January 6, 2002

The newest entry in the Anita Blake series has been out for a while (October 2001) but I just got around to reading it this weekend.  I had a number of reasons for being reluctant to open this book.  Chief among these (reasons) was that I had heard from several sources that it was different than any previous book, not necessarily in a good way.  I have enjoyed Anita's antics for a couple of years and hated to witness any deterioration in her persona.  But I had heard rumors that this book was too "soft porn".  There was a quoted comment from someone close to the author that every reader would either "love it or hate it".  Others inferred that Anita was going to jump with both feet and every other body part into the scene with Jean-Claude and Richard and the triumvirate.  And these statements mostly turned out to be true. 

Every one of them!

Anita is losing the battle that kept her "human" while most, though not all, around her were of the undead or furry variety.  So in some ways this is an evolving series, changing from one set of priorities into something decidedly different, much as a "human" would meld into a "lycanthrope" in Anita's world.

I think Ms. Hamilton will have to drop the "vampire hunter" logo from any future books in the series.  I don't remember a single vampire that was slain in this book.  That's not to say that there was zero body count.  Anita still knows how to fight and win.  The battles were among the strong points of this story but when Anita and company weren't fighting, the action tended to be a little (or sometimes a lot) touchy-feely and got bogged down in were-politics and mostly gratuitous sex encounters.  It really bothered me that Anita would spend dozens of pages, discussing (or in some instances, forming) relationships while just off stage the bad guys were in control of people who Anita and company had set out to rescue.   This happened on more than one occasion, and just seemed to be another instance of Hamilton's lack of staying focused on her story.

The reader will find that Anita has taken on a nurturing persona towards whole colonies of fuzzy-furies.  Nice, but, a little hard to reconcile with her being "The Executioner".  She even "saves" an old enemy from a terrible fate.  An enemy whose whole existence was focused on seeing Anita dead and permanently buried in a previous book.

On the charge of "soft porn" I'd assess Ms. Hamilton is 'guilty as charged'.  I didn't find the pages and pages of graphic descriptions of who was doing what to whom all that offensive.  Just somewhat boring and very, very repetitious but not especially disgusting.   What I "hated" about this part of the story was that our spunky, in-your-face, independent Anita has lost the battle and become just another of the hoard of those who are ruled by what happens below the waist.  You read the explanations for this in the telling of the story but I will always wish for the Anita of the earlier books.  She used to be a force to be reckoned with, above the fray and unwilling to compromise her higher standards.  She was also funnier and more of a smart ass.  Now, she has trouble with a lot of that.  I can't say it makes her as likable and as much fun as her character was in previous books.

This book brings back several of the main characters from earlier books including brief, highly unsatisfying, appearances by Dolph and Zerbrowski and Ronnie.  The conflicted Ulfric of the Werewolves and the always intriguing Master of the City are back, but as the book moves from the opening pages, their personalities began to slip and slide like so much silly putty.  Jean-Claude isn't given much to do, except act as unconditional lover, nearly worshipful of ma petite and seldom evinces any real sense of being in control of the situation.  He is reduced to being a supporting player to this new and nearly invincible Anita who is created by marrying the marks that bind the three.  How sad that Richard is by turns tough, cruel, loving, confused and filled with such self-loathing that I just wanted to have him seen by a psychiatrist for treatment of his split personality.  How he ever became the head of the werewolves is even more of a mystery after reading this mish-mash of conflicting personality traits.  

Ms. Hamilton adds a lot of new characters in this story.   Some could be fascinating, including Micah and Merle of the Maneater clan of wereleopards but they were introduced in such a profusion of other characters that they pretty much got lost in the shuffle.  Unfortunately, very little was done to flesh-out their personalities.  Many times, it seemed as though vital conversations were cut short that could have given some hints to what was going on and we were forced to settle for cliched bonding issues instead.  Passing reference was made to Merle having been the Nimir-Raj before Micah.  And Micah's desperate need to be Anita's Raj, regardless of the circumstances, left me wondering what kind of man/beast he is and if he deserves the honor at all.

Overall, it is a romping, stomping, multi-layered story with lots of action on many fronts.  For a fast read, that is almost enough.  But when you begin to analyze where this story has taken you, the whole thing begins to bog down.  I found that there were too many twists and turns in the story for it to hold together very well.  The plot seems to get lost and so did I.  It doesn't completely resolve some long standing open story lines which seemed to have "bugged" some readers when Anita spent the previous book in New Mexico with Edward/Ted. 

Not every reader will like or agree with the resolutions that are alluded to in the last few pages of the book, but Ms. Hamilton is obviously moving forward with her own agenda for Anita Blake's life and as Anita would probably say "this isn't something you can do by committee".   Hamilton is of a like mind and saying "It's my way or move on to another series, readers." 

I just hope that the author will forgo wasting so much precious tree pulp on the soft porn aspects in the next installment and get back to Anita Blake-Vampire Hunter.  It is really what she did best in the earlier books and what made the series so different and so likable.   I missed the smart mouthed Executioner a lot in this outing. 

There were times, during the reading of this book, when I felt that author Hamilton had been away from Anita's St. Louis for much too long and was fuzzing Anita's world with the more amoral Fae world centered just east of St. Louis in Cahokia, Illinois, where Merry Gentry holds court.  I wish Hamilton would learn that there is a big difference between erotic tension with it's promise of more to come later and writing the soft porn that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination and also precludes subtle nuances of feeling in the story.

By the time this convoluted story telling had gone on for enough pages to make it time to "fight to the death" with the Baddie in this story, there had already been so much that had happened on so many different fronts that it was very nearly an afterthought to the story.  There was a decided lack of build-up, the "threat" was mushy and ill-defined and just not very compelling.   Kind of an "Oh, by the way, let's (finally) get around to an ending".   The fight itself was so easily won that it didn't make much of an impression either.  In writing this review, I tried to recall details without referring to the book and .... don't ask .... I couldn't come up with anything that stood out, except that, of course, it was just another case of wanting the seemingly irresistible Anita for a mate!!??!!  If this doesn't stop, our Anita is going to become just another "soiled dove".

My advice (unsolicited and probably not going to be heeded) is:  Next Book be sure to get the input of your writing group.  And don't get so bogged down in developing every nuance of even minor characters, that you forget that Anita is at her best when she's fighting the monsters, not necessarily bonding with them.   The only way that things will change is if Anita steps out of the shower on the first page of the next book and says "I just had the strangest dream". (a-la Bobby in "Dallas")  Unfortunately, Hamilton seems to be going in a different direction, so I don't expect that to happen. 

So in the end, it came down to the aforementioned assessment offered by another observer:

One could say that "I Loved the Book" on a few levels and almost equally that "I Hated the Book" for it's many shortcomings.  It really felt as though too many stories were crammed into the frame of the book causing many omissions and contradictions to occur.  The forward flow of previous books was missing.  

I'm not ready to write off this series yet, because I have too much respect for Anita as a strong character and I want to see her coming back.... and getting back to doing what she does best.  Laurell Hamilton seems to have gotten bogged down this time out, but she is too talented in her own right, to throw away a great character like Anita.  It will depend on the next book as to whether I care about the future of Anita Blake.  Please, Ms. Hamilton, don't let me down in the next installment.  Anita can't be strong unless you are.  And it would be a crime to let her turn into just another half-crazy, mixed-up bimbo.  She deserves better and so do her fans.

Carol Abbott, Reviewer

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