Book #93

A Kiss of Shadows
by Laurell K. Hamilton

Now that I've read all the Anita Blake books -- and gotten into some amusing arguments about their literary merits and dangerous influence on impressionable youth -- I figured it was time to move on to Merry Gentry.

The final grade for this first book would be somewhere in the B- range, I think. I liked it, overall; I like the fey and the Courts and the way they are depicted. I like the fey society (as a concept, not as something I'd personally like to be a part of -- what a bunch of nutballs) and their morals and values. I don't think a whole hell of a lot of Merry herself, as of yet, but I don't think there has been enough development of her character.

That was probably the biggest problem I had with the book. It starts out too fast, with only the briefest of expositions before it goes into the action. And since the action is a sex scene, it felt too much like the book deserved all the disapprobation and criticism of Hamilton's plotting that I have been hearing in my little debates. The book doesn't deserve the rage it gets, any more than the Anita Blake books do -- but I think it was a serious mistake to fall into the cliche so soon in the series, like Hamilton was living down to all of her detractors' expectations. It also bothered me that the main character wasn't better developed, because it left me with little to contradict the accusations that Merry is just Anita with redder hair: they are physically similar, and Merry wears the same sorts of things and does the same sorts of things, using sex as a weapon. Of course, the characters have totally different personalities and motivations and reasons for doing what they do, as became clear over the course of the book -- but she should have made that clear from the get-go, and she didn't. It meant that I was annoyed by the first scene, rather than intrigued.

Being intrigued came later. I loved the hand of flesh and how it was used; I love the major conflict and how it was set up and immediately complicated by the Queen's insanity. I didn't like that Galen, the clearest romantic interest, was taken out of contention and left out of contention by what seemed a somewhat lame plot device -- he healed but not in the most important way, and we have no explanation as to why that is -- because it felt like a cheap way to increase the romantic tension. I also hated the name The Abyss of Despair. Wouldn't The Abyss kind of say it all? Do you really need "Despair" in the name? Other than that, I liked everything: I liked the Guards, I loved the goblins even though they horrified me, I liked that Merry's best friend had turned to her enemy out of desperation, I liked the Queen enormously. I'm a little less fond of Merry working as a private detective, but I'll wait to see what cases she gets before I'll pass judgment on that. I absolutely loved the complication of the paparazzi; I thought that was a fantastic idea, and I look forward to watching Merry deal with it.

So I liked it enough to keep going, because other than some stumbles out of the starting block, it showed all of Hamilton's strengths: fantastic imagination, wonderful world-building, excellent descriptive detail.