Review: Dead Ice

Dead Ice by Laurell K. Hamilton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First, if you haven’t read any other Anita Blake books go back and start from the beginning. There are too many storylines and men at this point to catch up. Now, if you’ve read other books in the series (or even skipped one, as I appeared to do here), I really found this book to be not nearly as bad as the other ones. I know, that’s kind of a horrible thing to say, but if you’ve endured some of the unending man-descriptions of the other books, you know what I mean.

This book picks up with Anita, now officially engaged and working on planning a parallel commitment ceremony with her more domestic group of men. As with all things Anita, nothing is simple. There’s some drama about adding another lion to her commitment ceremony to fulfill some stupid prophecy or something. There’s Asher being a stupid dick. There’s a necromancer making zombie sex tapes. Oh, and there’s also a lot of issue facing and discussion about the mental state of all those that surround Anita. Overall, my favorite was that we finally got to have a case and it kind of overlapped with all the other stuff. The entire book is maybe 2 days long in Anita-time, but it didn’t feel as insane as some of her other cases.

Yes, there’s still smut, but it didn’t fill *all* the pages and it actually felt useful and natural-ish (how many shapeshifters does it take before it become a little unnatural? I’m not sure). At any rate, things seemed to progress with all of her relationships, men, animals to call, and even her vampire bride (will he push his limits in the next book?). If you’re looking for a relatively light installment for Anita, this is a good book to dive back into the series with. It actually made me want to go back and read the book before this one, too. Just when you think you’re done with Anita Blake, she reminds you of what you actually enjoy about her.


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