Final thoughts on A Kiss of Shadows

So, just for the record, I don’t think Laurell K. Hamilton is the best. writer. eva! But I will give her props for hooking me with this book despite its shortcomings. Because, make no mistake, she had me from the first page, and I drooled all over the adventures of Merry Gentry and her erstwhile band of companions, despite my bitchery in an earlier post. Why? Well, first of all, urban fantasy is my favorite genre of literature. If you promise me things like fairies, goblins, and selkies in the modern world, I am already there like white on rice. This is why Charles de Lint has never yet published a bad work of fiction, just a few novels I thought were less good.

The other thing that hooked me was definitely the wish-fulfillment potential. I know I accused LKH of that in my last post, but I guess there is a part of me that would have liked to be a fairy princess, too. And then, of course, we have Merry's harem of teh hotness from the inegmatic Doyle, who is by far my favorite, to Kitto, who is just too cute, to Frost, who delivers teh angst. I mean, she was basically instructed to make herself a harem and have lots of sex. Some people should totally have her problems!

I do have to say that I wish the plot had been structured a bit better–I'd have liked a little bit more mystery and intrigue and a little bit less OMG look at my clothes! The last chapter was a serious let-down, because LKH introduces a whole other character that we don't get to meet at all, kind of at random. It was like she realized, 'Oh, crap, I'm at the end of the book. Um… So then we all went back home and lived moderately happily ever after until the sequel comes out, where there will be more of teh hot guyz for me to seduce. The end.'

Will I be reading future installments of the series? Probably, but I'm interspersing other books between them, and I'm on the waiting list from the library so I can get the third and fourth book in audio format.