Merry Gentry

About the Merry Gentry series

Merry Gentry is Laurell K. Hamilton's second long-running series, following Meredith Gentry -- a faerie princess in hiding as a Los Angeles private investigator -- after decades spent fleeing the fae courts' murderous politics. A Kiss of Shadows opens the series with Merry pulled back into the world she fled: to inherit the Unseelie throne, she must produce an heir before her rival cousin does, in a court where the succession is decided through fertility, seduction, and outright assassination attempts.

Hamilton's Merry Gentry books share Anita Blake's frank explicitness and morally complicated power dynamics, but trade Anita's vampire-and-were Missouri for a court of ancient, capricious fae royalty steeped in old bargains and older grudges. The series leans further into harem-style romantic structure than Anita Blake, with Merry's guards-and-lovers forming a central ensemble alongside the political throne plot.

Complete at nine books, Merry Gentry is essential reading for Anita Blake fans curious about Hamilton's other long-running series, sharing her voice and explicitness while exploring a very different mythology.

How to read this series

Read in publication order, starting with A Kiss of Shadows. The fae court succession plot, Merry's growing power, and her ensemble of guards-and-lovers all build continuously across the nine books, so reading in sequence matters. There's a substantial gap between book eight (Divine Misdemeanors, 2009) and book nine (A Shiver of Light, 2014) -- the story still continues directly, just after a real-world publishing gap. The series is complete and unrelated in setting to Anita Blake, though it shares the author's explicit content and tone.