Kiss The Dead (Anita Blake) - Laurell K Hamilton

I stumbled upon this review from 2012, before I had my blog and it never got put up here. :)

When a fifteen-year-old girl is abducted by vampires, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Anita Blake to find her. And when she does, she’s faced with something she’s never seen before: a terrifyingly ordinary group of people—kids, grandparents, soccer moms—all recently turned and willing to die to avoid serving a master. And where there’s one martyr, there will be more…
But even vampires have monsters that they’re afraid of. And Anita is one of them.

** spoiler alert **

Okay so back when I was working at Walden Books in 2001 I picked up a large silver paper back with a steel/blue butterfly on it. I enjoyed the back description, used my employee discount and bought the novel; I then spent the evening devouring it page by page. It was Obsidian Butterfly by Laurel K Hamilton. I then set off to the find and buy all the novels before it.

Within a week my eager mind had eaten up the words of Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, Circus of the Damned, The Lunatic Café, Bloody Bones, Burnt Offerings, The Killing Dance and Blue Moon. They were brilliant; I could not wait until the next in the series…

Until Narcissus in Chains… Yuck…. Now I have nothing against sex, hot dirty awesome sex, I write erotica. But I do have issues when it is not erotica and the plot line suffers because of too much sex and magic bull shit. Cerulean Sins and Incubus dreams were not much better, vampire politics over rule anything else and we stop seeing any of Animators Inc and fun characters I’ve come to really love and much more of Anita’s cootch and all the guys she’s suddenly stupping.

Then there is Micah, this was a good little short that gave the readers a bit of a pallet cleanser, and honestly until Skin Trade the other books just kind of blended together for me, death/sex/sex/sex/magic/death blah blah. I mean Dance Macabre had the pregnancy scare, which I thought would have been better had she actually been pregnant, maybe a miscarriage? But again her succubus tendencies rule the novel.

Harlequin wasn’t bad, but kind of a gray book for me, not much I remember. And what was the point of Blood Noir and Flirt? I just rolled my eyes at both. Bullet, eh, whatever. Now Hit List, we get back to what I love about this series, and there is almost no sex, until the end when she does like….everyone. I am always happy to see my beloved Edward.

So to sum up… Skin Trade and Hit List are the only books I’ve enjoyed at a 4-5 star level since OB. Too much Anita over analyzing and over thinking her stuff making everyone around her miserable, including herself.

So it was with a heavy heart I bought and began to read Kiss the Dead. So these are the things I noticed the most.

1) We started right in with the action. This was pretty awesome, the story started right up with a bang.

2) The vampires called Anita the Executioner, but also one of the Four Horsemen, war… I’d never heard that before, it was pretty cool.


3) I am sick of her morality issues and over thinking things. By book, what, 21? We should be over some of her “I’m a monster,” “I’m screwing too many people” issues.

4) Why does Anita always allow bad guys to get under her skin? She is always willing to see the worse in her lovers. It like she expects them one day to pop out and say Boo! I really am as bad as everyone thinks.

5) I love Zerbrowski, he is hilarious, I also like the new Marshal, Brice. And LKH has made him gay so we don’t have to worry about Anita screwing him, not that she does normal breathers.


6) Cynric is playing on a Preternatural School Football team, this was a pretty cool idea and she explains it really well, even talks about it going college level or professional. It is these glimpses of brilliance that allow me to remember how awesome she is. Even though the idea of Cynric is frigging disturbing, he's like 18.

7) "You know I hate the knick name.” So, Cynric, the baby blue tiger, wants to be called Sin….So what? But I swear I read this sentence 8 times in maybe two chapters, okay honey, we get it, it makes you uncomfortable to fuck a 18 year old, but get over the name thing, would ya?

8) Asher- now I love Asher, have from the beginning and it kills me to see her writing him like a mean whiny douche bag. And in this book Jean-Claude finally kicks him out to see if he can become Master of the City in some new, unnamed town. I think this was just her way of trying to thin down the amount of people screwing Anita… What’s next a huge battle where several of them die?

9) Richard? Mentioned but ummmm, not around…At all.


10) Okay, so the first sex scene shows up in the middle of the book, which was nice…But the second one is not too far afterwards and it is 21 PAGES LONG That’s ridiculous, though at least her sex turns me on, unlike that crap Charlaine Harris writes. And then BAM! Anita is doing Dev in like the hall and not only are we subjected to yet another slutty Anita moment but some crudeness where they fall asleep together and the condom gets stuck and just yuck…. The best part was Micah laughing at Dev and Anita, because really it would be funny.

11) Why is EVRY paranormal woman jealous of Anita? Would you REALLY want her life and the men in it? They are all so damn hot DAMAGED It is so stupid, Arnet is a lame character and I am sick of it, look at what she did to Ronnie, why can’t Anita have normal human friends.

12) LKH is sure a fan of making Anita’s “friends” turn on her, Ronnie does, Dolph does and now Larry has. At least Dolph is done being a dick head; random much when did THAT happen?

13) The ending, was rushed that’s all I can say about it. Not much else really happens, something about a bomb and then it is over. Fairly lame, even her ending sum up (which I am not a HUGE fan of) was even lamer than normal.


So…. I really think LKH should wrap this series up, end it please before the innocent suffer!!! a baby, terminal illness, Anita taking the fourth mark, just a general, “sometimes things suck, but I have my lovers and even if there are guns and death I have sex and love to see me through it.” This is getting two stars… And it PAINS me to do so. Though it has sparked in me the need to re read and review these books, after I get done with Sookie Snatchhouse and the Adventures of her Magical Va-Jay-Jay