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.