orbitaldiamonds: painting of dragon and books ([ a ] dragon and books)
[personal profile] orbitaldiamonds


Meredith Gentry Series #5: Mistral's Kiss
by Laurell K. Hamilton

p.5 A woman stood behind me, so close that when the wind blew through the dead trees her hooded cloak brushed against the hem of my gown. I formed my lips to say, Who? but never finished the word. She held out a hand that was wrinkled and colored with age, but it was a small, slender hand, still lovely, still full of quiet strength. Not full of the remnants of youthful strength, but full of the strength that comes only with age. A strength born of knowledge accumulated, wisdom pondered over many a winter's night. Here was someone who held the knowledge of a lifetime--no, several lifetimes.
     The crone, the hag, has been vilified as ugly and weak. But that is not what the true crone aspect of the Goddess is, and it was not what I saw. She smiled at me, and that smile held all the warmth you would ever need. It was a smile that held a thousand fireside chats, a hundred dozen questions asked and answered, endless lifetimes of knowledge collected and remembered. There was nothing she would not know, if only I could think of the questions to ask.

p.32 "None of us has told the younger ones, Queen Andais," Doyle said. "Everyone knows that out followers painted themselves with symbols and went into battle with only those symbols to shield them."
     "The eventually learned to wear armor," Andais said. Her arm had lowered enough for Mistral to be comfortable on his knees again.
     "Yes, and only the last few fanatical tribes kept trying to seek our favor and blessing. They died for that devotion," Doyle said.
     "What are you talking about?" I asked.
     "Once we, the sidhe, their gods, were painted with symbols that were signs of blessing from the Goddess and the God. But as our power faded, so did the marks upon our bodies." Doyle said it all in his thick-as-molasses voice."
     "It is faint and incomplete," the queen said from the far wall.
     "Yes." Rhys nodded and looked at her. "But it is a beginning."

p.47 Mistral raised his mouth from mine and half whispered, half groaned, "Fuck her, fuck her, fucker, please," and the last word was drawn out into a long sigh that ended in something close to a scream.
     Abeloec pushed himself inside me, and only then did he begin to throb with power. It was almost like some huge vibrator, except this vibrator was warm and alive, and had a mind and a body behind it.

more under the cut )
orbitaldiamonds: painting of dragon and books ([ a ] dragon and books)
[personal profile] orbitaldiamonds


Meredith Gentry Series #4: A Stroke of Midnight
by Laurell K. Hamilton

p.16 "Are the two of you having sex with the princess at the same time?"
     "No." Frost fought not to frown. We were lucky the reporter hadn't asked if they slept together with me. Because we did. The fey sleep in big puppy piles. It's not always about sex; sometimes it's about safety and comfort.

p.18 The cameras and attention turned to Nicca like lions spotting a newly wounded gazelle.

p.28-29 I'd also learned that all bodies are an it, not he, not she--it. Because if you think of the dead body as a h e or a she, they begin to be real for you. They begin to be people, and they aren't people, not anymore. They're dead, and outside of very special circumstances they are just inert matter. You can have sympathy for the victim later, but at the crime scene, especially in the first moments, you serve the victim better by not sympathizing. Sympathy steals your ability to think. Empathy will cripple you. Detachment and logic, those are your salvation at a fresh murder. Anything else leads to hysterics, and I was not only the most experienced detective in the hallway, I was also Princess Meredith NicEssus, weilder of the hands of flesh and blood, Besaba's Bane. Besaba was my mother, and my conception had forced her to wed my father and live, for a time, at the Unseelie Court. I was a princess and I might one day be queen. Future queens do not have hysterics Future queens who are also trained detectives aren't allowed hysterics.

p.39 Ameraudur meant a war leader who was chosen for love, not bloodline. Ameraudur meant that the man who called you this would give his own life before he saw yours fail. It was the word that the Welsh had used for Arthur, yes, that Arthur.

more under the cut )
orbitaldiamonds: painting of dragon and books ([ a ] dragon and books)
[personal profile] orbitaldiamonds


Meredith Gentry series #3: Seduced by Moonlight
by Laurell K. Hamilton

p.99 "Most things are logical when they're explained."

p.148 I felt the bed move a moment before I felt Nicca's presence behind me. He wasn't a burning heat now, but it was if he was t he warmth of the earth itself. The warmth that lives down in the rich brown soil, and keeps all the seeds, and all the creatures safe and warm through the winter. When his hands touched my shoulders, it was like being wrapped up in the warmest, softest blanket in the world. So safe, so warm, as if you snuggle down and sleep for months, and wake refreshed, whole, and the earth would be made new again. The magic of spring itself was in the touch of his hands.

p.176 I hugged him. When I pulled away, he was smiling. "For that look in your eyes, I would slay armies. What is a little emotion, to that?"
     Anyone who thought that slaying armies was easier than fixing your own internal emotional mess hadn't had enough therapy.
     But I didn't say that out loud, either.

more under the cut )
orbitaldiamonds: painting of dragon and books ([ a ] dragon and books)
[personal profile] orbitaldiamonds


Meredith Gentry series #2: A Caress of Twilight
by Laurell K. Hamilton

p.30 I started to laugh. I laughed so hard, I had to sit down on the floor. I held the bloody knife and watched the two guards gaze down at me, worried looks on their faces. Rhys wasn't glowering anymore. Kitto touched my arm, gently, as if afraid of what I'd do. I wrapped my arms around him, hugged him to me, and the tears streaming down my face stopped behind laughter, and I simply cried. I held Kitto and the bloody knife and cried.

p.33 He crossed his arms over his chest, flashing the gold of his Rolex, and looked at me. Among the fey it was impolite to ask why a person was having hysterics. Hell, sometimes it was even considered impolite to notice they were having hysterics at all. usually that was for ruling royalty, though. Everyone had to pretend that the king or queen wasn't bug nuts. Mustn't admit that centuries of inbreeding had done any damage.

p.81 "She tasted like sunshine. And until this second I didn't know that sunshine tasted like anything."

p.104 "...All the bright shining throng knew. My own cousin was kept because she was part brownie. You didn't throw her out, because brownies are Seelie--not court, but creatures of light. But when the sidhe themselves breed monsters, the pure, shining, Seelie sidhe, breed deformities, monstrosities, then what happens, where do they go?"
     She was crying now, soft, silver tears. "I don't know."
     "Yes, you do. The babies go to the Unseelie Court. We take in the monsters, those pure Seelie monsters. We take them in, because we welcome everyone. No one, no one is turned away from the Unseelie Court, especially not tiny, newborn babies whose only crime was to be born to parents who can't study a genealogical chart well enough to avoid marrying their own fucking siblings." I was crying, too, but it was anger, not sorrow.

more under the cut )
orbitaldiamonds: painting of dragon and books ([ a ] dragon and books)
[personal profile] orbitaldiamonds


Meredith Gentry Series #1: A Kiss of Shadows
by Laurell K. Hamilton

p.6 I stared at him, and finally understood. "You know we should walk away from this one, but you can't bring yourself to pass judgment on them. You can't bring yourself to condemn them to death."
     He nodded. "Yes."
     "What makes you think that I can do it, if you can't?"
     "I'm hoping one of us is sane enough not to be this stupid."
     "I won't get you all killed for the sake of strangers, Jeremy, so be prepared to walk away from this one." Even to me, my voice sounded thin, hard, cold.
     He smiled again. "That's my little cold-hearted bitch."

p.9-10 Some days I was better at it than this. Some days I was worse. I could have tried to get the measure of her psychically, to see if she had more than bone structure going for her, but it was impolite to read another person's magical ability at first introduction. Among the sidhe it's considered an open challenge, an insult that you don't believe that the other person can shield himself from your most casual magic. Naomi probably wouldn't have taken it as an insult, but her ignorance was no reason for me to be rude.

p.20 "If you're powerful enough, you can put a spell on an ad so that the ad brings you what you truly desire, not necessarily what the ad says you want. It's why I ran the ad that Ms. Gentry answered. Only people with magical ability would have noticed the spell on the ad, and only people with exceptional gifts would have been able to see through to the true writing underneath. The true writing listed a different phone number than the ad. I know that anyone who called that number was capable of the job."

p.26 For a building to be warded, not just an apartment, but a whole building, meant that the protective spells had to be put into the foundation of a building. The wards had to be poured with the concrete, riveted into place with steel beams. It took a coven of witches, or several covens. No single practitioner could do it. It was not a cheap process. Only the most expensive high-rises or homes could boast of it.

more under the cut )

Profile

heatherslibrary: (Default)
Heather's Library

March 2010

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
1415 1617181920
21222324252627
28293031   

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags