Product Description
I am Meredith Gentry, princess and heir apparent to the throne in the realm of faerie, onetime private investigator in the mortal world. To be crowned queen, I must first continue the royal bloodline and give birth to an heir of my own. If I fail, my aunt, Queen Andais, will be free to do what she most desires: install her twisted son, Cel, as monarch . . . and kill me.

My royal guards surround me, and my best loved–my Darkness and my Killing Frost–are always beside me, sworn to protect and make love to me. But still the threat grows greater. For despite all my carnal efforts, I remain childless, while the machinations of my sinister, sadistic Queen and her confederates remain tireless. So my bodyguards and I have slipped back into Los Angeles, hoping to outrun the gathering shadows of court intrigue. But even exile isn’t enough to escape the grasp of those with dark designs.

Now King Taranis, powerful and vainglorious ruler of faerie’s Seelie Court, has leveled accusations against my noble guards of a heinous crime–and has gone so far as to ask the mortal authorities to prosecute. If he succeeds, my men face extradition to faerie and the hideous penalties that await them there. But I know that Taranis’s charges are baseless, and I sense that his true target is me. He tried to kill me when I was a child. Now I fear his intentions are far more terrifying.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 162 reviews)

LKH getting back on her game?

Well not quite - this book still has some of the flaws the last LKH books have had. Too much sex and long-winded conversations. Still the plot actually moves along in this book which hasn't happened the the MG or AB books in quite a while. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for down and dirty sex, but enough is enough. Lets hope she keeps moving back towards real substance in her writing because I miss original LKH style.
November 11, 2008

Better than some of LKH's previous books, but not fantastic

After attempting several times to read the abysmal Mistral's Kiss, I finally decided to skip it entirely & move onto the next book. After getting 30-50 pages into the book, I realized that I hadn't missed a single thing. (Which says loads about LKH's writing & pacing abilities!)

This story (like previous ones) has the action take place within one day. Merry's men have been accused of rape, so they go to meet with Taranis's lawyers (one of his people was the one who was raped) to fight the accusations. Merry also discovers a zillion new different magical powers, brings together a new sithern, gets pregnant, & brings about world peace.

Ok... so maybe not the last one, but you get where I'm going with this. While the book is much better than the last one, it still reads a little too much like fanfiction. The sex scenes in this book are much tamer than before, with there being fewer sex scenes & less boring description in said scenes. Even so, it's just plain BORING to read about someone who always has a magical cure or fix-it-all whenever the going gets really tough. It's also boring that everything is so "Merry Merry Merry" when there were so many interesting sub-plots that were brought up & then dropped in favor of more "Merry is awesome" & "Merry is all powerful" plotlines. Die-hard fans may like this book, but new readers will find themselves incredibly bored. They'll also feel lost, but I'm assuming that the new readers will be people who have at least a rudimentary knowlege of what has gone on before. (And sadly enough, the plot development has been so slow that the average new reader could catch up with everything by reading a wikipedia summary.)

2.5/5
November 05, 2008

I love this series!

I can't get enough of Merry Gentry's world. Love it. Better than the Anita Blake series. Love the play on Celtic lore, the love story, the push for non christian perspectives. Absolutely adore Dole. Laurell finally got a powerful man right, no breaking this one down into fluff like she did with her vampire hero in the Blake series. Great read.
September 27, 2008

She's done it again!

Just when I think I have figured things out she throws me a curve ball. I love it! =) This book was all that and a big bag of chips. Without giving away anything I was really happy and very sad at how things turned out for Merry. I cant wait to read Darkness, but I really hope we are done losing essential guards, especially Darkness. I think I would actually morn his loss. =)

Thanks Laurell! Your books are never a disappointment! :-D
September 16, 2008

Better than the last one

I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for Meredith to get pregnant already and for there to be some forward movement of plot in these books. Also, I was getting tired of the strung together scenes of sex...new magic...more sex...some more new magic.

This book really toned down on the sex, thank goodness. And, to be fair, the plot did inch forward infinitesimally. But this book was quite boring. It was a bunch of mirror conversations. First Merry talks to Taranis is the mirror for eleventy-billion pages. Then she talks to Andais for eleventy-more-billion pages. The she talks to the goblins. And then we hear about some more new creatures her sex has brought to life.

In the course of these conversations we get more of Stark Raving Crazy Andais, something of Skeevy Perv Crazy Taranis and of course there is Just Psycho Crazy Cel lurking off in the background. Talk about tedious characters. If Merry is so dang powerful why doesn't she off some of these people already? I do agree with Andais, Merry has turned into a wimp.

I remember the first book when she got her hand of power and used it. Actually, I remember the first book and so much happened just in that one book. Le Sigh.
September 08, 2008

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Swallowing Darkness (Meredith Gentry, Book 7)
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