Review: Crimson Death

Crimson Death by Laurell K. Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At this point, if you don’t know what you’re getting into when you pick up one of these books, it’s on you. Book#25 is not the place to start a series and there is a lot of baggage that comes along with Anita Blank and her men (and women) from all their adventures. While this book was longer (I think) than most of the recent installments, I still was left feeling a little rushed at the end. It definitely had some critical events, though, so if you’re dedicated to this series (as it appears I am), you shouldn’t miss this one just because it was relatively “meh.”

If I had to sum up what this book was about (other than Anita’s endless other relationship issues), it would be 2 things: vampire attacks in Ireland and her master/servant relationship with Damian. I was actually really excited by the first storyline. It had all the things I thought I wanted: Edward (yay!), road tripping to another country, and the familiar procedural crime type story. It was even hinting at the fact that the most obvious big bad in Ireland might not actually be the perpetrator, leading to a mystery on top of all that goodness! To get there, though, we had to trudge through your typical Anita fare: way too much description of men, stopping in the middle of something important to troubleshoot her relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend, and unnecessary fights.

The other storyline, Damian/Anita, was a little more interesting than I thought it would be. Damian is having nightmares, which shouldn’t be possible, and Anita is finally forced to work on setting up her own triad of power with Nathaniel and Damian. I have to admit, I was seriously disappointed with Nathaniel in this book. He was significantly more catty and annoying than I’ve gotten used to him being. The smut was good, though.

So, to get back to why I didn’t end up liking storyline 1 (SPOILER ALERT) – the big twist I kept expecting never came. What they set up as misdirection was… just obvious. The big resolve at the end felt really rushed and we didn’t get nearly enough Edward time, most of it spent doing other things that weren’t nearly as fascinating to me as Edward himself. We definitely progressed the storyline and there is probably going to be a big whopper of a life change for Anita soon. I guess this book was necessary in the grand scheme of things, but one death in particular seemed kind of wasteful and mean. Like I said, though, you get what you’d expect from the books.


View all my reviews