Book #71

Cerulean Sins
by Laurell K. Hamilton

Geez, what am I going to do when I finish all of these books and I no longer know exactly what I'm going to read next, half the time? I know -- I'll read the Merry Gentry series. Ha. Take that. And by the time I've finished that set, Hamilton will probably have written four more books that we'll need to buy and read. Stupid prolific authors.

All right, so in this book we have several subplots, as has become the norm for this series. The main plot has to do with vampires, as the book before focused on weres -- Narcissus and Chimera and the werehyenas, and Anita becoming Bolverk for Richard and so on -- and I bet the next book will focus on humans, in some way. The vampire plot here started with Belle Morte, the sourdre de sang (Source of blood, and though I love these characters and it fits them well, I still hate the French language) of Jean-Claude and Asher's bloodline. She has been negotiating an official state visit to St. Louis, and now she breaks the rules and sends her emissaries early, just to mess with our heroes. Freaking vampires. I loved that this book got deeper into the psyche of those freaking vampires; Belle Morte is the way she is because she considers herself the most alluring woman in the world, and she is confused and offended that there are two men who left her -- and since those two men are Asher and Jean-Claude, here she comes to St. Louis. She also believes that everything that she thinks belongs to her descendants also belongs to her; makes sense for someone so egomaniacal. So she wants Anita, specifically, and maybe Richard and the wolves and the leopards and anyone else who she feels like taking over or just messing with.

So she sends Musette, a lovely little thing, who was a great character because she wasn't actually terrifying herself; in fact, she was kind of stupid. There's a great scene when she tries to insult Anita, and it doesn't work because Anita doesn't have the same values -- but then Anita insults Musette and cuts her to the quick without even trying, because Anita is not an idiot. The horrifying vampires in this book were Belle Morte, who possesses Musette in order to make an appearances in St. Louis despite being in France -- and I assume Hamilton did that so that Anita wouldn't have a chance to kill Belle Morte quite yet, as she seems to whack any vampire who appears in these books other than those in Jean-Claude's circle (And she kills some of them, too.) -- and the Mother of All Darkness, who has begun to awake, and who finds Anita interesting. She's particularly creepy, an effect carried off by the use of a nice little plot device: the creepiest vampire in this bunch, the child Valentina, thinks the MOAD is creepy. Creepy at one remove; I liked it. Anyway, Belle messes with our heroes again and again and again, with some limited success; I liked that Musette was the undoing of Belle's plans, and that the two child vamps, Valentina and Bartolome, show some honor and drift away from Belle and Musette.

The subplots involve Anita bringing Asher into a menage a trois with her and Jean-Claude, which kind of worked but not completely; I liked that he and Anita had trouble dealing with their impasse, because I thought it kept true to the characters, but I dislike that there's an impasse. I got really ticked at Anita for being mad at Asher, but I also understood why she didn't want him rolling her mind; I was extremely happy when she worked it out in her head, and I hope the issue is resolved, now. Then there was the murders, which brought Anita into a final conflict with Dolph and his anti-monster prejudice; Dolph has finally gone off the deep end and now Zerbrowski's in charge of the unit. Probably a good thing, really, but I was sad to see Dolph go; I liked him in the beginning. The murders were nicely done, really, since they tied in to the main story. It made it easier to handle the limited space that was dedicated to the mystery itself, as so much of the book has to do with the vampires and the ardeur. Oh, one thing about that -- there's a rather difficult scene when Belle is messing with Anita's head, giving her ardeur lust and then bloodlust, and she can't keep herself from attacking either Jason or Caleb or Nathaniel, none of whom she wants to screw or eat at the moment, while they are speeding down the highway in a Jeep. And I just wondered: why didn't someone just knock her out? I know she's all badass and stuff, but come on: somebody could have clocked her in the head, and it would have been so much easier to deal with the situation then. Well, maybe they couldn't. Anyway, I liked the murder mystery and how they finally got to the solution, and I really liked how Anita ended it.

Now I hope we get some more detail about Micah and maybe some resolution of the RPIT squad, and maybe even Animators, Inc. That would be cool.