Obsidian Butterfly

In this installment, Anita gets a surprise call from Edward, her assassin BFF to whom she owes a favor. He needs her help with a murder investigation in New Mexico. Sounds like fun! Except that Edward is keeping more secrets than usual from her. It turns out, he's engaged to a mother of two. Horrified that Edward, a cold blooded killer, is intending to join himself to a completely innocent and unsuspecting family Anita is immediately on the defensive. Things only get more complicated as Edward begins to catch her up on his investigation - a serial killer that has been skinning dozens of people alive.

It seems like the skinnings are related to ancient Aztec rituals. Luckily, the local master of the city is herself an Aztec and she is show more willing to meet with Anita. It's possible, just possible, that a truly ancient evil has awakened in the deserts of New Mexico. A true immortal with a taste for Necromancers. Anita will be lucky if she can even find the thing, much less come up with a way to kill it.

Blugh, this book is pretty bad. It's about twice as long as it should be and feels extremely padded out. The number of times the author will just grind the plot to a halt so that she can orchestrate an incredibly tedious and repetitive conversation between her characters is truly staggering. The climax of the novel is literally just Anita asking as many pointless questions as she can think of to a wannabe god so that she can stall long enough for the police to arrive. It's pretty much the opposite of exciting. And since when does Anita wait to be save by the police of all people?

To make matters worse, all the characters we've come to know and love from the series are absent. The only one knocking around in this book is Edward, and he's pretty dry most of the time. So of course, Ms. Hamilton has to spend tons of time introducing an entire rugby team of new characters, mostly male, and all whose appearance, mannerisms, and wardrobe have to be spelled out in great detail. It gets old fast. Thematically, the book is pretty pointless too as Anita's entire character arch in this novel is just her hemming and hawing over whether she wants to return to her two boyfriends or try dating a normie. It really seems to erase several books worth of character and relationship development. Besides, it's annoying because it's extremely clear what decision she will eventually make. show less

Okay, so Obsidian Butterfly was a weird, brutal, and oddly refreshing detour in the Anita Blake series, and I was totally here for it. It's taken me literally decades to read this far into the series, but now that I’ve hit Book 9, I’m reminded why this series is my guilty pleasure. Anita’s world is messy, bloody, chaotic, and full of emotional landmines. And I keep coming back because I love every bit of it.

Now, Anita has had a love triangle thing going on for many books now. But what was so refreshing about this instalment is that neither of her love interests are in it. No Richard, no Jean-Claude (with the exception of a single dream scene). And honestly, that was such a breath of fresh air. Without the usual soap opera drama, show more this one gets to breathe in a totally different way. It’s not over-the-top erotic (a rare thing for this series), and I was more than fine with that. The space gave Anita room to be introspective and maybe even a little less performative. The self-examination stuff wouldn’t have worked if the "boys" were hovering nearby.

However, what this book lacks in sexiness, it makes up for in horror. Seriously, the horror is dialed ALL THE WAY UP in this one. Genuinely disturbing stuff. Not even because of monsters or magic (though those are definitely there), but because of the very human cruelty underneath it all. A couple of scenes involving child abuse were extremely hard for me to get through. I don’t mean, “ew, that was dark"... I mean I actually had to put the book down and walk away for a while. I just can't with the child abuse stuff.

As for Anita herself, I really like that she’s getting older and starting to feel the weight of everything. She’s still intense and fully armed at all times, but there’s more emotional texture to her here. She’s tired. She’s complicated. She’s becoming a little less holier-than-thou, which I deeply appreciate. I’m hoping by the time she hits her 30s, we’re done with the moral superiority thing altogether.

There’s a central mystery to solve in this instalment, but that’s not really the point of the story. The core of the novel is all about relationships, inner conflict, and Anita’s realization that she might not be one of the “good guys” anymore... if she ever really was. It’s gritty, fast-paced, and full of tension, but it’s also introspective in a way the series hasn’t quite been before. The shift was noticeable and, for me, very welcome. As always, I'm looking forward to picking up the next in this series at some point. show less

First read: June 2006
Initial rating: 5/5 stars *favourite*
Re-read: October 2017
New rating: 5/5 stars *favourite*

I have one strong memory of reading Obsidian Butterfly the first time around and that is that the book was just so good I couldn't put it down. Any second I had to read, I picked it up and devoured it. I ended up reading the 600 odd page book in a little over a day.

In contrast, my re-read was incredibly slow; almost two months from start to finish, but I found it just as enjoyable as before, if not more enjoyable as I found a lot of details that I either missed the first time in rush to get to the end, or had simply forgotten about.

The plot: Edward calls Anita away from St. Louis and her regular life to help him investigate a show more supernatural occurrence in his home town. Edward puts together his own team which includes Anita, Olaf Gundersson; a serial rapist and murderer, and Bernardo Spotted-Horse; a supernatural bounty hunter.

What I liked:
- Following on from Blue Moon Hamilton once again takes Anita out of her comfort zone and puts her in a new place with new challenges to confront. I always like how Anita can handle herself, no matter where she is.
- The crime was horrific but original and I love the twist on the zombie mythology employed here
- Obsidian Butterfly herself, and her strange sociopathic sense of justice – in particular the three females and their rapist that she turned into vampires, so that the women could get revenge on the rapist for eternity.
- Up until this point in the series, Edward has always been a mystery so to travel to his hometown and see his personal life and the way he conducts himself around other people was fascinating.
- As with all the Anita Blake novels, Hamilton gives tantalising glimpses of the reality of living in a world where magic and the supernatural are real and commonplace; such as how the criminal justice system could hold a person who can summon demons at will safely for trial. We also learn that the death penalty is applied to those who misuse their magic – like raising a demon to commit a murder, and that they follow tradition in burning the body after execution – a twenty-first century take on burning a witch at the stake.
- The horrific scene in the hospital nursery was so hard to read, but at the same time unputdownable.
- The entire dramatic rescue scene for Peter and Becca in particular the scene where Anita takes out two armed men in the bathroom with nothing but a single knife!
- I also liked the fact that while Anita is surrounded at all times by all manner of powerful, supernatural creatures. Hamilton still manages to make Edward and Olaf - mere human beings - two of the scariest characters on the page.

What I didn't like:
- On my re-read I skipped the details of what happened to the children while they were held captive I just didn't want to read that sort of thing twice. show less

This is the best of LKH's books. Though set in the midst of a pornographic trend in the series, this book truly focuses on the actions and relationships of the characters - not the bedroom.

We also get a closer look at Anita's own self-loathing (of her powers, abilities, family, race and gender). It's fascinating to shine a light on just how much of a bigot she is - and how that angst is all directed at herself. The entire series can be reread as an exercise in self-loathing.

This is the last of the good Anita Blake novels, and when I recommend this series to people (which I still do), I tell them that the series really ends here. Every book from this point on is horrible crap.

But this book is good. I loved how Anita had a chance to spend some time away from the boys and do some thinking. Hamilton plotted this book pretty carefully, and the main plot of killing-the-monster dovetailed very nicely with Anita's relationship angst. My favorite aspect was how Hamilton explored Edward, Edward and Anita's friendship, and Anita's thoughts on Edward. The ending of the book is so tidy that it works quite nicely as the ending to the series as well. Score!

This might actually be my favorite of the Anita Blake books.

I think this may be the best book in the series so far, with some caveats. The book has a lot of things in it that could trigger people. Children in danger to name just one. So choose to read this with care.

This book has a lot more horror elements than previous books.

This book features Edward, so you get to know more about him and his relationship with Anita. I thought it started slow. It could have used some editing to tighten things up a bit. I thought it was a bit repetitious about Edward and how Anita sees him.

But once things got going, I found it to be a real page turner. Horror, supernatural creatures, Aztec mythology, and black ops. Something for everyone.

Among those who have followed the Anita Blake books, Obsidian Butterfly stands along the great divide. This is the last book where Anita really is a Vampire Hunter, and uses her brains (and guns) rather than... another part of her anatomy to solve her problems. For me the series doesn't just drop in quality, it falls into an abyss after this book and it becomes a completely different series, with an entirely different focus in characters and themes. So for me this is the last good book. For some it's their favorite.

In this book Anita works with Edward her fellow US Marshal--a sociopath--to investigate a series of supernatural attacks. Especially in this book, Edward reminds me of Dexter. Here he shows another side as a family man, as show more someone who does have a side that wants something normal. Ordinarily though he's one scary son-of-a-bitch. The thing is though, there's a lot of Edward in Anita. This book examines that, and I think that's why some name this as their favorite book. When we first meet Anita in Guilty Pleasures she was a woman who drew several moral bright lines, despite some impulsiveness and often disregard for rules. Vampires and weres were monsters to her she put down without remorse, now she's in love with--well, one of each. So up to this book, the theme of the books were, who's the monster? And the thing is in this book, the ordinary humans like Edward and Olaf (a creepy sociopath that makes Edward seem warm and normal) are definitely the scariest.

Maybe. Because of all the Anita Blake books, and I read until book 18, Flirt, until giving up on them, this is the one with the big bad I remembered the best. So I have to give props to that. That said, not even fans of Anita Blake universally laud this book. For a friend of mine, this was the last Anita Blake book she could stand. There's a pretty graphic scene in this book involving the molestation of a child. For my friend that finally crossed the line. "That woman is sick." And she meant Hamilton, not the baddie.

That disturbed me. Goodness knows this book doesn't represent too bright a line from what was to come. Too many times in the earlier books--and here--Anita is threatened with rape, and characters around her victimized. There have always been some icky, at times gruesome aspects to this series. But this was the last one that really had a story and where Anita was at all recognizable. The book could have ended, après moi, le déluge. show less