Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #12 - Incubus Dreams

Laurell K. Hamilton

For the series overview click the following link. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter

This is book number 12 in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series, I personally think it is the best one since Obsidian Butterfly, the two in-between were not so good in my opinion.

It starts with the wedding of Tammy and Larry. Tammy is the female cop in the special police task force that Anita consults for. Tammy is there because as well as being a police officer she is a witch. Larry is Anita's sidekick from Animators Inc, the necromancer she was mentoring earlier in the series who wanted to be an executioner just like Anita, but who has not had a mention for some time.

The wedding is Halloween themed, possibly one of the tackiest themes for a wedding ever, this chapter of the book was made available on the net as a preview.

The ceremony goes of pretty much without a hitch, but early in the reception Anita gets called to a crime scene with a dead stripper outside a club that appears to have been killed by a vampire. Anita concludes that due to differing sized bite marks it is infact multiple vampires that are responsible, a practice that prevents the victim from rising as a vampire.

Anita thinks it may be linked to some serial killer vampires that were recently operating in another town, and it is confirmed that they have a serial killer on their hands when more victims are discovered further down the track.

Unfortunately still no Edward, the backup Anita gets in this novel is some sort of Swat team. Fortunately however Anita actually does some work this time (raising zombies), and does some police work.

There are several hundred pages of sexual filler, as well as some more sexual content scattered through that actually has a reason for being there, but being a 724 page book there is room to fit a story line around it, so that is fine. I was a little worried that after the last two and with Incubus in the title that this one could be just a porn novel. It is also a rather thick book.

It turns out incubus dreams is an establishment that is visited, not a reference to having sexual fantasies about Jean Claude, Vampire Master of St Louis, one of Anita's boyfriends, possessing the power to feed of sex as well as blood.

We go back to Guilty Pleasures and Danse Macabre also during the course of this novel, places that have been visited in previous novels owned by Jean Claude.

The cover is the half a head design that has now become standard for the Orbit versions, the colourations and the background change for each novel the last few I have purchased have been like this, the earlier novels that I have with the older cover art for have now all been re-published with the half a head version of the cover art also.

Anyhow the book wraps up many of its story arcs in the end, but leaves some things unresolved, an obvious starting point for the next novel. It is hard to explain exactly how without giving everything away. Unlike what I had heard prior to reading it (that it didn't end properly), I thought it was satisfactory way to end a book that is part of a series like that.