 |
| Skin Trade |
So yeah, I’m still reading the Anita Blake series. I keep bitching about them, but I keep reading them anyway to find out what happens next. The summaries on Wikipedia just aren’t enough, apparently. I’m kind of glad I did, because Skin Trade really is a return to form for Hamilton, a return to what made me pick the books up in the first place. There’s a mystery. There’s fighting. Anita waited until after page 300 to have sex with someone.
In this book, Anita answers a serial killer’s invitation to Las Vegas. She joins up with her fellow U.S. marshals: Edward, Bernardo, and Olaf the serial murderer. When Edward shows up, you know it’s going to be a good book. Unfortunately, she immediate gets into a pissing match with the local law enforcement and local weretiger clan. Everywhere she goes, it always seems like someone wants to test Anita’s powers. At least, Anita gets some time to do some investigation, just like the old days in the early books.
The conclusion to the book is a little muddled, because a whole bunch of things happen at once. Things ended so quickly that I’m not sure that the Mother of Darkness plot line is really over. It seemed too easy to be finished. On the other hand, it was nice to have something wrapped up. The last few books have been like soap operas in that–among other things–nothing really ends. It just gets carried over to the next book.
What I really would like to see resolved is the multiple-lycanthropy strains thing. Anita has come so close to shifting her shape that I just want it to happen already. It would be cool! After a while, having all the magic happen inside of Anita’s get gets frustrating and repetitive. After a while, you just want something concrete and physical to happen instead of some nebulous mojo that no one knows how to use or control. This is probably what keeps me coming back for more. I want to see how it plays out.
The only major problem I had with this book was the dialogue. It’s kind of a shame, now that the sex problem seems to have been fixed. For the last dozen books, almost every conversation seems to be an argument between two or more people who refused to bend. So, every conversation seems to be a circle were person a wants something, person b won’t let them have it, so person a repeats their demand in slightly different words, and person b repeats their refusal. Repeat every few pages. It’s almost like hitting a brick wall every time the characters open their mouths.