Sucker Punch

I have read all of the Anita Blake books, and I keep saying this is the last one I’ll read. This time I mean it. I only made it halfway through this awful book. I kept stopping to yell “move the plot!”. The characters keep having the same conversations over and over again, drawing the same conclusions. Then they talk about how they keep having the same arguments. It’s just nonsense released to get fans of the past to shell out more hard earned money. Spare yourself the agony!

Idont know what to do with this.

Id stopped reading LKH a few years ago. At the time I stopped, the books felt like 20% plot and 80% icky sticky orgies. I was bored.

But when I was offered a chance to read this, I was curious. Maybe something had changed. Maybe Anita was back to being a monster hunter. I decided to give it a try.

Keeping in mind that Ive been away from the series a while, and Im really not aware of whats happened in recent books, but thisis weird.

Theres no sex. Zip. Zero. None. Theres sexual tension, but no icky sticky. If you love the icky sticky, you may want to stay away from this one. If thats what made you stop reading it, you may want to try again.

Theres an honest to goodness plot! LKH has given us a pretty solid murder mystery plot and I, while I figured out the *who* pretty early, I was invested in the *why*.

But

You also have new PC terms for various types of shapeshifters and I was sooooo confused. I cant even remember them now. My mind mentally stumbled every time Anita would talk about therio-somethings and ailu(um)-somethings and not-bipeds-but-something-similar-somethings.

You also have Olaf. Now, I kind of like Olaf in a makes-me-very-uncomfortable-to-admit kind of way. But Olaf in this book isextra. Olaf (you know rapist sociopathic serial killer) + Anita might make you very uncomfortable in this book. And if it doesnt, please stay over there and dont come near me cause you kind of scare me.

I already mentioned the lack of sex, but you do have a very boring scene that feels about 10,000 pages long in which a bunch of character gather in a room and read off a laundry list of Anitas sexual kinks. Its a very unsexy scene.

I just dont know who the book will appeal to. If you like the shifter sex shennanigans, you might be disappointed. If you like not thinking of rapists as hot, you might be disappointed.

Yeah, its just weird.

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

Sadly this will be the last book I purchase for Anita Blake. Although always well written and professor edited. The series has become a cop/detective type mystery series. The things I enjoyed about the books along with the support characters are not even in the book. I feel like Ms. Hamilton received a of it criticism in the past and it has shaped the changes. And not for the better. Some may consider what I’m about to say as spoilers but it’s not anything you would not learn in reading the first few pages. So I’ll say again Anita is away from home. She doesn’t begin by leaving. We come in with her already gone. Alone. Yes this is book 27 and as fans who know Anita knows she needs an entourage. It is a must have. Even on US Marshal business, because she has to feed. But nope she’s all alone. The other thing that bothered me is that although Anita has been dealing with her situation for years! And is a very capable grown women who knows the consequences of failing to do so, they constantly have to remind her to eat. I feel also that things are being dragged out like a daytime soap opera. This book was over 600 pages and only 2 days pass . If that. And … Olaf! I don’t need to say more. (Sigh..) I miss the old Anita zombies, sex, vampires and all. Especially Jean Claude.

i won’t beat you over the head with what everyone else has said. You’ve read that. Just want to add what I haven’t seen anyone say. One of the 5* reviewers said that this series is showing that all kinds of sex is okay as long as it’s consensual. That person is ridiculously naive. This series is not about consenting. Once the sex starts, it’s all rape. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking people who enjoy reading rape in books. To each their own and the written words aren’t actually hurting anyone so have at it. But the Anita Blake that this series was about, would have destroyed herself before choosing to rape anyone.

When the vampire power that causes all the sex kicks in its an interesting plot development. Anita has no control over it and at first didn’t even know it existed or could affect her. In that situation the rape of Anita and her nonconsenting partners (which is what is happening when the vampire powers force sex between them) is understandable and I don’t hate that. But as the books progress Anita refuses to learn to control these powers. That’s when I started hating her. By refusing to control the power she is choosing to continue to rape everyone around her. Until finally she gets control of those powers and then she makes the conscious decision to do it. There are characters in this series that flat out say that they don’t want to have sex with her. There’s one that begs her not to use the power on him because he is a recovering addict of that power and is also gay. Guess who she uses it on? All of them. There are a couple of times when she uses it to good effect like when she uses it to enslave one of the bad guys that kidnapped her. But mostly just uses it because she can and she wants to.

I stuck it out until the book where they went to Ireland because I kept having hope that the series would return to Anita actually doing her job and fighting bad guys. I so hoped that book would be the one. I was disappointed and I refuse to waste my money on any more of Laurell K. Hamilton’s drivel. That book had a stupid plot that showed potential for how good it could have been, stupid execution, and a whole lot of ridiculousness.

For those that don’t know, Laurell came out as being poly herself several years ago so Anita being poly in the series makes sense as all her lead characters in her series are representative of herself. That’s fine. My problem is that Laurell is using Anita Blake to work out the chips on her shoulder. Every single character you meet in probably the last 5-10 books falls into specific categories. They either: immediately want Anita and make it known; they want Anita and don’t make it known and let jealousy make them angry and hateful towards her but of course she can smell their lust so she knows; it’s a woman that wants one of her men and is bitterly jealous and so hates Anita (she has no female friends that she’s not sleeping with. Although in the beginning she had one that, surprise surprise, falls into this category); or finally, they hate Anita because she sleeps around a lot, has a lot of scary powers, and/or is better at the job than they are. There’s not a single person in the series that doesn’t either want Anita or hate her. I feel so sad for Laurell that that’s the kind of world she’s living in because that much hate didn’t start coming into the series until she came out irl.

And last, let me tell you about children. There is a boy in the series, teenager. 15 or 16 when he’s introduced. He’s one in the everybody rapes everybody, including Anita as a victim, group because a vampire takes over her powers. I don’t have any feelings about that in any way. What I do have a problem with is that, after some moral back and forth, she eventually brings this boy home to finish raising him. She sends him to high school during the day and makes him do his homework and go to therapy but takes him to her bed at night. You decide how you feel about all that. I think it’s gross. Then there’s the subject of Anita having children herself. She’s been very firmly in the category of not wanting them and KNOWING it would be stupid and dangerous, with her life being what it is. In the last book she was seriously considering having a baby. Not because she changed her mind and suddenly wanted one. That’s an okay thing to do. No, she started thinking about it because one of her harem wants to have a baby with her and he kept picking and picking and picking at her and she wanted to do it to shut him up. For the love of all things good and right in the world. Anyone with a functioning uterus please do not follow this example! You have the right to not want children for any reason. And if you say no you have the right to keep saying no. If the man in your life keeps trying to coerce you into having them, walk away. He doesn’t care about you because if he did he would respect your right to say no. Having a baby is a big deal. It changes your body and your life forever. Do not teach your daughters that it’s okay to say no until a man comes along and suddenly it’s a maybe yes, the way Anita has done in the series.

Basically, I’m done. This series gets 2 stars from me only because I enjoyed the first 8-10 books or so, but Anita Blake is not a good series. When the number of bad books outweighs the number of good, the series can no longer be counted as being good. (Also if you read this far, I’m shocked and I thank you for giving me your time. If you didn’t read it all and skipped to the end, I understand and don’t blame you)

I had had enough of the poly angst after Affliction and didn’t bother with Jason or Dead Ice, tried again with Crimson Death (shouldn’t have bothered) and didn’t bother with Serpentine but tried again with this offering as the reviews were not too bad and sample was ok-ish but it wasn’t long before I realised that we have not moved on at all in Anita’s dreary unhappy life. Anita has gone from feminist, butt kicking herione to a very unhappy victim, constantly trying to justify her poly lifestyle which seems to bring her nothing but unhappiness and we can’t now see the real Anita buried as she is under the ever increasing number of so called lovers – there appears to be only sex in her life and no love at all now. perhaps the author has backed herself into a corner and can’t escape although Anita is supposed to be very powerful and all her ‘lovers’ are bound to her by magic so surely there is a way out of this – Anita is having therapy and i assume the author is too as this book reads like therapy sessions verbatim and at great length. the actual storyline is so padded out by all this that I sometimes forgot what it was and it could have been a short story if one could remove all the deeply disturbing hand wringing – in this book Anita seriously feels that she should have sex with a serial killer so she doesn’t have to kill him or be killed (oh and he is a useful marshall!! so that’s ok – NOT) although she says several times that she doesn’t want to have sex with him!! – surely that is rape which is NOT alright in any way, shape or form and again shows Anita’s victim mentality – where has our perky, feminist gone?. She also has some cringeworthy scenes with lesbian fantasies although Anita keeps saying she is not really into it which seems rather insulting to lesbians and if she was a real person feeling unhappy with the sexual demands and lifestyle which seems to have been forced upon her then I would be advising her to get out of the relationships. she is also conflicted about marrying Jean-claude and this has been a theme through the last several books – as Jean-claude is hardly mentioned these days perhaps she should forget the marriage altogether. the early days of her romance with Jean-claude and Richard were very well written and believable – nothing in the last 2 books I have had the misfortune to read has been anything approaching believable. I have read and enjoyed fifty shades so I don’t feel that I am unduly prudish but fifty shades was also a love story which Anita’s is not anymore. also the increasingly complicated PC terms for werewolves and the like are annoying. what started as escapist fantasy feelgood enjoyable stories have become something much darker and disturbing and I for one can’t justify spending any more of my money supporting this author’s much needed therapy sessions. I will re-read the series up to Kiss the dead and possibly Affliction and then pretend there are no more stories because the Anita we knew and loved is long gone.

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