Yes, I caved and bought a copy of Swallowing Darkness, the latest Merry Gentry novel. The reviews I’ve seen have led me to believe that it might not be horrible. I finished it just a little while ago, and it looks like Hamilton is keeping up the good work she started in the previous volume. There’s much more plot here than sex (by a significant margin) and some loose threads got tied up at last. I actually enjoyed reading this, much more than I’ve enjoyed the previous volumes.
The only real problem I had with this book was the repetitive dialog. It seemed like every time a new character would enter the scene, we would have to go back over what had already been discussed. It was frustrating. I mean, how many times do we have to hear that Merry’s going to have twins? After a while it started to read like filler, and I think the book would have been a lot shorter if you trimmed the fat a little bit. I have noticed that dialog has been a growing problem over the last several books, in both series. With the exception of lecturing professors and one retired librarian I used to work with, no one I know speaks in paragraphs or repeats things over and over again without getting really irritated with whoever they’re talking to.
I know that the series is not going to end here. Hamilton has said so herself on her blog (read here). But what worries me is that, in the post I just linked, Hamilton says we’re going to see quite a lot of Merry being pregnant. I realize that the enemies that were defeated in Swallowing Darkness were only defeated temporarily, and there’s Taranis, who needs to be taken down. But I wonder how much of that stuff (in my mind, the really interesting stuff) is going to get dragged out while Merry’s busy being preggers. I’ve gripped about pacing before, so I’m hoping that the pacing of these latest books is not a fluke, and is a sign of Hamilton moving on to the next thing.
Fingers crossed, anyway.