Summary:
Anita Blake wishes that she could be indulging in other pleasures, but for the time being at least, she has more pressing matters: A team of assassins are heading for St. Louis and she, Jean-Claude, and Richard are at the top of their hit list.
Review:
The world's best vampire assassin's are after you. The Mother of all Darkness has a crush on you so she wants' to possess your body, and like all the other control freaks out there, if she can't have you no one will. The out of town case you get called in on, because, let's face it, you are one of the best, is looking like a trap to lure you away from the power structure that has previously kept you safe and the back up they have called in just so happens to be a psycho serial killer who has the hots for you...especially because you fit his victim profile. Oh shit right?
Not for Anita Blake.
In book 20 of her series it reminds me a lot of the older books. Where Anita was focusing more on crime fighting then boinking. It was one of the harder books to put down, in fact I fell asleep reading it because I fought closing my eyes for to long and they decided to close on their own.
Laurell K. Hamilton is one of my absolute favorite author's. I read both her series avidly and I am often caught re- reading them while trying to figure out what else I can fill my head up with. Hit List wasn't a let down at all.
Instead of her usual sweetie's being all over the book, we get to see a few old friendly faces as well as get introduced to a new face when Anita adds a lover to her dance card.
I liked how Edward, her mentor and another hard ass, started to realize that he had things he wanted to go home to. You got to see a softer side and a few hidden secrets about him as they talked about his family and contingency plan should he fall in the line of duty.
It was kind of odd how easy it seemed to take down the big bad of the story, it had me wondering, "Well why didn't you do it all along? " But it still was extremely well written and a very good read.
Memorable Moments/Favorite Quotes:
Somewhere in the book during a sex scene she made not of "dangly bits"
"The one's who can't be named-" He glared at me. " I really hate that we can't even say their names out loud, it feels like we're in a Harry Potter book talking about He-Who-Must-Not- Be- Named."
" They like women to look like women, not preadolescent boys with boobs sort of stuck on as an after thought."
" We both look nice and curvy the way God intended grown women to look. "
Rating:
5 Stars!!!
I keep hoping that the author would bring the "old" adventurous and exciting characters and plots/subplots back but alas.... It's clear that I had only hope and am now forced into letting that go with the disappointment of this book. While Hit List is better written that the last 3 or 4 in the series - this book seems to be just another way that Hamilton and her publisher(s) are making a buck off of her fans. The writing is NOT for the fans.... No closure, no interest, no REAL new plot and no Jean-Claude or Richard - wait sorry I am wrong on that at as on or about page 314 there may be a few mentions. The build-up took to page 296 and the ending was rushed from there to 316 a whopping 20 pages with of course a less than 2 page summary for closure... did she run out of time? (there's 320 pages in the entire book)..
ReplyDeleteThere are glimmers of the hard edge hunter of Anita as in the first few books but nothing "current" from any story line. We stay with Edward and eventually Olaf is brought back into the picture... Olaf/Otto is clearly is going to be the focus of upcoming books and quite frankly - who cares? He was "cute with a goatee" -really? Serial killer attraction - I wont ask what's next. I can only hope that Ms. Hamilton puts down the research and finds the time and wherewithal to get back to writing for her fans.
With only one sex scene it's clear that someone on Ms. Hamilton's camp got the message that the descriptive sex of past books had crossed a line and needed to be toned down. I can't even say that she went the other way - all I can say is there are way too many new men for me to even care anymore. One more dude with multi-colors that mean something to someone somewhere but if it's not behind a mask or colored with "what love means" then it means nothing...