Flirt (Anita Blake 18)
Flirt
(Anita Blake 18)
(Anita Blake 18)
Laurell K. Hamilton, 2010
Premise: Anita is actually at her day job, raising the dead, when she's interrupted by abduction and mercenaries threatening her loved ones. This is why super-heroes have secret identities.
Wow. Can I just say wow? I admit that I am impressed. After having fallen so low, to be able to write up out of the hole, without actually ret-conning the mess out of existence. That takes some remarkable skill, or incredible luck. It was fun and exciting and dark in the right places. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and that's the first one in this series I can say that about without reservation probably since book number 11 or 12.
The quote on the cover is right. It is good to see Anita raising the dead. In some of the recent books a reader could easily be forgiven for thinking she didn't have a day job.
Part of what's so good about this one is the simplicity. It's a short book in which Anita has to make the hard choices, and to use her powers both to protect and destroy. She feels like she's coming into her own, at last. She knows how to handle her power, now she's learning how to decide when to use it. I always like her power, her necromancy, to be a bigger deal than all the other supernatural abilities she's gained over the series.
In this one she managed to deal with the whole internal-beasts-but-not-really-a-were thing in a way that didn't feel nearly so ridiculous. I chalk that up to some actually decent writing. Although, I would like to see some vampires again in this vampire series. (Interesting vampires, please; not boring/repetitive like in Skin Trade (book 17).
Yes there is still a somewhat silly sex scene. And I already need a chart to understand her love life, so I hope LKH is done adding characters for a while. But I'm not sure I should hold out much hope for that.
It was one of those moments that Miss Manners didn't cover....if your guy friend and sometimes lover feels left out when you're cuddling your boyfriends at lunch, do you owe him a cuddle?I also really enjoyed the extra back matter – the “how I got the idea and wrote this book” Author's Note. I just love Author's Notes, and this one is quite friendly and well written.
4 Stars – A Really Good Book
I put the downgrade of the series a lot lower than book 11 or 12. The first six were totally awesome, and it started going downhill from there, one small bite at a time. You may be right, though, in that at 11 or 12 was when I really had to debate whether to pay good money for the next book each time one came out.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it was rather nice to once again follow Anita at her day job. Clean n' straightforward storyline, with all the usual elements present in good balance. I really enjoyed this one...and still can't decide whether a longer book would've been a good or bad thing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
-Alisha