SEDUCED BY MOONLIGHT

Third entry in Hamilton’s series about p.i. /Faerie Princess Meredith Gentry.

Meredith, she of the moonlight skin and blood-auburn hair, handles supernatural cases for the Grey Detective Agency while involved in endless faerie court politics. As we learned in A Caress of Shadows (2002), the now-mortal Meredith will replace her aunt as the Queen of Air and Darkness only if she becomes pregnant, a state she chases hard with the help of her many bodyguards and lovers, including thousand-year-old assassin Doyle, a celibate creature of absolute blackness and a member of the Queen’s Ravens. But Prince Cel hopes to assassinate her and become ruler himself by providing an heir before Meredith can deliver a child. The series background is Hollywood, whose tabloid media and paparazzi pursue Meredith for photo ops. Merry first comes up against Siun, a nightmarish bloated black spider the size of a large German shepherd, with eyes everywhere, a head, hands, and breasts. Then Maeve Reed, the golden goddess of Hollywood, who looks 20 but has been top star for 50 years, tries to seduce her. Can Merry’s ultimate orgasmic lovemaking reawaken Maeve’s true godhead of lost power? Can Merry’s body return his lost godhead to oceanic Barinthus? Will she sink into Adair and into “the power that lay in the muscles and meat of him”? Given all the rolling around beforehand, it seems only right that at this novel’s climax, Meredith finds herself abed with 16 males.

Steamy embraces wispily laced together by moonlit shadow-webbing.