Horror Books

While this is definitely a Should Read novel-- after all, the character of Dracula is firmly entrenched in our culture-- I came away from it mildly disappointed. While the epistolary quality is a fun way to get inside the minds of the various characters, I never became comfortable with its inherent misogyny. The women are either pillars of virtue or shameless vixens, and the men's responses to female sexuality are either to possess the woman, kill her, or protect her. This is clearly a response to the time in which it was written, when women were beginning to show their discontent with being merely decorations.

Stoker also shows his (or perhaps his culture's) fear of the other through the constant assertions that London is the center of the civilized world and those places further east are barbaric and backwards. However, this is still essential reading as it's important to get this influential story from the original source and not one of several over-sexed, over-dramatized Hollywood versions.

Bram Stoker's influential late-Victorian novel remains a dominant presence in the realm of horror and vampire literature. While some modern readers may have difficulty with the late 19th-century writing style, the novel itself is a rewarding experience for anyone willing to consider the work, and the use of language should not be held against its brilliance.

Though not the first word in vampire literature and mythology, Stoker's novel is, in a way, the last word - and one very much so worth reading.

I loved this novel; the story was well written and I was even frightened at times as to the detail and the images of the greatest vampire of all time. I would strongly encourage evertbody to read this wonderful classic.

This is a sort of a compendium of all tales about vampires surely the author was able to find at his times. And although I don't know English deeply, it seems only a regular novel, mediocre in strict literary sense.
But a novel isn't only literary language, and "Dracula" has some valors not to disdain.
First, there are a collision between old delayed continental Europe, origin of Dracula, symbol of evil, and modern England in full industrial revolution. Gramophones, telegraphs and other machines hardly exits in Transylvania, but abounds in Britain. It's said Bram Stoker wrote this novel with a typewriter, by then a novelty.
But Stoker lacks romanticism. In this sense, some of the several films about Dracula surpasses this novel in that.
However, the author does hit in some facets; one is disquieting: Dracula only is able to enter in your house if you invite him to do.
Another is the forces of goodness, as professor Van Helsing, Lucy, never resource to official authorities as police. Very British I think, as Dracula is a big peril, but... is his own private peril an enemy, and they achieve well the problem by themselves.

The greatest testament to Stoker's work is that it remains uniquely compelling despite popular conceptions shaped by some appalling cinematic adapdations. Even now, it is possible to understand the enthusiatic response of contemporary readers to his sensational tale of "the Undead" and the hardy souls who take on the eponymous Count. From the chilling opening in the Carpathians, Stoker relates his grimly fascinating tale mainly through diary extracts, also managing the tricky task of creating authentically different narrative voices. Add to the equation some masterful prose, a relentless pace and some genuinely shocking moments and the result is a novel that genuinely deserves the title of "classic".

Dark Desire (The Carpathians (Dark) Series, Book 2) This book is excellent. It kept me on the edge of my chair the entire time I was reding it. I love Christine Feehan, she can really stimulate the mind.

Great Book I enjoyed the way it was written and the way she sticks with the storyline and not bouncing around.

"Dark Desire" is the 2nd book is a series of stories about the Carpathians. Not evil, but immortal and blooding drinkers, these compelling beings are under attack by true vampires and humans that hunt vampires. Jacques, a Carpathian who is younger brother to the Prince, has been taken captive and torchured by evil men and left in a basement in an abandoned building to suffer for years. He is able to overcome his pain and communicate with a woman who will become his lifemate. This story is interesting and unusually different than the others in the series. I have tried to read the series in order since characters are innerwoven throughout others' storylines. Dark Desire explains a lot about the history of Carpathians, and the physical and metaphysical differences between humans and immortals. Author, Christine Feehan, has a great immagination and writes well.

Even after everything he'd been through, I had a hard time liking Jacques and I wanted to like him. He'd been so sweet and giving in Dark Prince, you just knew his story was going to be an easy one.

Boy was I wrong, but pleasantly surprised. Christine (funny, that I feel like I know her!) really made me WORK at getting to a place where I could even feel sorry for Jacques. That kept me turning pages.

You'll be rooting for him by the end!

What jacques goes through really gets to you. This story is about a love that stands through thick and thin. Jacques needs Shea just as much as she needs him. This novel is well written and filled with enough drama for an emotional roller coaster ride.

Write on, read on
N.M. Phillips

One thing I really enjoyed about this book was that Anita Blake was a really capable character. She could take her of herself and wasn't afraid to get seriously hurt on the job. Her body was also not overly described, and certainly not in a sexual way, and this I cherished more than anything. Too often we read books about women's breasts this, women's hips that... as if women are obligated to be sexual objects. But no, none of this was done with Anita. She was described to as much extent as a man usually is in novels. I will cherish this about the book forever.

I would have really liked to see some actual romance and was disappointed that there practically was none, but maybe that's just me.

The name "Jean-Claude" kept reminding me of Jean-Claude van Dam the entire time, so it was hard for me to take the vampire of that name seriously.

The writing is not without its flaws. Watch out for the phrase "he/she made it a question." It appears so many times in the book that you could probably make it into a drinking game.

Overall, pretty good book with lots of action, but not exactly my cup of tea.

While I (impatiently) awaited the arrival of a new Dresden Files novel, I decided to take a look at some of the other series that Dresden fans have recommended, including Laurell Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter books. I must say I was a bit skeptical going in to this series. I never really understood the whole Buffy phenomenon, and I was worried that the Anita Blake series would be a thinly veiled romance series instead of the supernatural horror series I was craving. Still, when I ran across a used copy of Guilty Pleasures, I decided to take a chance.

Unlike Harry Dresden's world, where the supernatural is kept (barely) under the surface, Anita Blake's world is one where vampires are a part of the mainstream, with their own nightclubs, political causes, and even churches. Anita Blake is an Animator (as in, she raises the dead), a vampire hunter, and an all-around paranormal troubleshooter. When vampires start getting killed by an unknown agent, the city's master vampire decides that the only person who can catch the killer is another vampire killer - namely one Anita Blake.

In her quest to catch the killer, Blake encounters vampires, wererats, zombies, ghouls, vampire junkies, and other assorted misfits, which gives the reader a crash course in the darker aspects of Anita Blake's world. There's a definite romantic subtext that I'm not crazy about (it's a little too Anne Rice for my tastes), but Guilty Pleasures has more than enough action to make up for it. Like Jim Butcher, Hamilton spends an inordinate amount of time describing what each character is wearing and/or eating, which tends to distract from the overall storytelling. I love the concept of the series, though I'm not yet hooked on any of the characters (Blake still feels like Harry Dresden in a skirt). Hopefully that will become less of an issue in later volumes.

Guilty Pleasures is not perfect, but the potential for something special is definitely there. I felt much the same after reading Storm Front, and to my continued pleasure I decided to go ahead with the next book in the series. I think I'll do the same with the Anita Blake series and see just how far Hamilton can take me.

I've heard so much about the Anita Blake books, and now I've satisfied my curiosity by reading the first of the series. Tersely written, tightly paced, it's fairly entertaining horror action, though nothing spectacular. Might be too graphic for some people, and I can't say I'm interested enough to continue the series, but Anita certainly takes no prisoners in this first installment. Don't be fooled into thinking this is a romance. That might end up happening later, but this first book is all about the action.

I'm currently up to book 6 in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. I know, this is supposed to be a review for only Guilty Pleasures, but it is difficult to review one without the others.

I was recommended the series by a shop assistant while on holidays, and I haven't stopped reading them since. I think the series is excellent because I'm currently 21 and too old for the young adult section and too young for the adult section. The Anita Blake series fits me perfectly.

Main character Anita is strong and witty, and I love her relationship with Jean-Claude. The writing style is easy to follow and get into, and the story lines are very interesting.

I would recommend this series of books to anyone my age with an interest in the paranormal.

The first time I read this book, I was fascinated and scandalized and I could feel my literary horizons opening further with every page. It was fresh, it was innovative. It was naughty and nice all at the same time. Almost fifteen years and lots of knock-off and me-too series later, Laurell K. Hamilton is still the queen of the supernatural for me. Nobody writes those scary, erotic beasties like she does. Sexy vampires, powerful werewolves, compelling shapeshifters, and, my favorite character, one intriguing scary SOB assassin.

Ms. Hamilton has an amazing ability to "up the ante" with every book. The first chapter of every book thrusts us into a grade of peril one step above what we faced in the last book. The powers of her heroine grow with every challenge, and her personality undergoes subtle changes from book to book. Every time her established principles clash with what she knows is the right thing, or simply what she desires, she loses a little more of her humanity.

Guilty Pleasures is the first book in a series that you'll want to read over and over. I certainly did, and I can say that of only two other series; Anne McCaffrey's dragonrider saga (though it's been a long time since I outgrew that one) and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books.

OMG!! I absolutely Love this book! Anita FINALLY makes love to richard.. and its so much more with him than it is with jean claude! The details in this book are amazing! I felt as if i were right there with anita.. or i was anita. I liked how she was possessed by raina and demanded richard to claim her once again as his mate.. and she had to ecscape all the other wolves so she wouldnt have been had (raped) by another. and in the end richard gets to her, and they do what ive been wanting them to do for a very long time! oh it was so awesome.. i re-read this book 5 times before i moved on to the next book!

Laurell K. Hamilton, Blue Moon (Jove, 1998)

I've been hearing about how the Anita Blake series is supposed to be falling off a cliff now for the last three books, and I have to say it hasn't happened yet, at least not as far as I'm concerned, and at least not in the way many have made it out. This one definitely does slip in two major ways, but not because of the major argument brought up by the critics. Guess I'll be waiting for that one in the next book.

The plot of this one starts off with Anita getting a late-night notice that Richard has gotten himself arrested in Tennessee-- for, of all things, attempted [censored for Amazon consumption]. As a few different characters say, "I'd believe murder before I'd believe [censored for Amazon consumption]." The local Master refuses Jean-Claude and his cohorts admittance to his territory, which Anita ignores, of course. As a result, the local Master, Colin, considers himself to be at war with Anita and company, and we get a look at a different set of werewolves than the ones we usually see. Which is probably the most interesting part of the novel; there's a lot of stuff with interesting sociological implications. It's like dumping a mound of topsoil onto already fertile ground to see if those tomatoes can get just a little bigger.

Unfortunately, the downsides are two. First, Anita herself, despite being the narrator of the novel, seems lost in the tide for most of it; events happen around her, and she doesn't seem to have much control over them, even when she's the center of the action. (Anita, and thus Hamilton, realizes this; she complains about it more than once.) The second complaint is far more severe, and I've heard it echoed a number of times in other criticisms; Anita, by the end of this book, is far, far removed from the sympathetic heroine with whom we all started the series. In fact, she's become downright unlikable. I hope this is a temporary aberration. I fear it might not be.

Still, as far as the writing, it's your typical Anita Blake novel, which means it's a good, solid quick read. So I'm still a fan, even if a number of others I know weren't by this point. *** ½

Blue Moon is my 5th anita blake novel. i think she is a unique and wonderful character...but. This book starts with anita in a sexual quandry over her vampire and werewolf lovers and somehow manages to work a story about rescueing Richard in there somewhere.
I guess i am wanting less time describing how some mans hair looks and what color it is and how his silk pants hug his manhood and more time spent on the actual story. i love laurel hamilton and her writing and her characters . It seems to me that too much time is spent on the sex and sexual stuff than on what anita is up to.
I would like maybe 300 pages of story and 100 pages of description of wolfen emotions and satin shirts.

It seems repetitous on the story also. seems anita gathers a group of vamps and werepersons and has trouble relating to them, runs into bad guys, fights, then a big shoot out scene. sure it is different people but still same story line.

laurel hamilton sure does not need me to tell her how to write but she creates such unique and real characters that i would like more about what they do rather than feel.
I will continue to read anita stories but i have the feeling she is headed for disaster and maybe the best thing would be to "kill every one" and start over with just anita.

I'm sad because this series was great in its first two books. Now the series is nothing better than badly written porn. The characters are uninteresting. Those that are featured are either one-dimentional or completely unappealing. The reason for the decline is the fact that the author apparently projects too much of her personal life onto Anita Blake, thus the dropping of Jean Claude for Richard after the author's divorce.

If you're into rotting-vampires raping shapeshifters, this book is for you. And you should be locked up.

This series has devolved into a pornographic soap opera. 1 star.

Well I still like the story and the plotlines. The scenes are well written, full of passion and yeah a lot of imagination. The ennemies are also very thourough and well presented but...

Well the characters are starting to bore me... Anita is becoming this Alucard from the anime series hELLSING. (for those who don't know, he's invincible AT ALL TIMES)

She's losing her persona. She just always seems to be stronger than the enemy...I know she should evolve but she does it too fast and too good.

She has this honnesty streak which I like, this sense of morality which is twisted but it's just well she's becoming unnaturally strong and a bit predictable...(maybe more than a bit) Well i still have a few more to go before making this my final conclusion.


Last but not least there is the overwhelming sex... the moralizing and then the sex again... she seems to grow in force but to schrink in persona

PS the bad guys are also the kind of black and white bad guy... no in between.

And her french is poorly researched and not good. bonheur means happiness and is not the same as good luck which is Bonne chance en français. Et je peux vous dire qu'il y a plein d'erreurs comme ça et ça m'énerve

When I first picked up this book, I did not know what to expect. 2 Hours later, I finished it and truly enjoyed it.

Josh is just a normal 12 and a half year old boy, going on summer vacation. He decides to try out for the summer baseball team, and makes the cut. But, he soon later finds out that his plans will be deminished when his parents tell him that they are going to have to go away to India for work.

Josh ends up being taken into the hands of his Stepfather's great Aunt Ethel, (Which makes her is great-great aunt,) who lives on the outskirts of Carbon City, an old mining area in Wahington. Josh's first impression of Aunt Ethel is that she is a total wackjob because the first ten mintues of him being in her house was filled with a shotgun, blood on a cake, and a dead bat behind the cabinets. So much for a good first impression.

Josh thinks that it will be the most boring summer ever, because of the fact that 1. Aunt Ethel has no TV, computer, or really any other electronic device other than a radio, and 2. That Aunt Ethel and himself are the only two people for miles.

When Aunt Ethel suggests that Josh go to adventure in her old treehouse in the woods that she used to share with her deceased sister, Florence, he decides to take his books along with him to read there. He later finds out that the treehouse isn't just any ordinary tree house; it is haunted.

By a close end of the novel, Josh is at gunpoint questioning himself whether or not he will live or die.

Sorry, this is just a brief summary of parts of the book. I'll leave the rest for you to find out.

All in all, this book is packed with mystery, a little bit of horror (If you call sweet ghosts horror,) and a grand closing.

This was a really fun and spooky ghost story. I loved when the ghost appeared. He was a great character and his history added a rich backstory to the mystery. The ending was really exciting, too. And I also loved the subplot focusing on the plight of abandoned animals. GREAT BOOK!!!

My friend loves gost stories and read it because of the cover. She recommended it to me and i loved it!

Twelve-year-old Josh is forced to live for the summer with an eccentric old aunt who technically is not even a blood relative. He first looks at his situation as hopeless but he soon befriends a ghost and a stray cat.

Things get strange when the ghost asks Josh to rob a grave so that all of his body might be reunited. Yes, it's an improbable plot, but this is a good story and moves at a fast pace. While digging up the leg bones of the ghost, Josh stumbles across stolen money buried in the same grave (of all the peculiar coincidences in this book, this is the strangest). But it makes for a good story and helps solve a local mystery.

All's well that ends well, and Josh is a hero as the local police never question him about why he was digging in that particular plot. The grave robber becomes the hero and in the end he even gets to join a local baseball team, something he had to give up before first coming to Carbon City.

Josh went to visit his Aunt in Carbon City, Washington. He's going over for the summer. She told Josh about a tree house in the backyard and he went in it. That's were he met Willie the ghost. Josh makes a deal with Willie to dig up his leg bones and rebury them with the rest of his body. While he was digging he found a box of money. Josh wants to return the money without getting hurt.
I thought the book was pretty good I would give it three stars. I liked the book when Mr. Turlep showed up and found out Josh found the box. What I didn't really like about the book was Willie wasn't in it much and it was called the Ghost's Grave.

I started reading this book after glancing at the cover. It is a well written book and difficult to put down. Twelve-year-old Josh is forced to live for the summer with an eccentric old aunt who technically is not even a blood relative. He first looks at his situation as hopeless but he soon befriends a ghost and a stray cat.

Things get strange when the ghost asks Josh to rob a grave so that all of his body might be reunited. Yes, it's an improbable plot, but this is a good story and moves at a fast pace. While digging up the leg bones of the ghost, Josh stumbles across stolen money buried in the same grave (of all the peculiar coincidences in this book, this is the strangest). But it makes for a good story and helps solve a local mystery.

All's well that ends well, and Josh is a hero as the local police never question him about why he was digging in that particular plot. The grave robber becomes the hero and in the end he even gets to join a local baseball team, something he had to give up before first coming to Carbon City.

Teenage boys should enjoy this book. It has all the elements that should keep their interest, and as said, the whole book can be read in one or two sittings.

A messed up girl named Barbie has created a dream world with some serious problems. After blocking this out of a mind for her time, and not dreaming, eventually her dream world gets to her.

This drags in her friends and neighbours, who happen to include an immortal witch, and an agent of her dream foe.

Through a drawing down the moon ritual, the women involved enter the dream world to try and rectify things and find Barbie.

Needless to say, Morpheus is not at all amused, when he finally has to act.

This part really has little to do with the Endless.

This is one my two favorites in the 11-volume "Sandman" series, which has proven Gaiman to be a genius storyteller. I think I like this one especially because it's a full-length continuing story, not a collection of short pieces, and because the characters are terrific (all of them are just ordinary people, including the witch and the princess), and also because Gaiman is a master of poetic dialogue. The story begins in a New York tenement for mostly women, all of them genuine characters, and several of them with connections to characters in earlier volumes. Then Barbie -- Princess Barbara -- is threatened and three of her friends set off on the Moon Road to help her. But Barbie is on a quest of her own, to seek out and defeat the Cuckoo, through a land of her own dreams and imaginings. The Endless are actually rather minor characters this time, but the story doesn't suffer for it.

Gaiman's earlier work with the characters of the Sandman Universe is very good, and the later books continue the trend. I would recommend this to any fan of the earlier books.
For those unfamiliar with the series, I would suggest starting at Volume 1, "Preludes and Nocturnes", which sets up the premise of the series and introduces many of the characters.

I did like this book. I really have enjoyed all the Sandman books so far. But as much as it galls me to admit it, I'm not sure I understand quite what the big deal is. I keep hearing about and reading about how fabulous they are. And yeah, they're interesting. It's an interesting world that Gaiman has created and I think the character of the Sandman is intriguing/fascinating. And the Sandman is good-looking in some of the panels. But I don't understand what about these novels/comics draws people in so much. I don't understand why the Midsummer Night's Dream one won that prestigious award which ticked the other authors off so they had to change the rules to specifically exclude a graphic novel from being entered ever again. I don't understand why this series is supposed to grab women readers in a way that other comic/graphic novel offerings haven't. It's a bit like David Bowie music, to me. I like it a lot. But partly, that's because I Want to like it. I think it (the music, or the graphic novel) is really weird and I don't understand why everybody else, with no inner urging, likes it so much. And then I read the preface to this book and the guy talks about all these layers and all this depth that I guess I'm really just not getting at all. Which also bugs me because I like to think that I'm smart. But, granted, I've only read it one time and that kind of stuff does usually become more apparent with multiple readings.

Like a huge boulder that cannot be stopped, Gaiman continues to plow through the journeys of the characters we first were introduced to in the spellbinding introduction entitled "Preludes and Nocturnes" with his fifth collection aptly titled "A Game of You". Like no other artist that I have seen in the past, Gaiman impresses yet again by taking a smaller character from his "Doll House" collection and expanding darkly into her dreams and past. That small character is Barbie - of Ken & Barbie - and the elaboration of her fantasy dream world that includes large hairy beasts, an inspector rat, a bird, as well as a monkey with a circus suit. It sounds nearly dream-like, but what Gaiman does (like no other) is give these characters moments of emotion, human traits, and a drive to see what they believe in succeed. Gaiman takes us from our physical Earth to this dream-created world with comfort and ease, nearly making us more excited to be in this fictional world than in our own. He does this through sympathetic creatures/characters, through the unknown, and through the unhinging power of Dream.

Our story follows Barbie as she attempts to reconnect with her world after her relationship with Ken soured. She has made a few friends in her apartment - one a transvestite named Wanda, a gay couple named Hazel and Foxglove that harbor a surprising secret, then there is Thessaly, an unknown neighbor that seems to know more of what is happening then the rest of our players. None the less, as it seems to be in this series, a character from Barbie's dreams escapes onto the streets of New York. Barbie sees it, realizes it, and retrieves a pendant from it before it is gunned down by the NYPD. She is struck by the idea that her dreams could become a reality. She takes the pendant home with her and deeply falls asleep only to awaken back in her dream world where she is asked to save it from the evil grip of the Cuckoo.

(Now, for the quick - quick - quick version...)

As she makes this journey with her supposed friends, Thessaly sets into motion a way to retrieve her from the lost dream world. She kills a neighbor George (who was oddly giving everyone nightmares in the apartment) and hangs the skin of his face on the wall so that he can talk to the saviors about what is happening to Barbie. Thessaly calls down the Moon God so that she, Hazel, and Fox can travel to Barbie's dream world to save her. Barbie finds the Cuckoo, but it is not who she expects it to be. Due to traveling, Thessaly has disrupted the physical Earth causing peril to Wanda - and just when we think that all is going to be lost, our heroine Dream takes his powerful step forward, wrapping up a phenomenal story that continues to build upon the world we still know little about.

This is another great collection by Gaiman in the expansion of his Dream world. I enjoyed the inception of a character that we already knew about, that we already knew her dreams, and Gaiman just wanted to grow upon it to demonstrate the overall power and depth of Dream. In a prior review, I was upset that we didn't have the opportunity to see much of Dream in a certain collection which ultimately created animosity with this avid reader, but in "A Game of You", I didn't mind. I liked not having Dream arrive until it was absolutely necessary because (unlike the past collection) there was this sense of fantasy that kept your attention throughout the book. The actions of Thessaly, the arrival of Martin Tenbones on the streets of NY, and the entirely creepy, yet bizarre world that Barbie enters that reminded me of a slanted Narnia. Gaiman gave us enough to wrap our minds around that Dream just seemed to be a mediator instead of a main character, and in this collection that worked. The eclectic collection of "real" people kept a strong balance between the realities that Barbie lived in and the dream world she created, it is only when the two combine together that we are provided with a climax like no other. While the other collections followed a similar path, I felt this one was Gaiman's strongest developed story yet. I say this mainly because he takes a similar structure as he did in "Seasons of Mists" - the onslaught of several different characters from several different walks of life - but expands it in a way that only he can develop. Gaiman is at the top of his game with this volume, and I cannot wait to see where he will take us next.

Overall, I was extremely happy with this collection. Yet again, I have no complaints as Gaiman does not seem to be slowing down at all. He brings imagination, creativity, and this layer of unrepentant darkness to the table with each page that I turn. I especially loved the insertion of Rose Walker into the finale of the story as well as seeing Dream's sister make a cameo appearance. This collection blended well, giving us yet another scope of just how big Dream's world is and how easily he has control over it. This is one of those collections that you finish, take a deep breath, and then quickly jump into the next realizing that you do not want to skip a beat at all. I strongly suggest this book to anyone that can get their hands on it. I still say you need to begin with "Preludes and Nocturnes" and follow the course, but one could read this chapter and still become an instant fan of the series. Gaiman proves yet again that this is the pinnacle of his graphic novel career.

Grade: ***** out of *****

I used to be a big fan of the Anita Blae series, I started reading them around 16 and I loved the first 9 books. Those are the only ones I recomend period because it started to go down hill after Obsidian Butterfly.

I kept reading until Micah because I hoped that things would get better, not every book can be great after all. But then I bought Micah, hoping that we'd get some more background on him, that we'd be able to see why he is the way he is.

I spent my $14 dollars, I believe it was, and what I got was two or three pages of how Micah became a werelepard, surrounded by him and Anita talking in a hotel room, really bad sex, and her not doing the job she had come to PA to do, in the first place.

After that I never picked up another Anita Blake book and have replaced LKH were these other authors:

Stephenie Meyer- The Twilight series and The Host
Mary Janice Davidson- The Undead/Vampire Queen Betsy series and the Fred the Mermaid series
Kimberly Raye- The Dead End Dating series
Yasmine Galenorn- The Sisters of the Moon/Otherworld series
Colleen Gleason- The Gardella Vampire Chonicles series
Charlaine Harris- The Sookie Stackhouse series

All of them write vampires, but are worlds apart from LKH in that I happily wait for the next book, even if I have to wait a year for it. I gladly do so and they get my money because their writing is so much better. Maybe if LKH went back to writing one book a year and switched between the two series, she'd be able to write better books and see how crappy her books have gotten.

This short book was very disappointing. The plot was shallow. The climactic action was boring, compared to other books in the series.

Additionally, I felt that this book was little more than thinly disguised porn. I read waay too much about Micah's member and bedroom skill.

Micah (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Book 13) (Paperback)
by Laurell K. Hamilton (Author) "It was half past dawn when the phone rang..." (more)
Key Phrases: vampire executioner, protective circle, Marshal Blake


This book was a bit disappointing compared to her others. Very short. Almost like someone else wrote it from her notes.

(sigh) Laurell, what's happened to you? Is putting out a book a year draining you too much? There's no excuse for this.

Micah is a novella dressed up to look like a full novel. The plotline is barely there, the characterizations are shallow, and everything just seems wooden & unlikable. The book is actually just as cheaply done as anything else, as the spacing is overdone in order to stretch out a 100-ish page novel out into 300-ish pages. If this had been published as a short story I wouldn't have minded the barely there plotline or dull characters. But as a novel, let alone as an actual numbered book in the series? That's unforgivable.

I can only hope that eventually things will improve. As it is, this book contributed to why I no longer purchase her books anymore and why I no longer have read anything after this book.

That's it. Really. Were you expecting more? There isn't anything more. No, I'm not kidding.

MICAH is a very short novella put into book form to make Ms. Hamilton more money. And no, I'm not kidding about that either.

Thankfully, I like Micah, although I don't think there are too many more descriptions that the author can make up to describe his physical characteristics. He's not that tall, but he's big where it matters, is hotter than hot, and can have sex as often as Anita needs. Which, we all know, is basically any time she's not unconscious.

I'm glad I read it, because it's part of the series. But the only thing I learned that was new is how Micah became a wereleopard and what happened to his family.

That's it. Really. I tried to tell you.

While we do have the Marvel Zombies, it feels as if this book is moving them more towards standard comic book fare. By the end, the zombies are no longer the crazy, conflicted, and generally funny group of super heroes gone wrong. They essentially become immortal, cyborg versions of themselves.

At the end of Marvel Zombies 2 in a short afterward paragraph, Writer Robert Kirkman refers to his Marvel Zombies creation as "a kooky idea". Indeed, if you've not read any of the series, and you've stumbled across this product, you're probably saying more colorful things than `kooky' as you try to even consider this as a serious purchase. But I assure you that if you're a fan of the Marvel Universe (and you like a good zombie story), you'll find the Marvel Zombies series a terrific, enjoyably quick read.

Marvel Zombies was one of the more pleasant surprises that I've come across in long long while. Kirkman, who also happens to be the creator of the absolutely fabulous Walking Dead series (The Walking Dead Book 1, The Walking Dead, Book 2, The Walking Dead Book 3, The Walking Dead, Vol. 7: The Calm Before & The Walking Dead Volume 8: Made To Suffer), knows how to do a zombie story. And he does the Marvel Zombies series just as well as he does the aforementioned Walking Dead series.

Marvel Zombies 2 picks up 40 years after the last page of the original Marvel Zombies. The Marvel Zombies are in a bit of a crisis: they've devoured every source of food that they know of. On Earth, Black Panther is the leader of what's left of any semblance of civilization, and the Marvel Zombies want to make a meal out of any survivors.

Marvel Zombies 2 is as well-written as the original, but the series may be losing its steam (and enough super-heroes to keep the series going!). I thoroughly enjoyed Marvel Zombies 2, and Marvel Zombies 2 is a must for anyone that's read the original. However, for the best chronology and continuity, before getting into Marvel Zombies 2, I'd suggest reading Marvel Zombies first, then the Marvel Zombies: Dead Days prequel / story arc collection.

(And don't miss the other very well done story arc prequel: Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness where some real "Ash" kickin' gets done!)

This was a fun book - where the first series was a giddy splatterfest, this second story arc takes the premise more seriously and has the super-zombies returning to Earth in search of a trans-dimensional portal so that they can find another universe to feast on. There they encounter the remnants of Earth's population, including several super-survivors, and thus the race is on. Kirkman does some interesting stuff combining super-prosthetic technology with the whole can't-kill-'em premise, and for fans of the superhero and zombie genres this remains a highly entertaining book. Several characters - Wolverine, Ororo - remain little more than walking furniture in this volume, but it's hard to complain about weak characterization in a book where the main point is to see how hard it is to kill the participants. Not great literature, but funny and fun. (ReadThatAgain book reviews)

Im a huge fan of the series. Now this isnt as good as the first series but damn close to it. We see the 6 surviving Marvel Zombies (Giant Man, Spiderman, Wolverine, Iron Man, Hulk and Luke Cage) now known as the Glactus (after eating the original) and they are now joined by zombified Pheonix aka Jean Grey, Thanos, Firelord and Shi'ar warrior Gladiator. It turns out in the last 40 years since the last series. The Marvel zombies have ate everyone in the universe.

We ate everything!

But it turns out that some humans survived on earth including Blank Panther, Forge, Magneto's accolytes and a bunch of other people. But they have cured zombies (didnt eat flesh for years) Wasp and Hawkeye (both are just heads attached to robotic bodies). Now the zombies return to earth for a teleportion device seen on Ultimate Fantastic 4 issues, and MZ dead days. But they find food and its now a human vs zombies civil war.

Great comic, read it

I had to write a review on this....I felt that the first MZ book was hysterically funny, and should have been left with just those stories. Dead Days was actually very good as well, with the Army Of Darkness spin-off rounding off an already tired storyline.

This story should have been much more solid, but I can only deduce that Mr. Suydam's artwork is what kept this series going....because Mr. Kirkman seemed to have run out of ideas. I gave this three stars because although the beginning is interesting, the end is atrocious; horribly cliched dialogue and an overall feeling of disappointment. I recommend all the volumes for collectors, but really, this series needs to end with this; even if there is a possibility of dragging out another story, enough is enough.

Whereas the previous five "Dark Tower" novels take place over large, sprawling periods of time, this novel is much shorter both in reality (400 pages) and within the text (all the events take place within a day or two).

When I first started this book, I was disappointed by the focus on Susannah-Mio, as that (at least to me) was not a very compelling part of the storyline. However, the interactions of those characters in 1999 New York City provides for some entertaining moments.

The much more interesting plotline in this novel, however, is Roland and Eddie meeting Stephen King in the flesh. Yes, King wrote himself into his own book! While the phrase "there are more worlds than these" had played a big part in the series to this point, I was shocked to find out that it perhaps even including OUR own world as well. Much like the TV show "LOST", which once hinted that it's characters were nothing more than one man's paranoid delusions, "Song of Susannah" intimates that perhaps the entire Dark Tower creation just springs from the mind of King...that Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and the like aren't even real! The coupe de grace comes when King (the real one!) questions which world the fictional Stephen King actually resides in.

So, although "Susannah" starts off a bit slow, it slowly builds to an exciting crescendo that will whet your appetite for the final installment. I am a first-time reader of the series, and I am chomping at the bit to finally be ushered into the Dark Tower itself!

This was painful. I just wanted to get through it. Boring, silly, egotistic and just....bad. If I hear the word "chap" one more time, I'm going to freak out. I'm listening to it now..oh god, please let it end. Kill me

I wanted to read the entire series before reviewing this and confirming that it is the worst volume in the series, and it is...perhaps this was deliberate on king's behalf to make the last one seem even better, who knows?

This book is essentially an 'add on' to Wolves of the Calla and the whole story could have genuinely been cut down to 50 pages and put at the end of the last volume...

As the title suggests, volume VI revolves around the character Susannah. How you, the 'Constant Reader', views her will have an impact on the enjoyment you get here. I personally don't rate her as my favourite and perhaps this was the reason I wanted to rush through it and get to the final book...

Anyway, the book is almost 500 pages of, what I feel, needless detail on the struggle between Susannah and Mia in regards 'the chap'. We found out about Susannah's/Mia's pregnancy in Wolves of the Calla and yet King goes on and on and on and on and on, boring us at times and (SPOILER ALERT) she doesn't even give birth to the damn thing until the beginning of volume 7.

I just feel it could have been condensed and the series made into 6 books
with any of the relevant content cut down to 50 pages and added onto book 5...I know King can sometimes go into too much detail but I feel this was well overdone perhaps to make sure the series had 7 volumes, was this King's plan? It seems very likely this is the case because this isn't an enjoyable experience.

There are a few good parts to the story, Roland and Eddie meet up with an old friend named Jack Andolini but I won't spoil that bit ;)

Basically, the parts not involving all the palaver of 'the chap' are good, and if you like you could skip most of these parts and not miss a thing...

Of course, if you've got this far, you'll have to read this as I doubt anyone could give up on the Tower at this point..

Book 7 does get better say Thank Ya!!!!!

Song of Susannah is the sixth and penultimate novel in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. This is the shortest book we've had in this series for quite a while. And, as the characters are split up into three groups, we get less than 200 pages for each. Since King likes to move things along at a rather glacial pace, not a whole lot happens here.

Picking up where Wolves of the Calla left off, the characters disperse back to different times and places in twentieth-century America. Here they all mostly wander around for a while until they get to convenient stopping points that will (one hopes) give the last book an exciting beginning. The "cliffhanger" here is anything but. Like the entire Susannah-is-pregnant story arc, it's hardly compelling (and it's grown rather tiresome).

In Wolves of the Calla, King inserted himself into the Dark Tower world. Now he shows up as a character. While the reader's initial impression of this is likely something along the lines of "Wow, how stupid," like most things in this novel, it doesn't matter one way or the other to the story, really, although King tries to tie together his writing career, life, the universe and everything with it. The book ends with a cryptobiographical diary from King the character which is, again, not particularly compelling.

This makes two poor entries in a row into the Dark Tower series. Song of Susannah is practically nothing but setup for the last book. On its own, it wouldn't be worth bothering with.

King's sixth book in the "Dark Tower" series picks up immediately where "Wolves of the Calla" left off, reinserting the reader into the world of the gunslinger and his travelling companions. They resume their quest for the Dark Tower with a great opening scene, and soon cutting to the absconded Susannah and her new passenger ...

Things progress smoothly and very competently in this penultimate volume, a shorter story than many of its predeccessors and more focused for it. The writing is condensed but not neglectful of the characters or the scenarios, and has all the fluidity and poetry of the previous volumes, although sadly not to the extent of the wonderful "The Gunslinger".

The novel benefits from the sense of movement and progress, that was sadly lacking in the last two novels, "Wizard and Glass" which was almost entirely flashback, and "Wolves of the Calla" which took place entirely in one town. Now things are rolling and the excitement and urgency return to the story.

I'm not a fan of the metafictional aspects of the series, which begun in earnest last novel with the mention of "Stephen King, the authord from Maine", a plotline which is expounded upon and reaches a kind of conclusion here as well. Mixing real-life with fiction is often a bad idea, and although Stephen King appears here as a character, the novel itself doesn't appear to suffer greatly despite the cringing feeling you might get at the hubris of the author.

Still, there are some truly heart-stopping moments, such as the escalation of Susannah's troubles in the final chapter, and the moment of Jake and Pere Callahan's emergence into the New York of 1999. Despite another cliff-hanger ending, which generally drive me nuts with anger and disappointment, it's still a strong book and worthy of the collection. If you felt a little deflated after books four and five, you'll be happy to see a return to form with book six.

I owned this book before, but my dog ate it so had to buy a replacement.I love the anita blake books, the are a great read.

I bought this for my husband as him and some of the other soliders he is working with have been reading this whole series while in Iraq. He has said this is the worst of the seris, a snoozer.

Anita Blake books in one sentence. Junk food reading for the goth scene; fun, addictive, and ultimately not a meal.

Sincerely,
Ira Carmel

I've read this series from book 1 (Guilty Pleasures) and have loved each book. Anita has become such a complex character and her supporting cast members are enigmatic and beautifully created. Yes, the books are much different than they were in the first few installments, but I don't believe that to be a bad thing.

Cerulean Sins carries on with a character introduced in the previous book (Narcissus in Chains). This character is Belle Morte, the vampire who turned Anita's boyfriend, Jean Claude, into a vampire. She also created Asher, Jean Claude's second in command. Both men are former lovers of Belle Morte. She is insulted (to put it mildly) that both Jean Claude and Asher chose to leave her, as she considers herself the most desirable woman/vampire in the world. Thus, she sends her second in command vampire to "visit" Jean Claude's territory. The troubles that this visit causes are the central plot in the story (and there's definitely a couple surprises). There is also a sub-plot involving a series of murders that Anita helps to solve.

Some readers of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books believe the series has gone downhill since Anita began engaging in sex with multiple partners as a result of a condition passed on to her from Jean Claude. This condition (called the arduer) causes the person to experience intense sexual desire until "fed". I don't believe this is a problem in the books, or just an excuse for Anita to have sex. I think this condition represents the only thing Anita has found that she can't yet control or kill. It's something she has to face head-on and must be patient with until she learns control. In the books leading up to Narcissus in Chains, where Anita first learns she has the arduer, there are references to her reliance on guns to control situations. I think the arduer is to teach Anita that guns won't solve all her problems. Plus, she's not having sex with random people on the streets and, considering the length of the book, I didn't feel there were too many sex scenes in this book. I never felt like I wanted to just get past the sex and get on to the plot, as I do with some books.

I think the Anita Blake series is still going strong and Laurell K. Hamilton continues to add new elements of surprise.

Honestly!!! all i read about in the anita blake stories is sex sex sex, that and tortured, cut up bodies, not to mention really BAD french. She started out as such a cool character, so lively, so real... someone with principals and limits... now she a raging, limitless, all powerfull sex junky who has every other character in the book boot licking!!! I'm sorry ms hamilton but you took a really good charachter and you messed her up completely. I will now finish the series because i am committed to it ( i bought them so i read them) i can only hope that this was (yet another) one time tragedy amidst a decent series.... *sigh*