Ill Met by Moonlight

Ill Met by Moonlight (2005) is the second novel in the Scepter'd Isle series, following This Scepter'd Isle. In the previous volume, the child Elizabeth was born of Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII. When the child was presented to the court, Harry Fitzhugh was transfixed by her semblance. Surely this child would become the red-haired queen that he had seen within the Great Lens in Underhill. He decided to present her with his cold iron cross to protect her from the Unseleighe. Denoriel Silverhair and his sister Aleneil kept close watch on the child and foiled one attempt by Pasgen, their Unseleighe half-brother, to replace her with a changeling. Then Prince Vidal Dhu, with his consort Aurilia, led the next attack. The Unseleighe attacked the child in her quarters, but Denoriel and his fellow protectors were already in the rooms and prepared for the intruders. In this novel, Pasgen subdues an imp who carries a summons from Prince Vidal Dhu. But how has the creature found him? Under questioning, the imp coughs up a Token made from Pasgen's flesh. Temporarily ignoring the summons, Pasgen hurries to find Rhoslyn and tell her of his discovery. After finding Rhoslyn at the Empty House, Pasgen discovers that his mother had provided a Token from each of them to Vidal Dhu at the time of their birth. The Prince probably still has one for Rhoslyn, but may not know where it is. Pasgen leaves his Token with his sister to investigate and hurries off to answer the summons. Vidal Dhu has spent the previous four years being treated for iron poisoning. Some of his healers have died while taking the poison from his body. Now the Unseleighe Prince has mostly recovered from his injuries and thinks to take back his place in court. During the past two years, Oberon forced Pasgen to take responsibility for the Unseleighe Court after several raids against the humans. Pasgen definitely hasn't liked having these responsibilities, but he has managed to control most of the monsters in his charge. Now that Vidal is back, Pasgen wants to position him firmly as the ruler, so that Pasgen himself can do something else -- anything else -- other than continue in charge of these unruly Unseleighe. Vidal Dhu isn't aware of just how long he has been gone and just how weak he is. However, Pasgen acts timid and subservient to bolster Vidal's reputation in the Unseleighe Court. Some times Rhoslyn has to remind him not to strike down Vidal, but Pasgen gradually removes himself from the court. Rhoslyn is pleased that Pasgen is no longer trying to kill Elizabeth. She would rather join the Seleighe Court than continue to treat with Prince Vidal and has gradually weaned herself from dependence on the Unseleighe habit of feeding on pain and suffering. Yet she is unsure of her reception and believes Pasgen would prefer to remain in the Unseleighe Lands. Denoriel has also been undergoing treatment for the last four years. He almost burned out his magical power by cha

Mercedes Lackey is second to only to MZB in her writing. She caputers your imagination and holds it for the entire book! When your done, you want the next one!

Mercedes Lackey and Roberta Gellis' ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT is for avid fans of fantasy and tells of an aging king and a struggle for a throne. Elfland becomes involved in human endeavors in this thriller.

Others might find it long and slow. I am into 16th C England and loved the book.

Mercedes Lackey has written and co-written over 50 novels, so I guess it is expected that there will be some that are better than others. I found that this novel and the preceeding novel in the series were excellent, and since I have been disapointed in some of this authors works in the past, it was a nice suprise. All of the characters are well written and rarely ever slide into the "annoying" category. I found myself cheering for both sets of twins, light and dark. While some of the dark sidhe were a little stereotypical, namely the prince and his consort, they were not annoying and were such a minor part of the novel that it was easy to ignore them and focus on the rest of the story. There is a huge cast of characters and in other novels by other authors, when this is the case there are often huge problems associated with choppiness and confusion, as each character gets lost in the shuffle. This is definately not the case here, where there are many minor characters that are integral to the plot and amazingly enough, each seems to have thier own well developed personality. Some authors manage this by endlessly describing thier characters outfits or always having the character speak in a certain way, or use a certain pet phrase, and it was refreshing to see that somehow, the authors have avoided the use of annoyingly repetitive mechanisms to define both thier major and minor characters. The best thing about this novel to my mind was the "believability" of it. I know that fiction is far seperate from reality, but after reading this novel its almost hard to imagine that the events that occured in our history did not actually occur the way they occured in the novel. I don't know very much about the history of that period in time, and perhaps if I did I would not like it as much, but the way the events from our history were explained in terms of the novel was great. Perhaps the only criticism about this novel is that at times it verged on a play-by-play accounting of the characters lives over the years that the novel takes place in, but most of the time it wasn't a problem, only when you were waiting on pins and needles to see what was happening to another character at that time. Also, at other points there were jarring time jumps that distracted the reader from the flow of the novel, such as "for the next year and a half so and so..." or "all during the year 15xx to the end of the next year so and so was..." This was distracting because there were periods in the novel of so much information and then all of the sudden, 2 years had passed, usually just with a short sentence like those I paraphrased at the end of a paragraph or chapter. It is hard for me to find anything major to criticise about this novel, while it is not my favorite novel, it is definately one that I will buy and read again. That includes the first book in the series as well, which I think is slightly better than this one. This novel is fun, exciting, diverting