Danse Macabre

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #14

by Laurell K. Hamilton

In the thralls of supernatural passion, Anita Blake faces a most human dilemma.

Genres: Urban Fantasy, Vampires, Paranormal, Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal Romance, Fiction

483 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Laurell K. Hamilton is one of the leading writers of paranormal fiction. A #1 New York Times bestselling author, Hamilton writes the popular Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels and the Meredith Gentry series. She is also the creator of a bestselling comic book series based on her Anita Blake novels and published by Marvel Comics. Hamilton is a full-time writer and lives in the suburbs of St. Louis with her family.

Reviews

[CS · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you have ever considered reading the Anita Blake series up to this point, let me save you a bit of time, trouble, and heartache by giving you a plot synopsis of this book. Don't worry, I won't spoil anything nor will I get into so much detail that it will be ruined.

PLOT:



No, really, this book HAS no plot. The blurb burbles about a vampire ballet, hints at a pregnancy for Anita, and dances around the topic of the ardeur, but nothing happens in this book. (Cover blurb author needs a RAISE.)

OK, no, I'm wrong. Stuff does happen in this book. If any one of the following is what you want when you pick up a book called "Anita Blake VAMPIRE HUNTER":

1. Women bashing.

2. Talking/whinging about a pregnancy and ignoring the real time problems of your "best friend" and proceeding to shame her into humiliation and say that SHE is the one who needs therapy.

3. Metaphysical date rape sex that is used to power up individuals like a video game.

4. Talking/whinging about all the metaphysical sex (unprotected, of course) you have with the stripper boyfriends that fall at your feet and all the complicated relationships between all 7 of them.

5. Evil overly sexualized, pyschotic b!tchy women.

6. Petty fights over the resident Mary Sue.

7. Talking about brand-new character's backstories while characters are in the nude or have just come out of the bath.

8. Bad guys who do bad guy things like talk about how much of a bad guy they are.

9. Talking about who should have sex with whom, when, where, why, and how, and whether that makes you a slut or not.

10. Having sex with two new men "because the ardeur says so" when you already have six current boyfriends. And everyone (minus the "unreasonable" Richard) is totes OK with being naked around all 6 men, being observed while having sex by all 6 men, or even being a part of a menage a trois with all 6 men.

If THAT is what you were looking for when you opened up "Anita Blake VAMPIRE HUNTER", then you are in luck! The next 500 pages are full of the plotless meanderings of Anita Mary Sue and her Dancing Troupe of Greatly Endowed Male Sex Objects (because Anita is so not into teh gay). If you are like me, and you were kinda hoping to see, oh, I don't know, maybe a ZOMBIE RAISING or a crime scene or *gasp* a vampire execution, you might as well quit now while you're ahead.

"Dance Macabre" makes "Incubus Dreams" look like a tightly plotted masterpiece (well, almost). "Danse Macabre" is the poorest excuse for a novel that I've seen in a long, long time - well, since "Incubus Dreams". It's plotless, pointless, stupid, and insulting.

Anita Sue remains the most unlikeable, worst protagonist I've read. She's rude to her friend, she's a hypocrite, she's demanding, she's sexist, she's a misogynist, she has a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas. We spend nearly the entire first chapter Anita Sue whinging about her pregnancy to Ronnie, when all she needs to do is take 5 minutes out of her oh-so hectic day (between screwing every male in sight) to get a pregnancy test. Or - gasp! - make an appointment with the doctor to be tested. There is no reason why Anita Sue must dominate the ENTIRE conversation with her drivel.

When Ronnie tries to talk about her feelings about Louis moving in and how she isn't sure she likes it, Anita Sue makes sure to let Ronnie know how inconvenient it is to talk about something other than Anita Sue's problems (I've got a really nice quote from her about Ronnie's "penis envy" that you can see in my early updates). And she tells her "friend" that A) Ronnie is just a jealous meanie who only wants to land in Nathaniel's pants and B) Ronnie ought to get some therapy. Because Ronnie is silly for not wanting to commit to Louis - even though Anita won't commit to any of her 7 men and has no intentions of doing so.


Here lies Veronia "Ronnie" Sims, a once great character massacred by the hatred and vitriol of Laurell K. Hamilton and her author avatar, Anita Sue. May she forever rest in peace.

Anita demands monogamy from her men, but she is allowed to sleep with whomever she wants. If one of the men gets mad like Richard (who is sleeping around himself), he is the one shown to be unreasonable. God Forbid Richard sleep with multiple other women, even though Anita Sue is doing the very same thing with her 7 men. Anita Sue also continues to hate on women, slut-shaming the mistress of the Master of the City of Chicago because "she's a real whore" and insulting her intelligence by agreeing she couldn't see Augie having a scintillating conversation with her. And any woman that isn't as masculine as she is is automatically evil - Thea, Meng Die, etc.

The exponentially growing cast composed almost entirely of males might as well be all the same person, given how little there is to distinguish them. Richard yells at Anita; Asher whines about not being fulfilled; Nathaniel is a doormat (except when he isn't); Jason makes lewd comments. Other than a couple of words, it's impossible to tell anyone apart!

Gone is Anita's "day job". Gone are Zerbrowski, Dolph, Burt, or anything resembling her "normal life". Instead of zombie raisings and at least an attempt at a paranormal mystery, we have lots and lots of vampire politics and new stupid rules, with Anita Sue constantly asking what is going on or for someone to explain something to her because she can't put two and two together. It's astonishing how little Jean-Claude, the man who has lived with the ardeur for HUNDREDS of years, knows about the damned thing; every time we turn around, Anita Sue uncovers some new plot device that changes the ardeur into a new brand of metaphysical date rape drug.

And don't be misled; these sexual encounters are by and large NOT consensual. Anita Sue doesn't want to have sex with Augie and Jean-Claude because that turns her on; no, of course not! We can't have a thing like pesky female sexuality! Instead, the ARDEUR forces her to have sex with them. Only afterwards does she think she likes it. The same for the scene with the new Interchangeable Male Genitalia added to her harem. The same for the menage a trois with Nathaniel and Jason. The same for sex with Asher. They are done because someone needs to be healed (or that stupid Damien must be saved - the number of times Anita Sue has to have sex to save that stupid vampire is ridiculous!) or the ardeur has to be fed or the ardeur was called. It's never because Anita Sue sees a guy and goes, "Hot dayum, I want that man on me now" and then gets permission to go ahead and do that.

Do not even get me started on the "pregnancy" thing or the "vampire ballet". Those "plots" are laughable. In one of the earlier Anita Sue books, they wouldn't have made even tertiary plots; in this book, they are supposed to carry the story. Both are done terribly; both are disappointing and a waste of time.

In some ways what makes this worse is LKH's atrocious writing. Let me share some of the gems I found:

"Hot anger can feel good, but the cold will protect you better."

"Samuel's eyes were hazel, pale brown with an edge of greyish green around the pupil. The green shirt brought out more of the green, so his eyes were almost an olive green. But they were definitely hazel, not true green. But then I had high standards for true green eyes. Samuel's eyes were just eyes."

"Your feeding on Augie raised my power level."

"...the first bite of his power flickered through the room."

"My life wouldn't work if I wallowed in every disaster, every moral quandary. I can't afford the luxury of self-doubt." (Followed quickly by Anita Sue showing self-doubt in her life to the very person she made this comment to!)

"'Don't yell at Micah!' I yelled at him. 'I'll yell at whoever I want to yell at,' [Richard] yelled."

"Now that I was only minutes away from knowing, I wanted to know. No more guesswork. I needed to know. One way I the other, I needed to know. What I didn't know was..."

"Let me be covered in your silken chains. Tie me down and let me drown in your sweet flesh."

"I touched my stomach, so nice and flat with all the exercise."

"'She is cold.' Jean-Claude's voice, his hand moving away from my cheek. Cold, yes. I was cold. So cold. Cold down to the core of my being, as if I'd never be warm again."

"He fell into that kiss and spilled over the couch."

"'I made you both fall in love with me. That's like evil.' 'If you made us fall in love with you but didn't love is back, maybe it would be evil,' Micah said. 'But you do love us back.'"

"He tried for arrogant disdain."

But by far the worst has to go hands-down to:

"Richard made a sound, and it made me glance at him. The look on his face made me look where he was looking."

And then there is the narrator, Cynthia Holloway. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand her. Her voice is grating, she reads all the sex scenes in this ridiculously cheesy "porn star" breathy voice, and she cannot do an accent to save her life. Jean-Claude doesn't sound French in the slightest; London wavered between the most cliched "British" accent to country-western to faux-French. And most of the rest of the cast pretty much sounded exactly like each other - which maybe, considering how interchangeable the cast is, was a stroke of brilliance.

I am surprised that this book ever sold, in hardcover, in paperback, or at all (well, I do get how fans might be duped into buying this - and for those of you fans who paid for hardcover for this, I am so sorry!). This book is pure torture. Did fans really want another plotless mess of a book that spent most of its time talking about sex and vampire political minutiae? Did fans clamor for Anita Sue to acquire TWO MORE MEN to her Male DingDong Dance Card? Were fans begging for Anita Sue to do fewer zombie raisings and spend more time in her underwear or completely undressed having conversations about conversations about conversations? I can't speak for them, but for me, this book made me LONG for the earlier books and the Anita Blake who would have taken one look at Anita Sue and popped her with her Browning.

STAY TUNED: Anita Blake BINGO!!

[Kathryn Lee Hamilton · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate to say this, but I think I am done with this author.
I remember when she first started the series and there were monsters and plots all over the place.
The last book was 800 pages of sex, most of it repetitive acts of fellatio from the main female characters point of view. with 69 pages of plot. 899 pages of imaging you are going down on someone, only the men change.
This book was 482 pages of fellatio with no plot, and the people being fellated were talking about their goddamn insecurities the whole time.
I am not against fellatio at all. I am not again erotic writing. My first novel, unpublished, written while I was in college, was an erotic story about werewolves that had so much sexual content it grew into a full novel.
But I would not try to pass it off as fantasy, and I have been very honest about the fact that my published novel is fantasy-erotica.
Something that is 800 pages of sucking dick, is what I could buy at a pornography shop for two bucks, and in fact I have bought books like that. Taming Katie (hahahah) and Hell's Bitch come to mind.
I guess what I am trying to say is that Laurell K. Hamilton wither needs to find some personal satisfaction or start writing in another genre and stop wasting my time.
And as a very small side note and maybe its something I am over sensitive about, though she expresses extreme tolerances of bisexuality in the men in her books, and I mean extreme, very homo erotic. She has never had a female character who's reaction to being with other women isn't nauseating. I think its bad form not to at least imagine both sides. After all it's one of your characters not yourself if you don't swing that way. As a bi-sexual woman, its a huge turn off to read a book where you get the feeling the author would throw up on you if she met you, and not feel bad about it.
I am very disappointed in this book. Why does every female writer I like go nuts. It's like watching the Anne Rice down fall over again, only over more books.

[Jilly · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know when you are reading a book series and then there is a really bad book in there, but you keep reading because you think it might get better again? Well, that doesn't happen here. It is obvious that there is no hope for this series to become what it started as.

Anita is now a succubus which means she needs to have constant sex in order to survive. Plot device to bring this series into the porn realm? Yes. Overly obvious indulgent bullshit that is clearly the author's fantasy of wanting to have the most beautiful men that ever exist all desiring her and willing to share her - not to mention the blatant way that Richard has become her scapegoat for all of the anger she feels for her ex? Yes.

There is no actual plot in this book. Anita is pregnant and there is a vampire ballet company coming into town. That's it. And yet the book is over 900 pages long. At least 800 of those pages is Anita having sex with every single male she comes in contact with.

Also, just like the book with the Mexican restaurant that was wrong, there is another blatantly wrong scene in this book. Anita has an ultrasound to see if she is actually pregnant and the doctor runs the wand over her stomach. Um, no. That's not how it works at such an early stage of pregnancy. First off, they have to use the wand that is inserted into your body. Since the author has absolutely no qualms about writing about lady (and men) parts, she could have been more accurate. Secondly, a quick swipe with a wand over the stomach wouldn't be enough for a doctor to just say "oh, never mind, not pregnant" when a test said she was. Doctors are weird about ultrasounds and always get a second opinion with conflicting results. And, finally, she didn't even have to drink water first. If there was some miracle ultrasound machine that could pick up her uterus over the stomach to check an early pregnancy, she would have had to have a full bladder to lift up the uterus for an ultrasound. We, who have been there, are very familiar with seeing your first pictures of your baby while wishing we could just pee real quick. It's the first painful joy of many with kids.

Does all of that matter? It wouldn't be a big deal if the author wasn't accurate in this stuff if she didn't get so freaking detailed in everything else. She could have just said the ultrasound was done and came back negative, but she went into great detail of what happened in the doctor's office. She also goes into great detail about what everyone is wearing - for pages and pages. She's a detail-oriented writer. And, that's fine - but at least get your facts straight first!

I feel like this is the perfect timing for me to just walk away. Goodbye Anita. Have fun with the humping.

[Danielle Meehan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really enjoy Laurel K. Hamilton and the Anita Blake series. That being said, I really enjoyed the first few books in the series because they were all about kick ass chick and a sorta interesting kinda mystery/thriller conundrum with some hot steamy scenes in the middle. This past book and the few before it seem to be all hot and steamy and very little advancement of the story.
I still like Hamilton, but I enjoyed her older stuff much more.

[Tilly Slaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anita Blake; Vampire Hunter and animator. A love triangle doesn’t even begin to explain the most interesting relationships that currently complicate her life.

Cursed with the ardeur, Blake suffers through an existence as a succubus. Sex to survive, more sex and even more sex. Although, the sex has made the stories interesting, enough is enough. I mean, c’mon .. stop throwing her naked under random characters and slow things down a bit. Anita has her sweeties, stop tossing spontaneous sex scenes. What happened to the dripping brains and gruesome murder scenes?

I am a succubus. I am a vampire. Maybe not a bloodsucker, but I feed off sex. It isn’t just Damian’s life that can get drained away if I don’t feed. Nathaniel will die. I will die.

As always, we have Richard, the Ulfric and leader of the local werewolf pack. As I’ve said before, I don’t much care for his character. I’m sure that having a sad relationship that keeps popping up may be an interesting twist to the story, but I could live without it.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” I said, and meant it.

“I hate you, Anita,” he said with almost no change in his voice.

“I hate you, too, Richard,” I said, and meant it.

ALSO:

Richard has informed me he’s shopping for his white picket fence.

I’m happy behind my black wrought-iron fence. The one with the pointy spikes on top. White never really was my color.

Everything is slammed upside down when Anita finds our she’s pregnant! Pregnant? Wow! Richard proposes, Doctor’s force choking fear into Anita and her sweeties with possible horrible outcomes. How the hell would a child fit in their lives?

There are some interesting and new political relationships formed in this book.

The end of the book was rushed. I love the scene with Asher, but what happened to everyone else?

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. The surprising twists in the book make for an excellent read. Not one of her best books in this series, but definitely in the top 10.

I recommend this book to everyone that is reading this series. Make sure to read the books in sequence.

Extreme sexual content. Mild to moderate violence. Some disturbing scenes that totally rock but may be sickening to others!

I do NOT recommend this book or ANY books that follow in this series to children OR immature adults. Here on out, every book is for adults only!

Happy reading!

[Raiveran Rabbit · Rating 1 out of 5]

No amount of ridiculously reasoned hardcore porn is worth this. —


If you want to read someone’s repetitive, repetitive, repetitive Mary Sue fantasy about legions of perfect, beautiful, smart, powerful, perfect men either fighting over or adoring, but all fucking, one insecure, shallow, selfish dumbass character, this book is for you. If you don’t demand a storyline to prop up the epic and imminently selfishly immature and needy fantasies of not one but ten Twilight twihards distilled and poured into one vessel, this book is for you. If you have a love of mind-rapingly tedious domestic disputes occurring every 2 pages for 20 pages thereafter, this book is for you. And if you have no sense of intellectual self-preservation, there’s about twenty of these fucking books, all about exactly the same thing; some woman who has to have sex or everyone will die every day.

But it’s not weird, even when she has sex with the shapechanger in cat form, because she loves them all vewy, vewy much each in a different “of course you’re not my slave” kind of way, and they’re all like a family. It reminds me of the documentary about the porn industry I saw where one of the spokespeople said, “We’re all a big family”, directly before anyone with an STD or HIV as a result of that same industry was immediately forgotten and shunned.

Oh, and if you like magical shit more than supernatural shit, this storyline (annoying Mary Sue who just wants to be loved who has to have sex all the time with different men whom she all loves and they all adore her or else) can be found in faerie form in the other series by the same author.

Get ready to kiss your standards goodbye.

[Terry · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a good explanation as to why this book series hasn't been picked up for television or the big screen. Could you imagine sitting through 1 to 2 hours of a movie or show & watching a room packed full of characters dramatically staring at each other, clutching each other, spontaneous fainting, collapsing, gasping and shuddering in a very mellow dramatic way with very little duologue.... All with nothing actually going on? Yeah, neither can I. And when there is dialog, the characters banter back and fourth verbally beating the most minuscule theories and details of their romantic life to death.

Past pages upon pages of the uncomfortable and boring bouts of "ripples of power" scenes that infest the book.... Hamilton putties the cracks of her book with pages upon pages of pointless and mindless blow jobs, dry humping and Anita donating blood every few chapters. The sex... So disappointing. It's meaningless and anti-climactic. No thrill of the hunt, no pining or hoping, feeding your imagination or build up. It would be nice if we could see Anita having real sex because she wants to not just randomly doing it with every anyone who crosses her path because she has to "take one for the team". I wish Hamilton would just let Anita want to have sex, not be forced into a situation where she has to do it The idea of the adure could actually be a really fun fantasy but it's just over-kill and redundant now. This book definitely drove that feeling home for me.

Another thing that bothers me is that Hamilton has really ruined Jean-Claude (among others)for me in this book. He was dark, powerful, unpredictable, mysterious, masculine with that hint of femininity that is attractive. Now he comes off (in his relationship with Anita) as weak, complacent, transparent, predictable, feminine and boring. Part of what made his relationship to Anita attractive to me as a reader was the tension, danger and mystery. Besides Nathaniel, I could go on for pages about how I just don't like most of the characters in these books anymore.

Basically, I'll keep reading the series (mostly because I can finish a book in 1-2 days no matter how horrible so I at least don't waste a month of my time reading this crap) in hopes I get a glimpse of what I enjoyed about these stories at one time.... But at the same time, I'll never read the books again and I'm happy I'm getting them from the library so they don't take up space on my book shelf.

[Laura the Intractable · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hungrily devoured the first several books in this series - they were the ultimate guilty pleasure. An ass-kicking heroine, lots of steamy sensuality, death-defying acts, moral dilemmas, and plenty of supernatural beings to go around. Starting around book 10, the series started to choke, like a car with electrical problems. It was unclear if Ms. Hamilton had lost her direction where Anita Blake was concerned, or if she'd never really had one to begin with.

"Danse Macabre" descends to the level of boring porn, and I didn't even know there was such a thing. I gave up after two hundred pages, bored nearly to tears by the lack of plot and the constant, very technical sex. It wasn't even hot sex, which for me is like saying a knife fight wasn't an exciting knife fight. It actually takes work to make sex not hot.

The entire plot centers around the idea that Anita Blake is compelled for supernatural reasons to have nearly constant sex. And after spending a couple hundred pages reading about said sexual encounters, broken only by lengthy naked discussions about the supernatural reasons for needing to have constant sex, I decided I had more exciting things to do, like cleaning the oven or rearranging my sock drawer.

[Darby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been a long time fan of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. I have reread the books Guilty Pleasures through Obsidian Butterfly - many times. But this book, as with the last one, I doubt I will reread. This one didn't even have a plot and the plot in the last book was thin. Each book I hang hoping and waiting to see if the entertaining characters that the beginning books had will show back up. And if the tough compassionate Anita will be present. But they aren't there. I used to read her books in one evening...not able to put them down. And now this book took me 3 months to get through as it just didn't grab me. Because I couldn't figure out when the plot would kick in. Even the in last chapter I kept hoping that something would come tying it all together to make sense but it didn't happen.

Overall the book....is badly written porn type sex. It isn't even erotic or good porn sex. I would like to count how many pages actually don't deal with sex (the act or just the characters discussing sex) because I would be surprised it it was more then 10 pages out of 483. One chapter might be a page an half and all that just having sex. Now I love sex. But the plot of the book, the premise of the book and what made them entertaining was Anita Blake VAMPIRE HUNTER. I loved the chemistry of her and Jean Claude at the beginning but now Jean Claude hardly says anything interesting.

The title of this book came from a dance troop that is coming to town. The dance troop doesn't even show up until the last 80 pages and again very weak and more sex of course.

So...if you haven't read it and are a fan of this series do know you might be bored by it. I did hear her next book is going to have Edward back in it and some other characters from the past. So that might be interesting...crossing fingers!

If you enjoy stories about Vampires and werewolves, please pick up the the early books and you enjoy the stories.


EDIT August 2012: I reread this book for the first time since I first read it in 2007. I wanted to reread the whole series as I was behind on reading Hamilton's last 3 books in this series. So I thought what the heck give it another shot. I will say I am upping this from 1 star to 2 stars. Because I guess going in knowing I didn't like the first time - gave me the permission to let go and be okay with not liking it. But instead - I went from total hating the book to being okay. I still stand by everything I said in my above original review. The sex gets just very boring and annoying as time goes on and this book has a lot of it in it. I feel the book lacks everything that I love about the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books.

[Ella · Rating 1 out of 5]

*Warning* this is more of a rant than a review.

This is the first Anita Blake book I read and it will be the last. I purchased it in an airport bookstore I didn’t realize it was book 14, my bad, but I’d heard good things about the series – it’s about a vampire hunting necromancer after all - so I thought, why not.

Holy shit.

What the hell did I just read! I mean, it genuinely felt like I was reading some deranged teenage girls fanfiction except that LKH is a grown woman which makes this infinitely creepier.

I wish I could talk about the plot but as far as I could tell there wasn’t one. It was sex scenes and a pregnancy scare sandwiched between. Nothing really.

Now maybe because I haven’t been exposed to these characters before I have no real connection to them but I honestly don’t see how anyone could like this series or how the HELL there are so many of these books!

Anita is possibly the biggest Mary Sue I’ve ever come across, and I read Twilight. Whilst Bella was blandly inoffensive and childish Anita is just an utter piece of shit as a human being; she’s petty, mean, selfish, arrogant, spiteful, cruel, greedy, aggressive, violent, dumb, utterly dismissive of anyone not in her little harem, homophobic, misogynistic (seriously she cannot stand any heterosexual woman), self-righteous and judgmental; freely looking down on other women for all manners of things from being promiscuous to unfaithful to...blonde...despite the fact that she will literally jump on anything with a dick, but it’s not her fault because – sex magic- or something (this is a common theme by the way, NOTHING is ever Anita’s fault)

As for the other characters; I’m going to be honest, they’re just sort of there and serve no purpose other than to talk about how amazing Anita is…and to have sex with her…. This is the worst book I’ve read in recent memory; in fact, I think I’m being generous calling it a “book”.

It’s just so ridiculous I can’t even hate it, I mean I just can’t take it seriously, it’s like My Immortal but slightly better written (and I mean “slightly” because the writing is absolutely horrific, seriously, it’s middle-school standard and the author appears to have the same knowledge of sexual intercourse and human anatomy as a middle schooler, all the sex scenes and there are MANY are oddly bloodless and unerotic and not just because LKH seems to get all hot and bothered by short, wimpy, androgynous, long-haired pretty boys)

Anita is the definition of a black hole sue (basically a type of super Mary Sue who is not just unrealistically perfect but has the whole universe of the story bend to her will)

I honestly think a 13 year old girls self-insert fic would have more self awareness than this deranged LKH fantasy where legions of "perfect", "beautiful" men's (I use quotation marks because they're obviously supposed to be impossibly gorgeous, sexy, amazing men...despite the text describing nothing of the sort) lives revolve around one selfish, insecure, shallow author avatar.

I mean I can't for the life of me imagine what was going through her head when she not only wrote this but thought it would be a good idea to get it published, publicly, so other human beings could read it? How was this not flagged by an editor.

Despite being an objectively shitty person by literally any measure everyone fawns on Anita lauding her for being such a caring and selfless person (har-har) like she is some sort of sexy goddess, even casual acquaintances appear to have their entire lives revolve around our amazing, wonderful and super speshul Anita and anyone who doesn’t worship the ground she walks on or drop everything they’re doing when she snaps her fingers is instantly painted in a bad light and will inevitably say or do something dickish (even if it makes zero sense in context) just to hammer home what an awful person they are; it actually goes one further anyone who even slightly disagrees with Anita no matter how valid their points will be demonized; like her “best friend” who points out that maybe a wildly irresponsible crapbag of a human like Anita who is infinitely too selfish to raise a child which could have any one of at least SEVEN fathers (she hasn’t a clue who and only one of them should be allowed within 100 feet of a child) should maybe consider her options carefully – but nope! …Turns out she’s just a jealous, vindictive bitch who hates how sexy and amazing Anita is and lusts after one of her boyfriends.
Or Richard the werewolf who is treated by everyone like some misogynistic dinosaur because he dreams of a “traditional life” with marriage, children and a house in the suburbs and doesn’t like the idea of a potential child of his being raised by a bunch of homicidal vampires, a sociopath and her houseboys.

Look, I’m actually just sick of talking about this book. I’ve wasted enough of my life on this already. That’s a couple of hours I can never get back. If I could give this minus stars I would. I’d rather have a root canal with no anesthetic than read another one of these pieces of shit. Don’t’ read it people. Just. Don’t.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not going to give a plot summary. Yes there is a plot but no it is not about raising the dead or slaying vampires. I think if you don't go into the book thinking that then you won't be disappointed. This book is about vampire politics and Anita finding out more about her powers. I think this is a book that was supposed to be much longer and that the publisher split into two since Incubus Dreams was so long and people didn't like it. This book is leading up to the party where all the Masters of the City come together. I wouldn't be surprised if Belle or the Mother of All Darkness shows up again. I think this book was done in order to build it all up. I'm hoping the next book will be the novella that Ms. Hamilton keeps talking about with Edward. I would recommend this one for true Blake fans so that you can see what powers she has gained or what the vampire political world is about. Yes there is sex in it and yes it's not very good. Yes there's a plot but it's continued in the next one. It's just not the plot most wanted.

[Denisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than the last one.
But like in most of the books in this series, I feel that there are a lot of stories still unfinished.
During the last few books Hamilton started a lot of separate little plots and I keep waiting for some of them to finish. But they don't, I still have questions left form book 10 and 11 and I have a feeling that the questions that I have left form this one will be left unanswered as well.

Ah well, it's still a very addicting series. And in this book Anita seems to be understanding more and more stuff about herself. Now I'm just waiting for the big boom :D

[Wonda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay it's OFFICIAL I have given up on these distasteful raunchy sex novels, with a splash of the supernatural!!!! WHAT happened? This series started off so well, but not even my love of certain characters can condone this nastiness...Sorry, Not sorry!

[#ReadAllTheBooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really tried to read this book, honestly I did. It started off well enough and was better than it's predecessor (not saying much). The idea of a meeting of several different Masters of the City was interesting since it would lead to different types of vamps & magic. Unfortunately all it lead to was providing Anita with different flavors of vamp & were to bang. It honestly was incredibly boring after a while, especially the sex scenes.

I'm no stranger to porn or written sex. (I have a few erotica novels on my shelves & a whole collection of anime/manga porn.) So when I say that LKH does NOT know how to write porn, believe that I know what I'm talking about. I think a 12 year old virgin schoolboy could write better sex scenes than LKH does. Her sex scenes just aren't well... sexy. It's boring that the only sex that happens comes through Anita. It's boring to hear LKH drone on about every little detail, and some of those details are actually make the sex a little icky.

In any case, I tried three times to finish this novel and couldn't. I got about halfway through when I just decided to flip randomly to the end of the book. I really didn't miss much. Everything takes place within a night or two & the whole plot can be summed up by "New vamps appear to provide Anita w/ new sex partners. Threats are made. Anita has sex. Everyone talks a lot. More sex. Anita solves it all. Richard whines. Jean Claude looks sexy & Asher broods. More sex while Anita tries to convince everyone that her way is the ok way."

I want to like LKH's books. I want to be entertained by them. I initially didn't mind the extra sex. However, now it's just boring. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you are missing part of your brain. If you want to read something fluffy & brainless, read some of the vamp books in the romance section. Those are brainless & have MUCH better sex.

[Ivana Azap Feješ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anita Blake; Vampire Hunter and animator. A love triangle doesn’t even begin to explain the most interesting relationships that currently complicate her life. Cursed with the ardeur, Blake suffers through an existence as a succubus. Sex to survive, more sex and even more sex. I really liked this book. It is more erotic than I remember her other books being. Book 14 in the Anita Blake, vampire executioner, series by Laurell Hamilton. This book had a little bit of action and danger, and a whole lot of emotional angst and metaphysically enhanced sex. I've got the sense that this book is a connector building up to something very big happening in a later book - that it gives background you'll need to understand the books later on in the series. It certainly seems that LH is not giving her characters peaceful, tranquil lives anytime soon.

[Matt Schiariti · Rating 2 out of 5]

you know what I'm talking about..like a train wreck..or a bad car accident..you know coming up to the scene that it's going to be bad..you don't WANT to look, but you can't help but slow down and take a lingering look out of some sense of morbid curiosity.

At its core, this is what the Anita Blake books have become to me and DM is no exception. I know it's going to be bad but I just have to see how bad it'll get and how long it'll stay that way. And everytime I think 'phew, now that all the horribly written sex is outta the way, now we can get to the plot', BAM..another trashy written sex scene that has nothing to do with plot or character growth pops up.

While there are several redeeming qualities of the book that kept it from getting a one star rating from me, the bad outweighs the good by FAR. I think I know why that is too: THE ARDEUR. Quite possibly the worst plot device I've ever born witness to. It's turned a rough around the edges, shoot first and ask questions later vampire slayer into a wallowing and confused (and confusING) sex addict.

There's two plots going on in this book. Danse Macabre is a traveling vampire ballet group. It's mentioned in the early goings of the book but really doesn't come into play until the last several chapters. She second is Anita's pregnancy scare (which is actually interesting and laughable at the same time.) Other than that? It's alot of talking heads and alot of talk about sex which is generally referred to with generous amounts of the F-bomb euphemism.

We've gotten the character assassination of Ronnie. I've always liked the Ronnie character even though she hasn't been prevalent in the book for quite some time. Now where she was once completely smitten and happy with Louie, she's turned into a jealous and angst laden character who's apparently afraid of having to give up NOT being monogamous. Which is fine, whatever. But WHERE did that come from? All of a sudden we find out (what, 14 books into the series?) that she's had lovers numbering in the triple digits and is afraid to live a happy life with Louie because she doesn't want to give up the possibility of future lovers?

The character assassination of Richard continues. He's been on a downward slide for quite a while now and this just continues the thread. People see HIM as the weird one because he's the only 'sweetie' of Anita's that has a problem with sharing her with other men. LOTS of other men. Remember when he was trying to win her over? Confident, charming, powerful. Granted he's picked up alot of Anita's anger due to the marriage of the marks, but still. Half of the time they're fighting and the other half the time he's crying. Ugh.

Let's not forget the orgy scenes. Talk Anita is 'brought' again and again and AGAIN (maybe she's just super sensitive?) and none of her lovers (except Richard of course) has a problem with being in the bed with several other guys. Oh yes, there's a lot of emoting and discussion during the orgies too. Very talented, that Anita. Can handle three guys and once and still help them all get in touch with their inner children.

Anita's added about four new feeding conquests to this book. Mind you this book happens over the course of about two days. And that's in addition to her usual stable of 'food' and 'sweeties'.

What's redeeming about the book? Well, the seemingly perfect nature of Micah and Nathaniel are sort of explained in regards to how they came to be in Anita's life. It deals with the ardeur of course. Seems like the arduer is seeking out what anita needs to keep her fed and happy (more or less) so it's almost like a vampire mind trick. A love potion if you will. So are all these feelings of love she has for so many men genuine or not? That's maybe the one interesting thing to come out of all this ardeur business. What are her true feelings and what are just a result of vampiric magic. Thing is, she seems mad about it at times, but then it just doesn't seem to last. Very inconsistent. I, for one, am sick of her professing love for all these different people and them pledging undying love for her as well. But if it's just a result of JC's idiocy in not knowing what he was truly dealing with when marrying the marks up from? Well I'm willing to ride it out and see where it goes. I still feel that she should be totally peeved with him for the chaos his part in her life has played and maybe we'll eventually get that as a result of this new arduer being a double edged sword revelation.

Anita says she's sick of the ardeur (FINALLY!!! some sense creeping back into her). She even goes so far as to try to break the ties to her and Richard and JC. YAY again! One minute she rails to Richard about how her life finally works for her, the next minute she says she's sick of all the men. Between me, you and the wall, she certainly seems to enjoy the stable of Chippendale caliber men she's landing so I find her anger over the ardeur to be insincere more often than not.

The fact that she's very confused in this book leads me to believe that there can still be hope for this character. She even realizes that she's as guilty of trying to change Richard into something he's not as she's been accusing him of doing to her all this time. FINALLY. Duh! Plain as day to everyone else.

I'm pretty much convinced that minus a few characters (JC, Richard and MAYBE Nathaniel) everyone only loves her as a function of the ardeur and that includes Micah (who's still useless and is only around to make Richard seem less perfect) and Asher (a great character who has been reduced to a centuries old lump of quivering emotional baggage).

So in short, minus the pregnancy scare (which was actually alot of fun to read) and the Vampire Ballet, there's just ardeur ardeur ardeur. More excuses to throw in multiple partner sex, sex that most people probably wouldn't experience in the sum of their life, much less over the span of 48 hours

Please, somebody tell me. It's a joke right? Just a gigantic dream sequence? We have master vampires and shapeshifters all walking on eggshells around Anita, afraid to tell her what a royal pain in the arse she is. Why? Seemingly because she's just THAT good in the sack. We have once really cool characters than just seem to turn 180 degrees and turn into whiny children with 'issues'. We have a main character who hates and loves her complicated life. She hates the emotional parts, loves all the shagging. Yep, Anita's turned into a raging nymphomaniac. Sure, you can blame the ardeur in part, but she still maintains a steady stable of studly suitors (say that three times fast) even when she doesn't need to feed, then complains about how complicated her emotional life is. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrright.

She wakes up from this right? Right? Tell me it gets better please!

(this is long winded so congrats and thank you if you've made it this far! lol)

[Karen Dales · Rating 1 out of 5]

OMG. I don't know why I even bothered. Maybe I harbour hope that the Anita Blake series would start to get good again. It didn't.

The ONLY thing that caught my attention was the pregnancy scare. It's too damned bad that it was just that - a scare. There could have been so much more if the pregnancy was real. Instead, LKH continues to bore through character interactions that does nothing and goes nowhere. I'm tired of whiney Richard and Anita as the Whore of Babylon, with men of all races/species wanting to bed her. Where is the character development? What happened to Anita being a necromancer for hire and the executioner? It's all gone. Now we see her developing new powers, which are all sex based.

Frankly, if LKH wants to write erotica, she should do so and do that. If she wants to write urban fantasy/paranormal then do that. I'm tired of plotlines that are ignored until the very end. I'm tired of argumentative prose and Anita constantly getting angry about how she's got every male wanting to bed her (but when she's in the thrall of the event, she has no difficulty being the centre of 3+ men in bed)and I'm tired of her not stepping up to the plate to take responsibility of her situations.

Anita used to be strong. She isn't anymore.

I'm really wondering if LKH is working out her own sexual issues vicariously through Anita. If so, then enough is enough.

[MischaS_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Řeknu to takhle, tahle série je naprosto někde jinde, než kde začala. Ale pořád je to takové moje guilty pleasure. Kdybych byla objektivní, tak bych dala jednu hvězdičku, ale někdy to je silnější než já.

Musím bohužel konstatovat, že tenhle díl je fakt mizerný. Děj je nulový! V jednom okamžiky se něco naprosto neodkladně musí udělat, jinak snad svět shoří ve svých základech, nebo nějaká jiná katastrofa, pak ovšem se to zakecá, když se začnou řešit Anitiny nové schopnosti nebo ji budou všichni přemlouvat, aby si našla nového milence.

Nesnáším Richarda, je to hrozný pokrytec. Scény s ním mě ubíjejí. Je to mizerná postava, stejně jako Ronnie. Ale! chápu ho. Anita po tomhle díle spí s kolika lidmi? Sedm, osm, děvět... ani nevím. Ale pořád by se rozešla s každým, kdo by se vyspal s někým jiným než s ní. Je tak pokrytecká až bych jí dala pár facek. A myslím si, že by Jean-Claude měl přijmout postoj jiných vládců měst, měl by si podrobit svou lidskou služebnici, jinak ho bude stát spoustu lidí a nakonec možná i život. Doufám, že se v dalších dílech zlepší, protože jinak budu muset přehodnotit své rozhodnutí dočíst tuhle sérii.
No, uvidíme.
Edit:
Upřímně Anita je fakt na facku. Pořád opakuje, co jí na kom vadí a nakonec je ona ta nejnedokonalejší a nejnedospělejší osaba v okruhu několika mil. Btw, to to bylo vždycky napsané tím stylem, že se nonstop opakuje?

[Senem Elmas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Seri hakkında yorum yapacağım: Her kitapta bir sürü olay, bir sürü konu, bir sürü insan varken, güzel hikayeler çıkabilecekken sekse yoğunlaşmış yazar. Anita, sorun gidermede ve sexte 10 kaplan gücünde. İçim şişti.

[Saimi Vasquez · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anita esta tratando de encontrar un equilibrio con sus amantes para poder mantener el "ardeur" controlado, el problema es que parece que todos sus amantes no son suficientes para lo que necesita y ya que Jean-Claude ha invitado al ballet vampiro y a un gran grupo de vampiros maestros a la ciudad para que tengan una probada del poder, Anita tendra ahora muchos mas candidatos de donde escoger a sus proximos amantes.
El problema es que la "Mommie Dearest" esta despertando, y al parecer esta intentando tomar el control de Anita para que salir de su sueno profundo. Y mientras lucha contra el "ardeur", los "amigos" de Jean-Claude intenta aprovecharse de ellos y Bella Morte logra causar mas estragos a la distancia.

Este es otro de esos libros que tiene demasiadas lineas de trama, demasiado drama sentimital sin sentido, demasiado retroceso en los protas, ademas que las escenas eroticas son cada vez mas inutes y sin sentido, no entiendo porque el autor tuvo que cambiar la saga de una exceltente y extrana cazadora de vampiros y resucitadora a una sucubu humana que no tiene mas en mente que solo ver como sacia su sed sin danar a sus "seres queridos".
La serie me esta aburriendo cada vez mas y mas, no puedo entender porque el autor quiere estirar tanto una saga cuando la trama pudo haber sido muchisimo mas definida y limpia con solo la mitad de los libros que llevo hasta ahora. Pero bueno, recomendaria no pasar el libro 11 si quieren leer esta saga sin que les resulte fastidiosa, despues de ese libro (e incluso algunas de las historias cortas) las cosas se vuelven totalmente fastidiosas, repetitivas y faltas de emocion.
Sin embargo, voy a intentar seguir la lectura, aunque quizas brinque parrafos o hasta capitulos completos en los proximos libros, solo por que quiero saber como va a resolver el autor este enredo tan grande que ha formado.

[Amy Imogene Reads]

Spoilers: This is the one with the pregnancy scare… it dominates so much of this book. I forgot how much I hated this plot line and just how intensely it shaped this installment. Jean Claude has invited a lot of master vampires from other cities to St Louis for a vampire ballet performance. One of them is Augustine, the Master of Chicago, with lions as his animal to call. He brings with him Haven (Cookie Monster). They realize that Haven could be Rex to Anita’s Regina—which would be bad news, as Haven is thug. We also meet Samuel the Master of Cape Cod with Thea, his wife and mermaid/siren. They have three sons, Sampson and two younger twins. Jean Claude and Anita roll Augustine with ardeur sex (true threesome) and Anita realizes she’s not bothered by JC with other men while she’s there. This is also the novel where they continue to flesh out the nuances of their new power levels, who is affected, why, and how they’re going to defend themselves from other master vampires and the threat of both Belle Morte and the emerging Mother of All Darkness. The novel ends with Asher and Anita having deathly good sex—literally. No murder mystery here, no zombies, no police, and no real fight scenes.

Note: So much sex. So much dialogue about sex. So much stalled action because they have to have sex. Yes, it’s a semi-valid plot point, but STILL. I completely understand why so many people stopped reading in the period of this slog of books from Cerulean Sins through the later teens in the series. I love smut and romance as much as the next reader—this amount of it was extreme overkill and frankly your eyes just glaze over it after so many endless paragraphs. It makes it easy to put down and easy to skim… deadly combos for readers. Thank god the books come back to center soon from what I remember.

[Jammin Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read a book from this series in a while, and I was also listening to the audiobook, and I was pleasantly surprised. I loved this story! Wow! So many men, so little of Anita to go around. It's a very hot read so warning if you don't like that stuff, or recommendation if you do.

[mlady_rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a more closed insular book than some of the others. Besides a chat with Ronnie at the beginning, Anita is neck deep in vampire politics from page one to the final page. So no RPIT and no Animator's Inc. That's not to say we didn't see as much of the necromancer as the vampire and lycanthrope sides. We just played with vampires instead of zombies.

Cast list wise... Vamps: Jean-Claude, Asher, Damien, Requiem, Meng Die, Wicked and Truth, and our first real taste of Elinore, London, Auggie and Samuel. Oh, and can't forget Belle and Marme Noir's visit. Werewolves: Richard, Graham, Clay, and Jason. Wereleopards: Nathaniel and Micah. Wererats: Claudia and Dr. Lillian. Werehyenas: ??? (names escape me at the moment) Werelions: Joseph, Cookie/Haven, Pierce, Travis and Noel.

But, once again, all of the main cast was on stage at one point or another. In the beginning of the book, Jason seemed "absent" given how much took place in Jean-Claude's living room/ bedroom, but it was later explained he had his own "mission" to accomplish. *g*

Spoilers ...

Richard. Everyone wants to trash Richard in the recent books, but except for the whole maybe baby surprise, he was surprisingly cooperative here. His initial anger after the scene with Auggie was completely understandable given what we learned about him and Gabriel in "Incubus Dreams". So I'll give kudos for his effort here, because very few people will. Truthfully, Anita freaked out much worse than anyone.

Ah, what else to say. Anita has gotten over feeding and being fed on by those she loves, but she still can't seem to extend that to anything casual. Not that that is a bad thing, in anyone who isn't a succubus. But, as Jean-Claude notes, Anita has accepted her vampire side in her head, but not her heart. The same could be said for her furry side. Besides giving her beast to Jason and Nathaniel in "Incubus Dreams" this is the first time the beasts have become so substantial that the lycanthropes are sure she will slip her skin.

Anita learns the ardeur can read a lover soul deep, but that isn't common with Jean-Claude's ardeur, or Belle's. Reading that deeply means binding someone that deeply. All of her lovers besides Jean-Claude and Richard having been read that deeply - Micah, Nathaniel, Damian, Asher, and Jason. But it gives new meaning to Anita's beginning with Micah, and the change in status with Nathaniel. The ardeur gave them all what they needed from each other.

Oh, and I haven't been "counting" it as such, but Anita and Jean-Claude feeding off of Auggie was as big of a power boost as marrying the marks or forming the second Tri. Jean-Claude became sourdre de sang after marrying the marks, but only now does his power taste of him alone. And Asher gets a big power up this time around, and an animal-to-call. *g*

As for number and variety of sex scenes, this book does come closest to that line of too much. But much of that is my discomfort (on top of Anita's) with her sleeping with strangers. My favorite sex scene is still Nathaniel and Jason in the limo after Requiem has left. Of all her threesomes, Jason and Nathaniel are the least demanding in many ways.

(Written 04/12/2009)

[Chrys Ink · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book did not advance the characters. Those characters I loved, those real lovable characters that were so interesting are trapped under an avalanche of sex. This novel started out fine and then deteriorated swiftly. If I had to keep reading about how everything her sex partners did made her 'writhe" or how every man wanted to have sex with her, or how her 'writhing' made all her men so eager to keep doing her, my brain would go on strike.

In this novel, she had to manage her sexy time better so she had threesomes and foursomes all the time. If she wasn't blowing some guy, they were all talking about sex and who she should have it with next. All this in the time period of less than a day. Where is the intricate story lines from the earlier novels that all came together in the end? The ones that 'wow'd me into continuing to read the next in the series at 4am because I had been so enthralled that I couldn't help myself?

They are gone. Blue Moon was the last novel I enjoyed even though it hadn't come close to the magnificence of Obsidian Butterfly. LKH has decided to change her writing style and it feels like she abandoned the fanbase she built originally. The last full novel (Incubus Dreams but the sex-over-shadowing-chapter-after-chapter started back in Cerulian Sins and Narscisiss in Chains) had no plot whatsoever. This is what I could decipher as the new plot for the series: Anita must have sex with as many men as she can, at the same time and other people get jealous of it. 99 percent of the time, they want to do her so bad that they lose rational thought.

Its so frustrating to have Anita, who started out as such a strong female heroine, blowing every man in sight instead of using her brain to stop preternatural killers. After a while, her jaw must ache as much as my head from reading from about it. I am not anti-sex. Plenty of my favorite authors have sex in their novels. But at least the sex adds to the relationships developing story line... here it was sex for sex for some more sex. None of it progressed any relationships along.

The whole Dark Mother storyline: is it going anywhere? Holy cripes, even the Dark Mother wants Anita, probably for one of Anita's famous foursomes. If the Dark Mother had a penis, I'd say it was for her one of Anita's stellar blowjobs.

All Anita's leopards (except the ones she has sex with) were absent. She doesn't much bother with them anymore, I'm guessing. Funny, I thought being Nimjra meant she had responsibilities to her pard and Micah's new leopards. The last time we heard from them had been in the novel Micah's pard had been introduced in.


Overall, this novel was severely lacking. I do not know if I will continue this series... I had an interest in the story, and the characters but it might not be enough for me to push through this bad pornography plotting. I kept waiting for the Pizza delivery guy to come to the Circus to entice Anita with his delivery of 'extra sausage'.

[Janel Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really tried to get through this book by just plowing through it but it's wasn't easy. It feels like LKH got a word of the day calendar and this book's word is "winsome". She used it for 3 different characters (when they weren't spilling out or over something. And if Anita says any of the following more than 3 times its not a chapter; I don't get it, point it out to me, I'm sorry I'm missing something here or could you just tell me I'm not following you. She solves murders in the earlier books for crying out loud, did falling for (or on) all these men make her stupid or did someone actually f*%& her brains out?!
I'm only reading them because I downloaded all of them already and since I spent the time I may as well keep reading because if nothing else it's funny as hell to play a fellow reader's bingo game. As Blake would say, I SO just went there. I know I can't ask the author to stop with the lunacy but I came in late to this party and the damage has already been done but damn!
Nothing scary or police related even happened. The meat of the story doesn't start until the damn ballet yet but don't worry, she's had sex many times with many men multiple times with an audience so that's 500 pages right there just to tell us each guys eye color so we can tell them apart. My only question is if, as she states in earlier works, vamp powers don't change you then how did these guys get these eye colors? I understand Micah spent too much time in leopard form and can't change all the way back but everyone else? I've been on this planet a long time and while I think it would be cool as hell to have lilac eyes please tell me how that is humanly possible?
One other issue, as if there's only one, this is a series and I know she wants each book to be readable independently but it feels like she spends half the book telling us crap we've already read in 13 other books. Oh wait that's exactly what she's doing! So if you want to hear about Asher and JC's blue eyes are along with Damien's green, Nathaniel's violet, Micah's green/yellow and of course our newest Auggie's grey eyes then you're in luck! There are at least 200 pages of eye color descriptions in this book alone. And if you want to hear about her having oral sex with someone who isn't erect you'll get more of that too.
I really wanted to just stop reading but now it's a game to see just how ridiculous the sex can get. I'm not a prude but when I started this series I was promised a bad assed vampire hunter that raises zombies but all I'm getting is a clueless homophobic woman hating slut! Yes I know she gets to have 3ways with 2 guys or more but Heaven help any of them if they seek companionship with others. I'm with Richard's deep brown eyes on this one, it's not fair to them! And when her friend comes to her and points it out she throws a damn fit like a two year old who got caught stealing all the other kiddies crayons.

[Saj · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Does this woman not have an editor?" She made it into a question.

I realize that this is part 14 of a series so it's probably not the best place to start. I also know that most people seem to think that the first 10 Anita Blake books were much better. Perhaps I'll try one of those some time. For now, here's the Big List of things that made this book so bad I wanted to hurt myself:

- X made it into a question: easily the most over-used expression in the book. If there's a question mark at the end, it's a question. You don't have to use this quirky little frase all the effing time.
- Jean Claude keeps calling Anita "ma petite". She's a grown woman with mystical powers, a marshall and apparently some sort of demon hunter (none of that happening here of course). Stop calling her with the most annoying pet name in history!
- These people love to talk. They love drama. They talk, talk, talk for nearly 600 pages. A political disaster brewing with the visiting vampires? Let's stop and talk about our feelings for three pages. The doctor has some news? Let's first debate at length if he should tell those news or not and who should hear them.
- Anita needs to take an anger management class. She's not cute or quirky, simply just immature. The men in her life need to take a class called "how not to be a condescending asshole".
- None of the characters in this book have any sense of boundaries or personal space. They need to touch each other all the time or they will DIE! This leads to painfully detailed descriptions of who is touching whom and where and how and how does everyone feel about that. This constant touching and groping made this sound like a teenage house party: "let's all sleep together in one bed, of course nothing will happen..."
- Then of course there's the constant sex. How much sex can one woman have in about 48 hours (the timeline of this book)? A lot, with a lot of different men and creatures, in various ways that defy the laws of physics. Mostly the sex in this book is uninteresting and lacks sensuality or emotion. It's just something they do when they are not going on and on about their various relationships.

There's also a plot about Anita possibly being pregnant. She's angry about it a lot, they talk about it for pages and pages (when not having sex). Some other stuff happens as well, but none of it is really interesting and none of it really goes anywhere despite this book being almost 600 pages long. Colour me unimpressed.

[Cloudwalker · Rating 2 out of 5]

"What was wrong with me? I was hysterical, that was what was wrong with me. The moment I thought it that clearly, I started to calm. I didn't feel any better, really, but I could think. That was an improvement. I thought about being free of the ardeur, and that was a good thought. I thought about being free of Jean-Claude's marks, and all the metaphysical mess that came with it. My life being my own again, that sounded good. I thought about being just me, as Jean-Claude said, just me in my own skin. Just me, alone, again. Alone again. I had a moment of absolutely joyous nostalgia for my life before I'd acquired so many people."

I have to agree with Anita. I miss the old Vampire Executioner. I never thought I'd say this, but the new Anita, succubus Anita, sucks. Essentially, the entire book is a series of short anxious arguments interrupting long bouts of violent sex. The sex is boring; there's too much of it, and too much detail. It's become the standard response to every situation; you could almost call it Anita's version of a sonic screwdriver, only messier.

[Marie Chalupová (Levitara) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am done. Curiosity is not a good enough reason to waste my time with this series.

There were some things that were pushing me to continue with this series, even when the problems started to really pile up for me. Namely, I enjoyed some of the characters and the conversations, which often went surprisingly deep. Like talking about emotions and mental problems and traumas. But it's just not worth going through all the mess to find these pearls.

The mess being progressively weirder sexual scenes. Anita getting constant power-ups that warrant more sexual scenes because her power is tied to sex. All the vampire-related drama which always includes vampires torturing someone because apparently, that's how we raise the stakes. And I could go on. A lot of things just started feeling very copy-and-paste too.

[Anna 'Bookbuyer' · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anita might be pregnant!?

I'm really starting to not like Ronnie. -.-

Richard just rains over everyone's parade all the time now. :(

Haven is soooooooooooooooooooooo bad news.

I don't like Auggie either. -.-

Merlin is a bit scary with how powerful he is.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh Anita...

I think this is where I started straying from the series originally. It just seemed like the books were venturing off into something completely different than how they started - and not in a natural growth way. So I stepped back. I think I made it a few more books in and then took a lengthy break. Now I'm back and determined to get caught up. In doing this, I am noticing different things - some that make me understand Anita and the direction of the books, and some that make me really want to strangle Anita.

Danse Macabre is the 14th book in this series so for the most part, our main group have been established. Also, this main group is the reason I keep reading this series (Jason especially) so it started to make me sad when they were pushed to the side in order for new men to come in. And because there's so many now, it's hard to really get attached to any of the newbies because like the author, Anita just throws most of them to the side.

So what's changed? Well, I do understand that Anita is a succubus and therefore she needs to feed. Ergo, the many men. And honestly, I would be fine with that if it wasn't for Anita's attitude. I really don't like her high and mighty attitude and all of her double standards. Example? She gets extremely upset when she thinks that the men in her life could be sleeping with other women, but yet it's completely fine with her to have multiple lovers. She also is constantly choosing to fight people and prefers to be angry with everyone than just talking to them and really listening to what they have to say. And there was one part that really bothered me in this book. It's a part after Anita gets some heavy news and finally allows herself to breakdown and cry and all she keeps repeating is how weak she is. CRYING DOES NOT MAKE YOU WEAK. Having emotions does not make you weak! It makes you human- something Anita is so gung ho on clinging to.

Then there's the character of Richard. Ok, Laurell K Hamilton, if you really dislike the character that much, why do you keep bringing him back? She's said multiple times that Richard was supposed to have died at the end of Circus of the Damned but she kept him around and now she hates the character. Well, you did this. You ruined a great character because you didn't like that you didn't kill him. Thanks for making us suffer with him now.

This series will forever remain in my heart but that doesn't mean I'm going to love every one of the books.