A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton

I know it's porn. The title is porn-y, the cover is porn-y, even the cover quote goes "I've never read a writer with a more fertile imagination" (ba-dum tish!). But still, does it have to be such badly-written porn?

Okay, Meredith Grey is secretly Merry Gentry, a fairy princess who, for bloodline-y reasons, has left the Fairy Court to be part of a private detective agency in LA. Because 98% of people in urban fantasy are private detectives, and the other 2% are vampire rape victims. After her secret identity comes out, the evil queen of the Fairy Court calls her back to continue the bloodline. She'll do this by, well, fucking the Queen's Guard until she gets a heir. The Queen's Guard is composed entirely of super-attractive men who've been celibate for hundreds of years, so they're thrilled by this, and the central drama is who Merry will sleep with first. I would probably care more if I could tell any of the super-attractive menfolk apart. They all have silly names like "Rhys" and "Galen" and they're all supremely devoted to Merry, so... I think one of them likes film noir?

Okay, I want LKH to write my cover letter. Because if someone can put that shit into a cover letter and get a book deal out of it, surely my non-orgy-having stuff could get a green light. But yeah, I've seen less self-indulgent premises in fics where Wonder Woman fucks a dog.

You know, because clearly Diana couldn't nab a dude.

Anyway, premise aside... it's porn, after all... this is really poorly written. There's no real problem or obstacle, nothing is resolved, the biggest threat is when the douche who would be next on the throne if it weren't for Merry casts a spell which causes her to... trip. Oh, and Merry has a convenient superpower that kicks in every time she's threatened, so whatever there. There's like two hundred pages devoted to introducing the other folks at the detective agency where Merry works, only then they disappear and the story starts introducing various members of the Fairy Court, many of whom also disappear.

As a character herself, Merry is nothing special. She doesn't have to really accomplish anything, succeeding mainly by accident of birth (seriously, everything she accomplishes is because of the magic she was born with or the fact that she's in the queen's bloodline). She isn't even likable. One of the few dramatic moments is when Merry comes face to face with her jerky ex-husband after eight years apart. The queen wants him to be one of the members of her harem, but Merry refuses. In fact...

"I want to know he's celibate again. He was freed of the geas ten years ago so he could sleep with me, but he used his freedom to fuck everyone that would have him. I want him to know that I'm sleeping with the other guards, that they're getting sex and he's not. That unless I consent to lie with him that he may never have sex again for the rest of his so unnatural life." I smiled as I spoke and realized it was the truth. Goddess bless me, it was vindictive, but it was true.

Jesus, lady, it was eight years ago. Move on! You're not Jennifer Aniston!

So then, in the grand tradition of douche ex-boyfriends everywhere, he goes to the press and reveals everything - details of Merry's sex life and private photos of them together. Everyone is so pissed off by this that they start talking about killing him or torturing him to death. And I actually think it's not as bad as forcing someone to not have sex? Especially since throughout the book they've talked about how evil and hateful the queen is for not allowing her Guard to, ya know, fuck their brains out. So I guess it's wrong to try to control someone's sex life unless you're pissed at them.

Pictured: Our heroine.

Another sorta baffling decision is that this book opens like a lot of urban fantasy novels, with Merry getting a new case about an abusive husband using a sort of elven roofie on women. However, this is pretty much resolved right away and not mentioned again for the rest of the novel, because of the harem. What makes this even weirder is that, in investigating the case, Merry is dosed with the roofie and raped in a scene that I'm really not sure whether it's meant to be scary or erotic. And it's not like it's "oh, thank God you saved me in the nick of time" rape. The book makes a point of her being penetrated and there's even a scene afterward that puts a fine point on Merry saying she was raped. And then it's never mentioned again for the rest of the book. Within 24 hours, she's having sex with her boyfriend (another character who disappears from the book within 100 pages of being introduced) and then having tentacle sex with a stranger.

Yup.

I realize no one is going to react the same way to being raped, but Merry doesn't seem to have any reaction whatsoever. In no time at all, she's shits and giggles, trying to decide which of her hawt boy harem she wants to have sex with first. So, basically, I'm more bugged by getting a warning on an internet comm than Merry Gentry is by being raped. (Damnit, if making yourself more attractive to get laid is rape, than She-Hulk is a rapist because she turns into an Orion animal woman to do sex. It's simple logic! The ancient Greeks weep when you disagree with me!)

Ahem.

Oh, and for those of you who think LKH's characters are just Mary-Sues, it probably doesn't help that Merry has three-colored eyes. The three rings of color in my eyes glowed bright enough that even from that distance you could see the individual colors: emerald, jade, liquid gold. Jesus.

Then there are the little niggles. Like Merry's boyfriend. I'd once seen Roane punch his fist through a car door to impress a would-be mugger that we weren't worth the trouble. Did you pay for that car door, Roane? Because I'm guessing repairing a fist-hole in a car door is going to cost someone a lot more than whatever your walking around money is.

Or how Merry feels in the afterglow. I'd woken with the feel of sex riding my body like a silken bruise. Silken bruise? Come on now! I wouldn't want to meet the woman who's aroused by that!

Okay, maybe I would. But I wouldn't respect myself in the morning.

But at least it's a fast read. If you skip all the descriptions of what the men are wearing, and their hair, the sex scenes, I'm sure you could knock this book out in one sitting. In fact, let's skip to a random page.

The V neck of his sweater cut low over the swell of his chest, showing a curl of chest hair that was a darker green than his hair, almost black. The sweater was pettably soft, clinging to his body. His skin was white, but the sweater brought out the undercast of pale, pale green so that his skin was either pearl white or a dreamlike green depending on how the light hit it. His eyes were a green the color of new spring grass, more human than the liquid emerald of my own. But the rest of him--the rest of him was too unique for words.

So if you're one of those people who are wondering what, say, superhero comics would be like if men were sexualized the way women were, this book could be of interest of you. Because apparently, everyone would look like douchebags.