Incubus Dreams (Anita Blake - Vampire Hunter

What's happened here? This book read like a detailed description of Anita having sex with anything in pants! It seems as though the author has lost track of purpose of her main character; there's no romance, little conflict and almost no story. Only in a fantasy could this many supposedly gorgeous males spend so much time and effort making sure one female got laid AND by as many different partners with no jealousy issues. If you're determined to read this, go for the first few chapters, skip the entire middle and pickup the last chapter. You won't miss much...

I love this series, but like the vast majority of the rest of her readers, I am personally sick of where she is taking this series. What happened to the books that would keep me up all night non-stop reading waiting to find out who the bad guy was, or terrified of the evil that was appearing in the investigation. Now, it's just bouncing from one sex scene to another. C'mon, Laurell, get your libedo off the keyboard and give us the old Anita Blake series back!

This is a truely pathetic book in (what started off as) one of the best series I have read in a long time. The book is almost 700 pages and roughly 550 of it is sex. Anita cares about little else anymore.

I learned almost nothing new about the characters or the political situation going on with Jean Claude. I can, however, tell you how Anita likes to give head. An average sex scene (with foreplay) lasted up to 3 chapters. Compare that to the actual scene where she takes out the bad guy which is a short chapter. WHAT HAPPENED TO LKH?!?!?!

Like many of the reviews here I also think she is just plain running out of good catch lines and feels the need to reuse them over and over again. In previous novels I laughed out loud at the conversations. Now I just roll my eyes.

Richard, Jean Claude, Nathaniel etc. have become one dimensional characters who roll over whenever Anita wants them to. Yes we get the point that Anita is a hard ass but once upon a time the men in this novel also had a spine.

I use to wait in anticipation for the next novel of the series but now I'd rather read something else.

Hey if you like oversexed novels with little to no plot this is for you. But if you're like me and loved watching Anita out of the bedroom on her feet instead of her back stick to the earlier books.

I love Incubus Dreams !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a must read to really understand what Anita is going threw.
I have almost all the books that are of Anita Blake in audio.
I am disappointed that not all the books, namely books 10-15, are not in audible.
I cannot understand why.
The way they do it is almost like watching a movie or going to a play. I just love all the sound effects & wish more of the audible books where like these.
The lame excuse that they are no longer in print is annoying since it isn't true.
Besides. what does that have to do with the audio ver of the books???

I have always enjoyed this series and every new book I read is just as good as the last only bad thing I have to say is why so much sex I feel like there is more and more every book. the crime solving and being a bad pass is still awesome though.

The Anita Blake series by Laurell K Hamilton is a great series and is well worth buying. I like to buy the mass market paperbacks because they are cheap and lightweight- easier to carry around and you'll need that because it's hard to put these books down!

I actually bought this copy because the first copy I bought has already had the spine re-glued twice and was being held together by duct tape because it had been read so many times by myself and half my friends who borrowed it.

Unfortunately I have to agree with others who gave this book a negative review.

This review may contain minor plot spoilers!

Like so many of them i fell face first into the Anita Blake books. I even put up with the erotic field trips. This book, however, is just full of sex and very little else. Just when i think we might be getting somewhere with zombies and animating it turns into another sex fest. And it took until page 240 something to even mention anything other than Anita's crazy sex life. In fact she was clothed just long enough to argue with a client before needing to be "rescued from her condition".

I also agree with another reader when they said if she wants to write erotic fiction she should label it as such. It seems the days of crime solving and life and death situation is gone from Anita's life. I found myself skipping through chapters just waiting for her to put her clothes on long enough to step outside.

Very sad turn of events for the series.

Actually, I enjoyed this book and have read it twice already and so it probably deserves more from me than 3 stars but I am also disappointed in the book. I was expecting to issues to arise regarding the Mother of All Darkness. The last book certainly had a lot of fore shaddowing that was basically ignored in this one.

There is a lot of relationship resolution though. However, I am a bit surprised at the direction that Ronnie has taken in her life. As other reviewers have mentioned there is a lot of Nathaniel in this one (not one of my favorites).

My biggest disappointment was the unsatified feeling that I was left with at the end of the book. There is a lot of fore shaddowing in this one, too. I ended the book feeling that the story hadn't been told yet since there were so many unresolved issues.

Ms. Hamilton has created an intreguing world with fascinating, well developed characters. I have been a loyal fan since the publication of Guilty Pleasures. I just wish that this one had more story and less fore shaddowing. Eagerly awaiting the next one!

Sometime after (or during?) Blue Moon, this series started its then-lazy downward spiral which slowed somewhat in Obsidian Butterfly but then began picking up downhill speed, bobsledding toward disaster...and now it has crashed into a mountain of "MEH" in Incubus Dreams, indubitably an even bigger pile of turgid writing than its predecessor Cerulean Sins.

It's a little mind-blowing to me that some folks view as "character growth" the transformation of the heroine, Anita Blake, from an allegedly strong-willed, independent slayer of creepy-crawlies into an inflatable sex doll on GHB (with all appurtenant orifices) that gets willingly passed around at all the supernatural frat boy parties. Wow, if you think THAT equates to "character development," then maybe in Micah, Anita can pull a train and REALLY grow!! The "I can't control myself" school of "character growth." What a pile, indeed.

And, on the "creepy" front - am I the only person who finds the whole Nathaniel thing beyond twisted? Let's see if I have this right - Nathaniel plays "dress-up" (like a little child) by wearing what he thinks are grown-up things - like frilly aprons; buys pretty things for around the house (like tea sets, whatever...like a little girl playing house), and lies in bed with Anita (Mom) and Micah (Dad), having bedtime stories read to him (like a little child)...and Anita's having SEX with this character? This formerly abused character, the one the "former" Anita heard referred to as "the most BROKEN of us," by one of Nathaniel's pack-mates? So...are we NOT supposed to "get" that this is barely-disguised paedophilia? That this is paedophilia, with the author trying to make it palatable? Sorry...if Hamilton is trying to push people's "comfort zone" with atypical sex, that's one thing - but nobody should be "comfortable" with paedophiles, period.

Truth be told, there hasn't been a real page-turner book in the series since Hamilton's divorce from her first husband. I'm not sure what that really means (hmmm...one has to wonder who REALLY plotted the mysteries?), but don't blow your hard-earned bucks on this excrement. Go with Kim Harrison or Charlaine Harris, instead, to go lighter, or try other authors for vamp-erotica or so-called romance, whatever. ANYTHING but spend MONEY on this garbage, validating this author's descent into self-absorption.

A word to Hamilton, about her the store interview - your publishers and editors aren't telling you to cut out the sex because you're a WOMAN; they're telling you to cut it out because it's CRAP. Get a CLUE.

Love, Sex, Blood and Power

These are the ingredients of the triumvirate formed between Jean Claude, Richard and Anita; Incubus Dreams is an examination of the characters and how they dealing with the changes in their relationships both physical and metaphysical.

Just when our main characters begin to feel comfortable with their gifts and relationship to one another, a new complication has arisen with Anita at its center. She inadvertently forms a second triumvirate including Damian as well as Nathanial. This has pros and cons with the major benefit of elevating the original triumvirate's power at the cost of magnifying the demands of the Arduer upon Anita. The book is predominately of how the characters cope with the changes and the moral questions associated with their powers. There's a RPIT investigation involving a group of rogue serial killer vampires that Anita is involved in but that's secondary to the novel's goal of character development.

Overall, the book is a good read. Maybe not her best work but still a worthy endeavor deserving of 3.5 to 4 stars. Many have complained about the turn towards prolific sex in recent works but I find her devotion towards character development admirable. So many authors spend little time on it, yet here, she has spent nearly the entire book! Face it, major ingredients in the mythos of vampires and magic are sex and blood. It's going to be there especially in the lives of young adults achieving sexual maturity under what amounts to combat stress....a stress that's eating at the character of Anita. The killing is taking its' toll and it appears sex is the escape she has chosen.

I too would like to add my name to the list of fans who would like to see a return to the mysteries and actions of old but does Anita have it in her? Only time will tell

I thought Guilty Pleasures was a fantastic book. I loved it!!! I continued on with the Anita Blake series and now it's turned into PORN!!! I'm on page 320 and have no idea what the hell this book is about!!! There is nothing but the ardeur. Ardeur with anything that moves!!! I'm giving up. It's such a shame that such an imaginative writer with such great characters has turned into this MESS!!! Typos all over the place. Grammatical errors. Laurell does not care about these characters anymore and neither do I. Huge waste of time and money.

Hamilton is turning into Christine Feehan. Stop, please stop! Sex scene after sex scene is just boring. Where did Anita the hero/anti-hero go? We the loyal readers loved Anita because against all odds she kicked-ass, human and otherwise.

Let's get back to the hanging (non-sex) plot lines and reintroduce some real mystery, intrigue, horror, battles, and heroics. I am all in favor of a sexy heroine; but Hamilton is book by recent book taking the heroine out of the equation. The arduer as plot device to break down sexual barriers has run its course. Let Anita master it and move beyond it. Put her and her friends in mortal danger (I suggest even killling off one or more major characters to create heightened drama) and let's see how she uses all of these new powers.

This book, in hardback form or paperback, is a total waste of money. I don't know what Miz Hamilton problem is but if she just wants to write graphic sex after graphic sex just to bother 'people in the publishing industry disturbed by erotic content' then she isn't giving a damn about her readers. An as readers we should do the same by not buying her books.

Untill Miz Hamilton grows up an stops acting like a six-teen year old girl everyone is well advised to avoid her books.

"Hamilton: In my books, the reason the eroticism is so high is that people in the publishing industry were disturbed by erotic content. Not for its own sake, but because I was a woman writing from a first-person woman's point of view. Had I been a man, they would have been okay with it. The erotic content has risen because they told me it shouldn't only because I am a woman writing about a woman. It's what my grandmother calls being contrary"

I always love Laurell K Hamilton's books, but this one brought over to digital had enough spelling errors to distract me - probably one per chapter at least, if not a few per chapter. I advise revision of the kindle version to amend this. I'll keep buying her books until she stops writing them, but I hope the issue with the digital versions is fixed!

Let me first say that I absolutely loved Hamilton's early Anita Blake books. They were full of edge-of-the-seat action, fascinating characters and delightfully unbelievable story lines! In the supernatural/fantasy genre, Anita Blake was the best, most enjoyable heroine I'd found. However, in Hamilton's more recent books (Obsidian Butterfly, Narcissus in Chains, Cerulean Sins) graphic sex has filled progressively more pages, and this newest novel, Incubus Dreams, is the worst offender yet.

I'm not even going to try to summarize the plot because it only makes up about 10% of this book. Extremely graphic sex scenes occupy the remaining 90%. I do enjoy a little sex with my stories but it has become excessive. Anita Blake is still a fascinating character, but she is no longer a woman I'd want to know! The only direction left for her character is to turn her into a werewolf or a vampire! Which might be interesting, providing the new storylines offer something besides sex on every page.

I can't end here without mentioning the publishing quality, or lack of it, in this Berkley Books edition. Has this publisher retired all of its proofreaders? Perhaps they are now relying solely on spellcheck. If so, their software needs a total overhaul. I noticed 3 misspellings before I got to page 23. The number of typos/misspellings in this edition was amazing! One example: "deity" is misspelled "diety" every time it appears, and it appears frequently. And that's just one word! Considering the sloppy editing and proofing, the $23.95 retail price is a bit excessive, but at 658 pages, Hamilton's longest book yet, this edition will make an excellent doorstop.

The keystone of my perspective on what has been happening in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Novels is that I found Laurell K. Hamilton's first half-dozen books in the series to be some of the best horror stories I have ever read. Book after book Hamilton kept upping the ante, with the graveyard finale of "Bloody Bones" my absolute all-time favorite horror scene. Time and time again I told people that if they ever made these books into movies they would be rated NC-17 because of the violent horror. But the second half of the series would probably all be rated XXX unless they left a lot on the cutting room floor and with "Incubus Dreams" that would not be a bad thing.

Buried in "Incubus Dreams" (the title refers to a strip club across the river in Illinois) is what long time fans of the series such as myself would consider an above average old-fashioned Anita Blake novel. Anita is attending the October wedding of Larry Kinkaid and wearing a tux because she is on the groom's side. Micah and Nathaniel are in attendance so it does not take long for Anita to have to start explaining the complicated relationships with the men in her life. But adding several new layer of complication to those relationships is the primary subject matter of "Incubus Dreams." However, before Anita Blake's sex life takes the first of several strange turns, she is called away from the wedding reception to check out a dead body. A stripper has been killed by a pack of vampires and Dolph is talking "serial killer." However, in the hierarchy of vampires a bunch of bad things have to be happening for that to be the case.

One way in which "Incubus Dreams" is decidedly different from the standard Anita Blake novel is that our necromancer's power upgrade happens early in the novel rather than at the end when it take place conveniently in time to save the day. The "arduer" continues to make things interesting for Anita on the metaphysical plane as well as in the bedroom (or whatever room or place she happens to be in when it hits), as things are getting more and more complicated in terms of masters, servants, beasts, memories of the dead, and monster politics. Maybe Anita Blake could have business card that says Vampire Executioner, Necromancer, Human Servant to Jean-Claude, Bolverk for the wolf pack, so on and so forth, except it would have to be tiny print to work in all the triumverates in play by the end of this one. No wonder every sex act in the book has to be talked about before and afterwards, because each time it changes things and the characters (and readers) have to try and catch up.

Part of me thinks that all the sex in these books is revenge for all the years we begged for Anita to make up her mind in terms of Jean-Claude and then between Jean-Claude and Richard. I can remember announcing I no longer cared whom Anita ended up with as long as she picked somebody before the choice was forced on her. But giving her body to Jean-Claude only seemed to settle things, because Richard is still a part of their triumvirate and her ex-fiancé is back big time in this story. Richard's fans will be happy, but my problem is that when he becomes a major part of this narrative he is getting in the way of the horror story.

That is because 400 pages into this 658-page novel Anita learns something that produces a reaction in Jean-Claude of fear bordering on panic. Murders that Anita Blake investigates always presage something bigger and badder than what anybody is thinking, and anything that has Jean-Claude freaking out is going to be wicked bad. So wicked bad that everybody should drop what they are doing and deal with this nightmare before it escalates into something bigger than the greater St. Louis area. But, no, the "arduer" has to be fed because powers and impulses are bleeding from one member of the triumvirate into the others (I was going for at least one star higher in my rating until that step backwards; in fact, if those last two parts of the novel were switched I probably would have been happier, such is my disdain for horror interuptus, especially when Hamilton finally gets me to sit up and gasp at the sudden turn of events).

Still, in the end we are right where we want to be, with the Executioner heading into another impossible situation trying to save someone and get herself and the rest of the people she is with out alive, which, we all know by now, never really happens. But once she gets up to what I consider the really good part, Hamilton rushes through the scene (at least in contrast to the sex scenes). More importantly, it becomes clear that "Incubus Dreams" is setting up something bigger and better down the road. Whether this is the prelude (i.e., it will take more than one novel) or the first-half of a story arc to be completed in the next Anita Blake novel we shall have to see. But "Incubus Dreams" has ample evidence that Hamilton can still write the nightmarish narratives that got me hooked on these books in the first place, she just insists on going in a different direction.

I know that one of the reasons I am having such an adverse reaction to the onslaught of sex scenes in these recent books is because I have been down this road before with John Norman. I enjoyed the stories and characters in his Gor novels, which became more and more about female slaves and male masters and I would read book after book in the series, skipping through the sex scenes (which were truly soft core compared to what Hamilton is writing) to get to the parts with the action and the characters. Granted, I am not yet at the point of reading Hamilton's novels that same way because there are important ramifications to both Anita's relationships and her powers every time she has sex. But knowing how she feels about getting her cervix bumped is really more than I need to know about the character.

Maybe the explanation for my being more interested in when the characters talk about sex rather than when they have sex is just an indication that I am old (certainly a reasonable working hypothesis). But I still recall how in novel after novel at the beginning of this series Hamilton would produce one chilling ending after another. Stephen King would usually disappoint me with an ending that was never as good of a payoff as the set up, but Hamilton delivered time after time after time. "Incubus Dreams" gives us a taste, but I want the full course meal. Bottom line: when I finish an Anita Blake novel I want to have trouble sleeping because I am reliving the nightmarish scenes in the novel and not the sex scenes.

I am only pleased that LKH has continued down the path that she has chosen for this series. The characters just get trashier with each book and all of the redeeming features that made them respectable are disappearing.

The sad part is that it is such a flawed perspective on people. Some people are actually able to resist being corrupted by outside influences and that is totally absent from this series where everyone is so caught up in a need for sex and power that they will totally debase themselves to get it. The will to resist that call was part of what made Richard Zeeman admirable, but now he is so enraptured of AB that he is falling too. Get real!

The saddest thing is that her editors should have helped her avoid some of the chracter clutter and useless dialogue. Kill Richard off or let him vanish into the sunset. Give Micah a backbone, because there is no way that he is a Nimir-raj like he is. He would get walked all over by a stronger personality. Jason would have been dead meat after the games he has played between the Pack and Anita and there would be nothing she could do about it. Nathaniel is just digusting and the whole infatuation thing that LKH has with him makes me want to gag. Teh creation of yet another triumvirate when the first one was still not well explained was another example of events taking the place of a planned storyline.

There is so much potential in this series, but it just seems like LKH is bent on destroying everything that made this worth reading. I have hated many of the plot turns, but they made sense in the earlier books. What we are seeing now is like she is lost and feels like she can keep the readers interested by taking things further down the porn road than along the occult/vampire road. Bad choice....

I have been reading this series since the very start and I was greatly anticipating this book to continue with the vamp and shapeshifter politics that the last book left us craving; instead I was handed the lamest excuse for a book yet!

Will the real Anita please stand up, because I see a shadow of a sulking character left sitting in the dust wondering what the hell happened. Anita feels tired and worn-out; it's no wonder after those 12-something sexscapades with "what-was-his-name-again?" I know Hamilton thinks she is crossing some great taboo by making a strong female character that can have casual sex-encounters whenever she wants with no consequences; but instead Anita has devolved into sniveling, whiny monster-bait that couldn't recognize the bad guy if they were on top of her. Don't get me wrong I LOVE erotica and Anita's passion scenes are usually hot beyond compare, but this time it felt like a junky going back for one more hit. As a longtime Anita fan I felt betrayed, I think her Vampire-hunter series was placed on the back-burner while Hamilton lived out all of her real fantasies through Merry, a fairy series I couldn't read from the beginning. I knew as soon as the covers of her books went all sexmopolitan that the plot was gonna suffer, but I didn't think she would rule one out entirely. Anita's edge is gone! She no longer seems to be the scourge among rogue vamps, but rather seems like an after-thought. She couldn't even kick-butt 'cause she spent most of her time ON IT. Jean Claude, one of my favorite characters, reduced to being nothing more than (pardon my pun) dead-weight through the entire book. His laissez-faire attitude was neither charming nor witty but just unimpressive. Richard was given the role of weak puppy that comes to lap at Anita's feet and as far as things Finally being resolved between him and Anita- Yeah right, all he did was join her harem. The Most interesting character in the book, Nathanial, was given the most pathetic leftovers from Miss Blake's enormous sex-buffet; He deserved so much more, I was downright appalled. Please Hamilton next time you think of whipping up a dime-store romance with weak S&M overtones- leave it for your fantasies and give us the Real powerful Anita Back!!

i started this series with circus of the dammed and have been hooked every sence, untill now. I love the charaters and will continue to read the series, with reservations. I'm 48 and i let my teenage children read the series becuse their was logic in the violence or the sex until incubus dreams. after i got over the first of my disppointment and anger, i thought this must have been ghostwritten. the charaters are all blured the sex for the most part pointless and she wasn't able to solve a crime this time. yet the biggest shock was the turn her relationship with jean claud. what was that, was it a love confession, between equals ? I don't think so,he's been mastered, and thats just wrong. what happen to all the plot lines left from cerulean sin? my favorite book is blue moon, and cerulean sins. not this one. I would warn people not to read this one, just wait for the next one

I've seen some readers complain about this series being "pornographic" and being "sick of the ardeur". News flash...the ardeur is no different than blood lust in other vampire series-it's just something that goes along with the vampirism and is part of the story. Frankly, I find it to be a nice change from the typical blood lust theme. As far a the series being "pornographic", if you didn't know the sexualized nature of the series going in (as I did), now you do, and if it's not for you, stop reading. Yes, there are some homo/bisexual themes too. No need to bash the author/series just because it's too much sex for you to handle or you are homophobic. Read the YA paranormal romances if that's more your speed. I do agree that the author can be redundant at times with her descriptions ("so much meat", etc) and I don't need a fresh rundown on what each character looks like in every book. I do however realize that some readers do need/want that reminder and if I wasn't binge reading and was waiting a year for the next book to come out, I might feel differently.

I was very disappointed in this installment of the Anita Blake series, the author is getting off track. The relationships are extending adnosium but what about the great mystery part and catching the bad guys and going after the big fish (the old vampires).

In this book Anita is once again chasing vampire serial killers. She can finally acknowledge that vamps are not dead. She is seeing them as people. She has finally realized She loves the men in her life.

I genuinely love these books. I've read them over and over. But a note. I'm no prude and never have been. As I get older I've started skipping over as much of the sex scenes as I can. There's just too much.

I love Laurell K. Hamilton! I have been following Anita Blake for about 10 years now. Scary as it sounds, I aspire to be like her! ;) One of my favorite things about LKH is how she researches her material to give the most realistic vampire world possible!

Incubus Dreams reads more like three books smashed together into one, which may be why it's getting such poor reviews from a lot of people. It's length (a boggling 658 pages and 82 chapters) is unwieldy; combined with the pace, it makes me wonder if the author has seen an end to the series coming and is pushing the reader there in a hurry.

This book isn't nearly as bad as I expected from the reviews. It's true that there's a glut of rough sex, group sex and public sex, but if you can get past the descriptions and see it metaphorically, it's not as graphic as you'd think. I found the book divides up into three main areas that would have worked pretty well on their own as standalone books: Anita recognizing her own monster and accepting it enough to drop most of her defenses and create actual relationships, the consummation of the original triumverate and creation of a second with unexpected powers manifesting themselves and a setup for a final showdown wrapped up in a stripper serial-killer case that's left hanging at the end. All of this takes place in about three or four days; there's very little sleep taking place in this book. Yes, there are major, major characters and plotlines from past books that are unresolved here - but this book covers such a short length of time and already involves so much and so many people, to add them in would have been unmanageable. Asher, Belle Morte, Damien and Jason are all there and I'm sure will factor heavily in the next book based on the setup here.

The typos, missing words and one rather disgusting conversation Anita has with Richard all detract from the quality of the storytelling and I'm hoping, the direction the author is pushing her readers. I got the sense that this was a bridge book, one meant not to advance the storyline so much as to set us up for the final couple of stories left to be told. Either Ms. Hamilton has abandoned Anita for her Merry Gentry series and this will all just fizzle out or she's brilliantly building up her characters for a monumental climax. If you read the book carefully, you'll see that the stage is being set for a confrontation with Mother: the addition of warrior vamps, the increase in the triumverate/s and their power, Anita's new ability to raise the dead and the tease of the serial-killing head vamp on the loose with ties to Belle Morte. I thought the sex had begun to get a lot out of hand, but it served to put all of the characters here in line to finish things up in a way that should satisfy loyal readers of the series as a whole.

All in all, I don't think this deserves a five star rating, but it's better than a three. In spite of the shoddy editing, Ms. Hamilton has a gift for graphic storytelling, action and dialogue (with the exception of Anita yelling at everyone to *f* her during sex). Without coming out and spelling it specifically, you get the impression that all the characters are headed for a crossroad of their own: Anita is melancholy and a little bitter, Jean-Claude is unsure of himself and Richard is buried under his own (and Anita's) anger and self-loathing. As if that weren't enough, Nathaniel discovers a dominant side, Damien becomes needier than expected, Jason turns out to be more mature than you'd think and Micah is deeper and more tormented than even Anita guesses. There's a lot of emotional upheaval in this book and while I missed the longer hardcore police investigations from earlier books, it would have just been too much to add to this already busy story.

Because of its length and dependency on the element of shock, it would be a hard book to read repeatedly, but it does feel like a necessary step to the conclusion that I desperately hope Ms. Hamilton delivers. I wouldn't recommend anyone not familiar with the series start with this book; the best way to enjoy all of Ms. Hamilton's books is to start from the beginning and read through in order. For fans of the series who want to find out how it all ends, as long and tedious as it can be, I still think this is a book you'll need to read in order to follow the characters to the conclusion.

In Twilight for Bella we have Edward & Jacob. For Sookie we have Bill and Eric with a dash of Alcide & Quinn. But for the incomparable Anita Blake we have Jean-Claude, Richard, Asher, Nathaniel, Jason, Damien and my personal favorite: Micah. Who says a woman can't have it all? Anita is tortured by norms but she is who she is and the angst of these relationships is powerful. I have loved the entire series and Laurell's vision of these characters. Some readers miss the mystery of the first set of books and don't care for the relationship madness. I personally love it all and trust the authors vision to develop Anita as she needs to be developed. Throw away your 'white picket fence" ideals and take a wild ride with Anita Blake. You might just enjoy it...I know I did.