Cerulean Sins

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1. 

   A. CLARK @ 3:57 pm

   Sheer disappointment. I keep seeing that word, “disappointment,” all throughout these reviews, and I don’t think that’s simply coincidence. These are my personal, major complaints in no particular order:

   1) *Shift of plot type*
   I got hooked on these books because they were a cool, supernatural combination of the whodunit, detective, and action genres. Don’t get me wrong, Anita’s love/sex-life has always been part of the stories, but it wasn’t ever really the primary plotline. Now it is, and since I don’t dig soft-core erotica nor romance novels, I don’t care for it.

   2) *Apparent metamorphosis of major characters*
   When I was reading passages involving Dolph or Richard, I couldn’t imagine why they’re now such different characters. People go through difficult, sometimes traumatizing times in life, but for pete’s sake, these guys are so different from the way they were in the previous books that their names ought to be changed!

   3) *The ardeur*
   I’m sick of it, sick of it, sick of it. That’s about as concisely as I can put it.

   4) *Long hair on men*
   Okay, Hamilton, so you like long hair on guys. So do I — on the right guy, of course. But get over it! I’m weary of reading endless descriptions of some man’s long, flowing, beautiful, cascading, lustrous, rippling, flaxen, luxurious, blah blah blah hair. Oh, and lets not forget how traumatizing it is for his friends when a man cuts off his long hair!!

   5) * “So much meat” *
   Might there possibly be any other phrase to describe a human being who’s been ripped to shreds? Seriously, I should’ve kept track of how many times that particular phrase was abused… er, used.

   6) *Lack of editing*
   Way too many typos, grammatical errors, blatant overuse of some phrases and words (e.g. #5 on my list). Need I say more? Although, like another reviewer said, this is less the fault of Hamilton than of her editor/agent/publishing house/whatever.

   There’s more, but I think I’ll leave it at that.

   Back when my friend first got me hooked on this series, I practically salivated with anticipation during the weeks before each new book was released. Since _ Narcissus in Chains_ was a letdown to me, I was eager to see if the next book would be an improvement. How sad that it wasn’t. I would say I won’t bother to read the next book in the series, but I know my lack of willpower won’t let that happen. I’m sure I’ll read it anyway, if only out of pure, morbid curiosity.

   
2. 

   Lucinda A. @ 6:44 pm

   I know, we don’t confuse fiction with reality. Yet, when you read enough about a character, you start relating to “it” (him or her) as if that character were a personal friend. Sadly, I have broken friendship with Anita in this new installment. “Anita” books used to have two major strengths, I think: a good mystery plot which got solved at the end (and if Anita kept pulling increasingly unbelievable tricks out of her sleeve, more power to her), and Anita’s coherence as a character. The reader may have gotten a bit bored with her constant moral qualms (“An affair with Jean-Claude, does that make me a monster? Maybe yes…maybe no…yes…no…”) and may not have agreed with some of her choices, but at least they used to make sense within Anita’s system of beliefs, the way the author described it. In this book, we encounter a new Anita who, while trying to learn self acceptance, also stops making sense. I don’t mean it as moral judgment, but Anita’s quite brusque transition from “prudish” to “orgiastic” seemed more motivated by real market pressures than the internal logic of a fictional character. Anita is as coherent as a software with a virus: push the button marked l’ardeur, and lo and behold, there’s no stopping her. (I have to say that at this point I sympathize a lot more with Merry Gentry from the other series, who at least does what she enjoys best.) To top it off, one of Anita’s strong points, her ability to take control of an explosive situation, here turns into the obsession of control: she whines, she complains, she complicates fairly straightforward circumstances. Unfortunately, that doesn’t come across as complexity, but rather as a badly constructed character.

   My second problem was with the plot of the book. Surely enough, the first 100 pages or so build the right momentum and offer the promise of great suspense. Then it all goes away, leaving the reader increasingly frustrated. The story is only partially resolved – we don’t find, for example, the key to Anita’s visions (or at least it wasn’t clear to me), probably in anticipation of a sequel. Because of that, you cannot help but feel throughout the remaining pages that the author actually had two books in mind, couldn’t quite figure out which one to concentrate on, and decided to wait awhile and hope for the best. I don’t think the best happens, not in this book. I am not sure whether to give it 4 stars out of nostalgia for the early series, or 2 stars out of disappointment. An average it is.

   
3. 

   Jessica @ 9:26 pm

   What on earth has happened to Anita Blake? What was once an engaging, funny, and human character whose vulnerability in a world of superpowered creatures made her so intriguing is now a hypocritical, self-centered, spoiled, childish, delusional, hateful, mean-spirited, nigh-omnipotent, humorless and unappealing sex fiend. Now, usually I rather like sex fiends, but Anita Blake is perhaps the most irritating, unlikable, and revolting character I have come across in a long time, and no amount of orgasmic sex is going to fix that.

   Anita’s supporting cast almost holds CS together and makes it palatable, but unfortunately Anita’s overbearing presence kills the other characters’ appeal. The fact that all of the characters in this book have been reduced to spineless bootlicking sycophants, hateful villains, or pale, zero-personality ghosts with no will of their own doesn’t help matters. What LKH has done to Richard and Dolph is atrocious, and Zerbrowski is getting dangerously close to being yet another Anita groupie. The newest male to be added to Anita’s ever-growing harem, Micah, is completely useless as a character. Sadly, I actually *like* Richard’s sudden raging hatred of Anita, because at least this means he’s not another mindless Anita-worshipper. Jason is adorable, as always, and Nathaniel is finally becoming interesting–almost. Jason alone is the bright spot in the hideous morass that is this book.

   The ever-escalating superpowers Anita keeps getting are also very tedious: at the rate she’s going, Anita will soon be able to control every vampire, ghost, were-animal, and other supernatural creature in the world, and probably not even God will be able to defeat her in combat. Ridiculous.

   Add a total absence of plot to the mix, and what you get is a self-indulgent mess with little to no redeeming qualities whatsoever. There is nothing to recommend about this book, not even good writing or pacing. The pacing is dreadful, and the writing is… well, I’ve seen better writing in badly translated assembly instructions.

   The only way to fix the atrocious mess that this series has become would be to have someone, maybe Edward, come to town and blow Anita Blake to kingdom come. Then, Asher and Jean-Claude can get together without having to ask Anita’s permission, Richard can finally find a woman who supports him, the wereleopards can get lives, and Jason can join RPIT, the preternatural police squad, and engage in entertaining high-jinks with Zerbrowski, with Dolph to keep the two in line. And Micah dies, of course.

   Now THAT’S an Anita blake, Vampire Hunter story I’d pay money to read. Anything else? Won’t spend a penny on such disappointing drivel.

   
4. 

   Anonymous @ 9:42 pm

   Although I love to read, I don’t have much time for it, so I go through a lot of audiobooks instead. Therefore, I was thrilled when I saw that this book was available in audio format (and unabridged, no less!). To my knowledge, this is the first Anita Blake novel that has been available as an audiocassette.

   I must preface my review by disclosing that I have not yet completed the book (I’m just beginning Tape 7).

   As many others here mentioned, I initially thought that there was a plot revolving around a client that would be fleshed out but I have not yet seen that happen. A few tapes into the book, I thought that perhaps the problem was that Anita did not translate well to audio; however, given that many other reviewers have picked up on the same problems with the book that I have, I no longer thing this is the case.

   First, I realize that a series that is so strongly built around a single character requires that the character evolve over time. Anita began as a strong heroine with a wry sense of humor and a highly developed sense of right and wrong. An essential part of the series, over time, has been to challenge that sense of right and wrong and force her to make hard choices. Now, it seems, there are no choices. Everything she does is driven by psychic links to others, the arduer, etc. Far from being the strong executioner of the previous novels, this Anita cannot even drive a car by herself, she is so weakened or overtaken by these outside forces.

   As to the rest of the characters, some are getting fleshed out, but the ones that truly matter, such as Richard and Jean Claude, have become shadows of their former selves, with Jean Claude (and many of the other characters) coming across as overly obsequious to “ma petite” and Richard (again) coming across as nothing but a whiner, rather than the strong but conflicted lycanthrope we’ve seen in past novels. In addition, as the series has progressed, it seems that more and more of the other characters’ world revolves around Anita. In the beginning, characters had their own lives and interests in addition to their interaction with Anita; now it seems as if every character’s overriding interest in life (or death, depending on the character) is to bed, feed on, kill or psychoanalyze Anita.

   In addition, although I don’t have a problem with gratuitous sex, I do have a problem with the entire book being nothing but a series of sexual encounters. If I wanted that, I would buy a Nancy Friday book. And again, as alluded to above and as mentioned by another reviewer, why does it seem that EVERY available male is in love/lust with Anita to the point that each of them would do anything to have her?

   In addition to the moral dilemmas Anita has faced, the characteristics that make an Anita Blake novel enjoyable to me are as follows:

   - The superimposing of the supernatural world upon the real world. This has been lost in the more recent novels, as Anita has slipped deeper and deeper into the supernatural world.

   - Consistency within the supernatural world. While I understand that there are exceptions to rules, it seems that something that has never happened in the history of the world is always happening to Anita, or she is able to do something that she should not be able to because of her “marks”, etc.

   - Some mystery/suspense. So far, the most suspenseful thing in this novel was whether the threesome with Jean Claude and Asher was going to happen. I haven’t noticed a plot in this novel. It’s more like “a day in the life of Anita Blake when she’s having sex every five minutes.”

   - This kind of goes along with the previous point, but I loved seeing Anita work, especially with the police. There is some of that in this novel, but it has yet to be fully developed.

   - A strong, sassy Anita. She seems to have become nothing but a weak sex toy.

   - Multi-dimensional characters. The series has gone far afield from the original substantive characters that there are just a host of one-dimensional characters. In addition, there are now so many characters that it is difficult to keep up with them and there are way too many that are overly dependent on her. Finally, it seems to me that the many of the characters are interchangeable. Edward might have been kind of one-dimensional (I say “kind of” because there was always a bit of mystery behind his character), but at least he was different than the other characters.

   Ms. Hamilton, I’m glad that your strong past sales have convinced your publisher to provide your novels with the same level of visibility as more “mainstream” novels, but I am sorry that it has to be when the series is in such decline.

   Please go back to basics. Somehow get rid of the arduer and pare down the cast of characters so that there is time to more fully develop the ones that are left. Bring us a true mystery and let us see Anita at work more than having sex with various supernatural beings. I know – the last couple of novels were nothing but a long nightmare that Anita wakes from in the next one!

   
5. 

   Ernst @ 12:27 am

   I would’ve given this book 5 stars, if I thought its intent was to inspire fits of hilarity. But seeing as how the author wants to be taken seriously for this laugh riot, I have to go with 1 star. None wasn’t available.

   Now, don’t get me wrong, its quite an achievement to put the word “ardeur” in the books as many times as Ms Hamilton does. And its not just anyone that can make sex scenes so mechanical and uninteresting. And one particular sex act gets described in painstaking detail not once, not twice, but THREE seperate times. Is this a book or a sex manual? (and a bad one at that).

   And its frankly miraculous that so many incredibly stupid characters can find their way onto these pages. I think they might have had a brain once, though not since Blue Moon. But now? Whether its the totally self-absorbed Anita, a character that has become so unappealing its amazing that the rest of the characters haven’t ganged up and staked her already. Or Jean-Claude, the once clever and manipulative vampire who seems to lead his life according to what Anita wants on any given day. Or Richard, the once sympathetic and very human werewolf who now gives new meaning to the terms “bipolar and moody”. Or how about Micah? A character that wouldn’t know a personality if it bit him on his enormous…uh…nose. And then there’s the increasingly whiney Asher who puts his foot down with Anita. At least for a whole 50 pages he does. Then he caves like the rest of the girly-men that inhabit this book. Someday I might understand why Ms Hamilton thinks men with long hair, feminine feature, the ability to wear Anita’s clothes and no visible signs of a backbone are interesting. But I seriously doubt it.

   What was once a very interesting, fun and exciting serious seems more and more to me like a soap opera/authobiographical/erotica mishmash. Someone send in Edward with an uzi to clean house, and make sure not to miss Miss Blake.