Danse Macabre (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #14) By: Laurell K. Hamilton (Book Review)

 ***This review will contain spoilers***

Summary:    

These days, Anita Blake is less interested in vampire politics than in an ancient, ordinary dread she shares with women down the ages: she may be pregnant. And, if she is, whether the father is a vampire, a werewolf, or someone else entirely, he knows perfectly well that being a Federal Marshal known for raising the dead and being a vampire executioner, is no way to bring up a baby.

I'm on the fence with this book. I'm not sure if I like it or if I hate it. There was some type of plot. Was it well executed? Definitely, not. Was there a lot of sex scenes? Yeah, but again it's like Hamilton is using sex scenes to fill the book. By that I mean, it seems like she's trying to meet a page quota so she's just putting in a ton of sex scenes to meet it. It seems like whenever we're progressing in the story she drops a sex scene. I'm not sure if it's because she's not sure what to do next to get the plot going but it's getting on my nerves. The first half a dozen books in this series focused primarily on the plot which the story was amazing and the Anita Blake universe was continually growing. But there has been a huge decline on quality and it's such a let down. 

There was a bit of a storyline going on but it was completely overshadowed by all the god damn sex that we are forced to endure. Essentially, Jean-Claude invited fellow Master of the City vampires into his territory so they could all enjoy the performance of the first all vampire ballet company and as well to find Anita a pomme de sang. They made it to the ballet which almost seemed like an impossible mission with all the sex Anita needed to have. But one thing that was missed that made things so anticlimactic was them not actually meeting all the Master of the City vampires. Anita met a couple who were Jean-Claude's friends but otherwise this huge meet up never happened nor was it mentioned in the final chapter. There was this huge build up that was essentially for nothing because it never happened. 

I swear the whole baby angle was to garner attention and to not lose her audience too soon in the book. It's like when a housewife says she's thinking about having a baby when we all know she never will. It's cause she has no on going storyline so she makes that up. Same thing is going on here in the book. Hamilton has lost her mojo so she throws out random shit to keep things interesting. The baby angle left pretty quickly. A false positive from a home test but her bloodwork shows that she's not entirely human which duh. She's been shoving that down our throat for a while now. That wasn't shocking at all. 

What was shocking is how much Hamilton is turning Anita into Belle Morte. Throughout the series, Belle Morte is described as a manipulating, power hungry bitch who doesn't care about anyone but herself. It's like Hamilton is trying to do her version of Belle Morte through Anita. Anita is developing powers like a vampire does, she has these beasts inside her that seem to want to come out and make her shapeshift and it seems she's only growing with power. Weirdly enough, it seemed during sex she was able to level up Asher and he finally has a animal to call. Reminds me a lot of her Merry Gentry series. She has a harem of men to have sex with and through sex more powers become developed. So, I don't know if Hamilton is blurring the lines between both heroines but it feels like the story has too many similarities. Heck, Belle Morte is reminiscent of Queen Andais from the Merry Gentry series. She's selfish, manipulative as fuck and does what she wants when she wants it. Even though the stories are vastly different, the more I read on the more correlations I can make between both series. 

Rating:

I am going to give Danse Macabre 2 stars on 5. Even though I wasn't overly thrilled with the book I do like the introduction of new characters. If we see them again who knows but overall I'm getting tired of this series. If Hamilton would have given up around 6 books in of this series it would have been better than her continuing on this train wreck. There's nothing wrong with smut books but don't get your audience hooked in and then switch the whole theme around on them like this. It's becoming almost too much to bear and I hate that I have to keep reading this series because I stupidly bought most of the books when I read through the first few books in the series and loved them. (huge face palm lol)