How much plot and description can be crammed into 299 pages? Well, the answer here is clearly “a lot”, but the big problem is that all that plot and all that description, along with the added irritation of Central Casting Irish dialect on every page, resulted in a book that, for me at least, wasn’t really readable.

Hey, what does it say about the compelling nature of all that plot, plot, plot that I can hardly even remember the bare bones of it one day after finishing the book? I’ll give it a shot anyway by telling you that it all has to do with a handsome modern day anthropologist who is somehow sucked into the world of the fairies. You’d think the fairies would be all nice and all, but they really aren’t since there are all kinds of wars and factions and jealousies and a sort of May West-ian version of Queen Mab who covets our studly anthropologist.

The problem is that he somehow belongs to Nuala, the beautiful fairy daughter of Mab, who’s been “watching” him for years. They’re hot for each other, but for some reason that I never really grasped or have already forgotten, Nuala doesn’t want Zeke (same studly anthropologist) to stay in fairy world, though he ends up staying anyway and performing some kind of quests that – and you’ll never believe this – he actually succeeds in accomplishing. And, since this book is the first in a trilogy, there are all kinds of ominous overtones about problems and wars in fairy world to come. Not to mention hot young fairies clearly in need of fixing up.

Okay, I didn’t get to know these characters at all. My eyes glazed over repeatedly at all the mythology (and, believe me, there is a great deal of mythology in this book) and didn’t care a whit for the characters or what happened to them.

The publisher – and it should be noted that this is the second in Silhouette’s new Nocturne line – promises two more installments featuring Nuala’s sisters, the other daughters of the Queen Mab. I wish them a whole lot of luck in their quests and wars and stuff, but as Nuala herself might put it’ “I’ll not be after readin’ those books, now. Lesson learned, I’ll have you know.”