A Lick Of Frost

WARNING, WARNING, WILL ROBINSON! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Seriously. If you don't want to know what happens in the latest Merry Gentry book, don't read any farther. I'm gonna reveal a LOT about the book, and make some commentary.


OK, if you've read this far, it's your own darn fault if the outcome is spoiled for you.

SYNOPSIS: Starts out in a lawyer's office. Taranis has accused 3 of Merry's Men of raping one of the Seelie Court. Merry & her Men spend some time discussing it, and revealing some of Taranis' dirty laundry as well. Taranis shows up via mirror and glamourizes...well...pretty much everyone. Then he tries to kill Doyle and Abeloec. They survive, but they're horribly burned.
Taranis' own court turns against him, and votes him out of office, so to speak. They want Merry to be their next Queen!
Back in Unseelie Land, Andais does not take kindly to this news. She thinks Merry has been treating with the Seelie Court for quite some time, and is absolutely furious. Merry finally convinces her that the offer was as much of a surprise to her as it was to Andais, and Andais...sorta...forgives her. Sorta. As much as Andais does, really.
Merry's feeling run-down and fears she has a cold or the flu. VERY tired, feeling "off", that sort of thing. She fears that even IF the "Golden Court" elected her Queen, she wouldn't be "immortal" or Seelie enough for them, and they'd shortly change their mind and kill her.

We get introduced to the Faerie Hounds. Several Faerie have dogs now. They're the result of the Wild Hunt being released at the end of "Mistral's Kiss". They were all the large black Wild Hunt dogs until the fae touched them, then some stayed large black dogs (Doyle's), some became greyhound type dogs, including Merry's, and some became terrier-types, like Rhys's.

Some backing-and-forthing goes on with the goblins and more with Andais. Merry and her Men do what Merry and her Men are supposed to do, and they have a lot of fun doing it. Ash and Holly, the 2 goblin-sidhe she's agreed to "service", show up for their Night Of Fun, along with all the RedCaps. Merry talks to them a bit, and suddenly faerie is "created". Maeve Reed's house, where they are staying, pretty much turns into another sithen. Sort of. We find out that Merry's female hound is pregnant. And so is Merry, with twins - and she has been for a month. And the twins have six fathers: Doyle, Rhys, Galen, Frost, Mistral and Sholto. Anyone that had a dog or twelve were "anchored" so they weren't as affected. The ones that didn't...
Ash and Holly were brought into their powers. Holly is happy, because he now has more power to be a goblin. Ash is not, because he wanted a shot at being King of the Unseelie Court, and he found out they're a month too late to even try to be in the running. The RedCaps are changed. It's not certain TO what, but they're still RedCaps. And, unfortunately, Frost is affected as well.
He didn't have any dogs, and feared that he wasn't sidhe enough to "make" them. When faerie came, he didn't have anything to anchor him to "how he was", so he was Changed. He changed into the White Stag, and ran off. He may or may not ever come back, and may or may not ever see his child. Merry is devastated, and goes outside to get away from everyone.

Amatheon shows up, and tries to...um..."press his suit". Only it's not Amatheon - it's Taranis in disguise, who knocks Merry unconscious and kidnaps her. She wakes up in his bedroom, and is rescued by the Seelie Court, who essentially arrest him and take her out to meet the press and get medical attention.

COMMENTARY: It's a fun ride, as usual with the Merry Gentry books. However, there were some completely bad things about the book. For one thing, the composition is terrible. There were chapter breaks in the middle of the action, which would pick up in the next chapter right where it left off. News flash: if it's not a thought break, don't make it a chapter break! That kind of "cliffhanger" writing is fine for the Hardy Boys, but these are supposed to be grown-up books. We don't need a "tune in next chapter for the exciting conclusion" every other page. Really.
I liked that there was more plot / action / character development than sex in this one. Mistral's Kiss seemed to have the non-sex scenes in there SOLELY to drive us to another sex-scene; it's nice that this one actually has plot and the sex scenes are a part of the plot instead of the replacement for it.
However.
The biggest, most unbelievable part of the entire book was that Merry was feeling run-down and tired, and never ever once thought, "hey, I wonder if I'm pregnant." We find out early in the book that she'd been feeling tired for a couple days, and everyone, including her, assumed that she was coming down with a cold! She fears that she's not immortal now, as she thought she was.
Erm.
The entire point of Merry's Men is to get her pregnant. The focus of the entire series so far has been "get Merry Pregnant". And with all of these people participating in the activities, not one of them said, "Hey, you're feeling tired and out of sorts, like you're getting a cold or the flu, let's stop at Walgreen's and pick up an EPT"???? Come on. That plot device just did not work. Do they not have pregnancy tests in Merry's world? The only way to ever ever tell you're pregnant is if you Miss Your Period? Puh-leeze. I'm sorry, I just don't believe that. By page three, I was thinking, "she's not got a cold, you morons, she's pregnant. Duh."
And the "I've got a cold" theme came up way, way too often for me to just suspend disbelief and set it aside to enjoy the rest of the book. I'm forced to conclude that it's a good thing sidhe don't breed that often, because apparently they're all dumber than a box of hair.
Of course, it did have one positive effect. Because pretty much all my disbelief was occupied with "I can't believe it took a freaking VISION to tell her she's pregnant", I didn't have too much trouble believing the whole "six fathers for two babies" thing. It probably helps that I have read enough mythology to buy it, but really. That's a stretch. I think Hamilton painted herself into a corner, here - she made way too many likable characters, and then couldn't choose which would be Merry's King-Consort. So she didn't. (My personal opinion: she didn't want to alienate any of her fanbase by "eliminating" their favorite from the Father List.) You'll notice any of Merry's Men that have received more than 5 pages of action & dialog wound up on the Father List. The throwaways, the "red-shirts", if you will, didn't.

Not a bad book, certainly not the worst in the Merry Gentry series, but not exactly the greatest, either.
3.5 out of 5 bones for this one.

COMMENTARY ON OTHER SPECULATION: I've read a lot of other people's speculation about it, too. Here's some of my thoughts on that. The biggest lot of comments regarding this book expressed disappointment that Cel has been built up into a big threat "for nothing". Er...excuse me? Just because Merry's finally pregnant doesn't actually mean that Andais is going to give up her throne, and it's far from certain that it'll be to Merry in any case. She already said that! She's deeply offended that Merry was offered the Seelie throne, and has said that Merry is "too Seelie" to rule the Unseelie.
She knows that as soon as Merry takes the Unseelie Throne, Cel is dead dead dead. She's already demonstrated a significant soft spot for her son, and she absolutely hates Merry. No, I'm not seeing this transfer of power from Andais to Merry happening any time soon, if at all, and certainly not easily.
Cel's not eliminated as a threat, people, and it's stupid to think he is.