Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #07 - Burnt Offerings

Laurell K. Hamilton

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

The seventh one was rather interesting, basically someone has been targeting vampire owned businesses and hangouts in what appears to be an attempt to drive them out of St Louis.

Being now bound to the underworld as it were through her ties with Jean Claude, Anita is in the thick of things. Seeing that Vampires are also now legal citizens and have the same rights as everyone else the police are also in on the action, the tables have turned and it is the monsters that need protecting now.

More Vampire council members come into town, including a weird body hopping one, and by the end if not somewhere before Anita has definitely been adopted as the head of the were leopards, taking care of them after she killed there leader at an earlier point, that possibly happened at some point in this novel and not one of the earlier ones as I may have mentioned in an earlier review.

That is the problem with reading eight books in a row then waiting a year to review all of them, they get somewhat blended together and eventually you end up having to update the reviews when it is pointed out to you that something was totally buggered up in your review. Fortunately the ninth one was read more recently and is fresher in my mind, and at this point I am awaiting the orbit release of the tenth novel. Number ten will be a book last read review so should actually be more relevant to the contents of the book than some of the stuff in these reviews.

The good thing about waiting so long to review the books is not possible to give away as much of the plot in the review since most of the non-essential bits have been forgotten anyway. The really obvious bits such as the ending and the solving of the mysteries should not be included unless one is planning on doing a spoiler so that is out too.

Back on topic now. Due to the nature of the arson attacks the anti vampire groups have become prime suspects, the existence of these Racial Hate Groups is interesting in itself as most people just think of vampires as people with pointy teeth. Could there be something deeper here, commentary on racism, or is it just to make things more believable. Basically I don't care, I just figure that they are just there as a convenient suspect/scapegoat/red hearing.

I am pretty sure that this is the novel where Anita discovers that she is able to raise the energy of the deceased were fox and use it to heal, this is handy because she can heal her furry friends. It does have the slight draw back of having to basically shag the injured individual to do it though.

The wackiest part of this novel though is the Vampire whose creature to call is the Butterfly. Different to say the least, not very effective for guarding the coffins during the day though really. Yes a creature to call also includes the lycanthropic version, but would a were butterfly be much more terrifying than a standard one, I think a flock of were swans would be far scarier.

That said I think the whole point was that it was such an unscary creature.

And as I wrap up this review I thought I should end with the cover remarks. No surprises that the cover should have Anita standing infront of an inferno, given the name and the main premise of the story involving fire and lots of it. What I must say however is that with a trashy neon sign like that, the venue in the picture deserved to get burnt down for displaying such tragic taste.

That's about it really, sure this will get changed again shortly when people point out all the incorrect statements.