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    A Kiss of Shadows
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    A Kiss of Shadows
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    A Kiss of Shadows
    Audiobook15 hours

    A Kiss of Shadows

    Written by Laurell K. Hamilton

    Narrated by Laural Merlington

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Meet Merry Gentry, paranormal P.I., and enter a thrilling, sensual world as dangerous as it is beautiful, full of earthly pleasures and dazzling magic, and ruled by the all-consuming passions of immortal beings once worshiped as gods…or demons.

    Merry Gentry, princess of the high court of Faerie, is posing as a human in Los Angeles, working as a private investigator specializing in supernatural crime. But now the queen’s assassin has been dispatched to fetch her—whether she likes it or not. Suddenly Merry finds herself a pawn in her dreaded aunt’s plans. The job that awaits her: enjoy the constant company of the most beautiful immortal men in the world. The reward: the crown—and the opportunity to continue to live. The penalty for failure: death.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMay 16, 2017
    ISBN9781543613087
    Unavailable
    A Kiss of Shadows
    Author

    Laurell K. Hamilton

    Laurell K. Hamilton is the author of the New York Times bestselling Anita Blake series and Merry Gentry series. She lives with her family in St. Louis, Missouri.

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    Reviews for A Kiss of Shadows

    4/5

    1,507 ratings60 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Merry can't run forever though, and soon she finds herself back in the middle of the things she once tried to escape. Once looked down upon at the court for her weak powers and mortality, Merry now surprises even herself with her strength both in combat and in magic. The question is: will this be enough to keep her safe once the Queen finds her? The book is worth a read, but if you're expecting new and different, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for that style and flavor that is very much Laurell K Hamilton, with strong female characters and that air of darkness and action she's good at, you'll find the book entertaining in its own right.
    • 5/5
      I love the way the sex plays into the story. With Anita Blake it sometimes felt like sex just happened and they forgot what was going on around them. But with Merry, it always played a huge role in what was actually happening.
    • 3/5
      Lots of sex in this one. Lots of weird, strange, tentacle-y sex at times. I like the close examination of fey courts, though. Very strange, terrible creatures. Lots of blood and sex, etc. Very graphic violence, even more graphic [unorthodox] sex. Not for the squeamish.
    • 4/5

      This book is basically all about Merry’s sexual activity and conquests. Traditionally, a book with heavy sex is not my thing but one of my friends was reading the book, so I gave it a try and we discussed it which was fun.

      I liked the part of the book with the branwen tears and where all the police officers were going crazy over Merry. Also, when Roan and Merry had sex and it involved a seal skin/seal-man, lol. Merry have lots of sex and with very unique creatures (tentacled-man, etc.). As you read, you will see…

      I did enjoy the overall story even if the author was to cut out the sex parts. This book might be for you if you enjoy magic, creatures, sex, and Royal Court drama.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book series ! This is my favorite book series !
    • 4/5
      A great start to a series love the characters .
    • 5/5
      What amazing imagination for the few world and court structure.
    • 5/5
      Kiss of Shadows is no different. In this book Hamilton does a wonderful job of creating a strong female protagonist, Merry Gentry, and describes an intricate fairy world that she belongs to, full of strange creatures and filled with political intrigue. But in order to enjoy Hamilton's skill at describing such people and places, you have to wade through pages of nothing but sex, as her main characters pretty much sleep with anything and everyone around them.
    • 3/5
      An interesting story of faeries and humans co-existing in the modern world. The plot has potential and the non-human sex is interesting to say the least. But I'm always a little disappointed to come to the end of a book and find that it is not a complete story in itself, although I think this first book is a bit more complete than the ones that follow.
    • 4/5
      I was pleasantly surprised as I do not like the Anita Blake series. I'll definitely try the next one.
    • 3/5
      It has been a little while since I read this book but here is what I recall...

      I had a love hate relationship with this series. It was confused about if it wanted to be mainstream or erotic. Mostly Merry had loads of sex and the story fell to the wayside.

      I quit before I finished the whole series. But I did get quite a few books in so there must have been something drawing me back every time!
    • 4/5
      So sometimes I like it naughty - sue me.
    • 5/5
      Great world building novel with strong emphasis on sensuality both pain and joy.
    • 5/5
      I saw Ms. Hamilton was about to release a new Merry Gentry book so I decided I needed to re-read this series as well. I forgot how much I loved them. I enjoy the lost princess aspect as well as all the court politics and sexy menfolk. I also love that Merry doesn't have the same sex qualms as Anita Blake (well as she did when her series started).

      I enjoy this series for what it is. Yes, there are some plot holes you can drive a small armored vehicle through and yes some of the sex scenes are a little far fetched but hey, I enjoy it.
    • 2/5
      So the whole series can be summed up as Anita Blake minus the vampire hunting and raising of the dead. Meredith (Merry) is a fae. Which I guess means having a much sex as you possibly can with as many people as you possibly can. Everyone loves Merry )with the exception of her aunt and uncle)
    • 3/5
      The storyline is a little on the boring side. The narrator's voice is terrible.
    • 2/5
      I remember really enjoying Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series back in the early '00s. Her take on women's genre fiction was so unique. Nowadays, like so many older books, it feels a bit dated. Today, sensationalism and shock factors in media have been used up until no amount of gore or sex seems to phase us anymore. So now, this series feels almost a little... quiant in that regard. As for the Merry Gentry series, I remember starting this series waaaay back when and not liking it at all. I don't even remember why, just that I read a bit of this book and that was that for me with all of the L.K. Hamilton books, even the A.B. Series. It had become page after page of smut, with little to no tension or gritty plot to follow. I am a bit more mature and world-weary now coming back to the series, and... I am honestly just bored with it so far. Sure, there is plenty of action in this first book, but it all seems to just, oops, happen to Merry. She falls into (often literally) trouble and then falls right back out. The same way that she falls ibto her love affairs, and back out. I don't think there is a shred of real 'loyalty' in this character. She tackles every challenge with empathy, which I like and find relatable, but thats seems to be all. Merry sees every other character right thru to their faults and insecurities, treats them with pity or disdain, then doesn't give two sh**s about what happens to that individual after. Its all heavily political. I get that, but Merry is cold even when she's intimate with people. I don't like that at all. Maybe her character will grow to have more fidelity as the series progresses, but I rather doubt it. There are at least a dozen male characters that come and go in her life and she is aesthetically awed by them, but that's it. Its just... So cold. Making it feel more pornographic than erotic. Finally, the narrator of this series is lovely when she reads everything EXCEPT masculine dialogue. She sounds like she's watched every Audrey Hepburn film at least a half dozen times to mimic the actress's vocal intonation and cadence, but then she gets to ANY male voice and she seems to be mimicking a hag in a Monty Python flick. Her poor throat. Its really awful to listen to that amount of vocal fry or whatever it is. *shiver* And it does absolutely NOTHING to make the male characters accessible or remotely likable. In fact their words' meaning just gets lost in that grotesque parody, especially Doyle. I think I might like the written version of Doyle a lot, but the narrated Doyle is just appalling. If it wasn't for that, I'd give the book another star, but if Scribd offered this series in Ebook format, I would drop the audio version in a heartbeat. This woman's voice reading men's characters is going to give me nightmares.
    • 5/5
      I have read the books and this is my 1st time listening to them and it was AMAZING! Can't wait to listen to the rest!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I've read this book before and decided to reread the series while waiting for the new Anita Blake book to come out. I adore the Merry Gentry series. It's just as great second time around as it was the first. It's slow going but picks up fairly quickly. A tough redhead princess with a ton of potential, gorgeous fae men and a wickedly sadistic Aunt. What's not to love?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      My review is like many others. App keeps freezing up, saved selection keeps reverting to unavailable not even 24 hours After the new month begins. Why save your books if every month it is a 90% chance your saved books will be unavailable. Support responses with the same rhetoric - unlimited selection available. Not true, what is readily available are old and obscure books.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      one all time favorites! I always read it at least once a year . I'll always come back to this series.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series were the only books I've read of hers before diving into the Gentry series, the first book of which is Kiss of Shadows.

      When I read lines like: I heard someone scream: it was me! – then I knew I was reading a Hamilton novel. Her Gentry book was similar to Anita Blake's books in many ways. We have a young woman who is coming into her own in discovering her new-found powers and abilities. For Anita, she was more than just a raiser of the dead. For Merry Gentry, she was more than just a mortal in the immortal world of fairie land.

      As in the Anita Blake novels, where werewolves and vampires are not myth but reality, so too is the reality of The Unseelie Court of fairies, goblins and elves and so on.

      Hamilton really gets into the sexuality of the situation even more so than in the Anita Blake books. Merry pretty much will jump on anyone who looks at her and enjoys these men immensely, as she teases and flirts with certain death. Her aunt, the current queen, has been looking for Merry for some time. Merry has been undercover as a detective working for a supernatural detective agency until caught and brought back to the fairie land that she originated from.

      Confronting prejudice and attempted assassinations as well as some crazy news reporters, she deals with these things fairly well.

      My criticisms center around plot! When we start at the detective agency and find one case that exposes her as the missing fairie princess, Hamilton drops the agency bit completely. We don't get back to it until nearly the last chapter of the book and then rush through what they're situations are.

      The bad guys were hard to follow and center on. Yeah, we had the Prince Cel and his minions but they were not clearly developed for me. His animosity towards his cousin Merry was not clearly explained. Her relationship with a former lover was not explained enough for me to understand his actions and betrayals. And finally, when she was allowed to have sex with her Guard, all I got for my reading pleasure was some softcore pornography!

      On the other hand, I did enjoy the potential of a world that deals with the magic world and humanities' response to it. There is made mention of World War II and Hitler and their dealings with this fairie world, and this was enticing to me. Unfortunately Hamilton does not develop much of a history of this world – she seems more interested in paragraphs describing wardrobe and matching socks & hairstyles rather than plot and story.

      I'm sure the later books in the series solve these problems as there is so much introduced and not enough development of main characters or much explanation as to motive. I'm not sure if I will continue in this series, but it being such a welcome change from vampire novels, you just might give it a try.

      Recommended for those loving romance novels with a bit of supernatural flair for the dramatic.

    • 4/5
      Now I remember reading this in high school. I don't remember what threw me off liking it but I hadn't wanted to read more of the series and stopped. I'm a big LKH fan but I was into the Anita Blake series. I decided to give Merry a second chance and so I read it again because I love how LKH writes. I'm glad I gave it this second chance. I loved it. Merry had lots of issues on her mind, her heart, and her world. A princess in hiding, outed in the worst possible way. Nearly killed more than once. Welcomed home by the very earth itself. Surrounded by gorgeous, dangerous (in a good way) men. There is not much not to like about it so far. As it is I'm picking the second one up right after writing this review. I want to learn more about Doyle, Frost, Rhys, Galen and whomever I am missing. This book was intriguing. And really, really well written.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Not much to say about this one, really. It wwaas fast and slightly entertaining without any deep thinking required.
    • 5/5
      Merry Gentry, the first Faerie Princess born on American soil, has been working in L.A. as a private investigator, hiding her identity from all of the fae for the past three years. Third in line to be ruler of the Dark Court, she’s also an oddity because she never came into her powers, and she’s the only sidhe born with some mortal blood.Aunt Andais, Queen of the Dark Court, sends her assassin to fetch Merry as she’s got a proposition for her. One that puts her life in danger all over again as she’s up against her cousin in a race to have a child. The winner will be the heir to the throne and most sidhe don’t want to see Merry win. What the author does really well with both this book and the series is politics. Everything Merry does or says has to be weighed for both the short term and long term, and she’s good at it without spending a lot of time over-thinking it. We also get a rather wide variety of fae, both the beautiful as well as terrifying. But unlike all other fae in a position of power, Merry had been raised to accept and respect all, and goddess knows she’ll need allies. Her attitude and compassion mark her as vastly different from the rulers of both the light and dark sidhe courts.This book was first published at a time before Anita Blake was accepting of having multiple partners. With this world, the fae have absolutely no hang ups with sex; who, what or how often. It’s something to be enjoyed.Mystery, action, politics, along with an interesting world and characters. You never know what’s going to happen next.
    • 5/5
      It reminds me a bit of the Anita Blake series mixed with th show "Lost Girl." At first the whole "fae" thing threw me off, it is not normally something I am interested in. But i like the dark twist to it. the main character might as well be called a succubus :P. I look forward to the next book.
      -Is there a prequel? That would help.-

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      If you fantasize about having mind blowing sex with many men/male creatures then this book is for you. It wasn't really for me.

      Laurell K. Hamilton does have quite a fertile imagination and the fantasy world of the Unseelie court that she creates is an interesting one. I like how she mixes the magical world and the modern world together. I like how the main character, Princess Meredith, views the world around her. She's a down to earth type gal who just happens to be a princess and have magical powers.

      But what I didn't especially like was all the meaningless sex with sooooo many partners, especially in such a short time frame. What ever happened to fear of STDs? They were never mentioned. Maybe in Laurell K. Hamilton's fantasy world STDs don't exist.

      Anyway, I'm more of a believer in monogamy, even in my fictional life, or at least more than a 24 hour span between partners. But hey, that's just me.
    • 3/5
      Upon re-read, I feel like the Gentry series holds up better than the later Anita books. Hamilton's world building is a lot of fun, and as so many characters and concepts are being created there's a lot of action to leaven the "pedantic leading lady" issue.
    • 4/5
      I like this series the more it goes on. Yes there is still lots of explict sexual content but Hamilton set this series to be based around that, Merry comes from a line of sex gods. So I accept it better in this world than in the Anita Blake world. Some Hamilton first person style that works well.
    • 4/5
      different......