www.read-that.com book review

My name is Meredith Gentry. I work for the Grey Detective Agency which we specialize in fey magic. Although no one knows that I hold glamour over myself to keep everyone knowing, including my friends, my real identity. My real name is Princess Meredith NicEssus of the Unseelie Throne. I can get by without changing my hair since humans try to match my unseelie red but I always have to hide my tri-colored irises. I have been in hiding from everyone for 3 years now. My aunt is the Queen of Air and Darkness and dotes on her son who despises me. If it weren’t for Cel trying to kill me, I wouldn’t have left. I didn’t think I would survive one more duel.

While working, Jeremy Gray and I were confronted with a dilemma. We rarely do divorce cases but neither of us could let this one go. A woman came in with a spell so nasty on her that we just couldn’t let it lie. We decided that we needed to answer one of his many spell ridden ads and try to figure out a way to put him behind bars. Then we would have more time to work on getting the spell off of the wife.

Alistair was normal looking and didn’t look like a predator. But he was stealing the magic off of fey without their knowledge. Merry has that knowledge which just make him want her more. When they got to his room, she gets surprised when he brings out a bottle of oil that happens to be “Branwyn Tears”. This oil lowers anyone’s ambition and makes then need to be touched by anyone. It was also forbidden to be used without the Queen’s consent. Also once the oil touched Merry, her glamour disappeared. Without the glamour, everyone would know who she was. While trying to keep her head and not let the “tears” get to her, she told Alistair to stop but her body didn’t want to.

After a gruesome ending to Alistair, Merry was found out. She would try to get out of town and run again but nothing was working the way she wanted. When on her way to the airport, she was being hunted by more than one member of the Unseelie Court. Unbeknown to her, the Queen wanted her home and safe so she could make her coheir with the Queen’s son, Cel. The one to bear child first gets the throne.

The Queen of Air and Darkness has always kept her guards celibate unless she wanted them. That geas was to be lifted for Merry and only for Merry. In order for her to get pregnant as fast as possible, Merry was to take on many men. She decided that she would return back to L.A. and take her men with her. She chose the Queen’s Darkness, the Queen’s Killing Frost, Rhys, Galen, a spy for the Queen, and with an alliance to the Goblins, Merry was to take Kitto too.

I loved this book. The imagination put into this whole series is out of this world. I am a big fan of Hamilton from her work with Anita Blake but this is really top notch. The characters are phenominal. I think so far, Frost is my favorite. Even though he seems to be the most emotional. Darkness or Doyle is scary to me. Rhys is not serious enough, neither is Galen. Of course she has to remember, whoever gets her pregnant will be king. Kudos again to the author for such a well written and imaginative series. Most beginning books are slow to start since you have to learn the characters and get the basics down but Hamilton does it with ease and makes you keep turning pages over and over. What a Read!!