Laurell K. Hamilton: Divine Misdemeanors

• ISBN-13: 9780345495976
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date: 7/27/2010
• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Pages: 384

 You may know me best as Meredith Nic Essus, princess of faerie. Or perhaps as Merry Gentry, Los Angeles private eye. To protect my unborn children, I have turned my back on the crown, choosing exile in the human world with my beloved Frost and Darkness. Yet I cannot abandon my people. Someone is killing the fey, which has left the LAPD baffled and my guardsmen and me deeply disturbed. I thought I'd left the blood and politics behind in my own turbulent realm. But now I realize that evil knows no borders, and that nobody lives forever - even if they're magical.

 Merry has given up her throne in faerie, rightfully given to her by Goddess herself, in order to live with her many men and raise her babies in peace. But that's not really going to happen because this is Laurell K. Hamilton, first of all, and second, Merry is the only other available ruler for the Unseelie court and Andais has gone off her rocker, officially. So there are factions galore and everyone wants to kill Merry, maybe. Which we pretty much only get because Doyle still has spies at court.
 Now on to the actual "mystery" portion of the novel. We are, for the first time since like the third book,  back in the real world and working for the detective agency again. It's kind of nice to have an actual problem to solve instead of power politics. Namely, someone has been killing the supposedly immortal demi-fey/lesser fey and Merry is called in to give her expert opinion. Of course, she's followed by her massive entourage because she's pregnant and royal and famous and screw the paparazzi. Basically.
 Now we encounter my first complaint, that actually isn't a huge complaint, but enough to get mentioned - there are way too many characters floating around. Several times I found myself wondering if I'd seen that character before and in what context. She talked about them like we already knew them, but for the life of me I couldn't remember why. Also, since there are so many, it's hard to get any good characterization in. I especially miss Doyle and Frost having the foreground after book 4, I think it was. That, for me, was the best of these novels. We had that emotional breakdown from Doyle when he thought Mistral had been chosen as king to Merry's queen - and it was beautiful. There's not a lot of that going on anymore. There is a lot of emotional/sexual healing going on, though, since all of Merry's guards, which now include Cel's female ex-guards, have some serious mental scars from their abuse at court.
 Which brings me to point number 2: for whatever reason, Hamilton has become incredibly heavy-handed i with her development strategies. We'll be rolling merrily along, detecting, advising, etc. when HALT FOR MERRY'S REVELATION ABOUT A GUARD. We have these strange breaks to have a breakdown, or have some crazy powerful sex, or just to have one of the guards reveal a little more of their life story. There was one particular passage that screamed complete lack of fluidity, being that it jumped between the present investigation, to Merry's thoughts on something else, back to the investigation, and back to Merry's thoughts. Usually Hamilton's much more focused. I think it's a symptom of way too many characters to deal with.
 Other than these complaints (and the shockingly short appearance of Mistral) it was an interesting mystery, and sufficiently squick-y at the end. Although I do think Merry was a tad dense on this one - the clues added up a little faster than she realized.
 Overall: B
 The saving factor for this grade was the murder mystery. Otherwise, I felt like the developments in Merry's world were not coherent, connected, or especially well handled. And I miss the fathers of the babies being around more (yes, I said fathers - Doyle, Frost, Mistral, Sholto, Rhys, and Galen, I believe. Which handily solved the problem of me having too many favorites, and Hamilton as well, is my guess).