Laurell K. Hamilton
The Killing Dance (1997)
Anita Blake #6
Reviewed: 2001-12-29

In her own words, Anita Blake's life is a cross between preternatural soap opera and an action adventure movie. Compared to previous installments of the series, The Killing Dance is high on romance and cuts back on the gore. Not that there isn't plenty of the latter: explosions of blood, flesh, and bone; ripping claws, searing blades, and blasting guns; pumping hearts, battered bodies and torn corpses.

This time it's not quite the usual routine. Anita is off the job, a dying vampire seeks her aid as a necromancer, and the police work is only peripheral. No new kinds of monsters, even. Oh, and this time, somebody is really out to get her. Ring, ring. The news arrives by phone. Somebody put out money to see Anita dead, a whole lot of money in fact, and the hitmen start lining up. Bang! Bang! Next please. With twenty licensed vampire kills under her belt she's no easy prey, but the hitters will keep coming as long as the contract is up.

Blood, death, and sex. Anita is still caught in a love triangle between an alpha werewolf and a master vampire, but by the end of the novel she will have made a choice. For the first time, Hamilton seriously tunes up the eroticism, getting positively kinky in places. The subject of killing weighs heavily on Anita's mind, affecting both the relationships with her boyfriends, but also her understanding of herself. Is she following down the path of her longtime friend Edward and turning into an emotionless killer?

Anita is as sweet (and Americanly prudish) as ever, tough Executioner, but also torn by love, lust, and self-doubt.

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