isn't it? Well, sure, that's one facet, but there are a whole host of other things that Hamilton could have done in this story and she missed a golden opportunity to weave the Sidhe into a modern day story and make it work.

As a long-time fan of hers, I feel betrayed by this tripe. She can do much, much better and be glad you didn't waste your money on this one. I suggest you seek out her earlier Anita Blake novels and stay far, far away from Merry and her perverted friends at the Gray Detective Agency.

Rating:
Summary: compelling reading despite a few faults
Review: In Kiss of Shadows, LKH has recreated her female character template (AB, Nightseer) into a new and equally likeable form. Merry Gentry is a small woman, with a fair bit of angst about her upbringing and with developing supernatural powers, but she differs from AB in that she is completely together about her sexuality and (due to her fey upbringing) has a morale code largely unlike that of human society.

Anita Blake fans may be pleased to know that at no time does Merry mention the phrase "Point for me/us," hang up the phone without saying goodbye, or nod while talking on the phone and then realise that the other person couldn't see her, although she does obsess about hair, eyes and groovy clothes quite as much as Our Girl Anita. :)

That being said, I still read the book in almost one sitting, and, despite a few items that I thought could use work (the interesting detective agency that gets ditched in the first part of the book, Merry never even calling her workmates/friends to tell them she's OK, great characters that will probably be developed in *future* books) it is a very obsorbing read, and has a cute bit of alternate history (what really happened to Hitler). I loved it, but couldn't justify a perfect rating.

Rating:
Summary: Further downhill she goes...
Review: I've been reading LKH since before she started writing her Anita Blake series. Indeed, I heard her read the first three chapters of Guilty Pleasures in manuscript form long before anyone knew who she was.

I totally enjoyed the first several books of Anita Blake, but something started happening to them about midway through - LKH's obsession with sex in all its possible forms when dealing with a multiversity of species. Reading her books became like reading the stuff Henry Miller sold for a $1 a page...sex for the sake of sex (I'm not talking about his great "Tropic" books here).

Having read the last Anita Blake book, Obsidian Butterfly, I thought perhaps she had returned to the excellent storytelling that I had so much enjoyed in her earlier books.

But A Kiss of Shadows is mostly just pornography, boring and repetitive, no matter the number of positions and partners involved. Nowhere does it even approach the erotic (Read anything by Anais Nin, or even Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire or Exit to Eden, to see the stuff of which eros is made).

It's really a shame that ACE has decided to pull out all the stops for this book (check out the full page ad in the BlairWitch2 cover of Entertainment Weekly). Most readers new to her work, judging this book as their sole example, will wonder what all the fuss is about.