Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me just start by saying, the first few books of this series were so good that Laurell K Hamilton became one of my favorite and most recommended authors. I quickly read through the entire Anita Blake series (and even began the Meredith Gentry series) but with each book I have grown more and more disappointed. With each of the last couple books, I vowed NOT to read the next one. Well, this is truly the end boys and girls. Danse Macabre was so bad that I had to skim through the last 1/4 of the thing because I couldn't bare to read it all. I was closer than I've ever been to just tossing it, because even bad TV would be less excruciating. There is no plot. No real sense of beginning, middle, or end. The entire book is a string of tedious, ususally inexplicable, and always overwrought discussions between the characters as they over-analyze their relationships with one another. (And as a drama queen myself, I'm not kidding when I say it's over the top). Every scene goes something like this: Anita is confused/angry/out of control while everyone around her seems to secretly know why she is confused or what's going on but they don't want to tell her. Then Anita goes on and on through her mental hamster wheel and teeth-pulling to get everyone to explain things to her, and when they finally do, it is something so simple and unimportant that you can't believe you had to read through all of that for nothing. Since there is no plot, there is no real ending. Apparently, once Ms. Hamilton reached a certain number of pages she got tired and ended with a couple pages of Anita's narration as if she were wrapping up an entry in her diary... you know the kind: bland, totally unsatisfying and totally not resolving a darn thing. Ms. Hamilton broke the cardinal rule of writing: don't promise your readers something at the beginning of the book if you're not going to deliver on it. And if you're ambitious enough to write a series, have the imagination and follow-through for each book to stand on it's own. Unfortunately, a lot of writers' work suffers with fame. The Publisher knows we'll buy the book whether it's good or not, so I doubt this book received much by way of any real editing. So, it's probably no wonder it's such a mess. The bottom line is this book was bad enough that it made me angry, angry enough to write this review, which means I think the problems go far beyond a mere personal opinion. My advice: Bail out of this series now while you still have some small bit of goodwill toward the characters (& the author). Here's a brief synopsis of what happens in case you're worried you'll miss something: NOTHING.