Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

okay, let me first say that i've been a fan of this series for a long time now. over decade of reading and following the characters. that's why i hate writing this. because there's so much potential in the ideas behind the series. alas, those ideas are getting watered down and turned into cookie cutter tripe. the first half of the book reads like a poorly scripted porn film with scatterings of magic and metaphysics. that's not my complaint really. I'm used to having to skim through mediocre attempts at erotica in this series. heck, there's times it isn't as horribly written. but half a book full of it? and again, its not the erotica by itself that's the problem, i like a good sex scene and also enjoy alternative views of sexuality. its the drab, cookie cutter way its written that sucks. i actually got so bored of it that i broke out the previous books in the series.there are entire paragraphs that seem to have been copy/pasted in with only the names being changed for the scene. if you're going to write an erotic series, there really needs to be more to it than just regurgitating things you've already done dozens of times. but lets move past that part. because let's face it, if you've read the series already you already either love or hate the erotica within it. you come back for the characters and the plot, right? well, good luck finding the characters here. everyone seems to be rehashing the same things they've said and done for the last ten books worth of supposed character development. how can we be expected to revel in the potential glory that is Anita's world when the people within it never grow and move with the series. its turned into a poorly done soap opera where every few moths they recycle the same story again and again.Richard always screws up something. Anita always moans and groans about one person or the other. then after ten pages of whining, another sex scene that takes a chapter to wade through. in this specific book, there's even glaring oddities that apparently happened off screen like Anita now having rat in her lycanthrope mix. i have no idea when that happened, but it was glossed over repeatedly. something that might have been interesting was turned into a footnote of "my beasts don't like rats inside me" so that yet another tired copy/paste could be slapped in. but hey! its halfway through the book now! they're going to where the plot will start and be more than a cheap parody, right? sort of. first you have to slog through the traditional " shes beautiful and doesn't know it" scene. then there's the obligatory " i'm a tough cop, so lets have a pissing contest" scene. and again, they might as well be copy/pasted in. all the men look at each other in confusion while tiny little Anita awes them with her glory. she's more than that, or should be, but its become this repeating mantra in every single book that has to play out before we can read the real story. eventually, you will get to the actual plot with the evil vampire, magical mystery and violence that is what makes this series more than really crappy porn. but guess what? you're now nearly three quarters through the book. so there isn't enough space left in whatever contract for each novel mandates, so the scenes where there might be something fun are short and pointless. it feels like they're only there as a synopsis to bridge between the dross at the beginning and the obligatory "Anita gets kidnapped and kills everything" part. spoilers ahead! okay, so Anita, this big, bad necromancer with power over vampires and lycanthropes is banging her way through another stock sex scene. she screams her pleasure onto, around or through someone (seriously, that phrase " scream your pleasure" needs to be banned now). and hotel security comes for a safety check. both the security guys are there to kidnap her. both are were animals of some kind or another. but neither Anita, or the two lycanthropes with her smell, sense, or even bother to think to check them over with their uber mystical senses. generic fight scene ensues. but Anita ends up pinned down (again) and just blabs her way through the scene. she doesn't use any of her power with wereanimals. she doesn't drink the life force from them. she doesn't open up and call for help from any of the dozen people with her. why? because plot says she has to meet the boss and fight it. pages wasted on a frigging cut scene. but okay! we're now 90% through the book, so now the real stuff can happen. a little deus ex and now Anita , Nathaniel, and Damian are properly kidnapped and in danger. (oh, did i not mention that there was a simultaneous kidnapping scheme for her two connected pets? neither did the author). but at least we can now get to the meat of things. there's threats of violence, vampire powers, Anita kills stuff in new and interesting ways. and its done. seriously. after all the "danger", all the threats, Anita finally does her magic thing and saves the day. no way could she have sucked the life out of the bad guys the first time. no reason she might have at least tried her necromancy during some down time to realize shes the uber-necromancer even in a foreign country, nah, she'll just wait until the word limit is hit instead and then we can cut to the epilogue. so basically, if you read the Anita series for the porn, you'll love this book. there's happy hard ons, sad hard ons, angry hard ons, and all of them end up inside Anita (who, as we are often reminded in every single book is so tight, but so wet). if you read the series for the soap opera, never changing cast of neurotics, then there's plenty of shirt rending and hair pulling too (because why change whats working, right?). if you read it for the quasi-detective stuff, you'll be disappointed unless you enjoy your detective/cop book to be a few chapters long at best. the same can be said if you read it for the supernatural thriller aspect. and i think that's what's happened here. the Anita Blake series originally crossed genres, shook things up and married them in a unique way. but its turned into something that just tries to be everything at once. its like an omelet with eggs, orange juice, onions and kiwi. everything alone is pretty enjoyable, but if you put it in the same pan and beat the crap out of it all you have is a runny, tasteless mess that a dog would refuse to eat.