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Book Review of Blood Noir (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Bk 16)

Blood Noir (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Bk 16)
reigners avatar reviewed on + 9 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 11


I'm one of the rare (it seems) folks who really still like LKH and Anita Blake. I really liked The Harlequin and thought there was a step forward in a return to some bit of balance with that one. This one felt like two steps back to me, but not necessarily in regards to the balance.

I have a couple key things that I found annoying. First, the style/quality of the writing seem to be amateurish. I've always really enjoyed her style of writing in the past, but sometimes even simple writing mechanics seemed painful here. I found myself groaning (and not in a good way) with how some of the stuff was written.

Second, this book was far longer than it needed to be. I can't even believe I just said that. I've always thought her books could be bigger and go on forever, and I would be perfectly happy with that. Not this time. This book should have been like Micah... small paperback, and really cheap. I'm almost annoyed that this was put into a hardback.

While some of the underlying character development was really good, and even the skeleton seemed solid, something just seemed to get lost in execution. Jason is going home to his dying dad with his bed buddy just so he can prove he is truly straight... seriously!?! This just baffled me. I can't even put my finger on why, but it just seemed so whack. Then when you add the whole looking like the local celebrity into the mix, it just felt entirely too contrived.

I still enjoyed it, cuz these are some of my favorite characters, but I felt like I got a glimpse of them on some seriously bad hair days or something.