I’ve been telling myself that I wasn’t going to read anything written by Laurell K. Hamilton anymore, but as soon as this book was available for pre-order on Amazon, I jumped right on it. I’m sick in the head, I know. This anthology includes fourteen short stories, eight of which have been previously published and only six of them new. It’s a total rip-off, right? Fortunately, I have never read any of them. One of the stories features a younger Anita Blake who has never met Jean-Claude or Richard and was refreshingly ardeur-free. She was just a necromancer, period. It gave me hope—however fruitless—that Ms. Hamilton will crawl out of her own ass one day and write Anita Blake the way she used to be. Not that I’m holding my breath or anything. After all, I’ve already given up hope that Firefly will ever come back. The other stories vary in quality from so-so to pretty good, but none of them really jumped out at me. I have to say that while I enjoyed reading this book, it almost felt like a chore. But hey, I enjoy vacuuming, so maybe I am a masochist. Every story is accompanied by a short little explanatory note from Ms. Hamilton herself, the tone raging from bitter to ha-ha-famous-author smugness. As I read the notes, I realized, “Wow, I really don’t like this woman,” but I’m going to keep reading her books, anyway, even though they suck. Why, you ask? Just shut up and read the review.
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Grade: D+

I can say it. I can finally say it. I AM DONE WITH YOU, LAURELL K. HAMILTON! My friends told me that I was insane for sticking with you even after the literary abortion that was Narcissus in Chains, but good god, woman, I counted one hundred and twenty grammatical and typographical errors in the first ten chapters of this steaming pile of crap you dare call a book. Count ‘em. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY. But that’s not all. You also managed to use the word ardeur fifteen times on one page. That’s right. Fifteen. In fact, I can count on my ten fingers the number of pages of this book that didn’t have the word “ardeur” on it. Why can’t we just call a duck a duck, huh? Anita is a slut-bag-whore true and true and I’m okay with that. I lurve slut-bag-whores, especially the ones who admit it to themselves. We don’t need this stinkin’ ardeur to complicate things. It just sounds like Eric Benet trying to tell Halle Berry that he’s a “sex addict”. You don’t gotta justify Anita wanting to have sex with all of Missouri. As if that’s not enough, Anita finds out that she’s also pregnant (come on now, at the rate she’s going, I’m surprised she hasn’t already metaphysically shat out five kids in the last six months). Oh, and she’s now a lioness, too. And a succubus. And this time, a whole bus load of people actually come to see her and beg to fuck her. And I can’t tell you how many times I threw this book against the wall. There are DENTS, people, actual dents on the wall now. Why did I keep picking it up again? ‘Cause I’m a masochist, alright? Why do you think I created this site?My buddy Karen Scott says, “That’s what you said about Micah’s story, honey. Give it up and admit it, you love LKH like a fat kid loves cake.” Shut up, Karen. Don’t look at me like you think I need Intervention. Why don’t you lock yourself up in a room with your MJD books and quit judging me?
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Grade: D+

Today was the first day of my summer vacation. I didn’t have to worry about waking up early to rush to campus or… you know, to actually do anything. I haven’t even taken a shower yet. I mean, since I really didn’t have anything to do today, I decided that I was just going to lay around all day and catch up on my TBRs and reviews. It was too bad that I started with this book. It’s not the most horrible thing I have ever read, but it was just so goddamn exhausting. While reading this book, I found myself actually groaning out loud and at one point, actually yelled, “For God’s sake, just get on with it!” and would have thrown the book across the room if… umm… it had been a print book and I wasn’t reading it on Tim’s iBook. The heroine and her boyfriend have the dubious honors of being the most boring couple I have ever read about. And the hero and his girlfriend (that’s right, the hero of this book is not the love interest of the heroine) are just as boring, but at least the girlfriend was white trash and kind of amusing in a Britney Spears kind of way. What I didn’t understand about this book is why it was written in a first-person narrative when Whitlock had planned to tell it from the points of view of the heroine AND the hero. It was really kind of confusing. If the chapters hadn’t been tagged by their names, I don’t think I would have known whose point of view I was reading. As if that’s not enough, the two of them are constantly intercutting into each other, interrupting the narrative flow often when things are about to get interesting. It was just an odd choice for a narrative, you know? What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned third-person omniscient narrative? Oh, and by the way, this is a secret baby story. That’s right. You heard me. This entire book is too long, too predictable, and too damned exhausting. The only thing that made me raise my eyebrows was when the author referred to Asian women as “Oriental” on page 21. Sigh. But this book’s worst offense? There is no sex. None. Not even between the sleazy husband and his skanky girlfriend. That’s just wrong, man.
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Grade: D

Woo-hoo, another contemporary vampire romance novel! Only this one features a vampire heroine who faints at the sight of blood! That’s hilarity, I tell ya. Pure comic brilliance. Oh, and I’m being sarcastic, by the way. I’m bitchy like that. Anyway, I’ve read the other books in this series, one was Single White Vampire which featured a Meg Ryan type of heroine that made me want to plunge a screwdriver into my brain through my eye socket. The other was Love Bites, which I don’t remember very well, except it had a villain named Pudge who was just some weirdo who worshipped the hero, but the hero wouldn’t give him the time of day, so he snaps (kind of like what’s-his-name from the Incredibles). In those books, we encounter a sister of the Argoneau boys who is married to a psychologist named Greg. This entry in the series is really more like a prequel because it tells the story of how Greg and Lissiana get together. At the core of this book is a pretty cool idea, but the execution is marred by annoying secondary characters and the bullshit Barbie characterization of the heroine.
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Grade: D

In theory, this book should have been kickass. I mean, we’ve got two leads who were forcibly married when they were children (to each other) and now that they’re all grown up, the female is a celebrate London actress and the male is a powerful marquis who wants the female to be his mistress, without knowing that she is actually his wife. Add to that a scheming former mistress who pretends she’s pregnant just to trap the marquis and a pretty powerful supporting male lead (sequel bait) who plays the heroine’s boss and is all deliciously broody and yummy, and THIS BOOK SHOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME. But it’s not awesome. It’s not even good. In fact, it’s pretty frickin’ dull. How could a book with a ridiculously evil mistress who is practically cackling as she schemes against the saintly sweet heroine be so damned boring? At first the book had me pretty engaged. I mean, the heroine is all feisty and determined, while the hero is all appropriately bitter and rakish, but then… it all just falls apart. At the end of the book, I just felt kind of gypped.
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