At least - the death of the Anita series for me. Today's review is of Danse Macabre by Laurell K Hamilton the latest installment in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. I'm not sure how to go about reviewing this particular book. I went into reading it, expecting more of the same she has been putting out, Anita has sex multiple times with multiple men - Anita gets a new power - Anita has some more sex - some one/thing dies. Close but no cigar this time.
I used to love the Anita Blake novels, I loved them when they really were about plot and not sex. I still read them, but will admit that I've become less enamored of them. In this latest Anita Blake Vampire Hunter novel, an all Vampire ballet troop is coming to town for their last stop on tour and Jean-Claude, master of the City of St Louis, has invited several other Masters to come to town to celebrate. Two of the masters Jean-Claude invites he considers friends and if the way they treat Anita is how friends behave, she doesn't even want to think about how their enemies will behave.
Anita may be pregnant, Mommie Dearest (Marmee Noir - The Mother of All Darkness) pays a couple of visits to Anita, Anita needs a new pomme de sang (and all the visiting vamps have brought possible canadits), she has to deal with her lion beast, her men, and herself.
My main complaint with this book was the sex was just TOO very much. Not, too much as in that it was the whole book, but too much as in it wasn't even sexy in this book, in my opinion. Simply TOO MUCH.
Also, the ending was forced, it almost seemed like a kiss off. Like LKH simply couldn't figure out how to end it so she did a pseudo epilogue and I wasn't sure if she did it this way because it may be a while for any more, or if she truly ran out of ideas as to how to end it. There was too much going on in this book, and none of it felt completed. It really and truly felt like half a book, although it weighs in at 483 pages.
It wasn't all bad - in fact, some of it was deeply touching and I thought I'd share one of my favorite parts of the book: We stood barely two feet apart, but it might as well have been a thousand miles. Some distances are made out of things bigger and harder to travel across than mere miles. We stood and stared at each other across a chasm of misunderstanding, and pain, and love.
It was that passage that gave me glimpses of why I got hooked on the Anita series to begining with. The truth in that paragraph and the beauty in which she conveys it, well, it's just amazing.
If you are an Anita fan, you will probably love this book. If you have never read any of the series before, DO NO START with this one.
Take Care
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