scary

It is official that I'm addicted to this series. I've even neglected the Merry Gentry series, Laurell K. Hamilton's faerie novels, which I started reading before the Anita Blake one. This is my favorite one to date. This series just keeps getting better and better! And the best part is that there is a lot of Jean-Claude in this one. The most I'd read him was in Circus of the Damned, and there are only bits and pieces of him in the other three, but he plays a more prominent role here. Bloody Bones illustrates the most challenging monsters Anita has ever had to deal with. Teenagers have been slaughtered in a small city of Missouri. The culprit is a creature unlike anything Anita has ever seen. It is stronger than a vampire, more dangerous and immortal to the core. To make matters worse, she has to raise an entire graveyard of three-hundred-year-old corpses to determine the fate of the graveyard's rather lucrative land, which is owned by a family of immortal faeries. Anita suspects that the graveyard raisings and the murders are connected, and with the help of her friends she is determined to bring all of those involved down...

Bloody Bones, like its predecessors, is nonstop action from beginning to end. The suspense is incredible, the fast-paced plot riveting. But it's more than just the action and suspense that kept me glued to this book. I loved that I finally got to know Jean-Claude in a deeper level. We learn more about Jean-Claude's background and history in a rather sexy bubble bath scene. JC and Anita fans will love to know that there is some closeness between them in this offering -- a fleeting closeness, but an important one nevertheless. And the best part is that Anita's werewolf boyfriend Richard is not in the way. I loved it! Laurell K. Hamilton describes Jean-Claude's sensuality in such a way that he's almost tangible. He's definitely one of the sexiest characters I've read. I also got to read about some great characters that were back after some notable absence, like Larry. I also like werewolf Jason. Anyway, this is my favorite offering. As said earlier, this series keeps getting better and better. I cannot wait to read the next one. In the meantime, I recommend Bloody Bones most highly...

The titles of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels always refer to some sort of establishment frequented by monsters and while "Bloody Bones" is the name of a eating place out in the sticks it is also the name of something much, much worse. Anita Blake and her trainee Larry (not Lawrence) Kinkaid are out in the sticks of Missouri to raise a bunch of really old zombies to settle a development issue. But then Dolph calls Anita to tell her the local cops need her help with a murder investigation that sure looks to our heroine like an incredible fast vampire using a really big sword. Of course, these and every other plot line in the book are all related. The "romantic" triangle between Anita, Jean-Claude and Richard is pretty much on the back burner this time around, although Jean-Claude and his pet werewolf Jason show up to help Anita meet Serephina, the local master. Boy, does that ever turn out to be a mondo-mistake.

"Bloody Bones," the fifth book in the Anita Blake "Vampire Hunter" series, is similar to the previous couple of books. The menagerie of monsters continues to grow, with faeries and worse being added to the roster, while Anita's powers as a Necromancer continue to grow at the most opportune moments. In terms of writing pure horror, Hamilton knows how to lay it out big time. If Hollywood ever dared to film these books as she writes them they would be NC-17 (at least). Yes, Hamilton tends to play the same cards in getting Anita out of her dire predicaments, but as a writer of horror novels with scenes of disquieting intensity that will make it difficult for you to sleep at night, she has Lovecraft, King and Barker beat. She is so good at coming up with scenes of outright horror that go on and on, that I will not let my teenager daughter read these books.

I admit I've read the first five books of Anita Blake in just a few weeks. I'm hooked on the sexual tension, the action, violence and the fiction. Yet, I just keep getting annoyed with the vampires. From the beginning all they do is play games. They can never just have a conversation, or answer a simple question, or leave people alone... Jean Claude is a little better in this book, but he's still a stuck up prissy pretty boy who can't dress and always needs Anita to save him, and yet thinks he's powerful enough to keep trying to seduce her. It's not even about vampire politics, it's just games. I just want to slap them all silly and tell them to just do and say what ever it is they want and get it over with. Arghhh, maybe it's this frustration that also has me hooked, because I'll keep reading her books even though I know the vamps will only keep getting worse. But I'm looking forward to more sex in the next books...