Circus Of The Damned (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #3) By: Laurell K. Hamilton (Book Review)

 (This review will contain spoilers)

Summary:

In Circus of the Damned a rogue master vampire hits town, and Anita gets caught in the middle of an undead turf war. Jean-Claude, the Master Vamp of the city, wants her for his own-but his enemies have other plans. And to make matters worse, Anita takes a hit to the heart when she meets a stunningly handsome junior high science teacher named Richard Zeeman. They're two humans caught in the crossfire-or so Anita thinks.

This has been the best book so far in this series! We've got new bad guys, new supernatural creatures and a whole lot of violence. Just up my alley. I love that this world keeps expanding and we are still being introduced to new supernatural creatures. We got to meet werewolves, a giant cobra and a Lamia. Still not clear on where this giant cobra came from other than it has something to do with magic. I am not a fan of snakes and reading about them definitely put me on edge. Yet again Hamilton has this knack for being hella descriptive. I had to pause several times when the snake parts came into play that's how much I can't stand them. The Lamia creature was very interesting because it's a monster from Greek mythology the top half is human and the bottom half is a snake. I wonder what other mythological creatures we will be introduced to later in this series. 

We had two different bad guys or so we thought. We had Alejandro and his posse of vampires attacking and killing humans and then we had Mr. Oliver who had his human servant and the Lamia by his side. But they were in cahoots this whole time. Oliver being the head honcho in charge wanted to kill the master of the city to take over and revert everything back to how it was for vampires. Not being out in the open but being creatures of the night to be feared by mortals. Too many humans were becoming vampires and it won't take long till there will be more vampires than humans. 

We learned something new about vampires. If you become old enough you can have an affinity for a particular animal. In the first book, we saw Nikolaus' creature to be a rat which is how she was able to control the wererats, Jean-Claude's creature is a wolf and with that he can control werewolf's and Oliver is snakes. Which makes me wonder if it was him who caused the giant cobra at the beginning of the book to suddenly lose control and attack everyone. I think that vampires having the ability to control certain animals is really cool. Kinda opens up the world to a whole lot more of possibility. 

Anita is being coveted and targeted by everyone lately. She is an animator which means she can raise zombies but if she were to explore her powers and become a necromancer then she can control every dead creature which includes vampires. Can you imagine just how powerful she can become? Alejandro was in a rush to give Anita all four marks and make her his human servant. Which he ended up doing and it canceled out Jean-Claude's marks making Anita a human servant. Being a human servant to a fairly old vampire like Alejandro allows Anita to be basically immortal, stronger and faster. That's how she was able to stake Oliver and Alejandro. From what Anita has said Oliver should be over a million years old. So it's a tad bit anticlimactic when a newly transformed Anita is able to stake him so easily. The final fight was extremely epic, we had a machine gun, a flamethrower, a Lamia, werewolves and a whole of vampires. Everybody beating the crap out of each other and it took Anita to save the day! I love that she had to be the big hero and save everybody. 

I absolutely adore Anita and that she doesn't need no man in her life to complete her. But I'm also a hopeless romantic who loves love and now that Anita has a tall, dark and handsome man named Richard that has caught her eye. However, human he is not. He is a werewolf. Started off human but took a bad dose of lycanthropy vaccine that caused him to become a werewolf, ironic ain't it? There is so much we can unload when it comes to vaccines but I'll leave it as that for now.  

Rating:

5 stars on 5 for Circus of the Damned!!! We had non-stop action, mystery, new creatures and Anita kicking a lot of ass. Anita has to be quick on her feet and she knows she's not the biggest or baddest person in the room but she uses her wit to get her out of sticky situations. I do wish that the fight against Oliver wasn't so damn anticlimactic with him being soooo old but the other half of it is pretty awesome so I can't really complain. There was an inconsistency that bugged the shit out of me. One night she gets attacked with Larry the new animator and her car gets totaled and the next day she's out and about driving. With what car? No one knows but a few chapters after that then it's mentioned she'll have to get a rental. I guess that was missed during the editing process. It would effect the rating but the story was still really great. Highly recommend.