Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #06 - The Killing Dance

Laurell K. Hamilton

For the series over view and the other Anita Blake Vampire Hunter reviews click the following link. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter

Anita has someone sending hitmen after her, this would be considered a real pain in arse for her, but it does make for a good story.

When the fecal excrement hits the air circulatory device Anita turns to her boyfriends Jean Claude and Richard, the vampire and the werewolf. They discover a special power that they can summon together due to their interconnectedness. The Wolf is Jean Claude's creature to call, this give the vampire power over this animal and its lycanthropic version also, Anita is Jean Claude's human servant. Anita also happens to be a mega powerful Necromancer with power over the dead and as we discover earlier over vampires too. Richard and Anita also happen to be shagging on the side.

This Triumvirate dramatically increases all of the involved parties powers, since they are all very powerful individuals to begin with this makes them a scary combination. Handy but it has its drawbacks too, lack of mental privacy for one, they keep ending up in each others dreams.

In this one Jean Claude has another new venture opening up, this time it is a dance club that he Co-owns with the current wolfpack leader's girl friend, a werewolf. For some reason I had always thought of her as a werefox due to the initial description of her, even knowing she was a werewolf. She also owned the lunatic cafe, the novel by the same name was probably the first description of her (but I may be wrong on the first appearance thing).

The club is called called Danse Macabre. Probably a really bad pun name being that it is a dance club owned by a master vampire and also the name of a very cool piece of classical music.

I think this is the novel where Richard finally kills Marcus the ex wolfpack leader, may also be the one where Anita in an odd set of circumstances becomes the pack leader of the Wereleopards after killing their leader.

The main nastiness in this novel comes from another Triumvirate similar to the Anita/Jean Claude/Richard one.

Cover art time. More cool skulls in the graveyard mist antics on this cover. A menacing cloaked vampire that looks somewhat like Emperor Palpatine is looming over a crouching Anita who is toting what appears to be a Heckler & Koch MP5 machine pistol. The MP5 is a cool looking gun, but it is totally wrong, Anita has an Uzi that Edward gave her, not an MP5.

This one definitely helps to drive the overall story along bringing several of the on-going plot lines to the fore. Here are the Specifications for the Heckler & Koch MP5 as printed in "The Handbook of the SAS and Elite Forces" Edited by Jon E. Lewis. Excuse the typo, in there where is says "rounds per minter" it should really say "rounds per minute"




Updated: 01/06/2005 - Fixed the Werefox issue, thanks to the individual that emailed about that, if you want you name mentioned let me know.