I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: the library
A Caress of Twilight
by
Laurell K. Hamilton
erotic romance, urban fantasy in Paperback edition that was published by Ballantine Books on March 15, 2005 and has 348 pages.
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Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Hit List, Bloody Bones, Killing Dance, Burnt Offerings, Narcissus in Chains, Obsidian Butterfly, Bite, Incubus Dreams, Micah, Danse Macabre, The Harlequin, Blood Noir, Skin Trade, Flirt, Bullet, Never After, Kiss the Dead, The First Death, Affliction, Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, Circus of the Damned, "Shutdown", A Kiss of Shadows, Lunatic Café, Seduced by Moonlight, A Stroke of Midnight, Mistral’s Kiss, A Lick of Frost, Blue Moon, Dead Ice, Jason, Crimson Death, Serpentine, "Wounded", Fantastic Hope, Cerulean Sins, A Terrible Fall of Angels, Slay, Swallowing Darkness
Second in the Meredith Gentry erotic urban fantasy series revolving around a half-fae princess and her harem in Los Angeles.
My Take
It’s a world we don’t want to acknowledge and yet is so fascinating in its macabre acceptance of what they consider normal. An excellent example of how power corrupts absolutely mixed in with dethroned gods and goddesses.
I love the culture of fae that Hamilton has created. That she chose the Unseelie instead of the Seelie, showing us the more positive side of the Dark versus the negative of the Light. It’s a complex culture with each species within it having yet more subcultures with their own customs and mores.
No, it’s definitely not sweetness and light in the Unseelie Court, but as Merry points out, they are more honest than the Seelie. And certainly more compassionate with all the orphans they take in. But don’t be fooled as both courts are deadly, even if the Dark is more accepting.
Yup, Merry is definitely channeling Anita Blake when she demands Rhys’ cooperation. You can hear Anita in her tone and her stance.
Hmmm, the worshipping rule continues into this story.
Crack me up. The dread Doyle is afraid of driving in a car, and Galen in his peekaboo apron. The men are such a contrast between themselves and similar yet different from other humans. And Frost, poor Frost is so terrified that when Merry does conceive, it won’t be a child with him, and he’ll have to return to the queen. A fear too many of the guard have.
Interesting contrast: Merry and Galen’s fertility ritual is a success and yet the fae are dying.
The Story
An unexpected and very dangerous client wants Merry and her men for an even more unexpected reason. One that could even more firmly cause Taranis to set assassins on their tails.
But humanity is in even greater danger, for the Nameless has been released to hunt. It can only be a fae who set it free, and if the human world should learn of it, the fae could be exiled from America.
The Characters
Meredith “Merry Gentry” NicEssus, Princess of Flesh of the high court of Faerie, has returned to L.A. Prince Essus was her father and Andais’ brother, and he taught her much about the other courts of Faerie. Besaba is Merry’s very vain mother.
Merry’s Unseelie high-court sidhe include:
Each man is a Raven, one of the Queen’s guards, but now they are Merry’s, possible consorts if one of them can get her pregnant. There’s Frost, a.k.a., the Killing Frost who carries Winter Kiss, the one with whom she’s in love. Doyle is part phouka and was the Queen’s Darkness who carries a deadly blade AND Snick and Snack, now he’s Merry’s. Now that he’s realized there are other ways to lose. Rhys is who he is now; before, he was a death god, the Lord of Relics, older than most of the sidhe, and too stubborn to realize that other courts have other customs. Now he has a passion for Bogey and film noir. Nicca is one of the guard, but soft. Galen, the Green Man, is Merry’s first love, too sweet and trusting to survive.
The plus-two-thousand-year-old Kitto is one of Merry’s, but a snake goblin and a symbol of her alliance with the very angry Kurag, king of Goblins. Queen Niceven holds Galen’s cure, until she passes it on to the hateful Sage in her own bid for power. Taranis Thunderer is the King of Light and Illusion of the Seelie Court and Merry’s great-uncle who set aside his second wife of a hundred years, Conan of Cuala, because she didn’t bear him a child. Hedwick is a dimwitted secondary secretary while Dame Rosmerta is the main social secretary.
Jeremy Grey, a trow, owns the Grey Detective Agency, which specializes in supernatural problems. Teresa is an agency psychic. Detective Lucy Tate is friendly towards the fae. Lieutenant Peterson is terrified of Merry, ever since the Branwyn’s Tears incident at the station in A Kiss of Shadows, 1. Bucca-Dhu is a diminished sidhe god and part of the ritual that brought the ghosts of dead gods, the Starving Ones, to life.
Queen Andais, the vicious and sadistic Queen of Air and Darkness is desperate for a child of her bloodline. Her son, Prince Cel, the Prince of Old Blood, is more likely to be executed for his beyond psychopathic crimes while her niece, Merry, is only a half-blood. Siobhan is the mad head of his guards.
Jeffrey Maison works for Maeve Reed, a fae exiled by Taranis, who took Hollywood and the world by storm. She had been a goddess of beauty and spring, Conchenn, but then Taranis exiled her. Some hundred years ago. Gordon Reed, the director who made her a star, is Maeve’s beloved…and dying…husband. Marie is Maeve’s young assistant.
Ethan Kane of the Kane and Hart Agency, the Grey Detective Agency’s only real rivals in L.A., is hostile toward Merry and her men. Max Corbin and Frank are two of the bodyguards. Jordon and Julian Hart are twins and strong in their own powers. Adam Kane is Julian’s lover and Ethan’s brother.
The Nameless is a conglomeration “of everything too awful, too hungry” in sidhe powers. All that is the worst of the Seelie and the Unseelie. A creation that allowed the Courts to come to America.
The Cover and Title
The cover is dark and purpled in its old Hollywood effect with the wrought iron curls and and frills of the frame partially enclosing Merry, with Doyle’s turn in Merry’s bedroom.
The title is a hint of the Darkness for he and the others are coming out into the Light, and it’s A Caress of Twilight on them all.
