Kiss the Dead, Laurell K. Hamilton

So, it's still Read a Romance month, so next up is some hot and steamy Anita Blake.

However....it wasn't one of my favorites. The plot was just kind of...lacking. Wah wah. Basically, a group of vampires want to be" free." Unfortunately, their methods for doing that are to kidnap a minor and then martyr themselves (aka suicide by cop - or executioner, in this case). The have a leader, a master, but they haven't blood oathed. Somehow the master misses the part where he can influence lesser vamps without a blood oath.

So, when they're around him, he can keep them on board with his plan for peaceful dissent. Unfortunately, when he's not around, his mojo wears off and they decide being martyrs and killing cops is the better plan.

Sigh.

Antia ends up setting them straight. That's basically the entire book plot wise.

Now, relationship wise, there was much more.

Burt Offerings, by Laurell K. Hamilton

Anita kicks some serious ass in this one - Some serious Council ass! Richard continues to be disgruntled. I can't blame him completely, but I've decided he changed into the wolf the way he did to push her away. 

So, last book he changed to his wolf for the first time in front of Anita. Or more, ON TOP OF Anita. To reference my last review (The Killing Dance) "There's a part when Anita is talking to JC and she comments that she's worried that if she accepts Richard's beast, he'll be horrified that she could and reject her, and if she rejects it, he'll reject her anyway because she can't accept him." To expand on that, I think Richard changed the way he did to make it as horrible for Anita as possible. I'm not sure if it was a subconscious effort to push her away so much as to get her to hate his "beast" as much as he does. I don't think he thought it would push her to Jean-Claude though. He figures, at least a wold isn't a corpse, right? Anita even comments that if he had changed differently, she might have been able to accept it. It's not like he had no other opportunities to change.

However, some of his behavior is just ridiculous.