I was really looking forward to the next book in the Shadowlands series, Kiss of the Goblin Prince. Unfortunately, all the magic seemed to be gone from this installment and I think the enchanting adult fairy tale of The Goblin King was a one hit wonder.

Dai King has spent millennia cursed as a goblin in the Shadowlands. When his brother Roan broke the curse by earning the love of Eliza, this sent Dai crashing into a century that he didn’t quite know how to adapt to. Still reeling from centuries of torment and greed, Dai decides to focus his energy on expanding his magical abilities. After centuries of study, he has the potential to be the most powerful sorcerer since Merlin and it would seem a waste not to use all that ability.

Amanda is shocked when her sister-in-law Eliza impetuously marries the Welsh stranger she barely knows. What is even more shocking is the strange attraction that Amanda feels for the man’s brother. There is something powerful and mysterious about Dai, but she can’t put her finger on what makes her so uneasy around the King brothers. All she knows is that she has spent years mourning her husband and caring for her asthmatic daughter and Dai has roused feelings she thought long dead.

As much as this story is meant to be a love story for Amanda and Dai, it is really a fantasy story about Dai connecting to the modern world and making use of his strong magical ability. There are whole chapters about nothing more than Dai learning a new skill, such as teleporting himself or healing his injuries. Though the book does spend some time from Amanda’s point of view, the vast majority of the story is told in Dai’s point of view and has little to do with his relationship to Amanda. As near as I can figure, Dai’s feelings for Amanda grew just because she felt an initial spark of attraction and he nourished the thread (literally) of that attraction throughout the book. By three quarters of the way through the book, the two had barely had two conversations alone together, yet he was claiming to be in love with her. And Amanda was having the same feelings, despite struggling with the way that made her feel about her lost husband.

The strangest aspect of the book is the unusual relationship between Dai and Amanda’s daughter Brigit. Brigit is Dai’s younger sister, Mave, reincarnated. Since Dai was forced to murder his sister in the past to save her from rape and abuse at the hands of a Roman centurion, Dai knows that he has to get things right between him and Brigit in this life in order to heal her of her asthma and break the cycle that she is locked in. Despite that, there is no real development of a relationship between the two. Brigit saves Dai from the Shadowlands, after Amanda abandoned him there by breaking their thread, because of the “strong connection” that they have, but the two barely speak to one another before that or after.

In addition to barely having a conversation together, Amanda and Dai have an almost nonexistent physical relationship until the last chapter of the book. Normally, I have no problem with that. I don’t need that in a book to think it is good. But considering that the title is the kiss of the goblin prince, I thought that their kiss would be somewhat significant. Yet I almost missed their first kiss completely and had to go back and reread it. And I had to read through a lot of Dai’s magical education and practice before there was another one. This left me wondering just where the title came from and what it meant to the story.

I think that this book seems to be a “filler” or a space holder between books one and three of the series. This book focused as much on the past and future characters as it did on Amanda and it spent a lot of time setting Dai up as a sorcerer with a special “company.” Though I am still curious about how the rest of the Shadowlands series will play out based on the strength of the first, I know that I won’t be as anxiously awaiting the next book as I was this one.