Anita Blake in Review

You're only as much monster as you choose to be.

That seems to be the theme of the Anita Blake Series. The series isn't over, of course, but I'm waiting for the next few. Kiss the Dead will be out in paperback at the end of May, and Affliction is coming out in hardcover this year. I just don't do hardcover. So, I'll have to wait for more of the series.

There are some halves out now. Strange Candy is a collection of short stories by various authors; as are Cravings and Bite. Strange Candy is what Anita Blake without the Vampire Hunter might have been like. It's short and fairly...limp. It's not boring, but it's not really great either. Good thing Hamilton added the Vampire Hunter part. I wouldn't really recommend their purchase, unless you're a) into the other authors or b) really love short stories. Well, the Anita Blake story in Cravings is just the beginning of Incubus Dreams, about Larry's wedding, so...  Bite is it's own story, and takes place between Blue Moon and Obsidian Butterfly, when Anita is still trying to distance herself, and falls off the wagon after seeing Jean-Claude, but for me it wasn't worth the purchase. Finally, Beauty, which can be purchased as an ebook and comes between Hit List and Kiss the Dead. It's basically just a sex scene between Anita, Jean-Claude and Asher.

So, for me, the series is over for the moment. Therefore, I thought I'd talk about the series in general: pros, cons, and thoughts.

Hit List, Laurell K. Hamilton

Weretigers are being murdered all over the country. Anita and Edward are on the case. We join them in Tacoma, Washington. They know who, the bad Harlequin. The know why, to get rid of all the gold tigers and trap Anita for Mommie Dearest, the mother of all vampires. This is the longest Anita's been away from her family (her men and the rest of their people - shifters and vamps). She's even gone days without feeding the ardeur.

My favorite thing, and I acknowledge it's a small thing, is that they finally call her polyamorous! I've been saying it since The Killing Dance!! Edward brings it to Anita's attention, and of course she's still a little prude and reacts as such. :) Love it.

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.