Review: Bullet by Laurell Hamilton
Title: Bullet (Anita Blake, Book 19)
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Release: June 1st, 2010
Buy Books: I refuse to link and encourage you to buy this crap.
Goodreads Entry: here
Rating: 0 Stars
The Mother of All Darkness believes that the triumvirate created by master vampire Jean-Claude with Anita and the werewolf Richard Zeeman has enough power for her to regain a body and to immigrate to the New World. But the body she wants to possess is already taken. Anita is about to learn a whole new meaning to sharing her body, one that has nothing to do with the bedroom. And if the Mother of All Darkness can’t succeed in taking over Anita’s body for herself, she means to see that no one else has the use of it, ever again. Even Belle Morte, not always a friend to Anita, has sent word: “Run if you can…”
Sigh. There once was a series about a vampire executioner/necromancer that kicked ass. Anita Blake was her name and she rocked my urban fantasy world. She kicked ass, took names, and didn’t care that she was wearing outdated/out-of-fashion clothing while she did it. She didn’t need stiletto heels or mid drift bearing leather vests. She wasn’t swayed into stupidity by the likes of hot men and out of the world orgasms.
Where oh where has our Anita gone to? She certainly isn’t being written by Laurel K. Hamilton anymore. Now before anyone says “oh you are just one of those who like to complain about all the sex”…. no, I’m not. I like sex in books…. in fact sometimes i LOVE it. What I don’t like is sex to the point that it has no relevance to the plot, or worse, sex instead of a plot. I’ve never been a complainer when it comes to Hamilton, other than what she did to poor Richard… I didn’t hate the ardeur or complain about the harem of men until I started losing track of who was who. I even kind of liked Blood Noir and Skin Trade… had hopes that maybe the Anita I loved was making her way back.
Unfortunately, Bullet is exactly as it is titled, a bullet into the coffin of the Anita Blake series for this reader.
Now here I could try to sum up what was going on in this book and put it into neat paragraphs… but I have put enough time into this one. Instead I am just going to give you a nice neat bulleted list (heh, pun intended) of my complaints and notes.
- The phrase “creamy goodness” should never be used more than once in a book, much less two times or more and when talking about one’s own breasts
- “too tall for straight missionary, or I was too short” was used more than once… relatively close together about entirely different men. Furthermore…. eh what? I want details in a sex scene but can they please be better than random thoughts like this?
- More than once I noted a big W-T-F is going on? There is all kinds of strange metaphysical triumvirate crap going on and most of the time it doesn’t make sense. If there are rules to the supernatural world Anita lives in now that she is ever-powerful, I can’t figure them out and I don’t like it. I don’t buy the weird magic touching mojo just works without rules or reasoning, giving Anita and gang the power to fix anything. Additionally, how many new powers does Anita have now and can someone get me a chart?
- Pages and pages and pages of description. Not just any description… but description of guys’ hair color, eyes, clothing, and shoes. It was endless… if the guys were not always wearing knee high boots we probably would have gotten description of their sock color… surely all varying colors of blue (cue *eyeroll*). Oh and it was not just Anita’s main squeezes that we were treated to unnecessary man drooling, it was every guy she lays eyes on. Bullet could have been at least 50 pages lighter if an editor would have done their job and not allowed her to bore us with Hamilton’s game of “how many different kinds of blue eyes can I shove in a book and how long can I write about them.”
- On the note of clothing… WHY does every man in the book have pants that were “painted on”? Really? I lost count of how many times Hamilton was painting pants on men.
- Boring, emotional, relationship drivel. Pages and pages of talking whether it be among the characters or within Anita’s head. Every scene was like one of those bad fights you had with your high school sweetheart where you both kept going long after everything was said and you found yourself talking in circles…. except in Bullet every one of those scenes involved 3 more more guys making them excruciatingly long. Sigh. I enjoy a good turbulent relationship but at some point in the book there must be a plot right? I mean something has to happen outside of the bedroom right?
- Rainbow of Tigers… they are confusing and totally weird. That is all.
- Poorly written sentences and paragraphs. Unnecessary details that only make my brain go into zombie mode… such as:
Nathaniel had made me drink a Powerade from the cooler near the locker rooms, but he’d also insisted on stopping at the kitchen so he could make me a protein shake. They were designed to replace things a hard workout would take out of you, and the interesting thing was if you didn’t need the shake, it tasted bad, but if your body needed it, chocolate tasted like chocolate. It tasted very good today.
- Richard… sigh. My dear Richard. I want Richard to stop whining and being a pansy as much as the next girl. When forced to choose between a creepy old vamp (Jean Claude) and an uber hot alpha werewolf (Richard) I am always going to side with the warm blooded non-creepy one. Well, I got my wish in this book…. but I am sad to say it was disappointing. Not because unwhiny Richard wasn’t what I thought…. oh no.. Richard accepting the things he wants is totally SEXY. The problem is that the turnaround is completely unrealistic and poorly done. It is done without set up or any believable back story. A fellow blogger described it perfectly, it seems that Hamilton just got tired of writing him as a pain in the ass and decided to stop doing it.
- Sex scenes…. for those who complain about the frequent sex in the later books…Bullet was a nice inbetween. It wasn’t overwhelming and it wasn’t sparse…. but it was BORING. Uninspired and lacking chemistry or sizzle of any kind. I am going to blame it on all the talking during, before, and after.
- Anita getting it on with the girls. Hey, I am all about Anita getting a little help taking care of her harem… its large, she needs it. Yet when Anita actually gets some sexual mojo going with one of the girls underneath her Hamilton wimps out on committing to it. The girl is left to get off on her own by rubbing up against Anita’s stomach? Really? Either dive in or get out of the pool.
- Plot….. where the hell is it? Other than a dance recital at the beginning of the book, Bullet takes place entirely in the Circus of the Damned…. much of it in the bedroom. AND THERE ISN’T EVEN A LOT OF SEX! There is definitely sex… but not enough for most of the book to take place underground in a bedroom. We get glimpses of cool things Anita could be doing (vampires running amock everywhere!) but we never actually get the action! Even the end reads like “here are all the traditional urban fantasy things that happened when we weren’t having sex or talking about our feelings, but I didn’t feel like writing them into the story so let me just tell you how it ended.”
- No Edward. Do I need to say more?
Now, I could go on…. but really, who is still reading at this point? My words can not express how bad I think this book is. And honestly, its a pretty harsh review already. I probably harbor an unhealthy amount of anger in regards to Bullet. Hamilton used to write better than this… and where is her editor? Are you telling me that no one at her publisher read this and questioned anything? Or is it no longer about writing a good story but instead about just meeting a deadline so it hits shelves on time? If so, its shameful… readers spend hard earned money on these books and deserve better than this. When you are the author of a long running, popular series, you have a higher level of responsibility. Your fans trust you, they buy your books on faith. If you can no longer deliver a book of at least mediocre quality writing then do yourself, your fans, and your characters a favor. Stop.
With that, I say good-buy to Anita Blake. Anita, Richard, Jason…. I have loved you and you helped me escape from my crazy so-called life many many nights. I will miss you but I am afraid I no longer care what happens unless it involves Edward coming in and and going on a mass killing rampage complete with Anita/Edward showdown. I am going to try to appreciate Bullet for what it did give me – sexy alpha Richard and series closure.
Disclaimer: This book was purchased by me.
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16 Responses to “Review: Bullet by Laurell Hamilton”
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mandi Schreiner, Elizabeth J Mason. Elizabeth J Mason said: RT @smexybooks: Review of Bullet by LKH @kindlevixen – love this review http://bit.ly/ctI81v [...]
“What I don’t like is sex to the point that it has no relevance to the plot, or worse, sex instead of a plot. ”
Amen sista! I stopped reading AB after book 6 because I couldn’t get past the ridiculous amount sex and lack of substantial plot. I am not surprised that is has gotten worse.
Excellent review. Excellent points. Sadly, I will STILL read the next one because I have this weird emotional connection thing to this series from the beginning. I can’t explain it despite how much I see and agree with your observations. But this book made me sad. Very sad.
I agree with your review completely. I kept waiting for something – anything – to happen to advance the story and I waited in vain. I am not going to quit reading the series. However, I can wait for the paperback. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series has just dropped off my “must buy” list.
Why, oh why can’t LKH find a happy medium between what she wants and what we want? Your review is fab and on the mark. The series has become nothing more then an outpouring of LKH’s inner self I feel. And I don;t want to read about LKH’s inner self. I want to read abt the old kick arse
Anita.
I stopped after Skin Trade and now I feel I’ve made the right decision.
I am in complete surprise that every time LKH publishes a book, it still hits the NY Times top ten, but everyone who reads her Anita Blake series, wants to throw the book out the window. Did she sell her soul to the devil to keep people buying her books?
me too Katie… I am surprised more people don’t wait and check out reviews before buying… especially considering the cost of hardcovers.
*wince* Although it’s sad when a favorite series comes to an end, I do appreciate an author that brings it all to a conclusion while it’s still fresh. It sounds like this series should have been concluded some time ago. I’ve yet to even start the series, and I’ve heard good things. However it seems there are many disgruntled fans with the last several books in the series.
I agree with every point you made but you didn’t mention my favorite WTF moment. Having Anita in the same dress (OMG, the details!) that LKH is wearing in the pics on her site. That one made me stop, blink, read it again, then go to her site and blink some more. Self-indulgent much? I would love to say this is the last Anita Blake that I will read but that would likely be a lie. At least I’m not buying them anymore, I just borrow them from friends that are still on the LKH bandwagon.
Lillie…. I totally noted it on goodreads in a status update and forgot to include it lol. I did a double take too!
“Bullet is exactly as it is titled, a bullet into the coffin of the Anita Blake series for this reader.”
AMEN to that!
“The phrase “creamy goodness” should never be used more than once in a book, much less two times or more and when talking about one’s own breasts” – I think ‘Bullet’ marked the first book in which Anita was an open egomaniac. In previous books she was a firm Mary-Sue who couldn’t understand why so many men were dropping at her feet. But in ‘Bullet’ she does a lot of tooting her own horn, IMO. It makes her even harder to swallow….
And interestingly enough, I did a little research and discovered that Ms. Hamilton has a ‘no editors’ clause in her contract. Yep. All she has to do is hand in the manuscript, get it line-editd (spell-checked) but there are no big ‘concept’ edits for her. So she doesn’t have any editors telling her “hey, Richard suddenly turning into a pussy is a little unbeliveable”. And can you guess at what book she stopped being edited? Me thinks it was right after ‘Obsidian Butterfly’
I have to sadly agree about Bullet, it is the bullet in the head of the series which makes me sad because for awhile there I thought LKH might have been actually going back to a plot based detective/vampire killer series.
Ah well, plenty of other authors out there to read though, rest in peace Anita for I shall not be reading anymore about you.
[...] has been painful… nothing seems to grab my attention. I don’t know if the craptastic Bullet is to blame or if I am just in a slump, but I think it is time for me to take a break from [...]
I stopped reading this series right around Micah. I just couldn’t stand how the sex had become the plot. Anita used to be bad ass. Now she’s like a blow up doll for any being with a boner.
I stopped reading at Obsidian Butterfly. I don’t know which book number that was. I remember the books used to be well-written. Like I would read them and think “Wow, this chick can write.” But that little snippet you showed us… wow. I know it’s VERY tacky for a writer to say this about another writer, but does anyone honestly think a newbie author could have gotten away with that in a book? And could have gotten a publishing contract?
I don’t even know what to do with that! Is that ONE sentence? Holy sweet baby Jesus. WHAT?
I scrolled back and looked. No, it’s three sentences. But wow. I don’t know what to say, except that that HAS to be a rough draft. I thought authors were supposed to get better the more they wrote. I think this is another case of “Author gets too big to be edited and editors can’t talk any sense into them.”
Your review hun makes me glad i ditched this series 9 or so books back. it was hard ’cause in the beginning i LOVED these characters, i gulped down each book, Anita was so bad ass and actually likeable. I rarely want any series to end, but this one should have been put to bed a long time ago.