Anita has been preparing for the wedding in the last two books. Yes, pun intended… I believe Anita will have the wedding in this book. Now… based on the four most recent quotes, three from bullet and one from affliction, Asher will return.
Even if not permanently. I also have a feeling Asher and Richard will have more of a relationship now. Especially now that Asher has more of a lycanthrope community for himself. Am I even remotely close!? I feel like one of the quotes was meant to throw me off. Also LKH is so unpredictable at times. Personal note: I hope Requiem makes an appearance. I miss that character, but I understand why he felt he had to leave.
Also, more boots please!!! Sorry… I just love boots. Maybe Anita and Jean-Claude must go to Europe and speak? Like Burnt Offerings Part 2 or something of that nature? Maybe Asher will accompany them. Also, I reread all of the books in order every six months so rereading them again to find the quotes is not a hardship for me lol.
Edward has to hunt Oloaf to get her back. Making Oloaf her bride right before he gets to her and then make Nicky her Rex. Is Anita finaly going to find a lion to call? Or maybe more about the baby issue? Just want to say thank you for writing. I re-read all your books in both the Blake 4th time through and Gentry 2 times series, and really liked Strange Candy, too.
Olaf may appear to stake his claim before or during the wedding I feel. Danse Macabe. She is looking for a mate. I am assuming you are rereading Danse Macabe because the next Anita book will explore and deal with her Lion problem. Affliction is, at its roots, about loss and redemption in my opinion. So, based on the quotes, here goes:. This binds them together in a whole new way, opening new doors for their triumvirate.
She is shocked, because she never wanted kids in the first place, at how much she mourns. I kinda think that it's kinda bad that it wont end yet either, because I want there to be a point to the story.. I dont think she'll get tired of writing this series.. I think that she'll run out of fresh ideas before that happens. Yeah, she's said she has ideas enough for more books than she'll live long enough to write.
She could write about those boys trimming their toenails and I'd still buy them. Jan 19, PM. I have no idea how it will end and frankly I dont want to think about it Will Anita age at all, if she never accepts the 4th mark from Jean-Claude? What will happen to her were lovers if she takes the mark? I'm thinking that Richard won't age, or Nathaniel, since they are part of a triumvirate, but I'm not sure about the others.
That'll be cool, I don't think she realizes what a great mom she's going to be. Marisella wrote: "Will Anita age at all, if she never accepts the 4th mark from Jean-Claude? I'm thinking that Richard won't age, or Nathaniel, since they a She would make a great mom, one that would protect her kids but let them live a little, not one of those who is like a bubble over them.
Courtney wrote: "Marisella wrote: "Will Anita age at all, if she never accepts the 4th mark from Jean-Claude? I'm thinking that Richard won't age, or Natha Think about it.. Yeah but if you ever watched Charmed she could do the ten years later thing and have it where people stopped being with her, got married such and such. She might end with somehow the triumverant breaking because of Belle Mort or Mommy Dearest and so the men arnt bound to her anymore.
Jan 20, AM. Diana Jane wrote: "I kinda think that it's kinda bad that it wont end yet either, because I want there to be a point to the story. I think there are already lessons in the series. Anita moved from being a close minded individual who thought all the vampires were monsters, to an open minded individual who looks at people as individuals whether they are human, undead, or furry.
There is also the move with respect to vampire rights. From Anita being a vampire hunter, to being a vampire executioner who needs a warrant, to being a Federal Marshall, to the "Skin Trade" philosophy of actually trying to save lives, and rescind invalid orders of execution. I'm just saying that it would be nice to see a conclusion.. It's not going to end.
It can't. We can't allow it or even think it. It will end in some big final show down where she is forced to finally take the 4th Mark otherwise everyone she loves will die and Anita will say something like "Bad Vampire, No Cookie" :. Jan 20, PM. Oh no, I don't want it to end like that, as though the 4th mark is the worst thing that can happen! I think that taking that last step with Jean-Claude will improve everything in her life, bring her clarity and enable her and JC to strengthen everyone around them.
Rat is her first voluntarily gained beast one that doesn't sit well with the pre-existing ones , and she has a pact with Rafael to make him her animal to call, but hasn't had an opportunity to do so yet.
Anita finds the Irish police's attempts to treat vampires as just a medical emergency frustrating, and they find her unnecessarily bloodthirsty, but she's helpful enough that they don't send her immediately back. After they realize that She-Who-Made-Damian a. M'Lady is actually behind the attacks instead of having someone invade her territory, she calls all the newly made vampires out into sunlight and attacking people, and Anita's group struggles to contain at least part of the chaos. Afterwards, when politicians take over and there isn't more for Anita to do, she goes off to a hotel with Domino to feed the ardeur in order to gain some of her strength back.
Ethan takes the adjoining room as their bodyguard, but is unable to prevent an attack from members of the Harlequin that have chosen to follow M'Lady instead of Anita and Jean-Claude. Domino gets killed in the struggle, and Rodrigo force-feeds Anita some of the blood because he's sadistic and finds it funny at the time. It causes Anita to metaphysically marry a clan tiger, fulfilling the prophecy, and makes her the true heir of the Mother of All Darkness and the Father of the Dawn.
Even drugged, and moments before losing consciousness, Anita manages to bind Rodrigo as her leopard Bride, and through him the other two siblings of their triplet, Rodina and Ru. M'Lady appears in Anita's dream, but she manages to break free of it, only to find herself manacled within M'Lady's stronghold and unable to use her metaphysical ties to call help.
Anita learns that everything from Damian's sickness to the vampire infestation in Dublin has been M'Lady's plot to bring Anita close enough to steal from within her the rest of the power of Marmee Noir, as part of it went to M'Lady as well.
Anita manages to resist M'Lady's powers but not the fear her sadism and sheer hatred causes, especially after she has Nathaniel and Damian brought in and promises to ruin their beauty. She cuts off Nathaniel's long braid, and then leaves Anita and Nathaniel hanging to await their fate in order to build up their fear.
They manage to free themselves and take out their guards, and then the triplets help them to escape. Their pursuers reach them at the nearby village, where Damian joins them after escaping on his own and killing M'Lady's animal to call.
While Anita is unable to raise the dead thanks to Ireland's wild magic, she is able to use the power of their triumvirate to help her take control of the numerous ghosts of the old gaol where the vampires had been killing people for centuries.
M'Lady's human servant is killed in the fight as well, and losing both of her servants is finally enough to kill her. Rodrigo sacrifices himself for Anita, but Rodina and Ru come to St.
Louis as Anita's Brides. In Serpentine Anita attends Edward and Donna's wedding that immediately heads off rails, and lands in the middle of a strange case involving hereditary snake lycanthropy and women being abducted from the hotel where the wedding is being held.
Anita plays along for lack of better ideas. In Sucker Punch Anita faces a new situation when Marshal Newman calls her in to his new home town in the middle of nowhere, to assist with a warrant where it doesn't seem likely that the only wereanimal within a hundred miles has committed the crime he's locked up for.
The local law enforcement doesn't feel inclined to investigate things further even if the details are all wrong, utterly convinced they know what happened. After the sheriff almost shoots Anita during an incident with the accused she calls in Edward for further backup, and Olaf turns up on his own accord.
None of the Horsemen are trained in traditional police work, but they have to figure out who went to all the trouble to set up the crime scene before the time limit in the warrant runs out. Legally, Newman has to kill the accused by that time, even without knowing whether he has actually done anything wrong.
Newman signs the warrant over to Anita eventually to make sure he doesn't have to be the one to do it, since he knows the man and is convinced of his innocence and is losing his taste to the whole preternatural marshal gig in general.
Anita doesn't really want to do it either, but figures she can sign the warrant over to Edward or Olaf in turn if it comes down to it. It's a race against the time and the letter of law, and Olaf, in addition to being his usual creepy but highly capable self, keeps freaking out Anita by being unexpectedly reasonable and accommodating in his attempts at getting to have consensual sex with her.
She lets him kiss her, and her inner lioness still likes him a lot as a potential mate, although Anita manages to convey the message that Olaf might be a 'cub-killer', which curbs the inner lioness' enthusiasm a bit. Even Edward comes to the conclusion that if they don't want to have to kill Olaf soon, Anita might need to suck it up and actually sleep with him, and that that might not be the worst idea ever, after all. She isn't at all happy with this prospect.
During the investigation Anita also discovers new things about herself. One of the witnesses has twin baby daughters and makes Anita hold one of them, and she is surprised to actually enjoy the experience. She also unearths a new power when the busy schedule makes her neglect her eating despite knowing how vital it is to keep her energy levels up. This time, instead of starting to drain Damian to death, she accidentally entices and rolls a local stripper like Jean-Claude can without triggering the ardeur.
She doesn't know how she did it or how to stop it, but manages to break the spell by praying to God to help her undo whatever she did. In the end they are fairly certain the accused didn't kill the victim and get another person to confess to the murder just to get around the warrant that is just about to run out of time, although that opens another legal can of worms for being completely unprecedented.
The accused doesn't get to see freedom, however, as the probable mastermind behind the whole thing somehow goads him into attacking her assumed partner in crime through the bars of his cell, and Anita and Olaf have to take him out anyway. She doesn't react well to it, and when the Marshal Service suspends both her and Newman for not killing the accused sooner, which would have prevented further loss of life, she takes the news calmly.
She is no longer certain she wants to keep being a legal assassin, whether they decide that the delay in execution was justified or not. She has horrible nightmares about the ordeal, often transforming into having to kill her own loved ones instead, and for the first time isn't sure the job is worth what it costs her. She is also not happy that her attempt to save Edward from getting scratched by the accused failed, and may have led to him contracting something out of her own blood instead.
Unusually for the novels of this series, a few kisses and briefly getting frisky with the stripper are the most sexual action that is directly displayed in this novel, even if sex and sexual preferences are discussed on several occasions. Born a necromancer with an inborn need and capability to raise and control zombies, as well as power over other forms of undead, Anita leads a complicated life.
She was raised a devout Catholic, but was later forced to become an Episcopalian instead, as the Catholic Church excommunicated all animators. Her mother died when she was a child, and several members of her remaining family treated her abilities as unnatural and wrong, as well as looked down on her mother's Mexican heritage.
Anita is hardboiled, flippant and stubborn. Like Kinsey Millhone and V. Warshawski , she has major emotional issues, is frequently the only female in macho situations, and tends to come across as quite prickly and difficult.
Like Spenser and Matthew Scudder she plays knight errant, championing vulnerable characters who ask for her help. Anita also lacks tact, loses her temper, is insubordinate, and tends to be quite hypocritical in many regards. Although she may not admit it, Anita initially has a deep contempt for vampires and the humans who serve them. This partiality stems from her often violent altercations with vampires and their human servants in the past, as well as her witnessing the death and misery that vampire attacks usually leave behind.
She is quick to point out the drawbacks, moral failings, and responsibilities of vampirism, and she sees anyone who advocates vampirism as naive. She gets called out for her holier-than-thou attitude towards vampires, and is even accused of being a sadist in her practice, as she seems to enjoy killing vampires, although she denies this and is appalled that someone would believe that about her.
Lycanthropes she is less vehemently against, but she's initially afraid of them, and the few friends she has among the furry keep their non-human tendencies as hidden from her as possible. In terms of her character and mental state, Anita displays signs of sadism and sociopathy in her dealings with vampires.
She shows little pity or remorse in killing vampires or lycanthropes she considers dangerous, even those who break down and cry right in front of her. She thinks of herself as a necessary monster to keep humans safe from much worse things, but is insulted if anyone else calls her such things.
As the series proceeds Anita is, against her will, forced to become accustomed to dealing with vampires and lycanthropes as more than enemies and getting to know them as persons, and eventually has to bend her attitudes. Emotional change doesn't come easily to her, however, and she often struggles with dilemmas for several novels, gaining and losing ground, before overcoming the issue in question—and even then there might be occasional setbacks when some event triggers her the wrong way or she comes across a new point of view she hasn't thought through yet.
Later in the series Anita becomes increasingly entrenched among the ranks of monsters and distanced from regular humans, although she continues struggling with the concept. Even after she becomes arguably the biggest preternatural power in the near vicinity, and becomes nearly as prejudiced against humans as she once was against vampires this time for their inability to understand or accept her abilities and alternative lifestyle without explanations , she still clings to her humanity and numerous other notions of how things should be that she has carried around since childhood despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Despite her often harsh nature, Anita has more positive attributes. She frequently displays concern for innocents and victims and has a profound sense of loyalty to her friends, even to the point of compromising her ordinary morals. As she becomes less "human," Anita worries that she will out-live her human friends like Zerbrowskie , to the point that she even considers having them become vampires.
Despite her troubled romantic history, Anita is capable of loving deeply and passionately. Late in the series, she comes to accept her unconventional relationship as well as her own emerging bisexuality, although she cannot bring herself to have sex with a woman if a man is not in bed with them however she did kiss Echo without any of her male paramours nearby in Crimson Death.
Anita's growing powers and moral sacrifices cause her to worry that she will eventually become the sort of dangerous villain she fights; as a result, she asks some of her allies, such as Edward, to kill her if she ever shows signs of succumbing to her own darkness. Anita possesses a wide range of preternatural abilities that have developed both in breadth and depth over time.
Anita's powers include those characteristic of necromancers , animators , psychics , master vampires , panweres , human servants , and succubi. During a period of hospitalization at the end of the novella Micah , Anita's blood test revealed that whilst she is not a lycanthrope, she is a carrier of at least four, possibly five, types of the lycanthropy virus: wolf, leopard, lion as a result of her violent contact with the panwere Chimera , and two so far unidentified but potentially tiger this may be as a reaction to the machinations of the Mother of All Darkness , snake as a result of being bitten by Chimera in his weresnake form , or lamia as a result of the attack by Melanie.
Anita is later infected with werehyena strain. She asks Rafael to infect her with rat strain with the intent to make him her Rat to Call.
This is considered unusual because one type of lycanthropy usually provides immunity to the other forms and usually one person cannot be infected with more than one type of lycanthropy. This method of thinking, as of The Harlequin , has resulted in the injection of a rare feline lycanthropy to combat a recent infection due to attack.
Because the viruses counteract one another this would result in an infection-free blood test. Anita notes that panweres are very rare. One Hypothesis about Chimera's panwere status is that because he was infected by multiple forms of lycanthropy before his first change, he thus developed the transformative abilities of each virus; though this directly contrasts the medical procedure of deliberate infection used in The Harlequin.
Another hypothesis is that Chimera had somehow contracted a mutation or caused the mutation of the virus allowing all others to coexist without nullifying one another. Anita may have inherited this mutation from Chimera. Each issue contains roughly 40 pages of the novel adapted into a 28 page comic book. A hardcover compilation of the first six issues has been released with a new Anita flashback short story written by Hamilton. There is also a 2 issue story " First Death " which is set 2 years prior to Guilty Pleasures , that fills in the details of her encounter with Valentine and Edward mentioned in Guilty Pleasures.
Anita also appears in the adaptation of The Laughing Corpse , and as of in the adaptation of Circus of the Damned , both produced by Marvel. Anita is a pet form of the name Ana, the Spanish version of Ann, meaning "favoured grace". It can also mean "leader" or "without guile". Katerine derives from the Greek name Katherine , meaning "pure". Blake is of Old English origin and its meaning is "black; pale, white".
It was originally a nickname for someone with hair or skin that was either very dark Old English "blaec" or very light Old English "blac". One way or another the dead multiply. It was his only serious flaw. Anita Blake Wiki Explore. The World. Administrators Community Blogs Create a new blog post. Bland and interchangeable. And dear characters get the boot or twisted into annoying, needy, bitchy whiners. Even good friends like Roonie and Larry get turned into jealous, judgmental people.
They are made not to fit anymore. She has no more friend-friends, only friends with bennies, enemies, people who want her, people who are jealous of her and people who love her. It all reads more like porn or propaganda for AB and her current lifestyle. If not by bullet or knives, she has an arsenal of magic at her command and if all else fails, she can simply sex it into submission. I am one of those people who love to read about more than the plotshare of character info.
But now there are too many and some got pushed into corners, have developed in ways I simply never saw them going and feel they have been placed there to be out of the way or create unnecessary conflict. Others get dragged back specially for that. Yes, I mean Richard. Jason was made to be able to act in his place, the self-loathing king of temper-tantrum drama could have taken a graceful exit to his off book happy ending.
Now I just wish someone would just blow his head off. But I am beginning to repeat myself. For some things it is to late I think. Micah is a neutral with me , where I feel he should be. For every name and character to shine there are simply too many, some things should be more background noise than center stage. But I fear it wont be that way.
I guess hope dies last, because I still read the books from the library. Once I was so excited and invested I could barely wait for the newest book. Now I fear what might be in the next. Will it be better? Will it get worse? It just wont rest in peace. My first contact with the series was the beginning of Danse Macabre. I meet the changed Anita first, so the experience was quite different. I accept the character as it is.
The story line is interesting. I was given the AB series by a cousin of mine when I was 11 years old. At that time in my life, all the sex bits would have made Anita evil to me.
The only thing that can make you evil in the eyes of God is the intent to be evil, or, rather, the lack of intent to do goodness. My friends, now, have great difficulty in understanding the ability to love more than one person.
To be tender to more than one person; the best way to be tender is through sex. While I respect your opinions, I have to disagree for the most part. I know far too many women who base their entire lives around sex — sex is their relationship.
Everyone has self-doubt, and everyone is damaged in some way, though not usually to such extremes as Anita. Am I the only one who reads this series as more than just porn? Each to their own.
I go back and reread the series every couple years, ending with a first read-through of the newest book or two for the first time. To me, the ardeur is a trial that Anita learns to control. We all have things that crop up at inconvenient times, things which we feel are controlling out lives. She is on the fourth crime scene in the fourth city when the book opens.
Studies have shown that sex, sugar and drugs all light up the same areas of the brain, so why would it be a reach for London or Requiem to be addicted? Anita was homophobic.
Nathaniel and Micah are intimate in front of her. When he finally gets to a point that he is willing to top her… That growth is amazing! Yes, LKH is very repetitive about description in case someone picks up a book without reading the rest of the series first. But most authors who have at least 10 books in the series do that, both as a way to connect the new reader to a character and to convince them to pick up the earlier books.
I hope she keeps writing for a long time, because there are so many paths that Anita can take, and there are so many ways that the characters are still growing. I could not agree more with the writer. Hamilton has already established the point that sex is not a sin, not evil, no matter how many partners you have read — past present and future. It would be really refreshing if the story would go back to the same lines as the first 10 novels.
News flash for Ms. It has gotten to a point that I skip several pages in between since it has gotten really boring. Also, has anyone noticed that the Anita Blake book series started depreciating after Hamilton started publishing the Merry Gentry Series Narcissus in chains released in , and the first book in Merry Gentry series A kiss of shadows came out in I totally agree—the Anita Blake series, past around the tenth book or so, is nothing but a sequence of increasingly disturbing incidents of sad, desperate sex which are all, apparently, forced on to Blake by circumstance, socially under development, immature outbursts, destructive power struggles and self-loathing.
I ended up deleting all of them in the midst of a furious impulse to rid myself of some poison. These books are rampantly anti-woman, filled with transparent characters and plotlines and tasteless sex scenes.
Literally, the sex in the final ten to twelve books is just nonstop and way over the top. I think Blake is on her way down a serious downward spiral leading to nothing but monstrous mental instability and her life in shambles around her—or at least she would be, had the author intended this character to be even remotely realistic.
I want to make a hard, factual and cited list of these instances and do my own careful critique of the books and Anita Blake herself. I started reading this series with high hopes. Anita seemed like a girl you would want on your side. She was kindhearted, loyal,funny and kicked butt.
I felt things going alittle wonky around obsidian butterfly, then I read narcissus in chains and got really uncomfortable with were anita was going. She became someone who anita in book one would never recognise, would hate, would warn her friends away from. I read reviwes of the books after narciss, and I have decided to stopped reading now,make up my own ending,no ardure,Richard manning up,anita making up with her friends and the police. I do not want to start hating a women I think of as a friend.
I think I will reread Kim harrisons hollows series. Will keep looking at reviews of new anita books to see if everthing after narcissus was a fever dream…. Yup, pretty much the same reasons I stopped reading Anita Blake. My last book purchased and read was Micah. And then when money got tight, they were the first books to go from my collection. But I think Micah was a really good place to stop all things considered.
I know this is old, but I agree with so much of this. I hate how much the personalities of so many characters have been changed or stripped away. Okay I agree with you about the series but as of today Anita has accepted who she is the story is not so much about sex anymore though it is there. I too suffer from what Hamilton has done to my dear Anita. As many of you I was taken by her strong personality and her unwillingness to endure with male BS. I had always wonder why it took Hamilton 7 books to get Anita to have sex, but now that I have read your comments my questions have been answered.
The sex, he orgy, the men, the lycanthrope strains, the arduer…are all too much for Anita, still trying to understand why Hamilton did that much to her. Could it have been a trend at that point to have sexual content in books? Was this a PR decision?
Or did she feel Anita was going that way? Either way I, one thing I know and have admitted to my self just recently after finishing Danse Macabre: I lost respect for Anita because all of the men she was taking into her bed, and far worst, the way she was taking them, often made me stop reading. I hated that she felt jealous and insecure of other women, and I hate that Hamilton would bash them.
It forced me to ask my self, is it because she is woman? Are the other women a reflection or Anita;s own self hatred? These questions make it hard for me to put Anita aside. Can I not allow her that? I know, petty little hopes of mine….
This is so accurate, even several books later. I too loved the series up until book Book 10 was my favourite as it had my favourite character Edward throughout. But Anita to me has always seemed somewhat hypercritical, as she seemed to be the least judgemental person in the world while at the same time being the most.
What I liked most and miss most about the earlier books was how hard she was, the violence, I liked that a woman could do the dirty work. Just some food for thought. And the problem doesnt stop on personal level, but her lack of respect, when it comes to law, is shocking.
I believe she should have been convicted so long ago, yet it seems LKH wants me to think its okay to kill or torture anybody if Anita is the perpetrator. I agree, and I actually had one of my characters in my Cadre 5 novels reading the series and wondering about Anita herself. I agree, the character is amazing, but the sex totally got in the way.
I will still go through the new books and see if Edward is back. Just reread the novels and incubus dreams is where I gave up. Such a shame but at least we have some very good books up till then! I agree completely I love this series all the way up to obsidian butterfly and then it changed from being a story about a strong smart funny bad ass chick solving crimes and kicking asses to a porn marathon and the crime investigating and action has taken a backseat and her animater job is nonexistent it just seems like the Arthur want to fit in as much sex as possible.
I loved reading all the comments and never thought there were so many people that agreed with me. I have reread the whole series a couple of times and always found myself losing interest around book However, not wanting to give up I stupidly keep pre-ordering the next one. Her latest book Crimson Death may have finally cured me of this. I get that she is obviously in a polyamoures relationship and is seeing a therapist, but does every book have to be about her sessions? I was more than halfway through both books before anything remotely monster or vampire hunting took place, and when it did it was spectacularly bad.
All she does now is complain and kill off characters. I am sad that was once one of my favorite characters is now a completely different character. RIP Anita Blake, as you are now no longer a vampire hunter but a portrait of an author who has completely forgotten her readers. Thank u. I agree. I loved the first 8 or 9 books… then things became too complicated. Especially if I understand something metaphysically, faster than she does.
I also think the Hamilton should have killed off several main characters for the sake of story progression. I think the arduer overcomplicates the story and functions too much as filler. Page quotas are a drag, but at least make it more substantial than sex.
Ok so I have read a handful of these books. Jumping the gambit from I think the third book to the 6th and 7th to the 12 and maybe one or two more… I think. Maybe entertaining at best.. Just finishing obsidian butterfly and the big bad artifact smugglers have threatened rape several times early on, get her and Edward to the their compound, make him strip topless but leave her fully clothed?? Do I make any sense? In life we all grow, no matter good or bad.
We all are conflicted about something that we are doing in life. If you would have made it further into the series she starts to go back a little to her old self but not quite. She grows. She still has the same issues she started with just on a different level. As she gets older and thanks to the powers she is constantly on a learning curve. Some people say they will never do something then they do. Its human behavior.
Sounds crazy, right? This one little scene—actually minor to the plot—is drawn out over four or five short chapters. It puts you right in there, with them. You can smell the blood, taste the tension in the air and wish you had a gun in your hand too. So how is writing like this a weakness? As more and more characters become involved in the plot, we get detailed descriptions of each. This nonsense goes on for whole chapters! Three, four, five…. One wonders why Jean-Claude bothers with her at all.
Minor at first, as the series progresses it becomes increasingly integral to the plot. And because Ms. But on the other hand, she has way too many men.
Her triumverate of power with Nathaniel and her vampire servant is interesting, but how many lovers does one person need? And how many can one person function with? I got to the point around book 10 where I just started skimming descriptions and stuff because it was word for word identical to the previous book. I will agree.
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