Laurell K. Hamilton has banged out 21 Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books. The fact that her name is ten times larger than Anita’s is proof that the writer has become more important than the story. While this a good thing for the publisher and the author, it’s not always a good thing for the reader.
The first half of Kiss The Dead really got my hopes up. We find Anita Blake acting as a US Marshall, chasing down bad guys, talking business with her Cop buddies. She even mentions in passing that she sometimes works as a Reanimator. There’s a bit of character development with a new Marshall and a bit of talk about the ever changing laws that deal with Preternaturals. There are hints of a police procedural kind of story unfolding.
Then we get to the second half of Kiss The Dead, where we find ourselves watching Anita have sex with several people, the plot is shoved to one side, and the story is wrapped up with a minimum of muse and fuse. The many threads of an old fashioned Anita Blake detective story are snapped as Anita ponder such moral dilemmas as-should I have sex a high school kid I’ve basically adopted? Answer:Yes, but feel guilty about it.
Kiss The Dead finds us dealing with the same old same old of the Anita Blake universe. She kills bad monsters and has sex with good monsters. She has so many lovers that she can’t keep them straight. She now calls herself polyamourous as she seems to have no choice but to fall madly in love with everyone she meets. So rather than think about limiting herself to fewer lovers, she thinks maybe she should stop wasting her time with law enforcement. WTF?!?!?
Laurell, seriously, you’re thinking of getting rid of the plotted part of Anita’s universe? Come on, how many times can you tell us (and show us) how much Anita Blake likes deep throating and having her cervix pounded?
Kiss The Dead had it’s moments, but Anita is correct, you can’t have a real novel and a porno book. This may well be the last of the Anita Blake books that I read.
The problem with the Anita Blake books is that Laurell doesn’t seem to understand what makes a good series. Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books are as repetitive as they can be, each story is exactly the same, and nothing in that universe ever changes-BUT I love those books and laugh my way through every one I read.
With Anita Blake, the things that should be rock solid, like how characters feel about sex, politics, or gun control, changes with the weather. It’s preposterous that everyone around Anita Blake has changed to her way of thinking. The worst example of this was when Laurell forced Richard into having sex with Jean Claude, as if sexual desire were nothing more than a willingness to be open-minded.
She might as well have someone in PETA show up wearing a fur coat or someone from the NRA lobbying for strict gun control. I expect the people I meet to at least remain the same at their cores, even if they do change their minds about Coke and Pepsi once in a while.
