Skin Trade by Laurell K Hamilton
Anita Blake is a Vampire Hunter who is living with a Master Vampire. In Skin Trade Anita Blake goes to Las Vegas to hunt down a serial killer vampire. She meets up with her old buddy and vampire hunting mentor Edward. Edward is my favorite of the gazillion characters who fill Laurell K Hamilton’s Vampire Hunter books.
Most of the Anita Blake books are porn with a bit of blood and mayhem tossed in. The sex in Skin Trade doesn’t even make an appearance until about two thirds through. The excuse for Anita’s insatiable sexual appetite is her gift of The Ardour. She has to feed every twelve hours or so, and sex gives her and her vampire master more power. But Anita has found that she can now feed on anger as well as sex.
So it is possible that the Anita Blake books will be less porn and more plot, but I tend to doubt it. There seem to be a lot of LKH fans out there that miss the good old days of Anita Blake raising zombies and kicking ass and doing something besides comparing the lengths and widths of her endless line of lovers.
Another common element of the Anita Blake books is that Anita and Jean Claude are always on the cusp of becoming full fledged Demi-Gods. The power to raise all the dead in the world. Anita’s power to control all dead, including vampires, with her necromancy. In Skin Trade we have more visits from The Mother of All Darkness, and the usual addition of some super bad guys that we have not seen before.
Anita will need some other god-like enemy to fight. Anita Blake is like Superman, soon there will be no kryptonite strong enough to do her any harm.
Skin Trade was good, and I always like having Edward make an appearance. The catalog of Anita’s lovers is still growing and there were the usual hints that one day she will become a full blown monster and Edward will have to take her out. With each new bit of power, Anita becomes more of a god and less of a human or a monster. The usual format of Monster of the Book is going to be harder to make work, as there can’t be that many ten thousand year old vampires roaming around for her to fight.
The last third of Skin Trade has the usual uncontrolled orgies and sex with random strangers that has become the hallmark of the Anita Blake books. But maybe that will change now. Maybe Anita can go back to being more of a zombie raiser and a Vampire Executioner and less of a porn queen.
There was less sex in Skin Trade than in the last few books, so that is a step in the right direction.
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August 18, 2009
Tags: audio book, book review, fun stuff Posted in: book review
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Maggie’s Blog » Blog Archive » Skin Trade By Laurell K Hamilton | if You Write it - October 19, 2009
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