Blood Noir

Anita decides to accompany Jason home to visit his estranged family because his father is on his deathbed. Although Jason's father has never loved or accepted him, Jason is hoping to reconcile with him before he passes. Anita's role will be to convince his family that Jason is straight. It seems that Jason's family is fully convinced that Jason is gay and have invested a lot of time into bullying him into admitting it.

Things are quickly complicated by the fact that Jason's doppelganger is in town for his wedding. Apparently, Jason looks exactly like the son of the richest man in town who is a senator and about to make a run for president. Jason is immediately mistaken for him throwing both he and Anita into the center of a media circus. show more To FURTHER complicate matters, there has recently been a threat on the senator's son's life so security is very tight and they've also decided to guard Jason and Anita (for some reason). It seems that the senator's son has run off with a local master vampire's wife and the vampire has put a hit out on him.

Naturally, The Mother of All Darkness is also pursuing Anita and picks this moment to put a call out to weretigers in the area. Anita loses two days to a mindless, animalistic mating with two strangers. When she wakes up she has blank spots in her memory and is actively being influenced by Mommy Darkest. Richard shows up and immediately makes everything about him and then develops spontaneous vampire powers. Also, Jason is now Anita's wolf to call.

Moments after Richard flounces away, Anita and Jason are abducted by vampires who have mistaken them for the senator's son. Jason is tortured until he is saved by Anita.

This book is basically my worst nightmare. The premise is so stupid and makes no sense. Even though Anita is Jean Claude's human servant and any time she travels around the country it has to be carefully negotiated with the local vampires they just forget all about that this time. She also inexplicably travels alone even though she's been going everywhere with body guards lately. The reason they all have temporary memory loss is that if they remembered to do this then the rest of the book couldn't happen. All this bullshit drama with people thinking Anita and Jason have run off and jilted Jean Claude together wouldn't have happened if their travel plans had been properly announced and negotiated. Furthermore, this business with her being abducted by two shitty vampires also wouldn't have happened if she travelled with the usual contingent of body guards.

Finally, the whole town full of inbred offspring from a cult is just ... so dumb. It's also fairly disturbing considering they all look like siblings and are definitely related and yet Jason has fucked all of them. Also, it's ludicrous that Jason looks so identical to this senator's son that his own body guards and fiancée cannot tell him apart. Also, this guy has a twin, and no one ever thinks it's his twin brother but only assumes it's the one who's getting married.

Also, it just seems very flimsy that what Anita and Jason are accused of doing is exactly what Jason's doppelganger is actually doing. This seems like very lazy writing. Does she only have one idea?

A full half of the book is just Anita meeting Jason's family and talking to his old high school friends. It's really really boring and nothing supernatural happens for about 200 pages. When the supernatural stuff finally arrives it's all a bit over the top, but at least more interesting. Unfortunately, Richard features heavily and is just as awful as always. They make a big deal about how he's only acting like an asshole because he's "inherited" Anita's rage and then Anita takes it back so he's better now. But I know better than to believe that. This is like the tenth book where Richard supposedly turns a corner or changes but it never sticks. He's such a tedious jerk. He's a bully. He tries to rape Anita in this book and only barely fails. And that's after she "fixes" him. So.... show less

A friend who loved all the Anita Blake books to date recommended the series to me, but warned that some didn't like the direction the books went after the tenth book, Narcissus in Chains. As it turned out, I was one of those people. I don't have an objection to (well-written) sex that's more than tab A goes into slot B. I do have a problem not just with it dominating a story, but with what is essentially non-consensual sex--and that's what the ardeur is, however you dress it up, which is why I hated the device from the start, and hoped that plot-line would come to an end.

No joy.

I did love the series up to Narcissus. I liked the dynamic between Anita, Jean-Claude and Richard. Jean-Claude, the vampire, started out fairly menacing, and show more the whole plotline with the different marks, with Anita struggling to remain human, resonated with me. Richard the werewolf represented something different: someone struggling himself to remain human, but perhaps in vain given his basic nature. And you could see Anita struggling not just between the two men, but what they represented. Learning that not all such "metaphysical" creatures should be seen as monsters, but struggling with the darkness within herself and where to draw the line.

At the time when I started this series, it was irresistible to keep going even after Narcissus, given that the books up to The Harlequin had already been published. This was the first book I had to wait for, and that rather broke the spell. Someone pointed me to an excerpt of the first chapter online before the book itself was published. I read it with disbelief. It read more like a parody than anything I should take seriously as professionally published. Unfortunately, not only was that the true beginning, but it was truth in advertising. There's hardly any of Richard or Jean-Claude here, and what exists of them is unappealing. There's lots of Jason if you find him appealing--and more of the ardeur, and its tiresome machinations, which I can't abide. I lasted through one more book, Skin Trade, then dropped Flirt mid-read. This was truly the beginning of the end for me and Anita. A shame. show less

If you liked the first 5 books of the Anita Blake series, thought the next 5 were going downhill somewhat & thought the next 5 descended into romance & page counts, then you feel about the series as I do. If you thought the writing got poorer in the past few, we also agree. If you felt ripped off by "Micah", we still agree. In that case, don't bother to read this book. Seriously, keep the few good memories you have.I'm afraid that Hamilton has had it as a writer. This was the worst book I've read in the past couple of years. Certainly the worst one I finished. Why did I? Because I've read the all the previous ones & I skimmed a LOT with the forlorn hope that things would get better. Also, the book was given to me.The plot was poor & show more half the book took place in one hotel room. Bring lots of cheese, because all the characters do is whine about & to each other about their lives, feelings, relationships & powers. The only displays of the last are filled with remorse, anger & desire - but the last isn't even very well done. It's not even good soft porn. Basically, it's a very negative play of how to have bad, supernatural relationships & spend hundreds of pages whining about it. There is no suspense. Every possible suspense element is obvious & hackneyed. They're usually immediately revealed. One is saved for the very end, but it is so obvious that I knew it from the start & kept hoping for a twist. Didn't get it though. The book was nothing, if not predictable. I think Hamilton is just tired.Finally, I got to the last chapter which could have been a good book - should have been the book, with all the wasted pages beforehand edited down to a couple of chapters - at most. In a few terse paragraphs, all the action that should have been in the book is summarized in a very passionless voice. "This happened, that happened, end of story." Yeah, it's the end of the Anita Blake story for me. It's a shame. I loved the first books but I can't bear to read another. show less

Anita travels with Jason the werewolf to visit his dying father in Asheville, NC. They get caught up in a case of mistaken identity – as has happened all his life, Jason is mistaken for his cousin Keith Summerland, bad apple of the Summerland clan, and mixed up in things that make it dangerous for Anita and Jason to be in town.

This is a review of good negatives. Not too much sex, not too many vampire politics, not too many Psych 101 conversations. The positives are a meaningful storyline that is interesting, a father-son story that is handled pretty well, and the potential for some good books to come.

This was going to be the last book I was going to buy in the Anita Blake series. I’ve been disappointed since Obsidian Butterfly, but show more kept slogging on, hoping for something better. I bought this book against my better judgment, then regretted it. But, as I read it, this book reminded me of the early Anita Blake books. Anita is actually doing things rather than worrying about her multiple-partner sex life. There are humans in the story, with very human feelings, and all the silliness that wraps itself around a wedding. (Not Anita’s, don’t worry).

Oh, there are a few lapses. Ms. Hamilton can’t resist starting the book off with a long conversation to justify sex and then describe the sex.

And there is a Psych 101 conversation when Jason ignores Anita at a bachelorette party and they have to discuss it a ridiculously long time.

And, finally, Ms. Hamilton can’t resist dipping into the convoluted relationship Anita has with Richard. He whines a little and has the usual angst a little, but then leaves quickly, and we get back to the actual story.

It’s like Ms. Hamilton wants to write the kind of books she’s been writing lately but has to jerk herself back to what is really good and what will make most of her long-time fans happy. If that’s what she’s doing, that’s okay with me. A little bit of irritating is better than a whole book of irritating.

Jean-Claude is barely in the story at all, and although I really like Jean-Claude, it was refreshing to just deal with Jason and some weretigers, strange magic with Marmee Noir, the Mother of All Darkness, and strange magic with Richard.

All in all I was happily surprised and will probably buy the next installment. show less

Jason is a werewolf, Master vampire Jean-Claude's pomme de sang, one of Anita's friends, and also one of Anita's lovers. Not long after Jason's girlfriend breaks up with him, he finds out that his father has maybe weeks to live. Jason's family, especially his father, believes he's gay, because to them there's no such thing as being bisexual. If his girlfriend hadn't just broken up with him, Jason could have taken her with him to see his father. Without her, however, he's got nothing but his word to prove that he's not gay. Anita agrees to go with Jason and let his family think she's his girlfriend - she's a girl, she's his friend, and they're lovers, so it's not exactly lying. Unfortunately, Jason bears a striking resemblance to Keith, show more the son of a senator who'll be running for president and Jason's cousin. Since Keith is supposed to be getting married in a few days, it looks really bad when reporters see someone they think is Keith (Jason) cuddling up with a strange woman (Anita). To make things even worse, Anita's ardeur is acting up, as is the tiger lycanthropy inside her, Keith, and therefore Jason, is in trouble, and the Mother of All Darkness (the most powerful vampire in existence) is focused on Anita.

I'll start this off by admitting that I was one of the readers who was really upset when Hamilton introduced the ardeur (which I still see as a convenient excuse for rough, orgy sex scenes), shifted the tone of the series into something very different from what the series was originally like but remarkably similar to her Meredith Gentry series, and started writing long, graphic sex scenes. I read a lot of romance, so I'm no stranger to sex scenes, but these are more like what you might get in an erotica novel.

I was a little worried by the way this book started. Basically, Anita, Nathaniel, and Jason negotiate the terms of a threesome (seriously, it's like some sort of business deal or something) and then actually have the threesome, in graphic detail. Hamilton uses this scene to remind readers that Anita had agreed to BDSM for Nathaniel - that kind of thing doesn't interest me, so it probably contributed to my dislike of this scene. In previous books, the sex scenes got so detailed and so lengthy that there wasn't always time for much plot, and I feared that this might be one of those books - it's gotten to the point where, although I used to buy Hamilton's books as soon as they came out, I no longer even feel the need to buy them used. As far as sex goes, this book wasn't that bad - if you actually liked the copious sex scenes in the last few books, you might feel differently. There are maybe three and a half sex scenes - the threesome I just mentioned, attempted sex between Jason and Anita that keeps getting interrupted by their need to chat with one another, sex between Anita and Jason, and an unintentional orgy that Hamilton thankfully never describes in detail. The biggest problem is that, although there aren't a lot of sex scenes, much of the book is still about sex in one way or another - Jason trying not to appear gay, Anita's ardeur, women drooling on Jason, etc.

Besides the way the sex scenes are written, I think one of the things that bothers me about them is Anita herself. Anita, to me, has always seemed like a thinly veiled stand-in for Laurell K. Hamilton. They look the same, they might dress the same if the author photos are anything to judge by, and, from what I've read of Hamilton's writings when she's writing as herself and not from the point of view of a character, they sound the same. I don't want to find myself trying to get through yet another graphic sex scene filled with bodily fluids of all sorts and find myself wondering if the recent shift in the tone of the Anita Blake series and in the kind of sex Anita has has anything to do with Hamilton's own sex life. I don't want to know about her sex life, and I'm hoping that Anita's sexual adventures are just Hamilton writing down her fantasies like some sort of lame fan fiction writer.

I enjoyed reading about Jason seeing his family - it wasn't a pleasant meeting, by any means, but it's always nice to read about the lives and families that characters have outside of all the supernatural weirdness that Anita lives around. In fact, I would have liked it if the book had been more about Jason's visit with his family and his attempts to connect with them. Hamilton is fond of having Anita analyze and painstakingly think through what's going on in all her relationships (sometimes only after things have already gone to hell), and I would have preferred it if Anita's analysis had been restricted to bad, but fairly ordinary family relationships (Jason's father was abusive and several of Jason's family members figure Anita is a whore who's just pretending to be his girlfriend so that they won't think he's gay, but all of that's more ordinary than Anita's metaphysical problems). Instead, readers are treated to pages and pages of Anita trying to think through and deal with relationship, political (vampire and lycanthrope politics, mainly), and metaphysical problems that she didn't even see coming.

Readers who enjoy shapeshifters may find something to like in this book. Anita meets several weretigers, the first natural-born weretigers she's ever met, and she learns a lot about how their society functions, mainly because there's a possibility that they might force her to abide by their societal rules because of the tiger insider her. A few werewolves do show up, like Jason (of course), Richard, Shang-Da, and Jamil, but weretigers are the primary lycanthropes in this book.

If you've read the past few books, which you really should before you start this book, you'll know that Richard has gone from being Anita's very nice boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend) to being an angry, unreasonable bastard. I can sympathize with some of his reactions to Anita and her ardeur - Anita's gone from being someone who resists sex in the earlier books to being someone who's regularly having sex with several different men, sometimes all at the same time. In this book, Anita does something that helps make Richard a little more like the guy he used to be, but the effects only last for a very short time. After that, he becomes a bastard of a different flavor, this time trying (and almost succeeding) to take Anita's choices about who she is with away.

One of the things I'm sort of sympathetic about with Richard is his attitudes towards Anita's fleet of lovers. I don't always like the way he deals with these feelings, but I can understand why it bothers him, even though the two of them aren't actually dating anymore. Personally, I feel like Anita's pretty hypocritical. Because she has to feed the ardeur, she has to have a bunch of lovers (like I said, it's an excuse for lots of sex with multiple partners), but I'm sure that even if she suddenly lost the ardeur she'd keep at least four or five of those lovers (Jean-Claude, Asher, Nathaniel, Micah, and maybe Jason - I can't remember if she and Damian are lovers). It's not so much the multiple lovers thing that bothers me as much as it is her rule that, although she's allowed to have multiple lovers, her lovers must in turn be monogamous. Anita gets to have her cake and eat it, too, and I'm never really quite sure why all her men put up with it. If Jean-Claude could just give her up, I wonder sometimes if he would, considering how much her "you must be monogamous while I sleep with everyone" rule hurts him politically.

Well, enough ranting. Overall, I think this book is an encouraging sign that future books will actually have time for a plot between sex scenes, although I doubt the series will ever go back to being what it once was. I no longer plan to buy any of the books in this series right when they come out, but I haven't yet gotten to the point where I'm just going to give them up. I didn't really like this book, but I didn't hate it either.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

I really think LKH has turned the corner here. The last book brought back the "old" Anita for me and this one is even better. Yes, there is still sex but her power is tied to sex and has been for several books now.

A few books ago she was truly out of control, but she has come a long way (baby.) She is still learning to harness her power, and the sex is not something that is just going to stop happening. In fact, it would be bad writing if it did!

Hamilton has placed Anita on this path, and she has to follow through with it. Character development must continue, even if it makes some of us uncomfortable.

Anita is still the "kick-butt" woman that she started out as, but she has grown and is more complicated. There's more to her now than show more just guns and knives, and a gigantic chip on her shoulder. She's learned (the hard way) that things aren't always black and white, and the monsters are not necesarily what she thought they were.

In this book I got a glimpse of the series I fell in love with years ago. I will eagerly await the next in the series! show less

I liked this Anita Blake book much better than the last few. Which isn't exactly saying much. I've heard that Hamilton isn't using an editor these days. It certainly explains a lot about the last few books. Not just typos and grammar errors, but continuity errors, too. And certainly an editor would tighten up the story and get rid of redundancies.

There's an actual plot and not as many unnecessary sex scenes. I wasn't going to buy any more in the series, but I read the exerpt at the end of the book and Edward is in the next one. I like Edward. So I broke down and bought the next one. I only own a few more in the series.

Hamilton is a good writer with great plots and characters but she needs an editor to keep things from getting boring. show more All the whining was really getting to me. show less