All of the Anita Blake books have a set pattern to them, a formula if you like. We start off with Anita doing some business, either raising a zombie, which is her night job, or serving a warrant to Execute a Vampire, which is her day job. She then has trouble with her boyfriends, has to have sex with at least one stranger she may or may not ever see again, has to have sex with one or more of her many boyfriends, and along the way kills a few bad guys, until at the end of the book, that Warrant she was talking about as the book opened is executed and the really bad, bad guy is killed as the story closes.The Harlequin fits that pattern nicely. There is always this hint that this time, Anita Blake Vampire Executioner, will become Anita Blake, Demi God, but it hasn’t happened yet. She gains new powers in each book, like a D&D character that just keeps racking up the hit points. Her one major weakness is always her sort of one of true loves, Richard the Werewolf. He is a monster that doesn’t like being a monster, but he is one third of Master Vampire Jean Claude’s triumphant of Power with Anita. Jean-Claude is one of Anita’s more powerful lovers. Jean-Claude is also working his way to Demi-Goddom.To be perfectly honest it is getting pretty damned hard for me to keep track of who is who is these books. My favorite character is a cold blooded killer name Edward, he is a human but he is really good at killing just about anything. Edward makes an appearance in The Harlequins, and that is always fun.I enjoy these books, I’m not sure what that says about me, as they are almost all sex and violence. Anita ponders what it is to be good and evil once in a while, and she is still good, though Richard doesn’t see how she can be. The universe these stories are set in is kind of our own, except for the vampires, were-everything, fairies, mermaids and any other magical creature you have ever heard of and a few you haven’t. It’s a good read that makes you want to read faster, because something bad is always just a page or two away. But it’s alright, Anita Blake is there to save the day.
Mistress Matisse wants it to be better, and Jonathan McCalmont called it as bad a book as he has ever read. He gives a really serious review of The Harlequin with a lot more depth than the subject requires, no one is ever going to confuse Laurell K. Hamilton with Herman Melville or Ernest Hemingway. These books really are guilty pleasures and you should be embarrassed to be seen reading one in public. But I will keep reading them.
