Seduced By Moonlight
Seduced by Moonlight (Meredith Gentry, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)
by Laurell K. Hamilton
Seduced by Moonlight (Meredith Gentry, Book 3) is Book 3 of a series; I have not read the first two, so I started out at a disadvantage. Another disclaimer I should probably make is that this book is probably aimed mainly at female readers, so my criticisms can be taken with these points in mind. Still, I believe that a good book or film should not be gender or age (unless it’s a children’s book) specific.
Reading the jacket of the audiobook version, I thought this was going to be an urban fantasy about the sidhe (faeries) and humans sharing the modern world. Instead, Seduced By Moonlight reads more like a romance novel, or perhaps even soft core porn than fantasy. The protagonist, Meredith Gentry, is a half sidhe, half human who must negotiate the two worlds. The book takes place in a kind of parallel world where the existence of the sidhe is openly and casually acknowledged by human society. The faeries in this world, for example, must constantly worry what the media will say about them.
There is a lot of exposition, attempting to keep new readers up to speed, but this makes the first half of the book very heavy and clunky. The plot is based on Merdith’s attempt to get pregnant, which will make her eligible to become queen of the unseelie faery court. The unseelie court are the “dark” faeries, while the seelie court are the “light.” This is part of traditional faerie lore, not an invention of Hamilton’s. This book also has goblins, who are sort of fringe dwellers of the unseelie court.
For a fantasy novel, not all that much happens. There are a couple of fights and a lot of sex. The story line, of course, where the main goal is for Meredith to get pregnant, sets up the perfect excuse for her life to be an ongoing orgy. The number of sexual encounters Meredith has in a short period of time makes this book more unintentionally funny than erotic.
Another problem with this book is that there is too much dialog relative to the action. Even the many sex scenes are so bogged down with such excruciating analysis regarding every thought, impulse and implication of every encounter that the eroticism is diluted (of course, if this weren’t the case, what would remain would be little more than pornography).
There are also a couple of scenes of rather graphic violence. Again, these are also so full of introspection and talk that it blunts the effect of the action. There is also a lot of exposition and description of many tedious laws and customs. Of course, fantasy, as well as traditional fairy tales, must have their rules of conduct, but these are best organically and subtly inserted into the story; here the reader is bludgeoned with them page after page. If we were to go by Hamilton’s description, visiting the world of faerie would be akin to being in a Kafkaesque government bureaucracy, where the slightest action requires endless paperwork and an intricate knowledge of arcane laws and regulations.
I regret having to write such a critical review of a genre of which I’m usually fond and forgiving of minor flaws. But I feel that this material does not do justice to the rich traditions from which it gathers its elements. Even the word “sidhe” (which is the Gaelic word for faery, and pronounced like the English word “she”) is rendered silly in this book. There are numerous sentences that end up sounding like word play, such as “he is sidhe….she is not sidhe, etc. This may seem like a minor quibble (and it’s something you’d be less likely to notice if you read the print version rather than listening to the audiobook as I did), but to me it illustrates the author’s carelessness with language.
I’m sure some readers enjoy Hamilton’s version of the faerie worlds, or there would not already be a third volume in this series. I cannot, however, recommend it to readers looking for a typical fantasy or even urban fantasy.
