Rating: 
Summary: More sex does not mean a better story
Review: I hope that this is the last in the series and it seems to be. The Anita Blake series has been a wonderful ride and we believe in her world - a Laurell K. Hamilton speciality. However, as far as story arcs go - geez! Anita ends up as a succubus (she needs the sex kids or things go south), Jean Claude is losing his cool factor and poor Richard is down right suicidal. Then again, perhaps she is planning on writing another book. I just hope it's better than this one, because using explicit sex as plot points does not make for the best of stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Anita wherefore art thou?
Review: I had no idea how to rate this book. If you've followed the series, you'll probably want to read this one. Unless you've hated the direction that last book or two has taken in which case you may wanna skip it. Before I start complaining about all the kinkiness, let me confess that Anita's priggish-ness in the early novels aggravated me badly. She wouldn't so much as kiss Jean-Claude (her would-be boyfriend who was near perfect other than the whole vampire thing.) No intercourse til marriage she tells Richard-her other would-be boyfriend who was near perfect other than the whole werewolf thing. Who by the way has turned into a rather nutty self-loathing guy who barely appears in the book and when he does you just wanna smack him. The whole leader of the local pack apparently is seriously not agreeing with him. The story starts out promisingly enough with Anita on the job with Animators Inc. Soon she has a mysterious new client and the bad news that the Vampire Council-specifically Belle Morte the found of Jean-Claude's and Asher's lines-has taken an interest in St. Louis's vampire/werewolf/Anita goings-ons. Pretty soon this devolves into a yet another tale in which every man she encounters wants to get carnal with her even though she is annoying as ever, with pointless arguments that go on for pages that make you wanna throttle her and anyone who would wanna get busy with her. And naturally she just has to enter into a menage with JC and Asher so Asher isn't forced to return to Belle Morte. Uh yeah, that makes sense to me. And I haven't even mentioned the Ardeur that needs feeding. Who hasn't Blake had relations with yet? Let's see...well there's Willie the vamp and Irving the werewolf reporter. Then again they've been missing for a few books now. Maybe they were afraid their draft notices were coming up. Other bad news for fans of Dolph the police lieutenant-he's as buggy for Richard and hates all supernatural types now since an event occurred in his personal life. This book isn't entirely bad and honestly I'll run out and grab the next one as soon as it's...available from the public library. I haven't reached the point I have with Anne Rice where I've just completely given up. There's still hope for Laurell and Anita.
Rating:
Summary: I never thought tons of sex could make a book tiresome...
Review: ...but it does in this case. I have read all of Hamilton's Anita Blake series, most of them with great pleasure, and in several hour marathon sittings. But I found myself actually falling asleep and losing track of the storyline while reading the lastest novel in the series, Cerulean Sins. The sex is so constant that it distracts from characterization and plot. I adored the Anita novels in which hot, exotic sex scenes broke up the crime-driven and supernatural explorations of the book, and in which the sexual tensions between the primary characters were sometimes explored and relieved. Then there was enough romantic suspense to keep me hooked. But this book was like a glutton's feast -- far too much, and far too over the top, to the point that the writing actually numbed me out. I would so much more enjoy a novel in which Anita truly explored her relationships with and feelings for Jean-Claude, Asher, and perhaps Richard (despite Richard's rather irritating constant self-pity), the most compelling romantic interests Hamilton has created for her heroine. All the rest, in my opinion -- Micah, Jason, Nathaniel, etc. etc. just make Anita look less conflicted than like a sex addict. This in turn makes the ardeur seem an excuse for Anita to abandon her earlier sexual ethics while still paying them constant, tiresome, self-excusing lip service. While she may, for example, admit that insisting on Jean-Claude's monogamy is "monstrously unfair" when she has several lovers and semi-lovers at any given time, Anita does not do much to change her attitude. Even when a much-awaited and potentially hot, hot, hot menage-a-trois finally develops in this novel, it is strangely unsatisfying for all the characters as well as for the reader, precisely because Anita still refuses to let herself truly explore or emotionally process the event. Thus reader excitement is abruptly followed by irritation and disappointment -- and atop it all, Anita gets around her moral qualms by messing around with one man in the menage, but not "going all the way", and the two male characters in the menage do not have sex with one another despite powerful attraction. So, Anita is still maintaining her double standards for her men and still splitting hairs without accepting the true nature of her desires, or accepting the complexities of her lovers' needs, or paying more than lip service to her "monstrously unfair" hang-ups. I'm not sure what Hamilton plans to do with this for her future novels, but this angst, and these double standards have gone on for so long now that I want to yell at all the characters and tell Jean-Claude to get together with Asher or Richard and simply give up on Anita Blake. If this continues, I am going to give up on the series. It's becoming tedious, in my opinion, and I can't see all this character development some reviewers have mentioned. We learn more about Asher, Jean-Claude, and even Richard's personalities, but we mostly learn more and more and more and more ad nauseum about Anita's libidinous desires and adventures. It does her no good to realize things about herself but then do nothing about them. That's not character development; it's making a token gesture toward a promise of future character development. I do hope it is not an empty promise. If there's not definite change in the next installment, I won't be buying any more of the series. To be fair, Hamilton does have Anita briefly realize she has relationship issues, when she is forced to confront the possibility that she's afraid of full emotional intimacy and commitment with one man. But like too many other occasions in these novels, Anita's realizations lead to far more angst than action. And in this respect she and Richard are perfectly suited. Also, there is strange potential foreshadowing in the book about someone thinking Anita must be pregnant -- but she's not. Perhaps this is what Hamilton intends for the next novel in the series. If so, God help Anita Blake, who quite possibly would have no way of knowing who the father of her child really is... And if this happens, I do hope she will finally make a full commitment to *someone*, even if it is to a baby. Yet that seems very difficult to imagine, so I doubt Hamilton will choose that sort of plot development -- the domestication of Anita Blake. Therefore, I wonder, what in the world was that strange scene all about, anyway? If it's not foreshadowing, it's really confusing writing.
Rating:
Summary: not so very hot
Review: I know, we don't confuse fiction with reality. Yet, when you read enough about a character, you start relating to "it" (him or her) as if that character were a personal friend. Sadly, I have broken friendship with Anita in this new installment. "Anita" books used to have two major strengths, I think: a good mystery plot which got solved at the end (and if Anita kept pulling increasingly unbelievable tricks out of her sleeve, more power to her), and Anita's coherence as a character. The reader may have gotten a bit bored with her constant moral qualms ("An affair with Jean-Claude, does that make me a monster? Maybe yes...maybe no...yes...no...") and may not have agreed with some of her choices, but at least they used to make sense within Anita's system of beliefs, the way the author described it. In this book, we encounter a new Anita who, while trying to learn self acceptance, also stops making sense. I don't mean it as moral judgment, but Anita's quite brusque transition from "prudish" to "orgiastic" seemed more motivated by real market pressures than the internal logic of a fictional character. Anita is as coherent as a software with a virus: push the button marked l'ardeur, and lo and behold, there's no stopping her. (I have to say that at this point I sympathize a lot more with Merry Gentry from the other series, who at least does what she enjoys best.) To top it off, one of Anita's strong points, her ability to take control of an explosive situation, here turns into the obsession of control: she whines, she complains, she complicates fairly straightforward circumstances. Unfortunately, that doesn't come across as complexity, but rather as a badly constructed character. My second problem was with the plot of the book. Surely enough, the first 100 pages or so build the right momentum and offer the promise of great suspense. Then it all goes away, leaving the reader increasingly frustrated. The story is only partially resolved - we don't find, for example, the key to Anita's visions (or at least it wasn't clear to me), probably in anticipation of a sequel. Because of that, you cannot help but feel throughout the remaining pages that the author actually had two books in mind, couldn't quite figure out which one to concentrate on, and decided to wait awhile and hope for the best. I don't think the best happens, not in this book. I am not sure whether to give it 4 stars out of nostalgia for the early series, or 2 stars out of disappointment. An average it is.
Rating: 
Summary: Cerulean Sins by Laurell K. Hamilton
Review: Cerulean Sins by Laurell K. Hamilton is the last Anita Blake I will read. Very few times have I not finished a book, but all I could do with this is skim the last half. I couldn't get past all of the gratuitous sex, the "I am so...," and the whining. They have steadily become less action and more sex and sex and well, sex. The sex passages are simply absurd. Anita Blake's language is that of a 13 year old rather than a college educated professional. It is as if LKH is trying to make the books more "hip" but it just comes off as silly. Her internal whining is tedious. It appears that the only way to save her male friends is to have sex with them, which she appears to do with frightening predictibility. There are no females in the book other than psychopathic vampires or angsty female cops. Why can't there be a werewolf or vampire, or for that matter a human, that isn't a stereotypical female? The attempt to make the books more literary by quoting poetry is wasted. This is a disappointment as I enjoyed the first few books in the series, they certainly weren't great literature, but they were very entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Saddly Disapointed
Review: I've been follow Ms. Hamilton's Writing for some time now. She started off very strong, with strong characters, impelling plots and morbid humor. When she started up her Fae series I saw another side of her writing. It's not that I do approve of her Fae series just that I wish she would have kept her two main subject matters seperate. I worked for a bookstore for over a year and the main sections I took care of were the Relationships and Fiction. Bookstores have policies of placing the sexual fiction books in the relationship sections where they can keep an eye on them. Those under 18 are not allowed to review or buy the overt sex books at all. Unfortunatally, Ms. Hamilton's fiction series is reaching the point that if I still worked for the bookstore I would place them in that section. Please bring back the action and humor that you had In your earlier writing Ms. Hamilton. I felt when I was reading the book that it was a few lines of talk between sex scenes. If I wanted to enjoy an x-rated book or video I would have bought one.
Rating:
Summary: A weak effort from a formerly great author.
Review: Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the Anita Blake series, but I feel like Ms Hamilton has lost the plot (and the characters) in exchange for more sex and sensationalism. In addition, there's a lot of repetition of sentences lifted directly from earlier books which is boring. Her prose seems to have gone down the tubes compared to the punch-packing flow of the earlier stories. The last great book in this series was Obsidian Butterfly, but if you must read this I'd say check it out from the library and save yourself the cash. You'll be glad you did.
Rating:
Summary: Cerulean Faux Pas
Review: I think that the greatest challenge in any series is to have the characters grow beyond the initial boundaries that defined them, characters that fail to do so are either poorly written OR are defined by that lack of growth (in this series, Richard who is rooted in self-hatred and always will be). Anita, through the first 8 books grew and changed and discovered more about herself morally and mystically... but she also stagnated. Several of the characters in the series have noted that Anita will change, make concessions and discover acceptance.. and then immediately snap back to the old starting points. So a change in that hyper-rigid morality is probably a good thing. On the other hand, I'd like her not to be a gun-toting bimbette, as she is in some ways in this book and the last. Yes there is the ardeur by way of explanation? But there's also a lot of romance novel worthy physical sex, which seems a bit beyond 'growth' for her. It's my hope that the next book in the series encompasses more of Anita's understanding of the various men she's bonded with, more of her coming to comfort with NEW aspects of those relationships (as opposed, y'know to the same ones she's dealt wih three or four times now) and, I would hope, an exploration of the metaphysical. We seemed for 3 or 4 books... heck more than that, to be building towards a realization of just WHY the council fears necromancers and just how powerful a triumvirate can be. Perhaps it's time to wrap up some of the more soap opera worthy plot lines (i.e. Richard) and move forward with exploring those new ones. It's worth reading for the teasing glimpses of an Anita that doesn't completely hate herself, but all in all the promises of this book can be numbered equally bad and good. It continues the trend of Narcissus in Chains, which makes it two disappointing follow-ups to the best book of the series 'Obsidian Butterfly'.
Rating: 
Summary: Anita At Her Best
Review: Before I purchased this book, I read all of the reviews on this site. After doing so I was worried that I wouldn't enjoy it. Now that I've bought and read this book, I feel like I need to comment here so that others won't be turned away from this book. This book, and Narcisuss in Chains before it, have taken Anita into a much darker and sexually charged world. And I am loving every second of it. This seems like a natural and exciting progression for her, and all of the other characters. If you're a prude, don't read the books. It's as simple as that. But if you've grown to love all of the characters and this world as much as I have, then dive in and hang on. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: What went wrong?
Review: Only 3 story lines - all of them too weak and undeveloped.
The crimes - fit Olaf, but he is never even mentioned.
Lack of connections to earlier books.
She no longer carries guns.
A LOT of POINTLESS talk, litle action.
Most of the time she spends in bed - ... and being sick after it, instead of doing something useful with her time.
The [physcial activity] is impressive, but no amount of [that] can capture you for 405 pages. And if I wanted just [[physcial activity], I wouldn't be paying [money] for Anita books.
The big threat of the story is not convinsing at all. Just not scary. And almost doesn't do anything.
Jean-Claude became a boy scout!! Toothless, No evil plotting, no nothing. In general - "All Anita Wants Anita Gets", and "I Won't Do It Because You[Anita] Would Be Upset"!!!! IN EVERY SITUATION!
Discussion of the 4 mark - ten lines! No real discussion at all.
Story line with the Were-Pards - almost non existant.
Basically - She should have worked on the book for at least 6 more months. It's undeveloped.
DO HOPE THAT THE NEXT BOOK WILL BE MORE WORKED ON!
|
