Words I Write Crazy: Week 32 Reviews: Hit List, Beauty, Kiss the Dead, Dancing, Shutdown, Affliction, Jason, Dead Ice, Wounded, Crimson Death

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Week 32 Reviews: Hit List, Beauty, Kiss the Dead, Dancing, Shutdown, Affliction, Jason, Dead Ice, Wounded, Crimson Death

From Goodreads:
A serial killer is hunting the Pacific Northwest, murdering victims in a gruesome and spectacular way. The local police suspect "monsters" are involved, and have called in Anita Blake and Edward, U.S. Marshals who really know their monsters, to catch the killer.

From Goodreads:
"You'd think I'd get used to seeing such a beautiful man and knowing he was mine, but it never grew old, as if his beauty and the fact that he was mine, and I was his, would forever surprise me."

With a vampire like Jean Claude around, it's far too easy for Anita Blake to doubt her own appearance--and the hold it has on those who love her. But one hot tub and two incredibly sexy men--Jean Claude and Asher--will make her feel like the most lusted-after woman alive...or undead. Not bad for a mere human...

From Goodreads:
When a fifteen-year-old girl is abducted by vampires, it's up to U.S. Marshal Anita Blake to find her. And when she does, she's faced with something she's never seen before: a terrifyingly ordinary group of people - kids, grandparents, soccer moms - all recently turned and willing to die to avoid serving a master. And where there's one martyr, there will be more...

But even vampires have monsters that they're afraid of. And Anita is one of them...

From Goodreads:
For most people, summer barbecues are nothing to be afraid of. But Anita isn't exactly plain vanilla—and neither is her love life. So it takes a special kind of courage to attend a barbecue thrown by her friend Sergeant Zerbrowski. Walking into a backyard full of cops and their families with wereleopards Micah and Nathaniel both looking gorgeous on her arm won’t be easy, even with almost-four-year-old Matthew Vespucci to break the ice…

Anita is determined to have a good time with her family, just like everyone else. But it doesn't take long for tensions to rise among the adults and kids. And Anita will learn that gossip and innuendo can be just as dangerous as anything the undead can throw at her…

From Goodreads:
This story is for all my readers who have been impacted by the current political SNAFU – and for anyone else who might need to enjoy a free story in these difficult times.

"Shutdown", will be available free for the duration of the government shutdown. Once the government is back in business then the short story will no longer be available on line, at least not until my publisher and I figure out what we might want to do with it. But for right now, while we're all wondering how it got to this point, here's a brand new Anita Blake short story, featuring our favorite bad boy werewolf, yep, I mean Richard Zeeman. Hey, I've been telling you, he's been working his therapy: read on to see the results that hard work and being brave enough to own your whole self can get you.

From Goodreads:
Some zombies are raised. Others must be put down. Just ask Anita Blake.

Before now, she would have considered them merely off-putting, never dangerous. Before now, she had never heard of any of them causing human beings to perish in agony. But that's all changed.

Micah's estranged father lies dying, rotting away inside from some strange ailment that has his doctors whispering about "zombie disease."

Anita makes her living off of zombies—but these aren't the kind she knows so well. These creatures hunt in daylight, and are as fast and strong as vampires. If they bite you, you become just like them. And round and round it goes…

Where will it stop?
Even Anita Blake doesn't know.

From Goodreads:
"Enjoying pain with your pleasure is something you either get, or you don't. If you get it, then you don't really need it explained, because you know how good it feels, and if you don't get it then no amount of talking is going to convince you it makes sense."

But sometimes you have to explain the unexplainable, especially if the love of your life needs to understand, or she'll leave you. Jason Schuyler is one of Anita Blake's best friends and favorite werewolves, with benefits. J.J. is his lady love, an old flame from childhood who dances at one of the top ballet companies in New York. She's accomplished, beautiful, and she's crazy about him, too. Neither of them wants to be monogamous, so what could go wrong?

J.J. is enthusiastically bisexual, with an emphasis on the female side of things. She plans to keep sleeping with women, because Jason can't meet that need, just like she can't meet Jason's need for rough sex and bondage. J.J. doesn't understand why Jason isn’t content to go elsewhere for a need she can’t fulfil, so Jason asks Anita to help him explain.

Anita is having her own relationship growing pains with her only female lover ever, Jade. Jason suggests that J.J. might be able to help Anita with her girl problem, while she helps him with his kinky explanations. With some encouragement from a few other lovers in Anita's life she reluctantly agrees, and J. J. makes plans to fly into town for an experience that none of them will ever forget.

From Goodreads:

Anita Blake has the highest kill count of any vampire executioner in the country. She's a U.S. Marshal who can raise zombies with the best of them. But ever since she and master vampire Jean-Claude went public with their engagement, all she is to anyone and everyone is Jean-Claude's fiancée.

It's wreaking havoc with her reputation as a hard ass—to some extent. Luckily, in professional circles, she's still the go-to expert for zombie issues. And right now, the FBI is having one hell of a zombie issue.

Someone is producing zombie porn. Anita has seen her share of freaky undead fetishes, so this shouldn't bother her. But the women being victimized aren't just mindless, rotting corpses. Their souls are trapped behind their eyes, signaling voodoo of the blackest kind.

It's the sort of case that can leave a mark on a person. And Anita's own soul may not survive unscathed . . .

From Goodreads:

Be proud of Life's battle scars, it means you were stronger than whatever hurt you, and you didn't die—and Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter and U.S. Marshal will be the first to show you hers in this sweet and sexy story of celebration and connection from #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton.

Anita attends the wedding of her close friend but finds that even on the happiest of days there are wounds that need healing. She and the wereleopards Micah and Nathaniel are asked to talk to the bride's thirteen-year-old brother, Tomas, who is struggling to recover from a recent gunshot wound. Depressed and demoralized, Tomas isn't doing his physical therapy and could spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair…

How can Anita, Micah, and Nathaniel convince Tomas that he can heal when he's given up? They tell him about their own scars and how they took back their own lives after they were wounded. And Anita will realize how lucky they are to have not only survived their pasts, but to now be able to make their own formal commitment to each other— and the vampire in her life…

From Goodreads:

In her twenty-fifth adventure, vampire hunter and necromancer Anita Blake learns that evil is in the eye of the beholder...

Anita has never seen Damian, her vampire servant, in such a state. The rising sun doesn't usher in the peaceful death that he desperately needs. Instead, he's being bombarded with violent nightmares and blood sweats.

And now, with Damian at his most vulnerable, Anita needs him the most. The vampire who created him, who subjected him to centuries of torture, might be losing control, allowing rogue vampires to run wild and break one of their kind's few strict taboos.

Some say love is a great motivator, but hatred gets the job done, too. And when Anita joins forces with her friend Edward to stop the carnage, Damian will be at their side, even if it means traveling back to the land where all his nightmares spring from...a place that couldn’t be less welcoming to a vampire, an assassin, and a necromancer.

Ireland.

My Review:
Yeah, I catched up to what's been currently published of this series! And boy, did a lot happen! Like killing Mommy Dearest, and taking over the Harlequin, facing off against some pretty bad zombies, and having zombies as victims...yeah, lots going on!

These books, the relationships are a lot more secure, and they've worked through a lot of issues. Sure, there's people like Asher, who was a big problem for most of these books, like a wave of up and down. He made some really poor decisions, like making Kane his hyena to call!

Anita's powers grow in these books. Of course they do. In Affliction, she gains a hyena beast to add to her menagerie. And then between Dead Ice and Crimson Death, she deliberately gains a rat beast, with intentions to have Rafael as her animal to call. And that's just one side of her powers that grew!

There was also growing up in these books, facing issues (besides facing off bad guys.) Like that Anita views the events in Vegas as rape, of the books (incorrectly, again) stating that it was Mommie Dearest, instead of Father of Tigers, who caused the massive orgy. And how that affected her feelings for Sin. Yeah. She also deals with having a female lover, and how what she thought was the issue, wasn't. She grew by deciding to get married, and have a commitment ceremony because she can't legally marry all that she wants to. And by the end of Crimson Death, she was open to discussing having a baby. Lots going on!

These were some really great stories with a lot going on, and I can't wait to read more!

Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #20, 20.5, 21, 21.5, 21.75, 22, 23, 24, 24.5, 25
Read: August 7th, 7th, 8th, 8th, 8th, 9th, 9th, 10th, 10th, 10th, 2017
Source: Ebook.bike
Reason Why: Loving this series and her writing, and they're Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2017 Books!
Publisher: Berkley Books, Penguin Group (USA), Penguin, Berkley
Published: June 1st 2011, May 8th 2012, June 5th 2012, September 1st 2013, October 8th 2013, July 2nd 2013, December 2nd 2014, June 9th 2015, December 6th 2016, October 11th 2016

Hit List: