I liked this book, but I may have reached a saturation point with Merry's story, because I didn't devour the book like I have with most of the previous installments.

The story was interesting, had all the elements of the previous books - friction between Faerie and the human world, the difficulties for Merry in managing all her men with her royal responsibilities, etc. - but it fell just a little flat for me in this outing.

Possibly because the group is living in L.A. in this book and there was no interaction with the Faerie world. I like peeking into Faerie and have enjoyed the alternate world that Hamilton has created there in the past books of this series so I may just be missing that. But for me this book felt like it could be almost any ordinary murder mystery, except that magic was used to catch the victims.

There were some good aspects to to the book - don't get me wrong! Merry standing up to Barinthus and using diplomacy with the mortal police to participate in the investigation was interesting. I also really liked the character development in both Doyle and Frost in this book. Both of them became much more well-rounded people for me in this book, and less just body-guards fighting on Merry's behalf.

I had had the impression that Hamilton was planning to take this series in a completely new direction with this book, but I did not see that here. I will give this series one more attempt [assuming another book is planned] but if that turns out to be more of the same I will probably quit after that.