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Type of bind: Kindle Edition
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Format: Kindle Book
Label: Jove
Manufacturer: Jove
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 608
Printing Date: March 03, 2007
Publishing house: Jove
Release Date: March 03, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 2192
Studio: Jove
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Product Description:
'Whenever the phone rings before dawn something big is probably up, and the fact that Anita Blake has been up all night dealing with zombies doesn't make this call an exception. 'Ted Forrester needs backup from Anita Blake, Vampire executioner,' Edward tells her, using the pseudonym he keeps for those rare times when he needs a legal identity. And she owes him a favor. So by noon she's on a plane to Santa Fe, sun-drenched town of wealthy retirees, where in the last two weeks twelve people have been murdered. The dead ones had it easy; other victims have been completely flayed, but kept horribly alive by magic. Seeing them in the hospital, Anita feels uncharacteristically shaken. Edward's 'Ted Forrester' identity has her nearly as spooked as the crimes: He's working with the local police, courting a likable widow with two kids, and generally making like a good ol' boy. Anita knows the real nature he's hiding beneath his mask of normality--and she finds 'Ted' perhaps more frightening than Edward. But she must put aside her fear to help Edward hunt down the greatest evil she has ever encountered. It's ancient and devious--and, in the end, she will have to face it alone.'
Amazon.com Review:
Anita Blake, the tough, sexy vampire executioner, zombie animator, and police consultant for preternatural crimes in St. Louis, hunts monsters in New Mexico in the ninth book of Laurell K. Hamilton's excellent series. Edward, Anita's mentor in slaying, asks Anita to return the favor that she has owed him since she killed a backup he brought in to protect her. He needs Anita's preternatural expertise as well as her firepower. Something is skinning and mutilating a few of its chosen victims, and dismembering others. Edward has no idea what creature could be responsible for such heinous crimes.
Summoning Anita has its downside for Edward, since it means letting her onto his turf. Anita is surprised to find that this normally aggressive man has a personal life, and shocked by his ability to be entirely different from the stone cold killer she's known. She also has problems with the cop in charge in Albuquerque, who believes her powers must be evil, and with the other backups Edward has brought in. Most of all, she has to deal with her own vulnerability--she's tried to shut down her ties to her vampire and werewolf lovers and go it alone, but it turns out to be harder than she thought.
Anita's usual supporting cast is missing, and she's taking time out from her complex love life, but there's plenty of bloody action, vampires, werewolves, and Aztec ritual. Plus a lot more about Edward. Fans will find this installment similar to the earlier books in the series, particularly The Laughing Corpse. --Nona Vero.
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Rated by buyers 
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Gotta love this book. Hamilton writing at her best. The subsequent books lose it a bit, but this one is IMHO by far the best of the series. Great plot, tightly written action, some great little twists, great characters (gotta love Bernardo and Olaf and the poor old cops....), more is revealed of Edward. All in all, this book illustrates what Hamilton can come out with when she's writing at her peak.
Well worth the read - altho it makes more sense if you've read the earlier books in the series.
Rated by buyers -
I know,I know I say it every time but this is book is GOOD. oh my god I just love it. you must read it. Laurell Hamilton you are an amazing human being.
Rated by buyers -
Laurell Hamilton has an extremely vivid fantasy and is able to create situations full of suspense and mystery. Anita Blake is always an incredible character...not only she's a great heroine, but she's also funny!
The plot of this book is very well created and i couldn't almost put the book down!
Rated by buyers -
All right, so I'm up to Book 9 in the series now, and I still haven't lost any interest. Reading these as quickly as I have been has made them seem like one extremely long novel, rather than a series; I can't decide if it's better or worse this way. But the fact that the characters are still fascinating to me and the stories haven't lost anything over the course of -- what, 3000 pages? Something like that -- shows me that this is a series that is worth pursuing, something that I plan to read and enjoy more than once. Maybe subsequent time I'll read them with a little more space in between.
This one was excellent, though slower than the ones before it. Slower partly because it was longer, jumping 150, 200 pages in length over Blue Moon, and slower partly because it was just slower-paced. There was much less action and much more investigating and talking to different people in this one, which was a little disappointing inasmuch as it was Edward's book, and I expected that to be nothing but slaughter. But after reading it, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way, because it was fascinating to examine the disparate attitudes and morals and desires of the Four Psychos of the Apocalypse, Edward, Bernardo, Olaf, and Anita. These four run the gamut of serial killers, since that's what all of them are, and I loved comparing them over the course of the book.
You have Bernardo, who isn't really in it for the kill, but is simply good at what he does and has found a place where he belongs in his role as killer-for-hire. Since he doesn't love the kill, he does as much bodyguard work as anything, and he chafes the worst under the necessity of waiting for a break in the case. Then you have Olaf, who is a true serial killer -- a sexual sadist. He's in it for the kill, but not this kind of kill, so he has trouble with this case as well, but for a different reason: he has trouble because he has a terrible time resisting his own desire to kill Anita. The case becomes something he just wants to get finished so he can get back to what he loves: murder. Then there are our two heroes, Anita and Edward; throughout all the earlier books, Anita has worried that she is becoming too much like Edward, too willing to kill for too little reason. Not surprising, as she has dropped several hints that Edward had much to do with making her the way she is; most of her guns are either given to her or suggested to her by Edward, and her biggest internal struggle -- the conflict between her connection to her two boys, and Edward's most basic philosophy, "You don't sleep with the monsters, you kill the monsters" -- comes directly from her desire to live up to Edward's example in some way. So she has been worrying that she will become as bad as, if not worse than, Edward. In this book, it turns out, she really has reached Edward's level, but not because she sank that low: rather, Edward came up. The empty, cold-hearted killer, who exists only for the thrill of a challenging hunt and a deadly climax, has found love. He has found a family. And when he comes together with these other three murderers, they actually become friends, as much as these people can. Even Olaf -- though his perception of Anita, particularly, is pretty far from what I'd call friendship. But it fit perfectly with his character.
How many writers can do that? How many can not only write a convincing serial killer, but four convincing serial killers, of disparate types, and also portray their interactions in what seems a realistic way? The only other one I've known is Stephen King, who's done similar things in novels with multiple villains -- like It, with Pennywise and Ace and Beverly's father all playing different villain roles at different points. I think it says quite a lot about Laurell Hamilton that her name goes subsequent to his in my mind with this accomplishment.
The story was okay; I liked Obsidian Butterfly, both her story and her power/character, and I liked the mystery surrounding the deaths. I didn't think much of the "god," though his outfit was the ickiest thing in this oft-icky series since the rotting vampire sex or the zombie scenes in The Laughing Corpse. Good to see the theme of horrifying-multi-person-zombie come back around again, thanks to that twisted little nutjob Nicky Baco. I was a little bummed that even after 600 pages of Edward's story, I still never got to see him cut loose and slaughter people by the score; that was Olaf, Bernardo, and Anita. Which was still cool. And I liked Anita's difficulty in dealing with celibacy and her final decision regarding Richard and Jean-Claude -- and it was nice to have a book without the two of them flexing and ma-petite-ing all over the place. Though now I want them back in it, so we can see what happens next!
Rated by buyers -
After reading her other works, this one has the least sex scenes and is the best book in the series.
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