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    A Stroke of Midnight
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    A Stroke of Midnight
    Unavailable
    A Stroke of Midnight
    Audiobook14 hours

    A Stroke of Midnight

    Written by Laurell K. Hamilton

    Narrated by Laural Merlington

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    I am Meredith Gentry, P.I., solving cases in Los Angeles, far from the peril and deception of my real home-because I am also Princess Meredith, heir to the darkest throne faerie has to offer. The Unseelie Court infuses me with its power. But at what price does such magic come? How much of my human side will I have to give up, and how much of the sinister side of faerie will I have to embrace? To sit on a throne that has ruled through bloodshed and violence for centuries, I might have to become that which I dread the most.

    Enemies watch my every move. My cousin Cel strives to have me killed even now from his prison cell. But not all the assassination attempts are his. Some Unseelie nobles have waited centuries for my aunt Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, to become weak enough that she might be toppled from her throne. Enemies unforeseen move against us-enemies who would murder the least among us.

    The threat will drive us to allow human police into faerie for the first time in our history. I need my allies now more than ever, especially since fate will lead me into the arm of Mistral, Master of Storms, the queen's new captain of her guard. Our passion will reawaken powers long forgotten among the warriors of the sidhe. Pain and pleasure await me-and danger, as well, for some at that court seek only death.

    I will find new joys with the butterfly-winged demi-fey. My guards and I will show all of faerie that violence and sex are as popular among the sidhe as they are among the lesser fey of our court. The Darkness will weep, and Frost will comfort him. The gentlest of my guards will find new strength and break my heart. Passions undreamed of await us-and my enemies gather, for the future of both courts of faerie begins to unravel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 12, 2005
    ISBN9781597107457
    Unavailable
    A Stroke of Midnight
    Author

    Laurell K. Hamilton

    Laurell K. Hamilton is the author of the New York Times bestselling Anita Blake series and Merry Gentry series. She lives with her family in St. Louis, Missouri.

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    Reviews for A Stroke of Midnight

    4/5

    979 ratings28 reviews

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    • 5/5
      As always any book written by Laurell K Hamilton, I enjoy...although I've read the Merry Gantry series in years past... Books that I enjoy, I tend to go back years later & read them again...Now as an audio book I'm listening to them only because I enjoy the reader...She's really good...
    • 4/5
      Can't wait to start next audio book .
      . .
    • 5/5
      I LOVE the way she puts any of her stories together!!! You can TRULY EMERSE yourself with ANY OF HER BOOKS close your eyes and picture the story in you mind word for word!!
    • 3/5
      The narration is excellent, but the near non-existent plots and storylines have caused me to grow tired of this series. Nearly the entire story takes place in one hallway or another, and most always involved blood or sex. I often waited for a progression in the storyline, but it never seems to develop.
    • 5/5
      Amazing! Nonstop action, marvelous sex, peril, love - again this book has a good mix of action and character to make it more rounded as a novel. I do have to admit that among such action it is hard to pick a favorite. The Sithen lives again, changing, growing, becoming what it had lost. The God and Goddess are granting and guiding much for Merry and our band of sidhe. Our coming of power with Mistral was both powerful and exciting, as well as possibly dangerous. Sex is dangerous in the Sithen, powerful. This is proven over and over again in this novel. LKH straddles that line between too much and just enough to make you want more. I nearly cried as well, I will not say why but I am glad things turned out for the better. This book ends with someone's desperate pain, and I admit that what he had done was unforgivable, but the queen is one bloodthirsty woman, even if I thought she went to far, I believe for her it wasn't far enough. We still have yet to find our would be king. I am rooting for Doyle. Something about him just calls to me.
    • 3/5
      It has been a little while since I read this book but here is what I recall...

      I had a love hate relationship with this series. It was confused about if it wanted to be mainstream or erotic. Mostly Merry had loads of sex and the story fell to the wayside.

      I quit before I finished the whole series. But I did get quite a few books in so there must have been something drawing me back every time!
    • 5/5
      I say as I did in the review for the book following this. I would like to take Mistral out of the book and take his sexy butt home with me. He and Merry have good chemistry and even though he is new to the situation he is HOT.

      This book was strange. I thought the murder plot line was poorly constructed. I get maybe she was trying to keep an element of Merry's PI side but it was just strange and didn't even matter to Merry's overall plot line.

      It was a good read though besides that one weird, ill-fitting element.
    • 4/5
      Fast paced, lots of action, a lot of sex, but the plot was entering.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      series curse has struck, but hard.
    • 2/5
      This a book in a series by Laurell Hamilton. This fantasy novel relates to an interaction of the human world and the fairy world. This book revolves around a murder and finding the guilty party. The book includes a lot of sex encounters between the princess and her guards. She is trying to get pregnant, so that she can become queen. Whoever gets her pregnant becomes king. The descriptions of the sex are rather detailed. The plot seems weak but the sex scenes are interesting.
    • 4/5
      The 4th book of the Merry Gentry series. Good intrique, fascinating world and developments, but.... sometimes (well, quite often...) I have a feeling that the plot is nothing more than mere placeholder between two random sex scenes. I'm not prudish or something like that but this is illogical and for its own sake....
    • 5/5
      Love this series, they all have kept me wanting the next book so far.
    • 3/5
      With this book it became clear that an interesting and unique (at the time) series was on a downhill slope. Bad enough it's a fairly short book, it was absolutely frustrating to reach the end, only to realize that nothing of much significance happened. Sure, there was the usual angst and drama, but the time frame for this book is a mere snippet of time stretched out to a very lagging pace. Pages and pages of people standing around talking, weeping, whining. There's no urgency, no driving need to turn the page and see what happens next ... because nothing really does.
    • 4/5
      A Stroke of Midnight begins with Merry and the Ravens attending a press conference in the sithen. This is highly unusual as the home of the sidhe is usually off-limits to the human press. However, it is felt that it is more secure than holding the conference elsewhere. This opinion is challenged almost immediately by the deaths of Beatrice, one of the lesser fae, and a human reporter. Merry, assigned to solve the murders by her aunt, Queen Andais, opts to bring in human forensics in the hope that science might be able to succeed where magic has so far failed?and bring a murderer to justice.
    • 3/5
      It seems as if these books have less and less plot the farther into the series that I get. This book, nearly 400 pages, spans one day and so many things aren't left unanswered that I feel cheated. Also, after 4 books, the sex is just boring. I find myself skimming long scenes, searching for a hint of a plot line. All that being said, I still like the characters, and I'm going to stick with them, but I hope that the pace picks up in the next book and something actually happens.
    • 4/5
      Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the book that takes place entirely in one day. One of the things that bugs me most in this series is that something will happen, then the characters will have sex, then they will be summoned to the Queen to explain why it was they didn't tell her about whatever it was that happened before they had sex. On the way to the queen, somehow everyone else knows despite the fact maybe 45 minutes have elapsed.This opens with a rather ridiculous press conference, followed by the murder of a human. Since Meredith is actually a PI, she decides she'd like to solve the case herself. But how can she, when she's surrounded by good-looking bodyguards like she is? Oh well, I guess she'll have more sex.I hate myself a little for liking these so much. They're totally addictive.
    • 2/5
      My comments on the last book in this series pretty much echo my feelings on this one: "This was pretty par for the course for this series. Lots of weird sexual situations, not much plot. You really don't notice how *little* plot there is, until you get to the end of the book and realize that it only covered a couple of days. I wasn't real fond of the way this one ended ... it was very abrupt. No real resolution. I have a feeling that once I read the next one, I'll feel like the two should have been one book." Just change that last sentence to read "once I read the next one, I'll feel like the three should have been one book."
    • 1/5
      If you like soft core porn, this is the book for you, but skip it if you like books with an actual plot
    • 1/5
      Laurell K is fabulous at world-building. Her fae society kicks so much ass!! I liked this book a lot. Just not any of the others in the series. Merry Gentry is kind of like a watered down Anita Blake. I like her but not as much as Anita.
    • 4/5
      A double homicide (human and fey) at a press conference causes complications for Meredith in the fourth series installment. Still not pregnant, Merry is feeling the pressure of keeping both her warriors and herself safe from the machinations of her sadistic aunt, Queen Andais and her twisted cousin, Prince Cel. Hamilton again slows down the plot progress (barely a day passes), but not the action. A great addition to the series.
    • 4/5
      Princess Meredith has survived three attempts on her life and she's only been back in the ancient native american mounds known as 'fairie' for twelve hours. Now someone has murdered a human, inside 'fairie'. She must convince the Queen to allow the police to investigate and she must prevent the police from finding out too much about the political machinations, death challenges and sex swirling through the dark marble hall and shifting entrances and exits.These books by Laurell K. Hamilton are addictive. She concentrates on one story and give delicious, if sometimes scary and/or steamy details. Her characters are well drawn, if a bit over the edge. Either she’s spent a lot of time researching arcane gods of the past, or she is really, really good at coming up with believable background. Of course we know she is, we are, after all, reading her books.It is total fantasy and not your childhood Fairy Tale. It’s a fun ride and a great escape.
    • 3/5
      Yet more sex in this story of Merry Gentry trying to get pregnant so she can take the throne. Interesting but nothing amazing. Sometimes the characters almost seem like parodies of their original selves.
    • 4/5
      I found this book in the Merry Gentry series to be quite compelling. It was still as if I was watching Hamilton masturbate with her word processor at times, but there was enough plot to make up for that awkwardness. This book is a fine example of why I'm still reading this series.
    • 3/5
      Not sure why I keep buying these books. There seem to be a lot of authors nowadays who know how to hook readers with fairly mediocre stuff and keep the money rolling in. I like the basic concept of faeries coexisting with humans in the modern world, and what one can discern of a plot has potential. I would like, one day, perhaps to find out how it ends. The eroticism is interesting. By using non-human characters it gives the author scope to explore things which are unlikely, probably impossible and possibly illegal in terms of human sexuality. But the books are so wordy and rambling, a bit like a TV soap opera which tries to spin every incident out interminably. In the midst of supposedly important, dangerous and fast-moving events the characters seem to spend most of their time engaged in idle chit-chat. The content of the first four books could easily have been edited into one good length novel - but then there wouldn't have been so much revenue, I suppose. But I'll keep reading them.
    • 5/5
      And I\'m still waiting for Ms. Hamilton to get Princess Merry to the Seelie court. A whole novel and not a Seelie Faerie to be seen.
    • 3/5
      Adequate addition to the series. Introduces us to more of the guards and more magic. More of an interim book.
    • 5/5
      Get me umpteen hot guys and fairy powers anyday.
    • 3/5
      (Amy) The title character is an exiled princess of the Unseelie court, but is called back because the court is fading and needs a new ruler. Whoever is first to conceive or sire a child wins the throne. There seems to be something resembling a plot running through the series to date (this is the fourth), but mostly it's just porn. In fact, in the ~18 hours covered by the latest book, there is miniscule plot advancement, but Meredith has sex to some degree or other at least five times that I can recall without thinking about it much.So, yeah. I have no real explanation for why I keep buying these books, when if all I want is an erotica fix I can generally get it from fanfic sites of one sort or another. Habit, I suppose. Hope that the author of the first few books I read still exists somewhere and might re-emerge someday. Sick fascination with how bogged down in minutiae it's possible for an author to get when she's lost the plot. But yet, I'll buy the next one. In hardcover. As soon as it comes out.