Publisher: Ballantine Books

Author: Laurell K. Hamilton

Release Date: 10/30/2007

Pages: 330

$7.99

Recommended Audience: Adult

I have never heard of the Princess Meredith series of novels, but this was just a random book I picked up at Barnes & Noble a few months ago. The book is obviously a sexy and steamy novel, but overall, you don’t need to read the rest of the books in the series to get this. This is the 5th entry, but I pretty much got what was going on in the weird and cheesy world because it’s not very sophisticated or deep. The book starts out with a seriously freaky dream that Meredith has, but overall she has to return life to the world of faerie and ends up reawakening the wild hunt by having sex with the King of the Sluagh. Yeah, the book is all about “sex magic” that can bring back life between two different races: Seelie and Unseelie.

While the book mentions real-life places, I really hated this, and it took away from the fantasy part of the book. When the characters talk about LA, cops, taxis, and so on, it just draws you out of that fantasy mindset, and I hate that. The book is very shallow and not very deep because of how uneventful it all is. In 300 pages, you read about a 6-chapter-long sex scene (the book is very graphic and explicit), about 7 chapters of talking, 2 chapters of more sex, and then the final, which is a mediocre battle of goblins, the wild hunt, and naked fairy people. Yes, throughout the whole novel, most of the characters are nude and even fight nude. Sound cheesy? It kind of does, but while it lasts, it’s entertaining, but if you prefer toned-down sex scenes, stay away because this is probably the most explicit I have ever read in any book.

Overall, Mistral’s Kiss offers a quick flash of fantasy fun and a unique twist on using sex with magic, but overall, the book feels uneventful and shallow in a sea of sci-fi and fantasy novels. I thought it was entertaining and interesting, with some well-developed characters, but the overall plot and the world felt small.