Laurell K. Hamilton, Cerulean Sins

reviewed by Danielle L. Parker

I really hate picking up books that are part of a long-running series and finding out that to make sense of (at least number 10 in this case) I must read all its prequels. Never having read an Anita Blake story before, I was almost at sea in Cerulean Sins.

Anita’s a vampire hunter, but seems to be more than cozy with the old bloodsuckers? She’s a federal agent, but a licensed shoot-em-in-the-face executioner as well? What the heck is an Ulfric? Progressing to stronger expressions of frustration, what the #$*! is a Bolverk? Or a Nimir-Ra? (All of which Anita, apparently, is). And why, oh why, does Anita just have to have sex with all those men?! What a life the poor girl leads.

Only, Ms. Blake isn’t the sort of gal one would feel sorry for even if she were hanging from thumbscrews. On a spectrum that includes Xena and Buffy at its far end and Shrinking Violet at the other, Anita’s in a class of her own. The woman out-swears all the pants in the story, punches big fellows in the guts and makes them fold like letters, totes a gun and flashes it like Wyatt Earp — all that and manages to sexually satisfy her own private harem of males at the same time (both breathing and non-breathing varieties). (Actually, I lost track of the harem: who she was Doing It with, who she had Done It with, and who was probably going to be Doing It with her by the next page or so).

At one point, Anita has a young punk inching away from her in fear — with good reason, since she’s about to eat him, and that’s a literal statement. No wonder a member of her harem, a male stripper (there are quite a few male strippers in this story) asks her briskly, Sex, blood, or flesh? Thank goodness Anita’s in an amorous mood!

The principal character of this story was so beyond Terminator tough, in fact, that by the middle of the book this very odd feeling crept up on me. I felt likewell, I had this very strange feeling that Anita Blake must really be a man ; I felt like the whole story was one vast homoerotic fantasy. I mean, there are clues; I’m not just nuts here. She participates in anal and oral sex! And most telling of all : the woman despises embroidery (and yes, real women do embroider little useless floral thingamajigs, trust me). OK, so I’m tongue-in-cheek, but not much. When Virginia Slims points out You’ve Come A Long Way Baby, they have no idea how far we’re talking about here.

I confess that the main reason for my original interest in the story was the private investigator fantasy (remember, I’m trying to write that sci-fi spin on the P. I.), but here I was vastly disappointed with Cerulean Sins. The little bit of detective business in the story remains a distant second to the vampire politics/sex plotline. It’s just there as a place holder, something Anita seems to do to keep her hand in, like the goes-nowhere necromantic raising she does at the start of the book. (I tell you, this gal’s resume must run to its own ten thousand-words horror story). I finished the tale and could scarcely tell you that any detecting went on at all. What little did didn’t seem to sink in to my brain, because of course it’s secondary to the main, um, thrust of the story, the kinky stuff.

The vampires, for example, trite as it is, after Anne Rice and others have done it to death, all the bloodsuckers in this story are absolutely gorgeous, even the villainous ones. Anita’s main squeeze, Jean-Claude, vamps around (sorry, I know puns are low humor) in sexy leather boots (thigh-highs, of course), tight leather pants, gorgeous long hair and frilly blouses.

Asher, the second pair of pants in Anita’s ménage à trois, is a blonde as beautiful as, well, those Fallen Angels. (In case any reader misses the point, he’s actually, literally, painted that way, wings and all, in the story).

The main plotline of the story has Anita and her vampire lovers up against a wedge of French invaders (vampire, of course) who want to take the beauteous Asher back into a form of vampiric slavery. I find it interesting that the villains in the story are almost all female: there’s the Undead version of Barbie, Musette; her possessing mistress, Belle Morte, and setting the stage for another sequel, of course the ultimate Bad Mama, the Mother of All Darkness, who makes the rest of the matriarchal monsters look like sweetness and light and knock in their kitten-heeled shoes.

I’m not saying titillating trash isn’t something one shouldn’t enjoy now and then. A balanced diet has to include some junk food as well as occasional runs of haute cuisine and home cooking. But to me, the non sequitur ending of this story sums up the whole nicely. The book ends with Anita and her lover Jean-Claude on stage with another male stripper (one of the harem members she almost does it with), indulging in a little playful bad-kitty flogging show for the audience.

Yes, this book is a homoerotic/heterosexual Chippendale show, with something for almost all sexual persuasions (but not quite all: I’m sorry, no girlie to girlie action, at least in this book). As a detective story, I think it’s a dead loss, and I personally think Anne Rice did the Gorgeous Immortal Sex God Vampire business better in her early Interview with a Vampire classic, and I feel Buffy makes a more sympathetic Slayer.

So I’m afraid I have no plans at this time to read prequels one through nine. I’d rather re-read Barbara Hambly’s far superior Edwardian vampire mystery, Those Who Hunt the Night, which I highly recommend, if you can find it; it’s a gem!

Of course, though, if I don’t read those prequels I’ll never find out what the heck a Bolverk and an Ulfric really are, and that’s a pain, of course. But I don’t dare ask Anita for any explanation. No ma’am, I’ll just sit here with my hands in plain sight, doing my harmless embroidery, and you won’t need that gun or that whip at all. No offense, Ms. Blake, but you’ve got this reader perfectly terrorized!

Copyright © 2005 by Danielle L. Parker

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