A Stroke Of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4) By: Laurell K. Hamilton (Book Review)

(((There will be spoilers in this review)))

Summary:

In Los Angeles she is Meredith Gentry, private investigator. In the faraway world of faerie she is Princess Meredith, heir to a dark throne. In this realm of peril and deception, adversaries watch her every move, while the enemies of her aunt, the queen, lay in wait to usurp power. For the first time in history, human police will enter faerie and Meredith will need all her allies when fate leads her into the arms of Mistral, Master of Storms, the queen's captain of the guard. Their passion will awaken powers long forgotten among the warriors of the court and as Meredith's enemies gather, both courts of faerie will face dire threat. 

Heading into the fourth book in the Meredith Gentry series, Laurell K. Hamilton changes up the theme in the series and takes on a more serious and darker tone. I feel like she was thinking “Kay we’re in the fourth book, them bitches are committed. Let’s get serious.” Evidently, she probably thought of it in a more kinder way but the gist of it is the same. We’re committed to the series so she can trust us to keep reading while she is switching it up and adding more of a serious tone. When I say a serious tone I mean more of she’s really going all out with the sex scenes, murder and gore. And when I say gore, I mean very descriptive gore scenes. But even with the switch up of the tone of the series she still had me hooked. The story is captivating and there is never ending new characters to be introduced to and story development. With a lot of different authors they tend to stick with the little world they created and maybe branch out a little bit but with Hamilton she always has a whole new portion to introduce us to. As far as creativity goes, she has an A+ from me! I feel for a stroke of midnight she definitely showed us the Merry Gentry world through how most people think in the world the Unseelie Sidhe are. By all means of course there was a murder and unfortunately, it was somebody that Merry knew this time around. Lesser fey and kitchen help Beatrice was murdered along with a reporter that was in Faerie for a press conference. 

One thing that I greatly appreciate with this book is that it picks up right where it ended before. And the pace of the book is in a sense exactly how Merry wishes in Faerie. She asks for more time so what ends up happening is Faerie slows down while outside in the human world everything is running at snails pace. And I feel the same is happening to the reader when reading the book. In a short amount of pages a lot of events occur such as; sex with multiple people in multiple scenes, discovering a murder scene and uncovering who committed the crime, a assassination attempt on Galen’s life and Merry finding out just how much magic she can bring back to Faerie. 

A lot of authors write 100 pages but aren’t really adding much to the story. Hamilton though is completely different! In this book, from cover to cover it is nonstop action and story development.  We end up discovering that there is a prophecy about Merry. It mentions that the green man will get Merry pregnant and the person of blood and flesh (referring to her hands of power) will take the throne and Prince Cel will die. No wonder part of his guard were trying to murder Galen seeing as how he is literally the only green man. However, Queen Andais did know about the prophecy and was sending vegetative deities to Merry’s bed in the hopes of getting her pregnant quicker. So instead of being a literal green man it might be a vegetative sidhe.  One of the worst things that we discovered from Prince Cel was pretty disturbing. Even with him not being in the actual story line the things we learn of him are terrible. We find out the guard that used to be Prince Essus’ guard were stolen away once he passed away. He lied to the guard saying the Queen gave them to him while he said to his mother that they made an oath to protect and serve him. Him being a liar is one of the worse things a sidhe can be and they can actually be exiled for doing such things. Not only has he lied to his mother for years but while being tortured he has vowed to rape Merry and get her pregnant with his child. Pretty fucked up. If we thought that he was bad before we can only imagine how terrible he will become once his punishment will end. I feel with a mother like Andais it’s no surprise that Cel is a whole lot worse. She has enabled his terrible behaviour and has covered for him for centuries all because he is her son. I’ll be real with all of you if I had a son that was even half that bad he would have a terrible time with me correcting his horrid behaviour. It’s strange with the choices she is making because her pushing all these men in Merry's bed is her essentially trying to make Merry Queen. Even Andais admitted her son is too selfish to rule. I think we are noticing a huge rift between them and the start of Andais turning her back on Cel. With everything he has done I’m surprised no one has killed his bitch ass yet. But the series is not over and hopefully we get a satisfying ending for him. Nothing would be worse if it was anti-climactic.

Merry and Mistral definitely have a connection and it's not just a reaction to the ring that is finally alive with magic on Merry's hand. Both of them having sex caused those in the vicinity to regain some of their magical abilities and paired Nicca and Biddy (Cel's guard) together. Both Mistral and Merry were able to see a phantom child for Nicca and Biddy but they would need to bed each other or that child will be lost. But Merry having sex with other men also changes Faerie itself and there are springs, meadows and even suns re-appearing in Faerie which has been gone for centuries. Merry has been touched by the Goddess and is even wearing the mark of a moth which when it was more common to have it would choose those needed to protect the wearer of the mark.

One little thing I wanted to mention because it bothered me so much when I came across it was Merry giving Frost shit about wearing fur. She freaking wears leather all the time but her guards wearing fur is an overstep and cruel? The same could be said for wearing leather. She's not a vegetarian so she should appreciate that as a meat eater all parts of an animal are being used. If we are going to kill an animal to eat then we should use every part including the fur. I never understood why she was completely judgmental in that regard.

Despite Merry inviting human police in the Faerie mound to investigate the murders, it is actually Andais who finds out who the murderer was. The murderer was Gwennin who was sleeping with Beatrice but when she rejected him, Gwennin lashed out violently because in his own twisted way he cared for her. But the reporter dying was simply due to him being there at the wrong time witnessing Beatrice's death. What Andais did to Gwennin I will not describe in detail but essentially she was holding on to him by his intestines. Not a pretty picture. 

Rating:

I am going to give A Stroke Of Midnight 5 stars on five. Yet again she makes a phenomenal book that is captivating and is always expanding! I think this review alone speaks volumes as to why I loved it. I have to say this book has been the best thus far in the series!