Crimson Death

This is a very disappointing book in the series. I enjoyed the last few books WAY more than this one. (I skipped the Jason book though.) Sigh. There's some things addressed in this book that should have been addressed ages ago. There's just so much that hasn't been developed and while Anita going to therapy is a good thing, how can she still see herself as human? Like what? At least admit to yourself that you're some flavor of preternatural.

And the whole Nathaniel coming into power thing was really off-putting. I don't like how easily brushed-off it was that he mind-fucked Anita and Damian. It was too close to dub-con and I didn't like that it wasn't further discussed. In fact, I don't know why this was advertised as a book about Edward and Dublin. The entire time that Anita was in Dublin, I sincerely wished she wasn't. It's like going back in time in the books and getting another crash course on how to deal with vampires. It was just rehashing things that we learned early on in the series and just introducing them in a different setting. The Garda characters in Dublin were just ridiculous fodder. I don't know why Pearson was portrayed as beyond incompetent and none of the rest of the Garda were even memorable. Either way, a bit more than the first half was more relationship issues than solving crimes in Dublin. It felt like if it had been two separate books then more could have been hashed out and fully realized. In the former, there were Anita's glacial development, her acquiescence to being pregnant, and Nathaniel's sudden shift in metaphysical power. In the latter, there could have an actual crime-solving plot in Dublin. There were so many instances–too many–where it felt like the author was writing about where people were and what they were doing than any actual plot happening.

That leads into the writing of this book. That was by far the most disappointing aspect. It's just so dry and noncommittal. Since it's in first-person I was always expect to get more into Anita's head than anyone else's, and we've gotten that in previous books but not this time. The characters closely connected to Anita were the ones actually telling the reader what she felt. What's the point of it being first-person if we need the side characters to tell us what the main character is feeling?

In the middle of reading this book, I went back to the author's Merry Gentry series to remember why I fell in love with her books in the first place. I can firmly say that I officially like the Merry Gentry series more than the Anita Blake series because the overall character development and portrayal in that series is more realistic, and feels like something that I can count on. Whereas in this series, I feel like the same issues are being brought up again and again without any resolution in sight.