"Most people don't find me funny at all." Anita Blake meets a guy in her office. Gasp, shock, horror, she actually accepts his job. She then raises a zombie. Asher arrives to tell her "Surprise! Musette, Belle Morte's cronie, is here!" She rushes to Jean-Claudes to get in a p!ssing match with Musette. Then she has to rush home to feed the ardeur. She argues about who she will have sex with. Asher waffles about having sex. Anita Blake has sex. Anita Blake is summoned to a crime scene, but she is too weak to go herself after such amazing sex so Jason drives her. She needs to feed the ardeur. Anita argues about who she will have sex with. Anita has sex. She talks about sex. She talks about her relationships. She talks about the new French vampires from Belle Morte. She has sex. She talks about sex. She finally goes to meet the French vampires. Oh, yeah, and she finally remembers the murders and the zombie raising she was hired to do at the beginning of the book. Good thing those last two could easily be wrapped up in a few minutes.I'm sorry. I know a lot of these reviews have been nothing but me saying "Anita Blake is a horrible woman", "The writing is so mediocre and misogynistic", "There is a good story here, but too bad it is buried in bullsh!t". And I'm afraid this is another one of these reviews.It's sad, because amidst all the sex, talking about sex, prepping for sex, arguing about vampire politic minutiae, arguing about werewolf political minutiae, p!ssing contests, misogyny, and bad fashion shows, there IS a good story. The zombie raising at the beginning of the novel (while barely, by a tenuous, subtle thread, connects to the "main" plot--whatever that is) was one of the best in the series. I felt, for the first time in this series, that I had a clear idea of what Anita did and how she did it. The shapeshifter murder mystery isn't half-bad. And I don't want to send you into cardiac arrest, but Anita actually gets a Court Order of Execution and IS THE FRAKKIN' EXECUTIONER with a one-liner that would have made Arnold Schwarzenegger proud. In a book series, where Anita Blake is supposed to be a "Vampire Hunter" so feared she is called the "Executioner", this is the only book I can remember where she got an actual Court Order to kill a frakkin' shapeshifter or a vampire. About damn time.And then we have the one character who doesn't suck up to Anita and isn't afraid to bring up Anita's stupidity, Jason:"I think you dated [Richard and Jean-Claude] both to keep from falling in love with either of them." - Jason"Originally, Jean-Claude said he'd kill Richard if he didn't get a chance to woo me too." - Anita"Why didn't you just kill Jean-Claude then? You don't tolerate ultimatums, Anita. Why would you tolerate that one?" - JasonI didn't have an answer for that. - Anita"I loved someone once with my whole heart and he stomped on it." - Anita"Please, not the fiance in college, Anita, that was years ago, and he was an asshole. You can't spend the rest of your life nursing one bad experience." - JasonIn the ways I listed above, "Cerulean Sins" (which doesn't refer to any building, but apparently the memo everyone got to wear Cerulean Blue) is actually better than "Narcissus in Chains". I mean, CS did have a plot; it hasn't been THAT long since I finished NiC, and I can't give you a plot summary to save my life (other than "Sex, BDSM, sex, sex, drama, wangst, sex, sex, arguing, sex"). But in many ways, this book is just as bad as the previous books.Anita Blake might as well rename herself "Mary Sue". I've forgotten how many titles she has to her name now: Nimi-ra, Animator, Necromancer, Jean-Claude's human servant, succubus, Federal Marshall (which happened all off-screen by the way), etc. I've forgotten how many men are lining up to get into her panties (which, conveniently, match with her bra): Jean-Claude, Asher, Jason, Nathaniel, Micah, Zerbrowski, etc. She has demanded to be called "Ms. Blake" but then won't respect a mourning woman's desire to be called "Mrs."She thinks a covering a transsexual's family problems and a teacher raping a 13 year old boy are "weird crap":"It was just the kind of weird crap [Court TV] liked to televise. You know, transsexual's custody case, female teacher rapes 13-year-old boy student, pro-football player's murder trial." She is making out/having sex with several men, and yet somehow Asher says this about her:"I have met saints and priests over the centuries that had not your will to resist temptation."Last I checked, resisting temptation kind meant NOT doing whatever is "tempting", not "holding back from screwing anything in sight".What is probably most groan-worthy is the silly plot device that “forces” Anita to have sex, the “ardeur”. Anita has to feed it every 12 hours or she will die. This leads to a large portion of the novel dedicated to sex, relationships, arguing about who is going to have it with whom, and so on and so forth. It bugs me that this “ardeur” basically strips Anita of her choice in the matter; if it is supposed to be a metaphor for women's sexuality, it fails.But of course, Anita doesn't WANT that much sex. Oh, no, like a bad, pornographic movie, she is FORCED to have this much sex:"Why was I always made to feel guilty because I wasn't having sex with more people? Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?"Despite claiming to be a feminist, Anita frequently makes misogynistic remarks such as:"If I'd have been a man, I'd have let it go, but I was a girl, and girls poke at things more than men."Yup, Anita, you really are equal rights. Calling grown women "girls" and comparing them to MEN is really feminist of you.She pretty much gets into a fight with any authority figure whose path she crosses. Double-time if that person happens to be a woman. Triple if that woman is blond and tall.Not to mention, Anita seriously needs to check into the hospital. Besides having breathing problems:"I was blushing so hard, my head was beginning to hurt." "I tried to speak but couldn't remember where my mouth was or how to draw a breath. I couldn't remember how to answer her.""It was hard to swallow past my pulse." "...I felt like the only thing keeping my pulse in my mouth was the tight line of my lips."I think I stopped breathing.""I kept my mouth closed; I was afraid of what would fall out if I opened it."Or then, Anita thinks she is oh, so clever and goes off on random rants that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot or what is happening at the moment:"I think that's why dogs are so damned popular. You can cuddle a dog as much as you like, and the dog never thinks about sex or pushing your social boundaries in anyway. Unless you happen to be eating. Dogs will invade your social boundaries for table scraps unless trained to do otherwise." "It wasn't the beauty of him that made me love him; it was just him. It was a love made up of a thousand touches, a million conversations, a trillion shared looks. A love made up of danger shared, enemies conquered, a determination to keep the people that depended on us safe at almost any cost, and a certain knowledge that neither of us would change the other, even if we could. I loved Jean-Claude.""Guns don't care if you're psychically gifted; guns don't care about anything. They don't b!tch at you about the rules in your life, either. Of course, neither does a dog. But I don't have to use a pooper scooper after I'm through shooting my gun.""Sometimes love makes you selfish; sometimes it makes you stupid; sometimes it reminds you of why you love your gun."There was that word again. Love. I was beginning to think I didn't know what it meant.""Sane happy people don't hack their hair off at home with scissors. Cutting your hair like that is usually a substitute for hurting yourself in other, more permanent ways. Any counselor will tell you that.""But once you get me angry, I usually stay there. I enjoy my anger; it's the only hobby I have." "It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Because for anything to matter, I could not have gone back into that room. I had to go back into that room, so nothing mattered."Other than Jason, I didn't care for any of the other characters. Pretty much all of them have been reduced to their one attribute and nothing more. Asher whines about being ugly; Richard whines about being a monster; Dolph suddenly gets all aggressive and offensive to Anita, when before he had been nothing but professional. Nathaniel is creepy and disgustingly submissive. And Jean-Claude continues to parade the bad fashion that makes this book a riot to read.Because it is an Anita Blake book, I need to talk about the fashion disasters in this book. On the most part, I've tried to ignore them (such as Anita's wearing baggy shirt and jeans and SOMEHOW passing as a teenager in the early 2000's or Anita's wearing some slutty garment because *lame excuse here*), but here are some of the ones I caught that made me laugh until I cried:"[Jean-Claude] was wearing skin-tight leather pants, tucked into thigh-high boots so it was hard to tell where the pants left off and the boots began.""The panties and bra were a matched pair, a shiny navy satin. When I'd found them, they had reminded me of the color of Jean-Claude's eyes.""...his eyes [were] as normal as they ever got - midnight blue, lashed with black lace." "The hair was like a living accessory. For a moment, I thought [Jean-Claude] was wearing leather pants, until I realized the black boots ran up the entire length of his leg. He was wearing black pants, but they were barely visible." One of the best parts, in that "So Bad It's Good" way, is the writing. Hamilton's writing has always been serviceable at best; here, it's as if no one bothered to proofread it:"His voice held sorrow so thick that you could have squeezed it out, tears in your cup.""Asher was afraid. I could taste his fear on the back of my tongue. I could swallow it, enjoy the bouquet of it, like a fine wine to whet the appetite." "...that brought me back, reminded me I had a body, that skin contained me, that bones and muscles rode the body underneath me.""Jason lowered us both into the water. It felt wonderful so warm...Jason moved me gently in the water...The warm water was so warm, so warm.""He ate those sounds straight from my mouth, as if he were tasting my screams.""I couldn't see or feel or be. It was neither light nor dark, nor up nor down."And my absolute personal favorite! "The room was red. Red as if someone had painted all the walls crimson. But it wasn't an even job of painting. It wasn't just red or crimson, but scarlet, ruby, brick red where it had begun to dry. A color so dark, it was almost black, but it sparkled red like a garnet." I am almost nostalgic for the early Anita Blake books. Anita wasn't nearly so aggressive, there was a plot (or twenty) and some pretty interesting action scenes. It seems the books now are just Anita being hostile, sex, boring politics, and a hasty mystery wrapup.Classic Anita Blake fans, the ones turned off by Narcissus in Chains, are probably not going to enjoy this. Newcomers to Anita Blake are going to be completely lost amidst intricate, overly complicated, silly paranormal creature politics. And if you were ever hesitant about the series, I sincerely doubt this book is going to win you over.
I started the Anita Blake series knowing what I was getting into. I had heard the bad buzz, but I also heard that the earlier books were solid good urban fantasy badass heroine writing. And I gotta say, that is true. I loved the first 10 books in the Anita Blake series. Loved them. Obsidian Butterfly ROCKS. The world LKH created in the book is damned scary, gruesome and surprising. I enjoyed the development of Anita from the first few books through books 5-10. Anita progressed, the characters grew on me and LKH often scared me senseless with her gory and gruesome stories. I am hugely happy that I enjoyed 10 books in the Anita Blake series. 10 very good urban fantasy books, not many other series give readers that many strong books. So I am not disappointed that I started it the series. Additionally, there have been no cliff hangers, so it is fine to just walk away. And that is what I am going to do. I am going to walk away from Anita Blake because Cerulean Sins is a disappointing read. It is disappointing on so many levels, but mainly I had grown to really like Anita as a character and she is no longer what she was in the first part of the series. What was the plot of this book? Well, there is no true plot per se, perhaps I am just being a stickler for literary guidelines, but there were definitely themes! Here are the ones I identified:1. Visiting super strong vamp. I know what readers of this series are thinking – didn’t a super strong vamp with amazing abilities from another territory visit in an earlier book (or wait, was it books?)? But this is a DIFFERENT super strong vamp with DIFFERENT amazing powers. 2. The visiting vamp wants to control Anita. Familiar? 3. The visiting vamp tries to get to Anita or see how she will react by threatening “her people”. Hmm, I know I have read this one before. 4. Anita protects her people and pisses off the visiting vamp. Yes, yes, you know this already BUT she does the pissing off in a really new and different way – she has sex with the person she is trying to protect. 5. The cops Anita works with give her a hard time and yell at her. They harass her at the crime scenes. What I don’t get is why do the police continue to call Anita to the crime scenes? Why does she continue to go when they call her? How many years has this harassment and belittlement been going on? I swear, I feel like I have read Anita’s posturing with cops in other books but I could be wrong …. 6. Some bodies are being raised, some general people in the background hate Anita. 7. Anita needs to feed the ardeur. Okay, this is a new theme. Because of the ardeur, Anita needs to constantly have sex and sexual contact and then feed off her sexual partners’ desire. Constantly. All the time. A lot. 8. Anita talks about feeding the ardeur. A lot. With everyone. All the men in her life talk about Anita needing to feed the ardeur. A lot. 9. The ardeur. 10. The ardeur. 11. Oh there is a murder or two. 12. Richard. Ah yes Richard. Anita talks about Richard. A lot. Why their relationship failed. How it failed. The moment it failed. I will let you read the details, I don’t want to spoil it for you. 13. Some silk underwear is involved – I lost track of all the men wearing tight silk stuff. 14. Lots of men need to take care of Anita, help her walk because she is overwhelmed by stuff, but she is still a toughie and wants to have access to her gun. 15. All the men want to have sex with Anita.So there you have it, the themes of Cerulean Sins. Good-bye Anita Blake. It was a good ride (err….) read for a while there.
What do You think about Cerulean Sins (2004)?
This was the book that, to me, started the decline of the Anita Blake series. When Anita, who had, up until this point, been very, very practical and always worn her feminism as a badge of honor...now becomes a totally different person because the ardeur has forced her to take multiple lovers. Instead of Hamilton treating this as another opportunity for Anita to be practical and say, "Hey, it is what it is. You can't deal? Fuck off."Such a lost opportunity.UPDATED 03/04/2015 for the audio book:Read by Cynthia Holloway. Ugh. I do not care for her narrating. Seriously, what is with her pronouncing "were"[insert animal] as "we're"??? I feel like it's that Cool Whip commercial with Stewie and Brian." "Were" is pronounced like "where" - not "we're" (or "weir")!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZmqJ...Every time I re-read (or, in this case listen) to this book, I am reminded of the greatness that once was, and am deeply sorrowed by the deterioration of it.But I'll keep holding on. Keep hope alive that it will regain the glory that was, and once again be as great as I know it can be.Read: 04/2003, 03/2004, 03/2005, 03/2006, 03/2007, 03/2008, 03/2009, 03/2010, 03/2011, 03/2012, 03/2013, 03/2014, 03/2015
—BWT (Belen)
Laurell picked up the pace from the last book, Narcissus in Chains, in this book. There is a new villain who is ultra-badass and seems much the formidable foe we have come to expect to fight Anita Blake, there is a back story of serial murders going on behind the scenes, along with something very wrong with Dolph, but the main story still revolves around the heroine, Anita Blake, which is a good thing.The thing I am not liking about the series as a whole at this moment, is that Anita seems to have lost the moral grounds she stood by early in the series. I bet if you asked her toward the beginning of the series (if she wasn't fictional) if she could see herself having sexual relations with not only Jean-Claude but Richard, Jason, Asher, Micah, and have Nathaniel as a pomme de sang, she would look at you like you've gone crazy and probably shoot you in the head. It comes up that she has issues with her sexual-ness, but it hasn't stopped her so far from having intercourse with many of her furry/dead friends. I bet, even in the first novel, she would have guffawed at the idea of having a relationship with a vampire, werewolf, or wereleopard. I miss the old Anita with her spunk (which hasn't gone away, just seems very subtle).I do like, however, that the story keeps moving along and, unlike the review of The Big Bad Wolf that I posted yesterday, the story is still interesting and has yet to become repetitive in the sense that the author has run out of ideas. Laurell has a good head on her shoulders and I am proud to say that she is my favourite author of all time. Once I start one of her books, there are times when I cannot physically put the book down due to the fact it is so engrossing that my head feels like it is literally glued to the pages. Yes, my head, you need your whole head (brain included) to absorb the awesome that is Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter.I would recommend this book to anyone who likes the Anita Blake series, I would definitely recommend the first book of the series to those who are extremely interested in what I'm talking about and would like to merge into the circle of knowledge. I'm sure that what I'm talking about makes no sense to anyone who hasn't read (a) the book, (b) the series, or (c) a single book in their life. So, go read it! CAUTION: STRONG SEXUAL IMAGERY WITHIN THE NOVEL, DO NOT LET CHILDREN READ!Also, this is the first book that isn't named after some sort of club.
—Nicole
Reviewed by Ciara*Warning: possible spoilers ahead.*Sex.That’s this book in one word, more or less.This book is, so far, furthest from all the things I loved about the first few books. I became addicted to the ABVH books because it combined crime, detective work and supernatural elements.Don’t get me wrong, I love sex, and I enjoyed the early days of examples of how awesome Anita’s sex/romantic life, but I enjoyed that as part of the overall books, when it fit in nicely with a decent plot and characters. Now that sex has consumed and taken over the actual plot (this book is basically sex scenes strung together with a confused storyline) I find it hard to imagine myself continuing to read the series.The book opens with Anita meeting Leo Harlan, an assassin who wants Anita to animate one of his ancestors, apparently simply because Leo is interested in genealogy.Then, along comes Musette, a decidedly unlikeable vampire acting as a lackey for Belle Morte, the founder of Jean-Claude’s bloodline who wants to test or punish him.Then, Anita finds out that there have been some brutal rapes and murders, seemingly committed by a shape shifting serial killer. She can’t get involved though, because Lieutanent Dolph doesn’t like the fact that she’s sleeping with the monsters, and their relationship has all but fallen apart.The ardeur, a device introduced in the last book, forces Anita to crave sex every 12 hours, conveniently removing the need for Hamilton to have a reason for Anita to have sex.Gone is the Anita from the first books, the complex character who was a vampire executioner but who fell in love with a vampire, a Christian whose natural ability was very unChristain, a strong woman who took a no-bullshit attitude to equally strong men.Now, she pretty much just hops from bed to bed, and worries more about the implications of dating someone than killing someone.Having read up to this one in quick succession (I had hoped to be up-to-date by the time book 20 was released in June), the repetition of certain phrases is very noticeable, as it is in her other paranormal series, Merry Gentry. It seems Hamilton just isn’t putting any effort into original turns of phrase when Anita isn’t in bed with a preternatural creature.I’m hoping that as the series continues, Hamilton takes on the criticism from her numerous fans and makes some attempt to return the books to way they were at first, though with titles like Flirt and Kiss the Dead, I doubt that will happen.There seems to be a split in ANVH fans, between those who miss the old style and think the books are drowning in sex (not a bad way to go, in fairness!) and those who think the increased emphasis on sex is a natural progression.I’m somewhere in between. Anita didn’t have any sex at all for the first seven books, and is making up for lost time. Some sex would add to the plot, but it’s gone overboard now.You may like it though. Maybe the sexy vampires and werewolves were always what you enjoyed. Just for me, as a crime fiction fan, the loss of the detective work is a big one.
—Myvampfiction
