Rating: 
Summary: Evolution of a Heroine
Review: I love this book. Having read all of the A Blake series , I found this book particularly entertaining, someones been walking on the wild side(DS anyone ?). The always in control Anita finally losing control. Having to depend on others to keept her grounded, safe, to meet her needs. It' a'int shakespeare but then again what is ? Great escapism, and still one of the strongest women in contemporary print.
Rating: 
Summary: She's jumped the shark.
Review: I was so sad to plow my way through Narcissus in Chains. I started the Anita Blake books at the beginning of this summer as a respite from school and work. In the beginning, while the books had some issues (won't some editor fix her grammar errors? Please?) the plot stormed along. Every chapter ended in a way that forced me to start the next one. Things started to go downhill a couple of books ago, though, and with this one, LKH really jumps the shark.I get the sense that LKH bases the men in the books on men she's actually been involved with. How else to explain the devolution of Richard? It feels like she stopped dating whoever he was based on in real life and decided to take it out on the character, which is a shame. The plot in this book is Pap smear thin. I say Pap smear thin because Anita's gonna need one after all the sex she has in the book. Since Anita has morals that won't allow her to sleep with just anyone, LKH has put her under a curse that will force her to sleep with just anyone. If she'd just go ahead and do it, the book would probably have been 100 pages shorter, but every sex scene (and there are many) is prefaced with many pages of, "Oh, no, I mustn't, I'm too choosy, I don't do this sort of thing!" Yeah, pull the other one, Anita. Somewhere in the midst of all the sex, Anita suddenly remembers: "hey, wait! There's a *mystery* going on! And people are trying to *kill* me! Maybe I oughta do something about that." Of course, this is just an excuse to give her Yet Another Strange Power. I like sex in my books more than most people, but I like my sex WITH PLOT. LKH should pick up some books by Laura Antoniou to get tips on how to write a good erotic novel. I liked Anita better several books ago. She started to lose her path with Blue Moon, and I can't see myself buying another book in the series.
Rating: 
Summary: I loved this book..I cant believe the bad reviews..
Review: Okay..I will admit that this book crossed the line into kinky, but I was so entertained I just didnt care. I will say that I didnt care for Micah overly much..the fact that hes little enough to swap clothes with Anita was just too disturbing. I for one have had enough of Richards whining..whats up with him? Infact..that was the biggest let down here for me..the powers between the 3 of them( Anita, J.C and Richard) dont really have anywhere to go because Richard just cant handle it. All in all this was a great book, but definitely not one for the faint of heart.
Rating:
Summary: Love Hamilton
Review: Fabulous I love Hamilton and can't get enough of her books. Like this one better then Obsidion Butterfly which was alittle off because of the S&M stuff to freeky for me. Still a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the plot? and the characters?
Review: Having read all the Anita Blake stories up to Narcissus, where did the characters go? This kind of fiction should entertain, and at its best develop interesting characters that we want to follow from one novel to the next. Up to now, I thought Hamilton managed to be one of the better genre series writers at doing this and even though the characters live in a genre plot, Hamilton managed to make the mysteries interesting enough to keep reading. Narcissus has neither. Also, I don't usually have any problem with whatever sexual activities occur in books-- as long as the sex fits the characters and helps the plot along. This book seemed to forget to have a plot other than sado-masochistic sex and the characters all left their personalities behind in some other book. This piece of the series is better skipped- read one of the earlier books to get an idea of why the series might be popular.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disappointing Journey
Review: After hearing raves reviews about the Anita Blake series, I went ahead and invested in puchasing all of the books in the series. I dutifully put them in order and made the decision to spend my summer vacation reading the series. All of the books were great and had interesting insight into the characters. Character development is important in stories, but I have no clue what Ms. Hamilton was thinking with Narcissus in Chains. It's almost as if she did one of three things: she had someone else write the book, she is bored of the characters and took it out on us with this book, or she wanted to butcher all of the characters us and confuse the hell out of us. I gained a fairly good sense of Anita, Richard, Jean-Claude, and Edward. Each had their flaws, but there were admirable qualities in all of them. However, I was greatly saddened after spending two months of my summer reading the series when I go to this book to discover how disappointed I was in all of the characters -- Anita is this uncontrollable sex-fiend, Richard doesn't know what he wants in life and bounces from one extreme to the next, Jean-Claude doesn't seem to the be suave, sexy, charismatic vampire any longer, and Edward has become this love-sick family man. WHAT HAPPENED??????? Ms. Hamilton, this series has so much potential! I started with feelings for these characters as they grew and developed; now I'm almost scared about what awaits me when I read Cerulean Sins.... God help me!
Rating: 
Summary: Can you blame Ms Hamilton for leaving her rut?
Review: And focussing on another form of rutting, so to speak? My sense of this book is that the first three quarters of it consist of a major character development, as Anita starts to explore her supernatural powers, and the implications that they hold for her relations with other people. The standard Anita Blake format used to be your basic murder story, with supernatural icing. This book is going much more towards the alternate history/fantasy direction, with the last quarter of the book containing the standard murder investigation/banter with the cops that we have come to know and love. So the usual stuff is all there, but you just have to wade through a lot of werecreature politics, and explorations of new supernatural power before you get to the standard formula of Anita getting called in to help on a murder case, coming across a new supernatural being, solving the case, almost getting killed, agonising about her love live, etc. So the reason why fans of the earlier stuff don't like this book is that it departs from formula. I guess that the reason is that the author wanted to develop the character and core ideas a little more, possibly in the teeth of significant opposition from her editor. But the bottom line is that these are Ms Hamilton's characters, and it's up to her what she does with them, but then again, it's up to us whether we like the departure from the old rut. Judging by reviews of the new Anita Blake mystery, this new departure is here to stay - I'm not sure that I will be following the novels in this new direction, but just because they are changed, does not make them bad.
Rating:
Summary: pretty good
Review: I have never read any Anita Blake novels before and started with this one. A couple reveiwers are right about the repetitiveness of the wording in some parts. However, I have read a lot of vampire novels and this one is the most descriptive bar none but Anne Rice and she is the master in this genre. So if you are out to have an awesome, attention catching and sometimes perverse read, here it is!
Rating:
Summary: Boring....
Review: I have to agree with the other readers, this book was sooo disppointing, where is the Anita from the earlier books???
The book has absolutely NO plot, JC is nothing but a shadow of what he used to be, Anita has lost her sense of humor and is transformed into a very arrogant and very tired woman. I loved the books untill Burnt Offerings but since then Ms. Blake has lost her appeal, because of the munin and now the dreaded ardeur she is most of the time so out of control that her personality is barely reconizable, I'll read Cerulean Sins but from the reviews I read I have no hope for this series.
Rating:
Summary: A good transformation...
Review: First off, I must admit that I started the Anita Blake books at Narcissus In Chains, so no points there, but I have went back and read them all from the begining. I like the new and improved Anita. Back in the begining she was too repressed. No sex before marriage?! How is that anyway to start a book? I'm glad the celibacy finally came to a head a few books back. As much as I like Narcissus in Chains, the backtracking, repetitive descriptions, and the overuse of the word, "said," get on my nerves. These things I can look past, because these books draw you in and let reality take a back seat; exactly what I look for in my fiction. Take it for what it is, and enjoy.
|
