Book review: "Flirt" by Laurell K. Hamilton

(Holy hell, I just realized I haven't written a review of this series in more than a year. I'm such a slacker. I read them, just didn't write it up. This book is too short to write a review without giving away plot points. You've been warned!)

When I first heard this novella was coming out, I was both excited and not expecting much. I love the Anita Blake series--I re-read them about once a year, if not more. So I was excited there would be another one to add to my collection. But I was also worried it was going to be like Micah, the other novella in the series. I think I read it in the store in less than an hour, bought it just to have the complete set, and have never opened it again. Micah isn't my favorite character, so a book that was largely about his past, and Anita's stupid emotional issues, and them having sex .... just not interesting to me. I was worried Flirt would be a book all about Jason (again, like Blood Noir) or worse, Nathaniel.

But hooray, it wasn't! It was actually a very nice blend of present and past-style Anita stories. It starts in her office, with two clients wanting her to raise the dead: one out of grief, one for nefarious purposes. She turns them down, before going out for a kind of hilarious lunch date with Jason, Nathaniel, and Micah; there's some of the emotional shit-shoveling that's present in all the books, but it's not belabored, which is nice.

Two weeks later, Anita is abducted by two strange werelions on behalf of one of the crazy clients from before. Of course, with her menagerie of metaphysical wereanimals, all sorts of furry issues erupt. The ardeur plays a part, as does her ability to "roll" wereanimals. In the end, though, Anita beats the bad guys largely with her own powers, in a gruesome and terrible way. Really, the way the primary villain dies is pretty devastating. I like that, and also the fact that the reason for the entire plot is rooted in Anita's world, in her animating, rather than furry or vampire politics. It was a nice return to older-style Anita.

There were a couple of things that bugged me; one was that, as with the last Merry Gentry book, there were spots where some copy editor clearly was asleep at the wheel. Also, this is the third book in a row where Jean-Claude is totally off-stage. He's mentioned, but he's not seen or even spoken to. I'm sick of Jason and Nathaniel; we're overdue for some JC. Also, Richard isn't mentioned at all, not in passing, not even hinted at. I know it's a small book, and things had to be left out; but I really hope that Bullet, the next full-length book, brings back both JC and Richard.

Overall, I enjoyed Flirt a lot more than I expected to. It brought a smile to my face, and unlike Micah, it's one I'll re-read as I go through the series in the future.

Book review: "Divine Misdemeanors" by Laurell K. Hamilton

(Big spoilers if you haven't read through the last book; minimal ones for this installment itself.)

I've been waiting on pins and needles for this book for a little more than a year now, even since finishing Swallowing Darkness, which was just incredible. I couldn't wait to find out what happened after Merry and her entourage left the Unseelie court, to find out what they would do in Los Angeles, if Andais would leave them alone .... a lot of questions were answered, but a lot of new ones were raised too, so I was just incredibly excited to read Divine Misdemeanors.

It starts with Merry at a crime scene, where a number of demi-fey have been killed and staged to look like a children's book. The police are working it, but since Merry is working for her old detective agency again she's there to look at the scene as well. (It's a set-up very similar to the Anita Blake books, really.) Overall, I liked the book, although there were some issues I had.

The good:

• A lot more of it is her dealing with all the men in her life, and being pregnant, and day-to-day life. Which is interesting, and there are some very sweet, touching scenes.
• One thing I've always loved in both the MG and AB books is the inclusion of very authentic, grounding details that really make it seem like this is happening in our world--there's a lot of that in Divine Misdemeanors, which I really enjoyed.
• The overall tone of the book really was very happy--despite drama, and problems, and tension, you get a sense of Merry being settled, and happier.
• The crew from the Gray Detective Agency is back--Uther and Jeremy, at least, and Roane is even mentioned in passing. The Hart brothers are included as well, and Maeve Reed is at least mentioned.
• We see some of the lasting impact of Andais' insanity; we also see some people recovering from it.
• The soldiers Merry healed in the last book haven't just dropped off the face of the earth, which is a nice continuity.
  
• A new type of fey, a Fear Dearg, comes on to the scene, which is really interesting.
  
• Great sex scenes--there's a moonlit beach scene with Rhys that's really just incredible. There's also one with Sholto that if you really stop and take the time to fully envision it, is, uh, quite striking.
  

The bad, or at least not great:

• Although the murder case comes up several times through the book, it feels very much like a side storyline--but there's not a primary storyline, so the book feels rather unfocused.
• There's also next to nothing about either of the courts--Taranis is being accused in public of Merry's rape, Merry killed Prince Cel and tons of other sidhe, her grandmother was killed, she and Sholto were crowned ruler of the sluagh, she and Doyle were crowned and gave up their rule for Frost, and all of that is hardly mentioned. LKH has said that this is the beginning of a new story arc for Merry, and that it's a transitional book--but there's so little of the old, and only a half-step toward the new, that the book feels a little directionless.
• There's a weird "fairy godmother" character that's just sort of thrown in, and you think her presence is going to be really important .... and then she's just sort of dropped.
• I'm already sick of Merry commenting on her stomach still being flat, but she's pregnant. We get it. Really. You don't have to state that exact thing every time you touch your stomach.
• I love the sex; I really do. But there was a bit much of it. In a 333 page book, there are five sex scenes, with six of the men, three of them new.
  
• The narrating voice of Merry seems to be getting lost. Until this book, I could've read an excerpt without names or locations, and told you if it was a Merry Gentry or an Anita Blake book. But this one, there were many, many places where I was tripped up the fact that it seemed like Anita was suddenly in a faerie princess' story. There was even one scene that seemed directly lifted from an Anita book--Danse Macabre, I think--where Anita says she's Prince Charming, she doesn't need rescuing. I suppose some cross-over is to be expected when you have one author writing two supernatural kind of series--but there's been such a distinct difference before that I was surprised to see it.
• Copy edits appear to have been very, very sloppy. There are sentences that don't make sense because they're missing words, or their structure makes them say something different than they're supposed to. There are repetitious situations--for example, the cop named Lucy is told at the beginning of the book that certain demi-fey can become human sized, but half-way through the book she apparently doesn't know this. And then there's a spot that's just ridiculous: Rhys's matter-of-fact voice was my first hint that... "The barrel of a gun isn't a very friendly way to start a visit."

Although there were a number of things that bothered me, I didn't dislike the book. It just felt like fluff, especially after the incredibly action-packed Swallowing Darkness. So little of note happened that I feel like this book could be skipped without the reader being confused. I can recommend it because it was a pleasant read, but it's really nothing earth-shattering.

Short book review: "Broken" by Kelley Armstrong

I think Broken may be my favorite book in this series so far. We've reverted back to the first main character, Elena the werewolf. She's now pregnant, and going nuts being babied by the rest of her pack. She's also terrified she's going to lose her baby; and that internal drama got a little tiring at times.

Still, the basic story was really good. Elena accepts what they think is just a research job, but predictably turns out to be more. She's hired to steal back a letter supposedly written by Jack the Ripper, which is actually some sort of dimensional portal that releases a couple of disease-ridden zombies from 1800s London. To hunt them down, and determine if Jack the Ripper was released as well, Elena, Clay, and Jeremy enlist the help of a couple of vampires and Jamie Vegas (necromancer).

This was the first book in the series that I couldn't put down from start to finish, I highly recommend it.

Short book review: "Haunted" by Kelley Armstrong

The premise of this book is interesting, as the main character is Savannah's dead mother, Eve. At the end of the last book, she made a deal to owe the Fates a favor in exchange for helping Paige, and in this book they call in the favor. Eve is sent into a hell dimension to track a chaos-causing spirit called a Nix, which possesses human beings and helps them commit horrible crimes. In a neat bit of historical inclusion, one of the Nix's victims was Lizzie Borden.

To trace the spirit, Eve moves through a bunch of different levels of the afterlife, sometimes alone and sometimes with the help of Kristoff Nash, Savannah's also-dead sorcerer father. While tracking the Nix, Eve also works through her obsession with watching her daughter and also her strange relationship with Kristoff--so in addition to the adventure/horror/supernatural aspect of the story, there's also a dose of romance.

I liked the book, though not as much as the one right before or after it in the series.

Short book review: "Industrial Magic" by Kelley Armstrong

I put off reading this one for a while, since Dime Store Magic didn't really thrill me. Once I started it, I was pleasantly surprised. Paige, Savannah, and Paige's Cabal sorcerer boyfriend Lucas have moved to Oregon and are living happily. Then Lucas' father shows up, wanting them to help the sorcerer Cabals with attacks on a number of their employees' teenaged children. At first they resist, thinking it's another ploy for the elder Cortez to lure his wayward son back to the fold, but eventually they agree to help.

I really liked this particular book; this was the first one in the series I had a hard time putting down. It was also a nice bridge to the next book: in addition to Lucas and Paige, we see the werewolf pack again, and the necromancer Jamie Vegas. Savannah's ghostly mother is part of the story too, which leads to the next book--which I rushed to read after this one. Becoming one of my favorite series.

Short book review: "Dime Store Magic" by Kelley Armstrong.

I'm way behind on my reviews; I've got a big list, but some of them I read months ago and have forgotten some of the finer details. So I'm going to do really short reviews.

Dime Store Magic follows the witch named Paige that we met at the end of the second book, as she struggles to raise Savannah, the daughter of a black witch who was kidnapped and killed. It didn't really hold my attention, and took me a while to get through it--partially because Paige's whining about her body issues pissed me off, and partially because she just seemed like such a weak, wishy-washy character the entire time. She also does some blatantly stupid things, like walking in to obvious traps.

It's not a terrible book; and we do get some story development. I recommend it as part of the series, but it's not the best.

First impressions book review: "Skin Trade" by Laurell K. Hamtilon (Anita Blake 17)

I've had the book for nine hours and I'm only 86 pages in. It's just not holding my attention, which is really unusual. Normally I'd be finished with it by now.

On the other hand, 86 pages in and no sex, which is an improvement--I think the first 86 pages of the last book were all sex.

Book review: "Stolen" by Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld 2)

Warning: contains spoilers for the previous book in the series.

Stolen is the second book in the "Women of the Otherworld" series, and just like the first, it took me a while to read. Our main character is still Elena, the only female werewolf, who at the end of the first book stopped fighting her nature and returned to her pack--and to her husband whom she said she'd never forgive for making her a werewolf. The last book was all about a pack problem, but this one introduces other characters. Elena is investigating someone selling information that would prove the existence of werewolves, which of course is something the pack isn't down with.

It ends up being a trap of sorts, however; instead of information-selling sleezebags, Elena meets two witches, Ruth and Paige, who want to invite the wolves to join a supernatural council. They tell her that supernaturals of all sorts (witches, half-demons, shamans, etc.) are being kidnapped. Various snafus and problems arise with actual council meeting itself, and then, to absolutely nobody's surprise, Elena is abducted.

The rest of the book is about Elena's experience there and unraveling the mystery of who's in charge, what they're doing, and why. It's interesting, but it still took me a while to plow through it, and like the first book, I'm not entirely sure why. Elena was less annoying in this book, since she wasn't whining about how much she hated being a werewolf, so that was a plus.

This was a book that I would put down for days at a time, but then sometimes I'd hit a part of it where I couldn't put it down. I still recommend the series, although I've ambivalent about this book in particular.

Book review: Bloody Bones by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake 5)

Warning: Contains spoilers for earlier books in the series.

Bloody Bones is one of my favorite books in the series, because this is the first book where we really see Jean-Claude as a person, rather than just a scheming master vampire, and it's fun. We also learn more about Anita's deceased mother, and how her death affected Anita. Jason the werewolf is back too, being a pain in the ass as always.

Anita (and Larry Kirkland, animator/vampire hunter in training) goes out of town to attempt to raise centuries-old zombies from a mass grave that's been disturbed. A high-powered law firm is footing the bill; the ground was being broken to build expensive homes, but now the ownership of the land is being disputed. If the corpses are members of the Bouvier family, then the law firm is SOL--but why won't the Bouviers, who are poor, sell this out-of-the-way piece of land? Magnus and Dorcas Bouvier are interesting characters all on their own; it's cool to see another "fairy tale" sort of being living day-to-day in the modern world.

Of course, a simple animating job isn't all the story: the state police call Anita in to look at the murders of three teenage boys, who appear to have been killed with a sword by something with preternatural speed. Then Anita gets another call, to the home of a family who's daughter was found bitten and dead in her bedroom. While hunting the vamp that killed the girl, Anita encounters the sword-wielding beastie, and realizes she might be in over her head. To try to solve these murders (and a kidnapping), Anita needs to contact the local Master of the City--and for that she needs Jean-Claude. He flies into town and bunks in her hotel room (though she, of course, takes the couch). That's a very interesting proposition, considering that in the last book Jean-Claude essentially blackmailed her into dating him as well as Richard--and Anita doesn't deny that JC has "a cute butt for a dead guy".

This is definitely one of the high points in the series. Anita is still struggling with her love life, struggling with her powers, and fighting against her attraction to Jean-Claude. There's plenty of conflict, there's plenty of action, plenty of Anita being sarcastic and hard-asses, and also some naked Jean-Claude!

Book review: Bitten by Kelley Armstrong (Women of the Otherworld 1)

I had looked at this book series at the bookstore several times in the last few years, but was never really interested enough to buy and read Bitten. It didn't help that I had trouble determining what the first book in the series actually was, seeing as the covers don't say. But when people at work recommended it to me, I decided to give it a try.

Our main character is Elena Michaels, a werewolf in hiding in Toronto. She tries to live a normal life as a journalist, while living with her boyfriend--who of course doesn't know anything about her furry side. This is tricky for a lot of reasons, ranging from simple (she requires a lot more food than a normal person would) to more complicated (having to slip out at night to change form and run around the city as a wolf). In addition to being a supernatural creature in a normal world, she's also the only female werewolf. In the world. This is because the genetic mutation is passed down on the father's side, and only to sons; being bitten by a werewolf infects the person bitten, but the process is so violent and painful that the new wolf rarely survives.

I found the premise interesting enough; and the plot gets going relatively quickly with Elena's former pack leader calling her for help. Elena's character was a little grating sometimes. I know that the struggle to accept oneself is pretty standard for supernatural stories, but in this case it's sort of obnoxious because Elena has very clearly already embraced her werewolf nature. She enjoys her wolf form; she talks about killing with little remorse; she slips easily back into Pack life. Her desire for a normal human life seems at odds with how she actually feels.

The actual action of the book takes a while to get going, despite being set into motion early. The head of the Pack (always capitalized), Jeremy, has called Elena to help the Pack track down a non-Pack member, a Mutt, who is killing humans in the area where the Pack lives. Although this storyline does start very early in the book, it also takes a long time to unfold. I got frustrated at times and would put it down to read other things. I think this is partially a result of this being a first book in the series, which naturally requires a lot of exposition to explain how Elena became a wolf, her relationship with other Pack members, her life pre-wolfing, etc. It's normal to need this in a first book, of course, but it makes me wonder what the other books in the series will be like, seeing as the narrator changes, so the third book will require all that exposition again from the new narrator.

Overall, I enjoyed the book enough to continue reading the series, but it's not at the top of my list.

Book review: The Lunatic Cafe by Laurell K. Hamilton (Book 4)

Contains spoilers for the previous books in the series.

The Lunatic Cafe feels, to me, to be where Hamilton really hits her stride writing about Anita Blake. I can't put my finger exactly on why; things just seem to flow better. We start out with Anita meeting a client whose werewolf wife is missing, but he won't go to the police because she'll lose her job if anyone finds out she's a lycanthrope. After doing what she can for the client, Anita goes to the theater with local werewolf Richard Zeeman, who she met in the last book. She's then called away to visit a murder scene in a neighboring county. The local police were calling it a bear kill, but Anita thinks it's a rogue shapeshifter.

And of course, her night isn't over yet. Her reporter friend Irving is waiting at home to take her to a meeting demanded by the werewolf pack leader at a place called The Lunatic Cafe--turns out her client's wife isn't the only missing shapeshifter, and they want Anita to help them find out what's going on. Anita also discovers that her boyfriend has fought the pack leader twice, but refused to kill him--and considering how practical Anita can be when it comes to survival, that's something she doesn't understand. To top it off, while leaving the cafe, Anita spots her assassin friend Edward in the crowd, and he asks for her help identifying his target.

One thing I like about this book is how the storylines mesh, but don't all meld. In Circus of the Damned, all the storylines ended up leading to the same point, which was a little too convenient. I also like the dynamic set up between Jean-Claude, Anita, and Richard, and how Anita is struggling to choose what she wants her life to be: to continue with her current lifestyle, "covered in blood and corpses", or to try for a more normal life, with more normal hobbies. While she's struggling with this idea, she's also getting more ruthless and pragmatic, and less bothered by killing.

This is definitely one of my favorite books in the series.

Book review: Circus of the Damned by Laurell K Hamilton (Anita Blake 3)

Contains spoilers for the previous books in the series, Guilty Pleasures and The Laughing Corpse.

Circus of the Damned is the third book in the Anita Blake series, and I always seem to forget one of the plotlines, as it has several. At the start of the book, Anita has a meeting with two men from an anti-vampire group (Humans First). They try to convince Anita to give them the resting place of the Master of the City, so they can kill him. Although Anita is still royally pissed that Jean-Claude gave her two vampire marks, she doesn't betray his identity, and the two men leave, although they come back later for different reasons.

Anita then gets a call from Dolph, with the RPIT squad, to come look at a body with multiple vampire bites. To try to find out who is responsible, Anita visits Jean-Claude the next night, but he doesn't have much information. She does meet Richard Zeeman, a seemingly normal guy stuck hanging around the vampires, and also a shapeshifter named Stephen. When she gets home her assassin "friend" Edward is waiting for her, and threatens to torture her to obtain the identity and location of the Master.

And yet another person is looking for the Master--a rogue master vampire named Alejandro. He forces the first two vampire marks on Anita after attacking her. Along for the ride is Larry Kirkland, a new animator who Anita is training for Animators, Inc. There are a lot of events and storylines jammed into this one book, and occasionally it gets a little confusing.

The writing is about on-par with the first two books in the series; we get a bit more development of vampire lore and laws, and also a bit more on shapeshifters. There's some development of the relationship between Jean-Claude and Anita as well, including how drawn she is to him while simultaneously wanting to be free of him--with all the people seeking the Master, and all of them wanting him dead, will Anita finally get rid of JC? The threads of the different stories eventually tie together, and the climactic battle scene at the end is pretty damn cool.

One thing that does bug me, about the early books in the series in particular, is the attention to describing Anita's clothes. If it's something that serves a purpose, because for some reason her clothes are important in a coming scene, I'm all for it. But I don't need a description of every item of clothing, including her socks. The times when she's discussing the trouble with hiding a gun in womens' dress clothes has a point; pointing out the blue Nike swoosh on her socks just because is overkill.

In the end, it's tough to write a review of this book because it is so packed full. The narrative is hilariously sarcastic and cynical, as usual, and again we get everyday, normal sort of details that really flesh out Anita's world. I don't like it as much as the first couple of books in the series, but it still kept me reading.

Book review: The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton

Contains spoilers for the first book in the series.

The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake #2)takes place a month or two after Guilty Pleasures. It's a relatively short book (under three hundred pages), and because we got to know Anita Blake in the first book, we can jump right in to the story.

Anita and her boss, Bert, meet with a client in the first chapter, a man named Harold Gaynor, who wants Anita to raise a 300-year-old corpse. Anita turns the job down, because raising that old a zombie would require a human sacrifice--but Gaynor isn't happy with that answer, and doesn't let it go that easily.

Simultaneously, the RPIT squad is investigating a series of gruesome murders that appear to be the work of a rampaging zombie. I'll be honest, the first time I read this book I may have blanched a bit because of this storyline--hey, I was young and innocent! Hamilton doesn't shirk when it comes to describing the partially eaten remains of suburban families. There's a particularly detailed scene where Anita and another police office try to out-gross each other at a crime scene.

In trying to find the origin of the killer zombie responsible, Anita visits the local voodoo priestess, Dominga Salvador. Because of this, we meet Anita's mentor and trainer, Manny Rodriguez, and find out something about his past. We do see Jean-Claude in this book, in his new role as Master of the City, but he's not involved much in the main plot--instead his screen time is mostly to continue the tension between JC and Anita. Willie McCoy, who Anita knew pre-vamping, is also in the book, and Anita continues to be unsettled by the fact that she doesn't despise him for being a vampire.

One of the things I love about the Anita Blake books, especially the early books, are the little details thrown in. In this book, while visiting the morgue, Anita describes a guard station that "looked like a WWII bunker, complete with machine guns. In case the dead should rise all at once and make for freedom. It had never happened here in St. Louis, but it had happened as close as Kansas City." Those sort of casual add-ins tickle me.

I'd rank The Laughing Corpse a little above Guilty Pleasures; the story is fast-moving, all the pieces tie together, and we get more of a sense of Anita--including her powers and her growing practicality and ruthlessness. I rushed out to get the next book in the series as soon as I'd finished this one.

Book review: Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

I don't even remember now who suggested the Anita Blake books to me. It took me a long time to start reading them. The first time I picked one of them up, I was totally turned off by the sensual covers--not because I was prudish, but because they looked like the kind of books I didn't go for, which is to say romances. The second time, I was more interested, but after reading a couple of pages I was so frustrated with Laurell Hamilton's writing style that I put the book down in disgust. Why I gave them a third shot I'm not really sure; I think I was just at Barnes & Noble one night, depressed and looking for something not too deep to distract me from my wallowing. That was about five years ago. I believe I finished Guilty Pleasures that night, and was hooked from then on--the year wait in between books is as torturous as waiting for Harry Potter was.

In Guilty Pleasures, we're introduced to an interesting world. Anita Blake lives in Saint Louis, Missouri, in modern times ... but in her world, vampires and werewolves, witches and fairies, and all manner of other things that go bump in the night, are real. Vampires are legal citizens, with the same rights as anyone else--they can vote, they have to pay bills, they can be arrested. But because vampires have super strength, and can bespell humans with their powers, "due process" is a little different for them, and that's where Anita comes in: she's the legal vampire executioner for the state of Missouri and surrounding areas. So when a vampire sucks a nice citizen dry, a judge draws up a warrant, and Anita goes after said vampire--with wooden stakes and holy water, sure, but also a sawed-off shotgun. The vampires call her The Executioner, because she has the highest legal kill count of any vampire slayer.

But Anita does something other than kill vampires: she's also an animator, someone who raises zombies for a nice cushy fee. As part of her job with Animators, Inc., Anita is also on retainer for the Regional Preternatural Investigations Team (RPIT). So when a serial killer starts killing vampires in St. Louis, RPIT calls Anita in to help them find the monster killing monsters. Then Anita gets dragged into the investigation by someone much less civilized: the Master of the City, a 1000 year old childlike vampire named Nikolaos who threatens to kill Anita's friend Catherine if Anita doesn't help them.

Guilty Pleasures is fairly clean--I had no problem letting my fourteen year-old cousin read it. Anita visits a strip club (which is where the title comes from), and also attends a "freak party" with definite sexual content, but there are no outright sex scenes or graphic descriptions. The book reads less as an erotic thriller than a detective story with supernatural characters, and it's more about getting to know Anita and her universe.

In this book, we learn that Anita's mother died when she was young. Her father re-married someone who was the opposite of Anita's mother, which contributed to Anita's apparent low self-esteem regarding her looks. She was raised Catholic, and discovered her zombie-raising powers when she accidentally raised her childhood dog from the dead. Anita at the start of the series is rather emotionally reserved, living alone and working a lot. She doesn't take crap from anyone, sometimes going overboard to prove that being short, female, and well-endowed does not make her lesser than anyone else. There are times I laughed out loud from the sarcastic comments in the narrative, which provide a nice spark of humor amid the violence and mystery.

We meet the sexy and manipulative vampire Jean-Claude, who's got the hots for Anita and who she resolutely shoots down--for now. We also meet Edward, Anita's assassin friend who the preternatural community has nicknamed "Death"--what else do you call someone who goes after the beasties with a flame-thrower? Anita meets with Rudolph Storr (Dolph), head of RPIT, and also his "sidekick", Zebrowski. I think there's a brief glimpse of Anita's boss from Animators, Inc., Bert Vaughn. We get enough of all these characters to see them as real, but don't get to know them completely.

It can be difficult to introduce a lot of characters in a first book without it being overwhelming, but Hamilton manages it. She also manages to make the "Anitaverse" rich and detailed, combining details from reality with little factoids from the fantasy side woven in without being heavy-handed.

All in all, this is one of my favorite books, from one of my favorite series. At 272 pages, it's a quick read, well-worth checking out.