Bullet by Laurell K Hamilton

ISBN: 978-0425234334
Rating: B
Anita Blake #19

The Anita Blake series is one of my favorite series, and I expect a lot from these characters and from this author because of my love of this series. BULLET did not disappoint, but it left me needing more. It felt almost incomplete; I felt like FLIRT AND BULLET could have been made into one book.
I can’t even do a synopsis of this series anymore because it goes beyond just the plot or story arc of one novel. It’s a series about characters, and relationships and the politics of each relationship.

Anita Blake is a vampire killing US Marshall, who can raise the dead. She’s flawed and makes mistakes and this series is about how she learns to trust in herself and keeps her faith when all she knows it the things that go bump in the night.

BULLET is a set up book, it’s obvious, something is changing in St Louis and Hamilton is preparing for what is to come. However in that process as a reader I feel like I was let down because BULLET did not feel as complete as it should have. Anita and Hamilton are finally back in line with who Anita was and who she is becoming, it must have been a tough negotiation. It is totally worth it. There are “fans” out there who think Hamilton has done nothing but write bad porn lately, but they just don’t get it. They expect Anita and Hamilton to not change and remain stagnant, but if that were to happen then those same “fans” would complain of boredom. It’s such a fine line to be an author and Hamilton draws her own line in the sand and pretty much says if you don’t like it don’t read it. I can respect that.

I will say that I laugh when talking to friends who are finally beginning to see what makes Nathaniel the man I always knew he was. They are now trying to steal my literary crush, and I won’t give him up but I am willing to share.

If you have never read this series I will suggest starting at the beginning with GUILTY PLEASURES but be warned these books do become more sexual as you read them, so if you like traditional love scenes this series is definitely not for you. However, if you take the chance, I hope you find what I love about this series.

Flirt by Laurell K Hamilton

ISBN: 978-0425235676
Rating: A

Have you ever just had one of those days? Anita is having one for sure. Two different people want to use her animating skills in order to raise their spouses from the dead. However, neither one of them wants to do it the healthy way and are willing to pay a lot of money for Anita to perform. The money is irrelevant to Anita, and she is bearing witness to monstrous behavior and wants none of it. What happens when someone stops being polite and takes what Anita loves most in the world in order to get what it wants?

While I am glad that I didn’t pay full hardcover price for this story, I am glad that I didn’t skip it either. Anita is learning to master her own powers, however when threatened it becomes a dangerous game and those who don’t know will learn quickly. In Flirt, we learn what is important to Anita, and who is important to her. Her core being.

It was nice being taken back into Anita’s animating, if only to be reminded that she is still her own person and she still causes problems on her own without the benefit of it being because she’s attached to Jean-Claude. Anita will forever be my hero not only because she has overcome what she fears most, but she also knows how to keep whats hers and kick butt while doing it.

Skin Trade by Laurell K Hamilton, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter 17

ISBN:  9780425227725

Publisher:  Penguin Group USA

Rating: A

There will never be another series for me that can make me laugh, make me cry or make me hurt for the heroine other than Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series.  From the beginning of this long running series starting with Guilty Pleasures I wasn’t sure if Iwould like Anita because she was a little too cold for me.  As my journey’s to St Louis became more frequent, I learned to see beyond the mask of “The Executioner” into the heart of the character, and I knew Anita would be a character I carried with me always.

There are fans of the Anita Blake series who lost faith in the character and in the author and that saddens me beyond measure because they truly do not know what they are missing.  Skin Trade is almost the perfect blend of “old Anita” and “new Anita”.  Anita was back to her hunting days and dealing more with who she is on her own level and learning to be one with the ardeur rather than fighting it.

As a fan in this series, I feel incredibly vindicated to see that how I felt about Anita and why she needed to grow as a character was the point in having the ardeur affect our heroine so distinctly.  Sure she is 5 foot nothin’, 100 and nothin’ and can kick some series ass, she still needed to learn that affection isn’t a negative and caring and loving aren’t weaknesses.  She had to learn that giving and receiving love are strengths.

It’s awesome to see Anita kicking bad guy butt again and not only dealing with vampire politics, but I missed Jean Claude and Nathaniel more than I could express, but I cried for Requiem and I felt for the Wicked Truth.

I can not wait for the next installment and I wish I had the pleasure of knowing in advance what is going to happen to my favorite heroine.

Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

ISBN:  9780061245084

Publisher:  HarperCollins Publishers

Rating:  B

Catherine “Cat” Crawfield is a half human, half vampire Night Huntress.  She hunts the undead with a vengeance in order to slay the Vamp who raped her mother thus producing Cat.  Cat has a distinct advantage; Vamps can’t tell she’s one of them because her heartbeat throws them off.  On one of Cats hunts she comes across a vamp who just might teach her there is more to Vampires then blood lust and their lack of heart.

Frost did an admirable job of creating these characters, however for me it was difficult to “know” them.  It took me to almost the end of the book before I really “got” them and it worked so well that I ran out and bought One Foot in the Grave right away because I didn’t think I could wait that long to find out what happens.  This was my other issue, the cliffhanger ending, why do you do that in the first book of a series?  I hate cliffhangers in long terms series so imagine my annoyance that I had to hate the end of this book just as I was starting to like it.  

It is interesting to me that when discussing the ending with a friend she said to me that it didn’t bother her because this book wasn’t a romance and here I didn’t feel like the book was complete until a romance happened.  This is one of the major reasons that I love to read because no matter what you are looking for in a book you can probably find it even if someone else doesn’t see it.  

I do look forward to reading One Foot in the Grave, but it better redeem the ending otherwise I will be a very upset reader.

Reading Funk

It appears that I have been in a reading funk much of this year, barely connecting with the books I’ve been reading.  I’ve finally realized that it isn’t me, it was the books I was choosing because the moments that I have just been engrossed have been the books with characters I love, Mine to Possess and Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh, Blood Noir by Laurell K Hamilton, Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich etc.  These are  just some of the books that make me excited about reading this year.

I have read some other awesome books so far this year, but these are ones that I devour because I am so in love with the characters and the worlds that are created in these books.

Stephanie Plum is the reason I fell in love with reading as an adult.  Evanovich just engaged me from the start and had me reading the first 7 books in less than a week.

Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling series just has me completely blown away with how in depth her characters are written and how strong her world building is, I never really appreciated world building until I started reading this series, and I will forever compare all others to her.

Harry Potter, while I am now appreciating the world JK Rowling has created, it never mattered to me before, but the characters and the friendships in these books were amazing and the small mysteries always had me digging and digging and digging for more.  This is the only series I re-read at least once per year because no matter what I always learn something new.

Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series introduced me to the paranormal genre and had me addicted from the 3rd book, I didn’t care for Anita in the first books because she wasn’t at all like me, but as LKH found her stride Anita has grown so much and has this rough exterior but a gooey center and that is all that matters because when she loves you it’s with her whole heart, there are no limits and that’s just a gift.

Blood Noir by Laurell K Hamilton

ISBN: 9780425222195

Publisher: Penguin USA

Rating: A

Jason has to go home, his father is dying of cancer and only has a few weeks left. Although estranged from his family for over 3 years, Jason feels he has to at least say goodbye, but he is afraid of the abuse he will face, since his own father doesn’t respect him, and refuses to believe Jason is straight, Jason’s mom begs him to bring a girl home so his father can die in peace. The only girl Jason would trust to come home with him is the one he will never ask, but when she offers all bets are off. What will happen when Anita and Jason make the trip to Promise North Carolina, will they survive the family inquest?

I love Anita Blake and the world that Laurell K Hamilton has created for these amazingly intense characters. There is an infinite amount of pleasure I get from revisiting St Louis and my favorite people who dwell there.

I’m a huge fan and I always have been and I always will be, I love seeing Anita become more human because for a while there I thought her more of the monster than the ones she is given the authority to kill. However, something happened to Anita when she became Nimir Ra of the Leopard Pard, she started to feel and understand emotion that ran deeper than her necromancy. I love watching her character grow in ways that I never would have believed possible. There is a scene where she is with Jason that actually made me get a little misty because it was a defining moment in this series and for their characters. Hamilton’s characters aren’t only three dimensional, but the individual flavors she pours into them makes me so eager to have the next one written and in my hand. I am always jealous when someone starts reading this series for the first time because to be able to fall in love with it was an awesome adventure.

I know there are people out there who read LKH just to count the sex scenes to me that is just wrong because they miss all the emotion that LKH puts into these characters. There are moments that I cheer for these characters I have grown to love so much and there are times when I am in total shock of what they go through for each other and because of each other, but each moment in these books matters.