Danse Macabre, by Laurell K. Hamilton

I used to really like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books. The first few were about a hardened, hard-nosed private eye, living in a world where supernatural monsters were as common as bikers or adulterers. As a sideline, when the law required it Anita would hunt down vampires and destroy them.

Hamilton mixed the tropes of horror and Mike Hammer-style detectives very effectively. The books weren't great, but they were fun entertainment.

I won't speculate about why the changes happened, but over the years Anita changed from a woman who was mocked for being too chaste into a woman who, in one book, literally bedded several men every single day, and adopted a few kinky S&M practices as well. I described that period of Blake books in this very blog as basically pornography.

Now it has gotten worse, at least for this reader. I looked at her Danse Macabre in a library. It isn't porn any more. Now it's exaggerated chick lit.

No kidding: throughout Danse Macabre, she introduces new characters just to have them talk about their relationships, then marches them off-screen. This book is the ultimate in what-men-hate-about-some-women's-conversations. It's nothing but relationship talk, and not even about plausible or interesting relationships. Hamilton goes to a lot of effort to make all the newly-introduced characters unique, and have them speak and act unlike existing ones, but she introduces so many, and gives each such little space, that none of them are actually compelling. You don't get the feeling you know any of them. And after they describe their relationships they just disappear ... which leads into my next complaint.

To state my bias openly, I'm very much a plot-driven reader. No Anita Blake story finishes plots any more. One major plot development does get resolved in this issue, but there are still danglers going back 10 books or more that Hamilton shows no sign of even remembering. She's lost interest in story, in favor of dialogue and very broad, sketchy characterization. It's symptomatic that these books only cover one or two days now. They're just collections of conversations, broken up by occasional fights or sex.

It's a shame. There was real talent there, but apparently this stuff appeals to her audience, and she has no reason to go back to the style I used to enjoy.


Danse Macabre

Danse Macabre