Dead Ice (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #24) By: Laurell K. Hamilton (Book Review)

 ***This review will contain spoilers***

Summary:

Anita Blake has the highest kill count of any vampire executioner in the country. She’s a U.S. Marshal who can raise zombies with the best of them. But ever since she and master vampire Jean-Claude went public with their engagement, all she is to anyone and everyone is Jean-Claude’s fiancée.

It’s wreaking havoc with her reputation as a hard ass—to some extent. Luckily, in professional circles, she’s still the go-to expert for zombie issues. And right now, the FBI is having one hell of a zombie issue.

Someone is producing zombie porn. Anita has seen her share of freaky undead fetishes, so this shouldn’t bother her. But the women being victimized aren’t just mindless, rotting corpses. Their souls are trapped behind their eyes, signaling voodoo of the blackest kind. It’s the sort of case that can leave a mark on a person. And Anita’s own soul may not survive unscathed . . .

This book is exactly why I am going to keep reading through this series! For the most part it reminded me of early Anita Blake books. WE ACTUALLY HAD A PLOT!!!! Who knew that was going to be something that would be lacking over the series. When Hamilton has a actual plot going then you know it'll be a good book. There were parts where she was trying to throw in her weird orgy mix of people but for the most part we had a viable storyline that we could follow through to the end. 

Zombie sex slaves...yeah in our crazy world if necromancy was a possibility you know damn well there would be sickos willing to pay for such a thing. The problem with these sex slaves was that their souls were trapped in the bodies so they could be preserved and not rot. Anita being the not so tech savvy woman that she is tries to find a way to figure out who raised the zombies through recordings of the zombie girls in action. 

This book was good and did have a few minor plotlines going on simultaneously as the zombie sex slave one. We had Asher fucking up as per usual but then we have Anita facing a misogynistic douche which feels like she does almost every book at this point. If its not the police or the feds giving her a "hard" time for her sex life then it's a douchebag trying it with her. 

I'm so done with the character of Asher, he had the potential to be a really great main character but now he's barely a background figure who is used to create chaos when Hamilton needs some filler scenes for the flow of the story. Just going off of the past books we've had with Asher, he never would have made Kane his animal to call because he was pressured to. Kane isn't powerful enough to warrant that title. Asher after his power up becoming a master vampire could have gone elsewhere and taken his own territory. Hell he could have made Narcissus his animal to call and strengthened his powerbase and then been a huge problem for Jean-Claude. I personally would have preferred going that route. There's too many lovers around so let's have them turn on each and kill a few off because Hamilton has got too many lovers around that in no universe would 20+ people would be okay with fucking each other and sharing. I would have loved it if Asher made Narcissus his animal to call and tried to wage war on Jean-Claude and one of them had to die. I'm not about having characters/ lovers be murdered but at this point someone has got to go. 

This weird sex orgy that Hamilton tries making happen but yet never actually fully writes is becoming a nuisance. It's teasing to the reader. Let me bring you to the edge but not let you finish. How rude! It's like she has this idea of who she wants to have sex with each other but yet doesn't have the know how to write it all out. A few books back Anita was against women then the ardeur made it ok and now she's making out with them in bunches. What the heck is going on? I'm all for being progressive but Anita admitted that if it weren't for the Ardeur she never would have been with a woman. Talk about rape by magic. How everyone in the story thinks it's normal makes me feel like I'm in the twilight zone. 

One thing that I wished was further expanded on was Anita's powers growing. She brought back a old corpse but it seemed like the zombie was a little more conscious than her typical zombies. It seemed as he had his soul back because he had so much life to his otherwise dead body. Anita was able to finally put him back in his grave after a long night of trying to figure out what to do but we never got an answer to how she was able to do that. The only actual 'answer' we got was the blood sacrifice was too big. 

The big bad animator behind these zombie sex slaves was the son of Dominga Salvador. Familiar name from earlier in the series when things didn't suck as badly and had a consistent plot. The ending felt almost anti-climactic. She shot Max (Dominga's son) but I would have preferred if they fought with their magic instead. Would have been a lot better than just her shooting him from a distance. 

Rating:

I'm giving Dead Ice 3.5 stars on 5. This has been very much needed since the past few books have been lackluster and a total waste of time. There were some weird and annoying sub plots running but for the most part there was a plot to follow. God knows that has been lacking. I hope this continues otherwise I might just give up this series altogether.