Blood Noir (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 16)

I too have read all of the Anita Blake books and I too will not be reading any more. After reading Harlequin and seeing how the sex was somewhat toned down from the last book, I thought that maybe - just maybe - Hamilton was listening to her critics and working on toning down the sex and attempting to going back to a real plot... but after reading this latest 'novel', I can see I was wrong.

Nothing's wrong with a little sex. Nothing is wrong with not having every character asking 'why?'. It gets aggravating to read nothing but characters over-analyzing each other and having absolutely nothing to do but screw each others brains out.

There is no plot. Nothing worth paying $$ for, anyways. I'm disgusted, disappointed, and no longer foolish enough to shell out money for crappy porn.

I have this to say to LKH, and about Blood Noir and the new direction of the Anita Blake series.

If you're going to write porn, learn to write it well. If you're going to continue calling these "real" novels, you might want to up the plot factor and let the sex become a delicious little treat every few chapters.

BN is too full of poorly written sexual encounters for me to consider it seriously. If you want to turn it into the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (if you know what I mean, wink wink) series, by all means, but please, start to use words and phrases besides "breathy" and "just flat does it for me". It's like LKH has been walking the line between eroticism and being too embarrassed to write what she's really "seeing" for many books now, and it's getting old.

(A side note about LKH follows, feel free to skip to the bottom for the rest of my Blood Noir review)
If you'd like your audience to start taking you seriously again, please give us back our strong, independent Anita. And please stop giving her new metaphysical powers every time she gets into a fight (which is happening less and less frequently).

As for sleeping beauty, aka Marmee, that's a WONDERFUL plot waiting to happen.. it could take the series back where it belongs and onto a whole new level.. please write it on par with the first few books, and whatever you do.. please don't have Anita hop into the sack with the zombie/vampire/lycanthrope/ghoul/etc combination I'm sure you'll turn Marmee into.
/rant.

In short, Blood Noir is either a poorly planned and written novel, or a poorly executed porn. Given LKH's penchant for backtracking in just about every previous book, you could certainly skip this one and not miss a thing. My advice? Wait for paperback, or ignore it all together.

(Oh, and to echo a previous review I had written.. when are Anita and the gang going to start dressing like it ISN'T 1987?) How many royal blue shells, or shells of any color, for that matter, does Anita own? Does anyone call stockings "hose" anymore? And we all know the litany of complaints about the way she dresses the men. Yikes.

I can't say it better than this:

If I wanted porn - I'd rather watch it then read it. I'd get more out of it.

I was so addicted to Anita Blake and the character. But the last few books have just been trash in my eyes. And no, I'm not a prude. FAR FAR FAR from it.

This book has the least substance of them all for me. It's a waste of paper it was printed on.

I'm a huge fan of the series, but I've been disappointed in the last few books, and this one in particular. I agree with at least one other reviewer -- this should have been a novella, but instead it got stretched into a full book with the addition of a lot of sex. Or it should have been called "Jason" (akin to the "Micah" book), and had even more depth about Jason's history and character development.

I hope LKH can turn this trend around. Anyone can get fatigued (after 16 Anita books, who can blame her?), and I'm willing to wait a little longer for the next one in the series if it means a better book.

I love that LKH pushes sexual boundaries. But the last couple of books have seemed like nothing more than sex -- it has become both the primary problem Anita is dealing with, and the solution to everything, and the overall stories have suffered because of it. I miss the crime solving and paranormal mysteries that characterized the Anita books in the past.

I'll always give a new LKH Anita book a chance. But in the meantime I'll also be on the lookout for a new series to give my attention.

i like this book because i really love jasons charter and i wanted to learn more about him. but i do kind of get what the other people are saying about the series about the whole sex thing it getting a little boring but whatever i dont really care i still love these books and will continue to reado both of her series.