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'Danse Macabre', new LKH book review...
Aug. 6th, 2006 07:18 pmOK, so some of us watch soap operas, and some of us have the unfortunate addiction to crack, and some of us read Laurell K. Hamilton, which seems like a pretty good approximation of a cross between the two. I just finished 'Danse Macabre', the latest Anita Blake book. If you're uninterested, just skip past this and be on your merry way...
Non-spoilery part:
In a nutshell, I liked it. Vastly entertaining, though please read the whole series first or you will literally have no idea what's going on. The series is worth it, especially to those in the audience (like, at least half of you...) who are part of the furry community or just interested in lycanthropy. LKH writes beautiful and diverse were-cultures, especially the wolves and leopards. She gets into the lions more in this one; very neat. Anita is a fun, tough protagonist (and an example of how an almost-Mary Sue type character can be used quite well). Like all of the post-'Narcissus in Chains' books, this one is sexy enough to be considered erotica (with vampires and weres---yay!) and it's *good* erotica. Unfortunately, the tradeoff of that seems to be the tight plotting and non-sexual character development of the earlier books. The last few have definitely relied heavily on the character as established in the earlier series, a flaw that this installment has improved greatly over the last one. Despite the fact that, objectively, there is very little, er, *plot* as such, this one feels like it is *about* more than 'Incubus Dreams', including some interesting explorations of possible dynamics and permutations in poly relationships.
( SPOILERS ahoy behind the cut! )
Non-spoilery part:
In a nutshell, I liked it. Vastly entertaining, though please read the whole series first or you will literally have no idea what's going on. The series is worth it, especially to those in the audience (like, at least half of you...) who are part of the furry community or just interested in lycanthropy. LKH writes beautiful and diverse were-cultures, especially the wolves and leopards. She gets into the lions more in this one; very neat. Anita is a fun, tough protagonist (and an example of how an almost-Mary Sue type character can be used quite well). Like all of the post-'Narcissus in Chains' books, this one is sexy enough to be considered erotica (with vampires and weres---yay!) and it's *good* erotica. Unfortunately, the tradeoff of that seems to be the tight plotting and non-sexual character development of the earlier books. The last few have definitely relied heavily on the character as established in the earlier series, a flaw that this installment has improved greatly over the last one. Despite the fact that, objectively, there is very little, er, *plot* as such, this one feels like it is *about* more than 'Incubus Dreams', including some interesting explorations of possible dynamics and permutations in poly relationships.
( SPOILERS ahoy behind the cut! )
