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Book Review: A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton
When Lauren and I prepared to go to upstate NY a little over a week ago, we looked around the Providence library's website for audio books we could download. Although I wasn't familiar with her work, I'd heard an interview with Laurell K. Hamilton on one of the podcasts to which I listen, and the first book of her Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series wasn't available, but the start of her newer Meredith Gentry series was available.
We've very much enjoyed Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series, and from the start this novel seemed like it might be in a similar vein. The basic premise is that all sorts of fantasy creatures, starting with fairies (or fey, or elves, or sidhe--call them what you will) and extending to goblins, brownies, and many you've probably never heard of are not only real, but unlike in Butcher's Dresden series, these fantastic creatures have for some time been living openly among us. The setting is the present day, but it's a modern world which has been shaped by the existence of these fantasy creatures (Hitler, we learn, first allied with some of these creatures, but they turned against him when he tried to weed out "impure" magical creatures). The fairies--at least one court of them--have a sort of independent city-state in Cahokia, Illinois (at the mounds, of course!), though many live in mainstream society, albeit as essentially foreign nationals with special laws applying to them because of their magical natures.
The story here centers on Meredith (Merry) Gentry, a fairy princess who's been on the run from her family for the past three years. Because of her mixed ancestry (part brownie and human as well as Sidhe), she's mortal (instead of immortal like the Sidhe) and apparently has far weaker magic than her fairy kin. Despite this, she still has a high place in the royal succession of the Unseelie fairy court. That's the set-up: I won't say much here about the plot.
Although we found the book enjoyable enough to see it through to its finish, we weren't terribly impressed. Hamilton spends far too much time on description, to the detriment of her work. She describes people and places to a ridiculous extent, apparently in love with similies. As a result, the plot moves with excruciating slowness: an important character shows up, something happens, and then we have to wait for Hamilton to describe the character's appearance, his or her relationship to the main character and to others, the character's personality, all the possibly-relevant details of this character's appearance on the story's stage at this juncture... and on and on. This is bad enough, but then she has to over-explain everything that happens, every decision that the character makes... before it was over, we'd find outselves laughing--at least, after screaming in frustration--as we poked fun at Hamilton's style. I know that fantasy is a hard genre to write: so much needs to be explained because it's not our world, the rules are different, but there's definitely such a thing as over-explaining, and too often Hamilton falls into that trap. Too often, when not boring us with extraneous details, she sounds like she's talking down to us. If this was her first novel--and not just the first in the series--I could understand, but she'd written at least 8 books before this one; if this is what her mature work looks like, I have no interest in reading any of her earlier stuff, and I doubt I'll continue this series either.
Even beyond those criticisms, when the plot moves in unexpected directions--and it does--frequently those directions aren't wholly satisfying. The first part of the novel seemed as though it was going in one direction, but instead it went in a whole different direction, with the first bit of plot being left behind quickly and all of the other characters from the beginning completely forgotten by the end: several characters who Meredith purports to care about in one fashion or another are just completely dropped with barely another mention.
The thing is, there is something appealing about this novel. Her characters do, for the most part, have a certain something that holds the readers' attention and draws us in. There are moments where the characters really come to life. Hamilton is known for writing very sexually-charged fantasy, and rather sadly the sex scenes are one of the highlights--probably her best writing. The book reads like a trashy romance novel for the reader who also loves fantasy, but it's too slow-paced to really work as the light read to which it seems to aspire. Considering how many other good writers there are out there who I haven't read, I don't plan to spend more time on Hamilton's work any time soon.
I suspect that the stylistic flaws that bugged me so much here were accentuated by the fact that we were listening to this as an audiobook. While these things might annoy if being read on the page, they are easily enough skimmed over. When each word is read to you, however, it's impossible not to notice and be frustrated. Oh, and the reader, Laurel Merlington, does a competent job differentiating the characters with different voices, though at times her male voices come off as more flat than I would like.