REVIEW, Skin Tade

I’d worked my share of serial killer cases, but none of the killers had ever mailed me a human head. That was new.

    Prod dets

Skin Trade

Series: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, book 17

Pub: 2009, Headline

Author: Laurell K. Hamilton

Cat: paranormal fiction

Format: paperback (mid); 594 pp w/ 78 chapters

Age Range: adult                                             

            Synopsis

My name is Anita Blake and my reputation has taken some hits. Not on the work front, where I have the highest kill count of all the legal vampire executioners in the country, but on the personal front. No one seems to trust a woman who sleeps with the monsters. Still, when a vampire searial killer sends me a head from Las Vegas, I know I have to warn Sin City’s local authorities what they’re dealing with.

Only it’s worse than I thought: several police officers and an executioner have been slain paranormal style. When I get to Las Vegas, I’m joined by three other federal marshals. Which is a good thing because I need all the back-up I can get when hunting a killer this powerful and dangerous.

            Thoughts

Back story: she’s in a triumvirate with Jean-Claude and Richard.

She’s in one with Damian and Nathaniel

Micah is queen to his king in the leopards (they have a special bond)

Jason is her wolf to call.

She’s got a lot of were-animals inside her, but none of them can come out.

Haven (aka Cookie Monster) wants to be her lion to call, but she doesn’t want him.

She’s living under the Circus of the Damned at the moment because of issues with      

           Jean-Claude not seeming master enough.

She’s the first true Necromancer in a long time.

She could be a tiger queen, but it’s not been tested.

But mostly this one’s back story sits in Incubus Dreams.

This one: I love this book, it’s by far the best in the series, I think. Really, it’s not that clear, but it’s defiantly the one that....

It’s actually the one that made me want to read the series, mostly because this one was just coming out and I liked the idea of it and so I started up the series. And I’m glad I did since, even though it explains all the shit from the prier book, the shit you need to know, she fucked up a little with some details earlier on if the series and it translates into this one. It also doesn’t....

I don’t know, but unlike a lot of the times, the flash backs into this one are actually played out in a way that others are seeing it, not just her remembering and that makes it seem a little different. It also leave a few things out that I felt were important to her psyche than anything else.

This being said, the real reason that I loved this book was actually because she was herself again, and if you haven’t guessed, it’s the books I crave most. Though there’s still a fair bit of her girl bitching, but I feel there a little more justified than in prior books, and it didn’t get on my nerves nearly as much as in the past.

(And you have to think of it this way...I actually read all the books up until this one in a row, one after another until I couldn’t no more, so she was full in my head, most of the time)

I also really liked the cop aspect. The fact that they were undecided on her (like everyone) and how she made sense, when she shouldn’t have. I liked that it focused more on her and Crispin (a were-tiger) and long with a new one—because, let’s face it, it ain’t a Anita book without her getting a new man for keeps (I’m not lying, there’s a new one—or two—every novel)

And vampires....we only have to really see her with the Wicked Truth and those two brothers rock anyway so it’s an added bonus.

The shit from home is left there, and even though we have to go through a phone call or two, we don’t really get mixed up in that part of her life. And I LOVED IT.

This is really one of those highlight books that takes us back to what she was and with a mix of what she is, along with a sociopath get-together and a lots of pissy cops. It’s great and got me enjoying the series again. Or maybe just late me see the benefit in reading on.

(Though I will say, these books are much better when read with a gap then they are reading back to back, and that is purely because they just don’t need to be, and she’s a descriptive person. I actually think sometimes that it’s not Anita that pisses me off when I’m reading, it’s Laurell and the fact that I just don’t care what they’re wearing right down to their undies in minute to minute detail that trails on for a full page and a half.)

Series

Guilty Pleasures, the Laughing Corpse, Circus of the Damned, The Lunatic Cafe, Bloody Bones, The Killing Dance, Burnt Offerings, Blue Moon, Obsidian Butterfly, Narcissus in Chains, Cerulean Sins, Incubus Dreams, Micah, Danse Macabre, The Harlequin, Blood Noir, [tb], Flirt, Bullet, Hit List, Kiss the Dead,

☼☼☼