Narcissus In Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #10) By: Laurell K. Hamilton (Book Review)

 (This review will contain spoilers)

Summary:

Just returned to St. Louis after six months away, Anita is still no closer to choosing between her lovers—Jean-Claude, a vampire, and Richard, a werewolf. But she has to rely on both for help after two of the wereleopards that she has been watching are abducted at a seedy club called Narcissus in Chains.

Anita and her boyfriends rescue the wereleopards from the sinister people holding them, but Anita is wounded in the fight and put at risk of becoming a wereleopard herself. Richard angrily captures the wereleopard he believes is responsible and threatens to execute him.

Anita must now rescue that wereleopard from Richard and the werewolves he leads, even as she mourns the apparent end of her relationship with him. Then she realizes that those who kidnapped the first two wereleopards are targeting other lycanthropes. Maybe she will be next.

This book took a whole different turn than I expected and have been used to. There have been small teasers of a ménage à trois situation with Anita, Jean-Claude and Richard. But Richard has got too much going on in his head to get the situation to work right for him so it never happened. It seemed at the beginning of this book that Richard was finally into the idea of moving towards that direction but when Anita gets scratched by Gregory; a wereleopard, and the ardeur that she inherited from Jean-Claude, Richard ends up majorly freaking out on Anita saying he can't be with a monster, especially, since she seems to be accepting of her changes. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't like Richard! The self-loathing, the major high horse that he is always on and the self-deprecation is just too much. There's not enough couch time for what is wrong with Richard. He is a liability and he needs to accept what he is and grow the fuck up. He has been a werewolf for years and has yet to accept what and who he is. If he doesn't it will end up getting himself and many others killed. He's too soft and his leniency will be the reason for his downfall, especially, when it comes to his pack. He's allowed too many new people into the pack and has tried to turn it into a democracy but that never works out in a werewolf pack. At the end of the book, the werewolves, wererats and the wereleopards come in to the rescue and when Richard gets injured he gives up and wishes for his death. You can't be a leader of a ferocious pack and not have the will and drive to survive so your pack may follow your lead. 

Anita has had a lot of changes in this one book. She's got a new man in her life named Micah which I thoroughly approve, she inherited the ardeur from Jean-Claude and she might be a wereleopard. The biggest change is the ardeur which is essentially means she needs to feed on sex and sexual activities like how Jean-Claude needs to feed on people for blood. And now Anita needs to have sex all the time or else she gets super needy sexually and ends up not being herself. I am a firm believer that you can learn a lot from a writer through their work and I think Laurell K. Hamilton is shining through with this whole ardeur deal. Like what the fuck kind of shit is that? From minor sex scenes (that don't happen often) to full blown out sex scenes. Like girl, I get you're experimenting sexually but you don't need to ruin this series to let us all know you're getting dicked down. I'm cool with occasional sex scenes but I hope that this book is not an indicator on how the rest of the series will be. 

A cool and different concept that was introduced was that Anita is not a wereleopard but that wereleopards are her animal to call just like how master vampires sometimes have their own animal to call. It would be really awesome if somehow she can end up shapeshifting into a leopard. Not only does Anita have an animal to call but she also has a vampire servant; Damian. Which is the equivalent to her being Jean-Claude's human servant. Very different to what we've seen thus far. The ardeur is the weirdest shit she got from Jean-Claude but everything else is pretty neat. 

As if Anita didn't have enough on her plate already in comes Micah the Nimir-Raj of his pard. The real intention was to take over Anita's pard but they somehow get attached to each other like mates. Not super clear on what they are to each other since so much was happening but he's essentially dating Anita and sort of replacing Richard. The triumvirate itself hasn't changed but Anita, Jean-Claude and Micah have the start to a ménage à trois. I approve of Micah because he doesn't judge Anita for who and what she is. I also like the fact that he's willing to kill to protect his pard and Anita. Richard is so far gone down the rabbit hole that he can't even help himself. I find Micah to be a better fit for Anita than Richard. 

The last bit of this book had me on edge. It was insane, action-packed and everything you could possibly want when you finish reading a book. A ton of different shifter leaders from different animal species go missing and it's up to Anita to figure out what happened to them. Anita was hundred percent correct in saying that shifters need to look out for each other because it could have avoided having so many go missing. Chimera; a panwere who can shift into multiple animals is the one behind the disappearances and has captured Micah and Cherry to torture and to lure Anita to him. Despite her tough exterior Anita has a bleeding heart for people in need of rescuing. When Chimera had Anita cornered with no help in sight, she protected and defended herself with her own power. She sucked the life of Chimera and sent that energy to Richard who was basically on the ground dying and not trying to survive. She gave the werewolves the push to keep on fighting and not to give up. Richard is not fit to lead and he doesn't even have the drive to survive. If it wasn't for Anita he would have died and taken his wolves down with him. 

Rating:

I am going to give Narcissus in Chains 4.5 stars on 5. This book had so much action, so many new characters and lots of changes but unfortunately not all of them were great. The reason why I didn't give this book a perfect rating is because of all of the weird sex scenes popping up. I get this is fantasy and made up but creating this random thing to try to rationalize all these random sex scenes does not appeal to me or make much sense. Everything else was amazing and on point!