Number 27 in the long history of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. Anita Blake lives in a vast and complex universe and you can never be sure what you’ll find between the covers. Some are thinly disguised porn, some are slasher films, some are masterclasses on polygyny, and some are rather dry textbooks on the legal system of this alternate reality. In the beginning we had a handful of important characters, but the cast has grown by leaps and bounds since then. Half a dozen or so people make cameos in Sucker Punch and I have no idea who the hell they are, other than the fact that are important to Anita in one way or another. The Big Names in this story are Anita, Ted, and Olaf. I’m afraid I have never been a big fan of Olaf and the fact that he occupies the lion’s share of the story means I didn’t like Sucker Punch too much.
Sucker Punch wants to be a mystery, but Laurell K. Hamilton isn’t Agatha Christie and there are too many random rants about Anita’s sexual preferences and not enough clues about the crime to be solved. The book was also way too long for a mystery. Clocking in at over 600 pages even if there were clues planted here and there to help the reader solve the mystery, there’s no way I was able to keep them all in my head at once. And I didn’t like the ending.
So what did I like? There was no sex, which is something that has dominated other titles in the series. I’m fine with Anita never having sex on stage again. There was very little talk about Vampire politics, in fact, Jean-Claude was only mentioned in passing as an expert on jewelry and shoes. Anita only rolled one person and she was able to release her before she became one more in the endless list of slaves that bow to Anita’s every whim.
The bulk of the story was about Olaf and his desire to date Anita. At a guess, a good four hundred of the six hundred pages is the two of them talking. Seriously. Talking. And more talking. Not about the case, because Anita and Olaf don’t really care about the case. They talk about dating, which is hard for Olaf since he tends to murder every woman that interests him. When you think they have talked enough, they start the topic over again and repeat everything they have already said. It can’t be overstated that Laurell needs a good editor and that she needs to let said Editor do their job.
Anita has the same problem that Superman has, you can’t let him solve a simple crime like breaking and entering because, well, he’s Superman. Anita can’t deal with run of the mill werewolves and vampires, where is the fun in watching her kill someone that has no chance against her? Well, there is no fun in that. And this is the problem with the crime story in Sucker Punch. The bad guy is some rich kid who isn’t very powerful. He isn’t even very bad. The little twist at the end was annoying. It was a direct steal from a couple of other serial killer stories.
In the end, Anita Blake books aren’t really about plot and resolution, they’re about spending time with the people in Anita’s universe. This time we spent way too much time with Olaf.
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