Laurell K. Hamilton's Danse Macabre

Or Should it Be: Downer and Dirtier? The Once puritanical vampire hunter Anita Blake gets down and dirty in the newest installment of L.K. Hamilton's vampire hunter series: Danse Macabre. Driven by the supernatural sex drive inherited from her vampire lover--the incomparable Jean-Claude--Anita must feed her otherworldly lust on. . .pretty much everyone. Fans expecting Hamilton's signature you- think- things- can't- get- any- worse- but- they- can plot escalation and exquisitely explicit violence will be disappointed. Anita is too busy dealing with relationship issues, feeding the arduer in one mind-blowing sexual encounter after another, and fighting off magical seduction from vampires and lycanthropes to be doing much in the way of detective work or vampire slaying. ...only upon release from her spell does one wish that some of the erotic scenes could have been replaced with perhaps ...dialogue... Perhaps this writer is a little put off by Anita's slow slide into erotic, supernatural, domestic bliss. Her hard stand on sex (hell, her hard stand on basically everything) made her a uniquely strong female character. The early Anita was a hard-as-nails vampire slayer and zombie queen, with impressive power in her own right. This new power, the arduer, is not even power of her origination. It is gained from the marks Jean-Claude gave her, the ones she fought so long and hard to avoid. The later books, and this novel especially, see a less of hardass Anita, and a lot more of Anita caving in to the men in her life. Not that the sex scenes aren't totally hot. This writer is a devoted fan of Hamilton's writing, and agrees wholeheartedly with the author’s claims that she does sex and violence "really well." The imagery is described in crystalline detail, and the plot is impossible to disengage from without conscious effort. She "rolls" the reader with utter mastery, and it is only upon release from her spell does one wish that some of the erotic scenes could have been replaced with perhaps. . .dialogue? Detective work? Shopping? Anything besides more sex? The book is worth reading if for no other reason than to witness the growth of Anita's lover Nathaniel from an abused human pet into a new, improved, and, if not well-adjusted, at least better-adjusted human being: now featuring uncomfortable psychological insights into everyone else's problems. Finally we see the unanticipated negative side effect of all that therapy. Regardless, Danse Macabre is more of the good stuff from the best new horror writer on the market. Hamilton keeps a firm hold of her circlet as the crown princess of horror.