Danse Macabre [Livre audio] [Anglais] [CD]

I remember when this series was great. Not just good, not just very good, but simply great. Sure the first two books were a little rough in character and writing style. However, the characters were interesting, the setup was clever, and the A-line police work plots made an excellent framework for the B-line character development. By book three, the series had hit its stride and was simply a great fantasy series. Then, it stumbled. The sex became a larger part of the books and the characters became less and less interesting. I don't mind the sex but, as a previous reviewer has said, it's poorly done sex. There's no erotica, no sensuality, just a detailed step by step list in prose form of the steps Anita takes to screw one of her many lovers. It's a sexual flowchart and bores me to tears.

Beyond that, the non-sex parts are beginning to feel tacked on to the rest of the story. The ballet here was occasionally mentioned but didn't happen until the end and frankly is a pretty thin A-line plot. Where are the detective stories that made the series interesting?

I used to like the personal relationships but that time has passed. Anita is so screwed up right now she's just boring and one gets the impression that if Ms. Hamilton could find a way to get rid of Richard without screwing up the trinity, she would. I would enthusiastically recommend that she do so and let Richard eat a bullet and stop bothering the reader (and Anita) with his constant whining.

What really has ruined the series for me is Anita, which is quite unfortunate as she is the main character! Where before she was a somewhat screwed up woman, always up against superior enemies but surviving because of her strength she is now an uber-powerful monster with a new major power appearing in every book. She has also become a completely selfish, rigid, and unattractive sociopath, which kind of hurts her appeal. What amuses me greatly is how all of these men fall in love with her on sight because she is (so we're constantly told) a wonderful woman who always cares about her lovers's happiness who also happens to be hot with a large chest. The physical attributes might be true, the mental ones certainly aren't. She will only accept a relationship with a man if he does exactly as he is told, never steps out of bounds, and serves whatever role Anita demands. In return, he gets great sex. That's it. The only thing that she offers is fantastic sex, which makes her into a parody of the stereotype where an attractive woman who "puts out" when needed can be completely self-involved and have men want her. She doesn't offer compassion (unless it involves some form of sex), understanding (unless it involves some form of sex), support (unless it involves some form of sex), compromise (unless on a rare occasion it involves some form of sex), or anything that raises love beyond the purely physical. In short, she better pray that the ardeur stays with her because if she ever loses the ability to bring men lots of pleasure, she'll be living in an apartment with 30 cats.

Having read and been disappointed with Laurell K. Hamilton's latest work, I swore I'd never buy any more of her books. Well, I checked this one out of the library, so I spent none of my money, but even so I feel as though I've been robbed from time I could have spent reading something better. Danse Macabre is a dismal excuse for a novel. You get the impression that the author has either given up on the series or is too lazy to conjure up a decent and cohesive plot. And why should she make the effort when people continue to buy her books? I often devote the first paragraph of my reviews to summarizing the plot, so here goes. Anita Blake, the so-called vampire executioner and animator, might be pregnant and has no idea who the father could be. There's also something about a dance ball involving some powerful vampire Masters of the City. Oh, and more fighting between Anita and Richard. There is a new powerful vampire in town and we meet some mermaids. And there's sex. Lots of (extremely boring) sex. The end.

All of that stuff is thrown into this book without any real sense of a story or pretty much a point to anything. There is no plot in this book. There is, however, variations of the same ol' same ol' sex scenes that make trashy, low-budget porn movies seem like works of art in comparison. Sometimes I think the author opens up a file containing a previously written sex scene and all she does is change the setting and its characters and voila! A book has been written! I had hoped to read about vampire politics and the Mother of all Darkness to see if Hamilton had developed what she'd started in Cerulean Sins, but all I read was graphic, acrobatic sex scenes involving a variety of different positions, as if Hamilton wants to impress her readers with her knowledge of the Kama Sutra. (Not impressed.) I don't just skim those endless sex-filled pages, I skip them altogether. I have no problems with sex in fiction. I am quite the avid erotica reader. I read the most wonderful and explicit novel not so long ago: All U Can Eat by Emma Holly. Holly wrote quite a delectable novel that had palatable sex scenes mixed in with a compelling plot -- something LKH has failed to do. But that's beside the point. I began to read this series because of its fantasy element, not for the erotica. There is also a lot of conversations in this novel. Everyone analyzes everything. The men discuss Anita's many complexities (please!). The talking and analyzing were so long, tedious and repetitive that I wanted to scream. Anyway, as for the other aspects of the novel, Hamilton had some interesting bits and pieces that could have made remarkable plot points, but I'm afraid that none of it was developed in a plausible way. The vampire ballet thing, though it reminded me of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire, seemed interesting and promising, but I was sorely disappointed with the results. The mermaids also seemed like a fascinating new breed in this series, but again, they were underdeveloped. As for the characters, they are hardly worth mentioning. Hamilton has made some serious character assassinations that began with Narcissus in Chains. Jean-Claude, my once favorite vampire, is now a big bore, just another one in Anita's long string of effeminate, clingy and whiny lovers. Richard's inability to accept Anita's lifestyle and his own demons have been brought up again and again ad nauseam and I just don't care anymore. Nathaniel has become brazen in this book, telling Ronnie off when she makes a nasty remark. I had to wonder when he had suddenly grown a couple of you-know-whats because this behavior seemed very unlike the Nathaniel I'd read about in the other books. And it's just as well that Edward has been MIA since Obsidian Butterfly. Anita will probably screw him and turn him into another one of her devoted men in any event. Whatever. I can't muster the energy to care about this series anymore. Then why am I writing a review of it, you ask? Because I feel the need to snark to my heart's content after wasting time reading this train wreck. I will definitely check out the costumer reviews before I ever attempt to pick up another Anita Blake, Vampire Humper novel. I'll just reread her earlier stuff from now on.

Let me just start by saying, the first few books of this series were so good that Laurell K Hamilton became one of my favorite and most recommended authors. I quickly read through the entire Anita Blake series (and even began the Meredith Gentry series) but with each book I have grown more and more disappointed. With each of the last couple books, I vowed NOT to read the next one. Well, this is truly the end boys and girls.

Danse Macabre was so bad that I had to skim through the last 1/4 of the thing because I couldn't bare to read it all. I was closer than I've ever been to just tossing it, because even bad TV would be less excruciating.

There is no plot. No real sense of beginning, middle, or end. The entire book is a string of tedious, ususally inexplicable, and always overwrought discussions between the characters as they over-analyze their relationships with one another. (And as a drama queen myself, I'm not kidding when I say it's over the top). Every scene goes something like this: Anita is confused/angry/out of control while everyone around her seems to secretly know why she is confused or what's going on but they don't want to tell her. Then Anita goes on and on through her mental hamster wheel and teeth-pulling to get everyone to explain things to her, and when they finally do, it is something so simple and unimportant that you can't believe you had to read through all of that for nothing.

Since there is no plot, there is no real ending. Apparently, once Ms. Hamilton reached a certain number of pages she got tired and ended with a couple pages of Anita's narration as if she were wrapping up an entry in her diary... you know the kind: bland, totally unsatisfying and totally not resolving a darn thing. Ms. Hamilton broke the cardinal rule of writing: don't promise your readers something at the beginning of the book if you're not going to deliver on it. And if you're ambitious enough to write a series, have the imagination and follow-through for each book to stand on it's own.

Unfortunately, a lot of writers' work suffers with fame. The Publisher knows we'll buy the book whether it's good or not, so I doubt this book received much by way of any real editing. So, it's probably no wonder it's such a mess.

The bottom line is this book was bad enough that it made me angry, angry enough to write this review, which means I think the problems go far beyond a mere personal opinion. My advice: Bail out of this series now while you still have some small bit of goodwill toward the characters (& the author). Here's a brief synopsis of what happens in case you're worried you'll miss something: NOTHING.