Seduced by Moonlight – Chapter 6

· by · in Book Reviews, Merry Gentry Book 3: Seduced by Moonlight. ·


Chapter 6 begins with Maeve laying in the fetal position on her bed. Her KING SIZE ROUND BED. What year are we in? We then get pages of LKH describing what Maeve is wearing, what she looks like, etc, boring. Maeve, as usual, is dressed in all gold and copper, and she’s wearing a goddamn headband. Her assistant is apparently standing in the closet crying because Maeve yelled at her, and Nicca is standing outside the door. He apologizes to Merry for not protecting Maeve, or whatever, because apparently Maeve made a pass at him in her anger/sadness/irrational faerie emotional state.
 
Merry enters the room to go talk to Maeve. She didn’t have time to get changed out of her bathing suit, but she did tie on a robe that’s more lingerie than actual robe, because Merry has zero practical clothes. Frost and Galen are with her. She goes to the bed and softly calls out Maeve’s name, but receives no response, so she leans over Maeve, hugging her. Maeve turns her face toward Merry and Merry realizes that Maeve has dropped much of her glamour. Her eyes are the true sidhe three-ring eyes, and Merry is just amazed by how beautiful Maeve’s eyes are, as we’re told: Her eyes were lightening-kissed, as if the Goddess Herself had decreed she would have the most beautiful eyes in the world.
 
I love being told how something is the most beautiful in the world. I don’t like blue eyes, so they’re not the most beautiful in the world to me OH BUT THE GODDESS SAID SO so it’s totally okay, yeah? I hate this goddess.
 
Maeve reaches out and grabs Merry’s wrist, and Merry is instantly frozen by Maeve’s power. The force of Maeve’s power brings the glow out in Merry’s skin and it strips all of the glamour Merry is using on herself away. She realizes that all her scars, all her imperfections, have been bared, and so Merry tries to pull away from Maeve, but Maeve draws her closer, and when Merry opens her eyes, Maeve’s face is right in front of her.
 
I had a moment of staring into her eyes from so close that they seemed to fill the world for a moment, a glittering, broken world full of storm and wind and color. She licked her lips, and that one small movement drew my gaze. I’d never noticed how full her lips were, how moist, how pink. Her mouth glistened like some succulent pink fruit, and I knew that it held warm juice that would run down my mouth, my throat. I could almost taste it, almost feel it.
 
That description is just disgusting. It reads like Maeve is going to spit or vomit right into Merry’s mouth. Gross.
 
So they begin making out. Yep.
 
Our lips touched, and the world was suddenly filled with the perfume of blossoms. I was drowning in apple blossoms as if I’d fallen into some enchanted orchard, where it was always spring, always new, always possible.
I saw Maeve sitting under a tree in full blossom.
 
Three “blossoms” in three sentences. Seriously?
 
There was a hill behind her, and she wore a gown the green-gold of new leaves, with hints of white linen at her bosom and wrist. The linen seemed to glow like white feathers in the sunlight. Her hair fell to her knees like a fall of white frothing water. Her skin was carved of the sunlight itself; golden and shining so bright I could not look upon her, yet even as I felt my eyes begin to burn, I could not look away.
It began to snow. The warmth began to fade, and the blossoms fell from the tree in a shower of white and pink, and the snow dotted the grass. Cold, it was so cold. I was lying on my back, staring up into Frost’s face. He looked worried, and his eyes held that falling snow. I stared into that snow, and again I had the sense that there was someplace behind the snow. That if I stared long enough I’d see it. But I wasn’t afraid this time. I knew he’d called me back, saved me somehow. I felt his strong hands on my arms, the press of his body against mine, and I wasn’t afraid.
 
So Frost saves Merry from whatever vision Maeve was forcing on her, and instead forces his own vision onto Merry. She is transported from a spring-field with sunshine and warmth to some snowy plain-filled vision. There’s a few pages of flowery description of this snow-filled scene and an earlier form of Frost is, like, dancing around in the snow. I bet it’d be really interesting if I cared at all, but I have no idea what is even going on. I’d rather be reading about Maeve and Merry making out than this confusing scene of Frost making fucking snow angels in some magic snow.
 
Merry comes to and Frost is holding her, telling her that she had grown cold, and was about to admit that he was worried that she was going to die or something, but before he can complete his thought he fucking PUSHES MERRY ASIDE and walks away from her. Hahahaha.
 
So Galen crawls across the round bed to sit beside Merry. He asks her if she is all right, but instead of answering, Merry asks them what had happened. Maeve responds that they’re not sure. 
 
                She looked embarrassed, which you don’t see in goddesses that often.
 
Just how many goddesses have you met, LKH?
 
“It’s my fault. I wanted the comfort of another sidhe’s touch. I tried to seduce Nicca and it didn’t work.” She gave me an arrogant face, but it left her eyes uncertain. “I’m not accustomed to being turned down by anyone I really want. I thought you might share one of your men.” She looked down again, then up, and she seemed more determined than arrogant now. I didn’t know if all actresses did this, but Maeve Reed could go from one emotion to another at the blink of an eye. I didn’t know if she’d always been this moody, or if it had been the job that had made her that way.
 
How about that she’s fucking pregnant?
 
“I thought it was stupid and thoughtless. You gave Gordon and me the chance to have a child. Your magic, and Galen’s, did that, Merry. I am an ungrateful wretch, and I am sorry.”
 
Remember how it’s like a cardinal sin to apologize to a sidhe? Remember?? I bet LKH doesn’t!
 
Merry tells her that it’s okay, but then realizes her throat is sore. Everyone looks around at everyone else, but doesn’t tell Merry anything in that typical “oh my god, should we tell her???” sort of way. Of course Merry has to coax it out of Galen. She tries to grab his arm, but he yanks it away, telling her not to touch him just yet, and directs her to look at the bed. It’s covered in ice crystals, now melting all over the blankets on the bed. Galen tells Merry that she threw up on the bed, and the vomit was just pure ice. Merry tries to get Maeve to tell her what happened.
 
“I tried to seduce you, and it worked, a great deal better than I’d planned. I forget sometimes that you’re part human. I used the power I’d use for another sidhe, another deity.”
I nodded, and even that hurt my throat. “I remember that part, but then it changed, became something else. I saw you sitting under a tree, and it hurt my eyes to look at you.”
“No mortal can look full upon the face of a god and survive,” Galen said.
“What?” I asked.
Maeve leaned against the bed. “I was Conchenn for a moment. I was what I had been. I think I’d almost made myself forget. The loss of faerie is a new wound, Merry, compared to having lost my godhead.”
I was getting a headache. “I’m not following this.”
“Let me,” Galen looked serious, determined, very un-Galen. “Maeve used her powers, or what was left of them, as the goddess Conchenn to try to seduce you. But you brought on more power. You brought her into her godhead again.”
 
I love how flippantly LKH throws around the title “god”. Didn’t she in one of the previous books explain how there’s a difference between the Goddess and the God and then the goddesses and gods of faerie? There’s a huge difference between the Goddess and then the goddess Conchenn, or the god Cromm Cruach, or whatever. But only when it’s convenient, apparently.
 
I gave him wide eyes. “I thought that once you gave up being a god you couldn’t get it back.”
“So did I, until today,” Maeve said.
I frowned at her. “Besides, only the Goddess can make you a god.”
“I believe that is still true,” Maeve said. “But perhaps anyone can be a vessel for Her power.”
“Not just anyone,” Galen said. “If just anyone could have done it, it would have happened centuries ago.” He looked at Maeve as if she’d been rude.
“You’re right. You are right. I will not belittle the gift. I know the touch of the Goddess when I feel it.”
“What goddess?”
 
Hahahaha what? What! First off, we’re three books into the series. The ONLY time they’ve ever mentioned “the Goddess” they’ve ALWAYS MEANT THE GODDESS. There is one. There has always been only one “the Goddess”. THEN, then we have what is actually written here – like they can actually tell when they’re talking about “the Goddess” or just some rando “goddess”. This is hilarious.
 
So Maeve tells Merry that the Goddess she is referring to is Danu, and Merry is like “WAIT HOLD UP, YOU DID NOT JUST SAY DANU” like that means ANYTHING TO US, YOUR AUDIENCE. I have no fucking clue who Danu is, and you do a shit job explaining your mythology LKH.
 
I shook my head, and didn’t even care that it hurt my throat. “Danu is the Goddess whom the Tuatha De Danann, the children of Dana, are named after. She’s the Goddess. She was never personified.”
“I never said she was a person,” Maeve said. “I said that she gave me my godhead, and she did.”
I frowned at her, the headache starting to pound between my eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“In the first treaty we ever signed with the Formorii, both sides worked the first weirding magic. We lessened ourselves lest our two races destroy the land that we now shared. Danu, or Dana, agreed to distance Herself from us for the great spell to be done.” Maeve’s eyes shimmered, and it was tears, not magic. “I don’t think that any of us understood what we were giving up. Except perhaps Danu Herself.”
 
Oh cool, a mythology/history lesson that I give absolutely zero shits about because the author has done a terrible job introducing her world to us. I went to Wikipedia myself to look all this up, so that I could have at least some understanding of the world LKH should already have described to me BOOKS AGO. WHEN YOUR BOOK IS BASED ON ACTUAL FOLKLORE, YOU SHOULD EXPLAIN SOME OF THIS TO YOUR AUDIENCE. I have no interest in researching things that are mentioned as KEY PLOT ELEMENTS in a SHITTY PARANORMAL ROMANCE/FANTASY NOVEL. I read these as an escape, to NOT THINK. I should not have to look this up myself. Is anyone else as bothered by this as I am?
 
I am working on drafting up an outline of a fantasy story that’s been kicking around in my brain for a while now, and a lot of it is based on Persian folklore, so if anything this series is giving me a good list of things to avoid to make sure my readers don’t hate me. 
 

 

Anyway, the chapter ends with Maeve crying because reasons. I don’t even care.

3 responses to “Seduced by Moonlight – Chapter 6”

  1. I just wanna reassure you that no, you are definitely NOT the only one who is incredibly bothered by the fact that LKH based something off an actual cultures actual mythology, obviously did research into getting it at least SOMEWHAT correct, but then didn’t bother to explain jack shit to her readers, as if to say “well *I* had to do the research, so so should you!!!”
    I genuinely think that’s why she does it this way. She feels spiteful that she couldn’t make this up entirely (even though she could have, just not called it Gaelic and completely made something up) so she wants to force her readers into doing research, too.
    That’s not how it works, LKH. Your readers are under no obligation to self-educate upon YOUR STORY, and the fact you think they should either by ignorant happenstance or intentional spite makes you a terrible author. I don’t care how many times you put that “fertile imagination” crap on your jackets—if you did have one, it’s long been destroyed.

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