Review of MISTRAL'S KISS by Laurell K. Hamilton (see her website)

A MEREDITH GENTRY NOVEL

Ballantine Books, December 2006

In a dream, Meredith Gentry, princess of the Unseelie Court of Faerie, sees the God and Goddess--each holding a gift. When she awakens, she has the cup of the God--and its ancient holder, Abeloec,wonders if he dare drink from it. Once, Abeloec was a god himself--but those days are so long vanished in the mists of time that few, even among the fey, remember it. Still, with Meredith's urging, he dares. Together they, along with Mistral, Queen Andais's bodyguard, and Meredith's other lovers dare to make love--and by doing so they begin to awaken the magic that has lain dormant for thousands of years.

Although Meredith (and sex with Meredith) awakens magic, that magic is not under Meredith's command and she finds herself in the court of the sluagh--the last of the wild hunt. Through either sex or death, Meredith can bring about an awakening in the magic of the slaugh as well--but the choice is critical. Her death returns the slaugh in its ancient and deadly form. Sex will recreate them into something that they have never been.

Author Laurell K. Hamilton (see more BooksForABuck.com reviews of novels by Hamilton) continues her Meredith Gentry series with an oddly poetic story. Meredith has become something of a vessel of the power of the goddess--and her actions now have power and consequences beyond what she could have imagined. One thing, however, remains constant--Meredith has a tremendous need for sex--for its own sake, for the sake of the alliances she uses her body to create with the other beings of magic, for the sake of proving her fertility by getting pregnant and claiming her heirship to the Unseelie throne, and for the sake of the God and Goddess who use the power of her sex for their own purposes.

Hamilton is a talented writer and story-teller, but I've been disappointed in several of her recent novels. MISTRAL'S KISS puts her back on track. Although there is plenty of sex in this story, the story rather than the sex claims the dominant place and Hamilton makes the hands of the God and Goddess, working their magic throughout faerie, a compelling image. This is a very short novel--two hundred pages of large print and wide spaces. But Hamilton packs it with plenty of action

If you're a Hamilton fan, as I am, you owe yourself the favor of grabbing this short novel.

Four Stars

Reviewed 1/04/07

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