Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Book 10) | Laurell K. Hamilton

Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Book 10) | Laurell K. Hamilton | Some will love it, others will hate it.

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Narcissus in Chain...

	Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Book 10) Laurell K. Hamilton Jove, 2002 - 656 pages average customer review:based on 567 reviews view larger image
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The "steamy" (Booklist) Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel that took Laurell K. Hamilton to a whole new level is now in paperback.

Includes a bonus excerpt from the next Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel, Cerulean Sins, coming in January 2003.

One of Hamilton's greatest

This book remains one of my most favorite in the entire series. Every aspect of the main character's relationships changes and she is starting to strip away the annoying tendencies that helped flesh out the character to begin with, but had become a little annoying that Anita, despite the radical changes in her life, could not seem to grow up.

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Some will love it, others will hate it.

This book continues the evolution (or devolution, depending on your point of view) of the Anita Blake character and the series as a whole. At the beginning of this series, the sex was rated PG, the violence R. As the series has progressed, the violence has remained constant, the sex become more prevalent. In "Blue Moon", the book two before this in the series, I said that the sex had matched the violence. Now, it has surpassed it; if you truly care about such things, I have to say that the sex in this book could be rated "X". I've read unapologetic porno novels that have less graphic sex. Of course, this one's written light years better than any of them, but that doesn't make the sex any less graphic.

Me, I love it. I find the plot development of the "good little Catholic girl" who finds herself turning into a succubus in spite of herself, who finds that her sex drive has been supernaturally augmented until even with the iron-hard will power that we've seen from her in previous episodes, she can't help herself, to be a very erotic subplot. And I understand what the author is doing: she's showing us how a person slides down the slippery slope of losing every last vestige of her humanity an inch at a time, not in spite of but because of the very best of intentions. But many fans of the early novels will find this one virtually unreadable; much of what they liked about the characters and the plots is gone. And I would not advise starting with this novel, without having read the early ones, unless all you're looking for is a VERY powerful, very well-written, very graphic erotic novel and don't much care if you're coming in in the middle of the story.

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A full book, not to be taken in all at once

WARNING: I like these books quite a lot, and so if you don't, you probably won't like this review, either.

So here it finally is, ten books (My god, I can't believe I've already read ten of these! When did I start reading them, June? July? Ridiculous.) into the series and the dreaded moment has come: Anita has gained the ardeur. Anita decided in the last book to make up for the psychic wounds she gave herself, Jean-Claude, and Richard when she broke off their connection and stopped seeing both of them, and so in this book, the triumvirate go through the step of "marrying the marks," allowing their auras to intermingle and fill the holes made by their connection and separation. But in the process, Anita gains Jean-Claude's ability to gain power through lust and sex, and with it she gains his need to do so every single day. Oh yeah, and Anita also gets into the middle of a were squabble, and one of her wereleopard accidentally wounds her, maybe turning her into a wereleopard for real, so we have that thread running through the book as well. Oh, and she finds a new lover, a wereleopard king named Micah who is instantly and intimately connected to her by their shared place at the head of their respective wereleopard pards. And then there's the conflict between the werewolves and the wereleopards, when Richard blames Gregory for infecting Anita and maybe killing her -- and, much worse though he won't admit it, ending his secret guilty fantasy that maybe someday he could make Anita a werewolf and have her be his perfect mate -- and has the pack sentence Gregory to torture and death, a sentence that sticks even after Richard finds out that Anita is not dead because Richard has allowed the pack to become a pseudo-democracy, and he has new enemies that are trying to take over the pack from him and are using this to undermine his authority. Until Anita comes to get her leopard back. Oh right, and Anita and Richard finally end it completely, when they have sex, she feeds off of his lust, and he pitches a hissy-fit about her being more monstrous than he could ever be, and even worse, she is comfortable with the monsters in a way he will never be, and so he dumps her. Finally. And of course, there's the invasion of the werehyenas, an unknown but suddenly powerful faction in the shifter world, who get attacked by a remarkably nasty bad guy, the panwere Chimera, who tries to use the werehyenas as a stepping stone to taking over all of the shifters in the city, and maybe eventually the world.

And people read this book and get upset because there's sex. And they say that the plot becomes weak at this point in the series, and it all devolves into little more than porn. Are they reading the same book I did?

I thought the sex scenes were as well done as every other graphic, visceral moment in this very graphic series. I thought the moment at the end of the shower scene, when Anita ends up crying on the floor of the shower because she thinks she has finally turned completely into a monster was incredibly poignant, and I loved the way Hamilton managed to bring Anita around to some kind of acceptance over the course of the single book. I love how this author has managed to bring Anita a step closer to monsterhood, without ever taking away her basic humanity and her core beliefs and strengths, and her intrinsic conflicts and vulnerabilities, in every single book of this series. Anita has been forced by her own values and her basic nature into becoming a radically different person, one she herself would have hated -- and yet, because she has never betrayed her basic values, has in fact given up almost everything else she held dear in order to keep to her most basic values, she can accept the new person that she has become and even like herself. I think it is amazing, and incredible fun to read.

My only complaint about this book is that it was too full, as the list above implies; there were just too many things going on, and so some of the plots, particularly the title one of Narcissus and the werehyenas, got short shrift, and that was too bad. But since the book is already 650 pages long, and took me longer to read than any of the previous books have required, I can understand why the final fight with Chimera ended up shorter than I would have liked. It focused on Anita, which was really what I wanted to read about, anyway.

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You either will like it or hate it from this point on in the series

I give this book 3.5 stars. There are a lot of opinions out there regarding the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter novels. I can't quite decide whether I want to love the series or hate it.LOL. The series isn't going to win any literary awards, it doesn't have beautiful prose, but that's not what is so addictive about this series. The story, the fictional world, is what keeps me coming back for more. The author has created an incredibly rich and detailed world and I think this is what I love best about the series. You see the world through the eyes of the main character, Anita Blake, and it's all very real and you almost expect to see and meet all the characters once you close the book.

It's been 6 months since Anita put her men on hold to gain control of her powers. The Master of the City vamp, Jean-Claude and the Ulfric, the uber-werewolf king, Richard. She is now the human servant of Jean-Claude and is bonded to him and Richard as a triumvirate. Anita is not your average human servant, she's also a necromancer, able to raise the dead (and undead, that's vampires), so the power of their triumvirate is unknown and they're all grasping in the dark. She comes back to St. Louis ready to face them and acknowledge the vampire marks, but that isn't the only thing she has to worry about. She may become wereleopard Queen, Nimir-Ra, in truth at the next full moon, plus she has to deal with another mysterious shifter that wants her dead.

I view the 10th installment of the AB series as a turning point in the series from the previous books, 1-9. I'd consider the books 1-9 as urban fantasy with more of a mystery/detective angle, but starting with this book it's more urban fantasy erotica (It's the best I can come up with.heh) with more graphic sexual scenes.

Narcissus in Chains introduces Anita to the power of the succubus. Once Anita decides to marry the vampire marks between herself, the Master of the City, Jean-Claude, and his animal to call the werewolf king Richard, it becomes clear that this sexual power she has inherited from Jean-Claude is something she'll have to live with for the immediate future. What this entails is daily "feedings", feeding off the lust of others to satiate this sexual power, called the ardeur. This power pretty much dominates the rest of the series as Anita tries to learn to control this power, with sex being quite prevalent (however I felt the last 2 books did tone it down a lot).

I'll give a few of my thoughts and opinions about the 10th book on. I like both the early and later books, although I'll admit one huge annoyance I've had with the series is how much of a control-freak and angst-ridden Anita is. As the series is written in first person POV, you are privy to all of Anita's thoughts and feelings. Her character isn't the most likable, in fact, sometimes she's downright un-likable most times. Contradictory, stubborn, can't admit she's wrong and gets angry to cover it, etc. But, I like how the character has flaws. I think it makes her character more real despite how her frustrating her character can be.

I also think the author needs to give Anita more control over the ardeur, as Anita has been put in situations where she was unable to control it and pretty much slept with whoever was available. I believe the ardeur has been toned down somewhat, IMO the last 2 books weren't as filled with graphic sex scenes as say Incubus Dreams or Danse Macabre, but I still think it has had enough page time. I liked the early books with Anita going vampire hunting and using her necromancy powers, solving preternatural crimes, but I also like the later books that evolve into an entirely new direction (which IMO, was more supernatural politics and intrigues between the shapeshifters and vampires). I liked learning about the power structure of the supernatural world.

This book could cause uncomfortable "squeamish" feelings in some readers. Laurell K. Hamilton doesn't pull her punches when it comes to describing in intimate detail every thought or action of her characters. Whether it's violence or sex. There is a lot of graphic sex in this book (and the later books afterwards). There are themes, sexual in nature, that may cause discomfort to some readers. One of Anita's main squeezes is a vampire who had a male lover centuries before and this character still holds passion and love for this former male lover. Another broad theme throughout this book and in later books is the mingling of pain and pleasure that inhabit the dark world of the supernatural creatures, shapeshifters and vampires. Which makes sense, the world Anita lives in is very outside the mainstream and never comfortable.

One thing I liked about this book is that Anita is finally (okay, maybe not quite, but almost!) willing to accept that perhaps she isn't all that human. She's been so much a part of the "monster" world, as she was the supernatural expert the police called in on supernatural crimes, but she always viewed herself as wholly human. Now, she's learning that she is more at home with the monsters (the shifters and vamps), and that frightens her. In this book, it's clear she still has this prejudice of the monsters, which like I mentioned earlier is a contradiction in Anita. She's a necromancer and human servant with vamp-like powers (the ardeur), and yet she is loathe to have her vamp boyfriend Jean-Claude "feed" off her and she doesn't want to be a wereleopard shifter in truth. I view it as Anita was always different anyway, having the power of a necromancer so it was inevitable she'd find more of a home in the supernatural community.

Anyways, this book takes a turn for the best or worst, depending on your viewpoint. I still enjoy the series for what it is: brain candy and no thinking required.LOL. When I just want a bit of escapist fantasy that's all I want. An imaginative and intriguing fictional world that helps me escape from the "real world" for a brief time. This book more than delivers and kept me turning the pages until the end.

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