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A review by _readobituaries
Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton
4.0
This is definitely where the books start to go downhill. This book TECHNICALLY is the end of the “Merry fighting for the throne”& feels like the natural conclusion to the story and is where she should have stopped. I noticed many things that don’t make sense or are poorly done.
As mentioned in a previous review, there was no reason for the Taranis issue. It doesn’t wind up going anywhere. The rape of the seelie woman isn’t brought to a conclusion- neither is the rape of Merry. They make such a big deal out of using the human courts but nothing ever happens in relation to the human court system aside from some bad press for Seelies.
Kel was a non existent threat. The first couple books tried to make him a huge threat but both the threat he posed and the actual fight between the two left a lack luster feeling, especially consider that they spent 6 books building up to how scary and bad kel is. They try and bring in all these big bads but at the end of the day, it doesn’t progress the story and the fights have almost no stakes to it. She had already lost frost, so we knew that she wouldn’t lose her other main lover. Kel killing Essus was pretty expected. We had basically narrowed down everyone else- so unless a new foe was being brought in this late in the game, we weren’t left with many options. Overall, I was definitely disappointed with the threat Kel turned out to be.
Finally, Merry turning down the throne... this entire book series has been centered on her fighting to take the throne. I understand why she didn’t. She wanted frost back, blah blah. But it doesn’t make since considering that is the entire series main plot! Get pregnant to take the throne...
Swallowing Darkness was a decent end to the series. A lot of threads were left unfinished but the main plot had overall come to a close. It wasn’t so bad that I would stop reading the series but it definitely wasn’t among my favorites.
As mentioned in a previous review, there was no reason for the Taranis issue. It doesn’t wind up going anywhere. The rape of the seelie woman isn’t brought to a conclusion- neither is the rape of Merry. They make such a big deal out of using the human courts but nothing ever happens in relation to the human court system aside from some bad press for Seelies.
Kel was a non existent threat. The first couple books tried to make him a huge threat but both the threat he posed and the actual fight between the two left a lack luster feeling, especially consider that they spent 6 books building up to how scary and bad kel is. They try and bring in all these big bads but at the end of the day, it doesn’t progress the story and the fights have almost no stakes to it. She had already lost frost, so we knew that she wouldn’t lose her other main lover. Kel killing Essus was pretty expected. We had basically narrowed down everyone else- so unless a new foe was being brought in this late in the game, we weren’t left with many options. Overall, I was definitely disappointed with the threat Kel turned out to be.
Finally, Merry turning down the throne... this entire book series has been centered on her fighting to take the throne. I understand why she didn’t. She wanted frost back, blah blah. But it doesn’t make since considering that is the entire series main plot! Get pregnant to take the throne...
Swallowing Darkness was a decent end to the series. A lot of threads were left unfinished but the main plot had overall come to a close. It wasn’t so bad that I would stop reading the series but it definitely wasn’t among my favorites.