Affliction

LKH has an incredible gift for giving Anita Blake great experiences, cases and bringing magical gifts to life. I only scored it a two stars because LKH has gotten away from her incredible stories and has been writing on mostly sex, homosexual, animal, S&M Bondage, and 70 % of her work now consists of this garbage. Now that LKH has made millions on Anita, she has an attitude of not caring what her readers think and disregards criticism. LKH must really be into having sex with multiple men and enjoys homosexual men to constantly write this stuff. The 30% of the story where a vampire or where animal, and Anitas magic is involved is truly great. I know LKH will not change but thats her choice. I believe the majority of her followers are also sick of all the sex and perversion but she made her money.

I still can’t believe this series is now more than 20 years old. I was a die-hard fan…until I wasn’t. The more lovers Anita acquired, the more feeding the arduer seemed to become the main focus of the books. After Incubus Dreams I was done. I have a signed copy of Blood Noir that I never read.

A few days ago, this popped up as an Amazon recommendation and the reviews convinced me to try again. So glad I did! THIS was the kind of story that first drew me in! She’s still rolling deep with a cadre of overly, hot preternatural bedmates, but there’s a mystery to be solved and some detective work to be done. Plus, Edward! I get that some people might prefer a different admix, but I was good without the endless questionable-consent, sexual encounters. I’ll even say some additional non-arduer driven sex could have spiced things up a bit, but enjoyed this one a great deal all the same. Already debating which ones I missed should be next.

OK I just reread this book. This might be my second or third time. I’m not sure.
The thing is, everything every negative review has stated is true. The repeating of certain phrases, the nearly identical sex scenes that I feel I could even write word for word because I’ve read them so many times. The fact that Anita thinks she’s not attractive. The way all other cops/men dislike her solely for being a woman or dating a dozen or so “monsters” The description of her scars, her ring tones,everyone’s eyes and so on and so on. Its all very irritating.
I started these books with incubus Dreams so I was always into the sex and the vampires and it was OK with me. Nowadays the sex scenes I literally skip. I know what’s going to happen. I know a lot of people started way back at the beginning and I did read those too but I guess it wasn’t the same for me because I knew where the series was going and I got tired of her dancing around Jean Claude and I couldn’t stand Richard. Anyway back to this book.

So the question I have to ask myself is if I hate this series so much why do I continue to read it and in some cases reread it? And I guess the answer is I don’t hate it. I dislike big giant parts of it but I guess its like a bad marriage or relationship, I’m comfortable in it. When I read one of these books there will be no surprises at all. And I guess there is a certain satisfaction in that. Is it worth the 12 or 13 bucks they are charging for a Kindle edition. NO!

This particular book was about Micah’s dad dieing and Anita and Nathanial (who I hate) going with him home to see his parents who he hasn’t seen in a long time (And yes we get to hear the story of Chimera and how evil he was and how Micah’s eyes are stuck in animal form and how Anita killed Chimera.)
While she’s there she ends up having to fight some zombies/rotting vampires and of course she has all her men with her. There is more action in this book then her more recent ones. And more of a plot. But if that’s the best thing I can say about a book…there is a slight plot..that’s pretty sad.
What did I like about this book. Edward, even though he seems a kinder, gentler Edward. He’s still my favorite killer.
Jean Claude, I like him a lot so sue me.
I also like Nicky and could see an awesome back story there is his childhood abuse, his contract killer/torturer days. Is he really a sociopath? Even his BDSM stuff interests me. But alas we will never read any character development and anything remotely interesting will happen “off screen”.
So in the end I give this book 3 stars. Its OK. It holds my attention. Has a semblance of a plot and its familiar. Wow what a gushing review lol

It seems that Hamilton made an attempt to fix one of the ongoing problems with her books, but didn’t address any of the others. In Affliction, the erotic content was toned down in quantity (though not in quality), which was a welcome. Not that I mind erotic content, but not when it takes up more than half of what is supposed to be an urban fantasy novel. Hamilton handled the erotic portions much better in this book, and she had a pretty good underlying plot.

The problems with Affliction were numerous, starting with a surprising number of spelling / grammatical errors. Then there is the ongoing contempt that this author seems to feel toward most law enforcement. Hamilton seems to think that almost all police are sexist, homophobic, racist, or bigots in some other form or fashion. Well, except for Blake of course.

And of course there are the tedious conversations that happen at least once in every single book. First of these is the “Let me wax philosophically about what it means to be a monster,” which consists of Blake telling the aforementioned sexist/homophobic/racist/bigoted police about why her myriad of friends and lovers aren’t really monsters but people are. Never mind that her myriad of friends and lovers have admittedly done some incredibly monstrous things before meeting Anita, but that that’s beside the point. Then there’s the conversation where Anita defends her poly amorous lifestyle against the same aforementioned sexist/homophobic/racist/bigoted police. Not only are these conversations occurring in every single book, they tend to drag on and on endlessly WITHIN each book, and sometimes happen more than once. In some cases, they’re with the same secondary character.

There was a lot of dialogue that seemed to be painfully and unnecessarily long and cumbersome, as if Hamilton is looked for new filler material since she’s not filling every chapter with happy sexy fun times. And while the underlying plot was interesting, it didn’t advance very well due to some of these clunky dialogue scenes, some of which just occurred randomly in the middle of what should be an action sequence. After dragging her feet getting there, the author rushed through the ending.

I still think that all the tools are there for Anita to be interesting, but also feel that this world has become so bloated with characters that it might be better for Hamilton to just start over with a new primary character in a new place and next time, please keep the clown-car of new characters out of the circus.

I started reading these books about a female corpse raider who helped the police, in the background she starts dating/meeting guys who are interested and willing to pursue. Over the last 10/12 books that has changed to almost constant sex with everything passing through, very little storey line/police investigation/zombie work, and sadly non stop emotional cra** from her partners, well Ms Hamilton if I wanted relationship drama I would watch Eastenders! (Sorry Eastenders fans but it has to be said!).
This storey line is pulling a little back towards the original (not much, but I think there were pages were no one had heart felt chats or hard sex) I think now I stick with the books hoping she’ll turn back or kill everyone off. Worth reading to stay in the loop but otherwise is very similer to the last 3.
Oh and if Ms Hamilton does get to see this – I stopped reading the Merry Gentry series because of the boringly long pages and pages of sex with every creature and no story line that didn’t have to do with the Fey throne, I started reading that series for the fairy private eye angle and loved the first book. Please stop writing S&M and get back to stories with a plot.

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