L. K. Hamilton, Seduced by Moonlight (Ballantine, 2004)

A lot of people lounge by pools in L. A., but few of them are truly immortal, no matter how hard they pretend with plastic surgery and exercise. Doyle was truly immortal and had been for over a thousand years. A thousand years of wards, assassinations, and political intrigue, and he'd been reduced to being eye candy in a thong bathing suit by the pool of the rich and famous. He lay at the edge of the pool, wearing almost nothing. Sunlight glittered across the blue, blue water of the pool. The light broke in a jagged dance across his body, as if some invisible hand stirred the light, and made it turn into a dozen tiny spotlights that coaxed Doyle's dark, dark body into colors that I'd never known his skin could hold.

He wasn't black the way a human being is black, but more like a dog is black. True black like the darkest of nights, or so I'd thought. Watching the play of light on his skin, I realised I'd been wrong. His skin gleamed with blue highlights, a shine of midnight blue along the long muscular sweep of his calf; a flare of royal blue like a stroke of deep sky touched his back and shoulder. Purple to shame the darkest amethyst caressed his hip. How could I ever have thought his skin monochrome? He was a miracle of colors and light, strapped across a body that rippled and moved with muscles honed in wars fought centuries before I was born.-- From the first chapter of Seduced by Moonlight

This review would be rated by the Motion Picture Association of America as NC-17. If you're not at least that old, go away! Or at least take a cold shower afterwards.

My first encounter with the idea of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts in a fictional setting was Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, possibly one of the finest fantasy novels ever published. I dearly love that novel, but the mythos that L. K. Hamilton has created in this series is far more complex and interesting than the story there. And a lot darker too. As Michael Jones noted in his review of A Kiss of Shadows, the first Merry Gentry novel, 'One of the things most people seem to forget about fairy tales is that they were, once upon a time, earthy, lusty stories in which just about anything was possible, and no subject was too taboo to touch upon. While the sex was off screen, the results were profoundly apparent, from illegitimate children to faithless stepmothers to cursed relatives to mysterious orphans. And while the fairy tales might have been sanitized in the Victorian era, made safe for younger ears, with the blood and sex and gore and scandals toned down or removed, they've never forgotten their true nature. And now Laurell K. Hamilton, best known for her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series of novels, has turned her own literary attentions towards the darker side of the fairy world.'

The first two novels in this series do a slightly better than acceptable job of setting up the premise of a half fey half mortal female who will be the next Queen of the Unseelie Court if she bears an heir to that Court. Her aunt, the Queen of the Air and Darkness, would just as soon have her dead as be the next Queen, but both Courts have been less than fertile for centuries now. Rather barren, to be precise, for reasons that are not terribly clear. So the Queen gives Merry some of her Guards to fuck her, but only to the purpose of getting her pregnant. (Tell that to them. Or to her as by this volme she's longing to give a good blow job but the Guards don't want to waste any of their precious seed, as being the one who gets her pregnant means he will sit by her side when she's Queen. Will she get to give head? Oh, go ahead and guess...) Now the sex in the first two novels is mostly offstage, but not here. As you might have guessed by now, there are graphic descriptions of orgasms here that would make Erica Jong who coined the phrase 'zipless fuck' blush. Or at least pay attention!

Remember a 70s Irish rock group called the Horslips? Their stories of the Irish gods dealt a whole lot with the carnal activities of those beings and mortal females. (One might guess rather sore mortal females at that.) Now just imagine that the Raven's Guard of the Queen of the Air and Darkness are the group that the mortals of Ireland long ago shaped those legends around. After they left Ireland, their powers waned in the sanctuary of the United States where, as long as they allowed no mortal to worship, Thomas Jefferson said they could live. This status quo holds well until Merry (who may or may not be mortal) starts exhibiting some very powerful abilities that allow her (possibly) to be channelling The Goddess Herself, i.e. Frost gets his powers back as a Storm God. (Much of this scenario also shows up in Simon Green's Drinking Midnight Wine where some of the Immortals have chosen to have diminished powers in order to appear more human.) Randy immortals with diminished powers are bad enough, but immortals with godlike powers are far worse. And Merry's just now realising what they are!

Take this piece of dialogue courtesy her Web site:

'Rhys was not always Unseelie.'

That surprised me, and I let it show on my face. 'He was Seelie court?'

Frost nodded, then frowned. He frowned so much, that if he'd been able to wrinkle he would have had grooves in his forehead, around his mouth, by now, but his face was smooth and flawless, and always would be. 'Rhys was a power apart. He was the ruler of the land of the dead and that is not truly Unseelie, or Seelie. He was welcome at the Shining court, but he was truly a thing apart, as were some of the rest of us. The system of two courts of the sidhe is relatively recent. Once there were many courts. The humans chose to call those of the fey that were beautiful and did them no harm, Seelie. Those that they found ugly, or harmed them, they named Unseelie. But it was not so clean a line, once. There were many, many courts once.'

As you can see from that quote, what I find utterly fascinating about this series is how grey it is. Neither the Seelie or Unseelie Court are particularly nice places as both are ruled by immortals that can have you killed, tortured (possibly a worse fate than death), or exiled at their whim. Fun, eh? Did I mention that many of the Raven's Guard had been celibate for centuries as they fuck no one but The Queen? Ahhh, then there's the matter of The Goblin Court -- lovely descriptions of life there! Because Hamilton uses the premise that the Fey have always walked among us, she deals with them in a very flesh and blood manner. We get descriptions of shape shifting that are truly frightening, a lovely bringing back a Sex Goddess by the act of lesbian sex, a Death God coming into his full powers, and even a Goblin becomes much more than merely a goblin.

Wait a minute... Is there a plot here? Other than immortals getting their full godlike abilities? Definitely. Though I am reminded strongly here of Roger Zelazny's Amber series in which nothing happens for long periods of time other than discussions of Court politics and who's trying to kill who. The difference here is that much of the novel takes place in Merry's very, very busy bedroom. (At several points, a cold shower would have been in order for me as the reader!) Not that I would say that is a bad thing. And the final third of the novel does shift locale to the Seelie Court in its burrow in Illinois. (Hey, where else would the Fey Courts be but underground? Remember Jennifer Stevenson's Unseelie Court and you can make a good guess how dangerous this visit by Merry and her all-but-in-name Consorts is for her and them. Add in that a sacred object of great power has found its way into the hands of Merry (no, not one of those!), while a gift from the Queen of the Air and Darkness that she got in the last novel is, errr, enhancing her considerable sex energy, and that war could well break out between the various Courts, and you have a very delicious story. Or rather I should say a very, very juicy story!

Ok, it is definitely more messy than the situation that exists in War for the Oaks or even in Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day. There are lots of interesting characters here, good plotting, and dollops of sex. Not to mention that it appears that the author really has a good feel for Irish myth and politics. If you liked War for the Oaks and don't mind sex scenes of a graphic nature, this is worth a read so long as you start with the first novel, A Kiss of Shadows; it will make no sense at all if you start here.

[Cat Eldridge]