Burnt Offerings

Rating:
Summary: Anita and her monsters rock!
Review: Burnt Offerings is yet another brilliant book in Laurell K. Hamilton's series about vampire hunter Anita Blake. Anita has experienced a lot, she is tough, she carries not one weapon but many weapons - and she knows her way around the monsters in her life. Or does she? Richard has left town (St. Louis) to lick his wounds (no pun intended) after Anita chose Jean-Claude instead of him. Jean-Claude and Anita are getting to know each other, having lots of intimate moments and things are looking good. Or at least they are until the ancient vampire council shows up in St. Louis. No one really knows what they are doing there, but they leave a trail of blood and violence and torture. Jean-Claude suspects that they are here to challenge him, and he prepares Anita for the violence to come. At the same time it seems like a crazy pyromaniac is roaming the streets, and Anita has to help the police. Her friends in the police force are starting to look at Anita in another way after she started dating the monsters, and it is going to be interesting to see what happens in the next book. Some of the other characters from previous novels re-appear in this one like Larry, the vampire hunter trainee and Anita's girlfriend Ronnie.
It is a great read and it will make you want to jump right into the next one in the series.

Rating:
Summary: spiraling away
Review: When I began reading this series, I thought that it was teetering on the edge of being something really interesting. It left a lot of room for flawed characters to change/grow/fail and anough space to develop a specific set of myths. Sadly, that hasn't happened, and my patience has run out.

First, the main character is the biggest stumbling block. I thought Anita was set up with faults as an entry to a character arc throughout the series. Her deep insecurity driving her kill everything in sight, alienation from her sexuality, and adolescent rendering of feminism were supposed to mature and secure. Silly me, now I find out those qualities are heroic. ?! She has to have complicated setups as excuses to have sex, but that's because she's a "good girl". She has channel the macho, shoot everything and solve every problem, because what makes her valueable as a woman is a rejection of woman. Ronnie or JC are used as excuses to wear heels and dresses?! Her inability to develop any shred of emotional sophistication is depressing. Honestly, by this book, I skipped much of Anita that didn't directly interact with another character. It hard to slug thru a story trying to avoid the main character.

Next, I keep waiting for Jean-Claude to develop. He has/had such potential. What is his relationship to his monster? his human side? Sadly, he has become a cardboard prop for Anita, all his power sucked into her. He's the only reason I've made it this far in the series. I mourn all his missed opportunities.

There is no real examination of power and society here. For all the use of S/M, dominance and submission, pack/class order, it signifies nothing. No deeper reflection into the world, human psyche, or religion. Which is what I had anticipated. Ultimately, it's a shallow world contructed an excuse to write S/M. Great. But just write it, don't say, "the werewolves made me do it".

The first few books are fun, but don't get too attached, or expect too much. As summer reading goes, it's a nice vampire beach diversion. None of the obsessive Catholicism of Anne Rice, but none of the insight of Joss Weadon either. Two stars for Jean-Claude.

Rating:
Summary: nothing special
Review: This is the first Anita Blake novel I have read and, while I found that it was competently done, there was little in the way of real atmosphere or suspense. Maybe it's just me, but I found it was just another generic genre fantasy novel (I was expecting something more horror than fantasy). This would probably appeal most to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer crowd or those who enjoy those massive multi-charactered series novels.