Book Review: Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton

07/02/2012 Sonia Lal1 Comment

Blurb 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…

So . . . I am done with Kiss the Dead. It didn’t take long to finish. As always, it moves fast and quick. I talked about it here when I just started.

What I liked best: the beginning.

She gets her butt kicked by a new vampire in the opening pages. 😉 It may be wrong of me, but I enjoyed it. It gave me hope for the rest of the book.

That hope was, by and large, fulfilled. Maybe because my expectations were low to begin with. LOL

Mostly, I just wanted a book that wasn’t driven by sex. That’s what I got. Oh, make no mistake, there was sex. But the first happened half way through the book and the second shortly after. I can’t tell you much about them; I am afraid I skipped past them. I don’t feel like I missed anything. As near as I can tell, there are no new guys.

I did pick up that by the end of Kiss the Dead, she has reached new levels of comfort with the youngest guy, the one she got as a kid in one of the previous books. (He’s eighteen now and about ready to graduate from high school. I cannot tell you much this relationship creeps me out.)

What I disliked: how Anita feels the need to point out she is small and tough every couple of paragraphs. Sometimes several times in the same paragraph.

The thing that surprised me the most is that they banished Asher for a few months. At the end, Anita has doubts about whether or not JC can really banish him. But I am hoping it happens. It’ll shake up their happy little life.

About the mystery: Anita does a lot of shooting. She does some things to scare the vampires into telling her what she want to know.

Some of the investigative part? I don’t know. Some of it feels iffy to me. Like it happens because the author needs to happen and there isn’t enough explanation.

I didn’t like the end. I didn’t dislike it, either. Oh, the mystery is solved; she goes deeper into her relationships. But it didn’t really satisfy. Something is missing, but hell if I can figure out what.

So . . . I am still going to read the next book.