Dancing

Level: Explicit
Genre: Fantasy> Urban Fantasy > Vampire
Obtained: Amazon Kindle
Reviewed by: Maggie W.

Cover:

The person on this cover seems to be peeking out from where they've been buried alive. Fitting since this book is an attempt by the author to climb out of the hole she dug herself into with the previous crappy books her series has turned into. The first thing I noticed about this cover art when it was released was, that it the ugliest color of orange for the author and title, and it doesn't look any better next to the purple and blue. Based on only the cover this gets a D if only because it wasn't one of the random objects we found in a box covers.

About the Book:

I would have let Nic continue with his on going reviews of the books in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series but this book was literally so terrible that I felt I had to post the review I wrote on Amazon here. Never in my life have I read a book so terrible that my ability to spell and make complete sentences afterwards left me for over an hour. Even now 2 hours later as I write this, I have to rewrite words repeatedly. 

Rating: 2/10

This book only earned a point for each of the following reasons: 
1) There were no horribly written boring sex scenes.
2) It was only novella length and I wasn't forced to suffer through the usual 500 pages of this swill. 

I don't even know where to start on how terrible this novella was. Once I got going I didn't know when to stop.

First were the endless paragraphs describing what characters looked like that were nearly identical to every other description of them we've gotten since they were introduced in the series. We get it, Nathaniel has long, long hair and lavender eyes, Micah is short with curly hair and a triangle face. Make a character list with a 1-2 sentence description of each one to put at the end of each book, problem solved in case people haven't read any other books in the series.

Then is the fact that because Monica is out of town for a week at a conference, she's left Matthew with Jean-Claude, Anita and company. Why would you leave your child in the care of someone that can't even remember to eat so as not to have ardeur problems while investigating murders? Not to mention, why is it appropriate to talk about the fact that you(Nathaniel) met Anita after nearly being killed by a trick and that you spent years trying to get in her pants in front of a 4 year old?
"we'd started doing less of the tonsil-cleaning kisses in front of Matthew--not just between the men, but between me and the men, or anyone and anyone. Why? Because Matthew liked to imitate"
So it never occurred to them about what is appropriate in front of children until Matthew started to imitate them? O.o Really? They didn't get that maybe 4 year olds shouldn't see you shove your tongue down multiple someone's throats until he tried the same? I think that's one of those things on the list with, don't swear in front of them, or expose them to violence until they're mentally equipped to handle it. Then again, if you're leaving a child with Anita they'd probably see all 3 and more within the first 15 minutes.

I noticed something while reading this, Zerbrowski has been a character since Guilty Pleasures. He was a character I enjoyed reading. When Anita and sundry get to the house, even his wife Katie is calling him Zerbrowski. I thought, hey, they've been married for 20 years, that's a little strange. So I googled and realized, we've never heard his first name. We've got nicknames for characters that get killed off a book or 2 after their introduction(sometimes in the same book) but a character that's been there since book one doesn't have a full name. Or maybe he's just Zerbrowski, like Cher or Madonna.

"It took us almost thirty minutes of conversation to try and explain that Matthew wasn't ours, but he spent a lot of time with us." Why would that take 30 minutes? All that needs to be said is, that's Matthew, our friend's son, we're watching him while she's out of town. Even if you're the slowest speaker in the world it would take maybe 1 minute tops to explain. Of course it's the wives that can't understand this quickly, because what's an Anita Blake story without some sexism thrown in for flavor. And of course we can add a bit of Anita getting angry over other women finding Nathaniel attractive and they only back off when they find out Nathaniel is taken because boring vanilla cardboard cutout wives can't resist him.

If working as a stripper gives Nathaniel so much angst about not being seen as a person then why continue to do the job? I mean as much as he and Anita both go on about him being the wife, why not be the stay at home partner full-time? He could just teach dance part-time.

"In that cold, wicked witch of the north sort of way," Nit-picking but the witch of the north was Glinda, the good witch.

The last 1/3 of the book I just rolled my eyes through. More meanies being mean about Anita and Co.'s lifestyle, even bringing Matthew into it by having another child start a fight about it and at one point a little boy kicks a girl in the head, because fuck her, that's why. Apparently dance is only for gay boys. Que Nathaniel getting everyone to dance ballet, even the mean little boys that only play baseball or do martial arts. Everything ends with pages of Nathaniel dancing with all the children, then children dancing with children, then adults dancing while talking about dancing. I wanted it to end and have no desire to dance for a while.

Someone please get me a drink, I need it.

What I'm reading next:

Literally whatever will erase this terrible, terrible book from my brain.