Anita Blake has the highest kill count of any vampire executioner in the country. She’s a U.S. Marshal who can raise zombies with the best of them. But ever since she and master vampire Jean-Claude went public with their engagement, all she is to anyone and everyone is Jean-Claude’s fiancée.It’s wreaking havoc with her reputation as a hard ass—to some extent. Luckily, in professional circles, … circles, she’s still the go-to expert for zombie issues. And right now, the FBI is having one hell of a zombie issue.
Someone is producing zombie porn. Anita has seen her share of freaky undead fetishes, so this shouldn’t bother her. But the women being victimized aren’t just mindless, rotting corpses. Their souls are trapped behind their eyes, signaling voodoo of the blackest kind.
It’s the sort of case that can leave a mark on a person. And Anita’s own soul may not survive unscathed . . .
From the Hardcover edition.
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I love Laurell K Hamilton books and her characters are fantastic flaws and all
This is the twenty-fourth book in a series which began with just the right balance of edgy supernatural mystery, hard-biting action, and a teasing romance. After the novel Obsidian Butterfly (#9 in the series) Hamilton began, in my opinion, to lose her way. The plot of the novels began to become far less important than Hamilton’s erotic exploration of the increasing number of men in her heroine, Anita Blake’s, life. By Dead Ice, the mystery (and an important related subplot) that would have driven one of the early novels has dropped down to only about twenty percent of the book with the rest being taken up by Blake’s infatuations with her many lovers and her attempt to resolve conflicts between them. This is really a shame because Hamilton’s plot and the moral questions which come out of it are both intriguing and quite disturbing.
A necromancer is raising zombies to participate in pornographic movies. To make the movies more disturbing (and presumably that is the only reason someone would make such a disgusting thing) this necromancer has discovered a way to trap the dead person’s soul back in their zombie body, making them aware of the horrific way in which they are being desecrated. In a related subplot, Blake raises an ancient zombie who is so life like that not even the zombie can tell he is not alive anymore. Hamilton does an excellent job at exploring the moral questions that derive from both activities and this adds substantially to the tension of the book. She also rewards long term readers with relevant connections to previous novels.
The emotional drama which takes up most of the book is often well done. My complaint is not that Hamilton includes it, but that she lets it dominate and distract from the mystery. The sad truth which I don’t want to face is that the monster hunting and super natural crime that dominated the early books in the series is not really what Hamilton wants to write about anymore. They’re the excuse to explore the many romantic relationships which have clearly captured her imagination.
bookshelves: adult, paranormal, suspense, 6-edit-review, 0-n-order-by-athr, shared-2-amazon, shared-2-facebook, 2shr2bkbub, 2shr2google
I’m a big Anita Blake fan but this & the last book ‘Jason’ have left me disappointed. To many words wasted on explaining things from previous books. It really bogged down the story & the space could have been used for her doing her U. S. Marshall job. The whole case seemed to be a very small part of the book. She took very little active duty in the case, yet somehow comes out ‘Saving the Day’.
The relationship parts of the book seemed to bounce around to much. There was no depth.
In ‘Affliction’ there was true depth of feeling & true investigation. I truly enjoyed that book. But these last 2 have left me a bit ………Dissatisfied.
Another in a long line of Anita Blake novels that I could not put down… Really! I started at 6pm and read all the way to 2:40am before I finished and left the universe Hamilton has created.
liked it
Disappointing. Slow moving. Main characters actions predictable and boring.
Vampires and wareanimals dealing with their differences and how to live fulfilling lives in spite of the humans.
This is some twentieth book in the series but Anita’s story continues to be
interesting. Lots if paranormal happenings combined with interesting relationship
dilemmas and scrumptious men… What’s not to like?
You would have to pay me a lot of money to read another L. K. Hamilton book. She lost it after about the 4th book in the series.
she has a great world built and many books in this world, always good stories coming from heer about this world and the characters within it
Horrible book. Her early stuff with Anita Blake is much better. Would not recommend this book to anybody but especially to someone who is already familiar with her work. They will be very disappointed.
I love the first ten books in this series… after that it gets a bit hard to follow all the metaphysics she writes about.
Still an insanely good writer, the plot lines of her last couple of books just jar a bit with me.
It’s still sex for the sake of sex. Hamilton seems to have taken a small step back though. There is more innuendo than actual hard core sex in this story. The story line still seems to center around sex, but, there is an attempt to advance the overall powerbase of Anita, Richard and Jean-Claude. There is a vague feeling that the books are building to something, however the direction is unclear.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Hamilton’s books. Just would like to see more story line, and less of Anita’s psychoanalysis of her multiple lovers, who they are and why she feels the way she does about them.
I love her writing style and characters, just wish they came in PG13!
I read most of it OK Hamilton’s books while I find them entertaining and I like the characters and the plot. I only read about half of them because I skip over most of the sex stuff it just is too repetitive and that’s about half the book.
I have been a fan of the Anita Blake books since the beginning. However, it has gone off the rails for me somewhere around book 8. This book spent more time explaining the back stories of all the characters than it did in creating a new story line. I think at some point, one has to say that if you haven’t read the previous 15 novels, don’t start here because I’m not explaining them all! I get tired of the repetitive lines as well. “What’s that supposed to mean?” etc, etc.
I was disappointed (again) with this Anita Blake story. LKH started the series strong, but as time wears on there is less plot and sex just about every other page. Anita has so many lovers now, a lot of the story line is about the men, how tall, muscled, hair color , eye color and how they compare to her other men. I am hoping LKH will just let Anita get “ wed and bed” and just finish the series. I have been a fan of this series so long , even if it’s bad I want to see how it ends.
Love all the Anita Blake series. Keep them coming!!!
Loved the first four books. After that, not so much.
I love Anita Blake.