Feed Your Interest

Part of my reason for reading Swallowing Darkness was because of the rumours that it was the last book in the series.

Basically the first thought running through my head was “Laurell K Hamilton is going to FINISH a SERIES?!??!!??”.
I was SHOCKED! This is the woman who has given us countless Anita Blake books (Guilty Pleasures - Anita Blake #1), a series that was kick-butt necromatic fun for the first 9 (or so) books, before degenerating into badly written, euphemism driven porn that *everybody* just wishes would finish, but will never ever do…

Back to the book under discussion…
I’ve just finished it, and it certainly does seem like an end to the series. Let’s just say that I’d be very disappointed if there’s another. There are things left unanswered, events that I would have like to have seen, but I also think I’m fairly happy not having actually gotten those. Complete closure is mildly annoying when you really think about what it means.

Did I enjoy it? Yes, yes I did…
This sounds a bit weird, but I didn’t have serious problems with the amount of sex in this Merry Gentry series. For one thing, it was honest… Right from A Kiss of Shadows onwards, Merry was stated to be descended from a goddess of fertility, it was well stated that sex was a weapon that the Faerie of the court she was exiled from used on a regular basis… None of this “Hey everybody! I’m a powerful necromancer who raises dead people and uses them to tear “innocent” old ladies to bits and pieces… NOT! I’m actually a succubus who will sleep with every man, vampire and were-creature that happens to be close to me!!!”
There’s no unexpected, (and undesired) sudden 270 degree twists in direction and character development… (Ok, granted character development isn’t particularly high on the list anyway, but that’s not the point…)

And oh, the vampire machinations of Jean Claude, the vampire council, etc, have got nothing on the political maneuvering of the Sidhe… And the magic that they live in is very *very* well described.

Back to the book…
There’s no gratuitous sex for the sake of it. Well, there was this one small scene where I was a little “huh?! that’s a little unexpected…”, but it kinda made sense. A bit. And it was a small scene.

The events were major, massive changes that made sense taken in the context of the whole series. Some of the characters, Mistral as an example, were fairly shallow in terms of how they were used in the story, but the main characters were well-represented. Kitto surprised me in A Lick of Frost, and while he didn’t make an appearance in “Swallowing Darkness”, his close relationship with Merry was made evident by her bodyguards’ surprising actions. Sholto grows in his role of King and matures in his role of Merry’s lover and ally. Andias’ twin roles of mother and queen are brought into conflict…

I’m not too sure what else to say about this (seemingly and hopefully) final book in the Meredith Gentry series. I did enjoy it: the faerie politics, the magic, the mild levels of sex, they worked well together to form what I feel is an appropriate and strong finish to a series that I mostly enjoyed.