Customer Reviews

Circus Of The Damned

5 star:		(106)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Having led off with "Guilty Pleasures" and "The Laughing Corpse," Laurell Hamilton has laid all the necessary groundwork to make this series work. In "Circus of the Damned" she builds on the previous to volumes give a fuller, and more frightening picture of an alternate earth where vampires, werewolves and other monsters are commonplace members of modern society.

While helping the St. Louis Police investigate a pair of human murders carried out by an unknown vampire pack Anita Blake realizes that there is a new master vampire in the city. One that is intent on terrorizing the populace and challenging Jean-Claude as Master of the City. In a series of startling confrontations she finds out there are not one, but two such vampires. The first, Alejandro, was young when the Aztecs were spilling the blood of sacrifices. The other, Mr. Oliver, has roots that extend into time immemorial. Either vampire is powerful enough to challenge Jean-Claude, and neither has any intention of observing the uneasy truce between humans and the undead.

In addition, Anita must deal with a Lamia, weresnakes, out-of-control zombies, and a whole host of vampires that are envious or opposed to her relationship with Jean-Claude. And Jean-Claude himself keeps pressuring her to take the third and fourth marks of the vampire, becoming his human servant. If dealing with all the really bad guys isn't hard enough, Anita has to deal with a new romantic interest, Richard Zeeman and an overly enthusiastic apprentice animator, Lawrence Kirkland. Did I mention Edward the assassin and a very large number of werewolves?

When the conflict between the three masters come to a head, Anita finds that she has become one of the focuses for the battle to come. Not only Jean-Claude, but Alejandro as well, are intent on having her as human servant. Alejandro, however, has no intention of being polite, and is capable of forcing the role on Anita - the vampiric equivalent of rape. The story moves fluidly from scene to scene, building steadily to the inevitable and spectacular final showdown which has enough surprises to satiate even the most finicky reader.

Hamilton has proven herself willing and able to handle complex plots and still keep her characters from becoming two dimensional. "Circus of the Damned" is no exception. All of the characters, from the illustrious Jean-Claude to the lowliest human servant come brilliantly to life. The effect is hypnotic, and I find Anita Blake stories too easy to read in one or two sessions, leaving me looking forward to her next book. With this, the third in the Anita Blake series, Laurell Hamilton fully demonstrates the strong writing skills that have made the vampie hunter a best-selling series.

A friend introduced me to the first Anita Blake book, Gulity Pleasures, and I've been hooked ever since. Circus of the Damned, is a wonderful, violent, exciting and a real page turner and a hell of a book

What I really like in this series, is that Anita Blake get's stronger and stronger as a female character. Anita is everything you want in a hero, tough, sexy, and smart. Anita lives in a work of Werewolves, shapeshifters, vampires and zombies.

In this book, Jean-Claude still wants Anita to be his human servent...the problem is that there is another vampire (who is very old and very powerful) who wants Anita for his human servant as well. Anita does the only thing she can...and I won't tell you what what is. If you want to find out what happens, you'll have to read it for yourself. :) I can promise you, you won't be sorry. One would think that 2 master (and powerful) vampires are enough for this book....but Anita has to battle aganist a giant snake!! I can't stress enough how good this book really is.

Laurell K. Hamilton is a wonderful story teller who keeps the reader glued to the book with a wonderful style of action, suspence, humor and horror. Hamilton offers the reader a solid plot with many, many twists. Once you start reading Circus of the Damned, you'll have a hard time putting it down. If you start this book you won't be sorry.

After her great success in "The Laughing Corpse," one of the finest horror novels I have ever read, Laurell K. Hamilton tries to reach the same heights again in "Circus of the Damned," the third volume in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. For the first time the focus is primarily on the vampires, although Anita's job as an Animator has always been more accurate a description than Vampire Hunter. Once again she is the target of every character in the novel: Jean-Claude the Master Vampire of St. Louis wants to put his final two marks on Anita to make her his human servant, but so does Alejandro, an even older vampire who wants to take Jean-Claude's spot. On top of that there are two other master vampires in town this time around: Yasmeen, who simply wants to rip Anita's heart out, and Oliver, who wants to slaughter humans so that this nonsense about vampires having legal rights will come to an end. Meanwhile, over on the human side of the equation, the leaders of Humans First want to take out Anita for not helping them slay the Master, Edward is back wanting the name from Anita so he can do the same thing, Dolph wants her help in tracking down a pack of vampires that are killing humans, Bert wants her to train Larry Kinkaid the college student turned animator, and just to make things really interesting, Richard, the middle-school teacher who hangs out with Jean-Claude at the Circus of the Damned, wants to go out on a date with Anita where they spend the day spelunking.

While we do find out a bit more about Anita's discovery that she is a necromancer and the issue of her being the human servant of a vampire is finally (?) resolved, the conclusion of "Circus of the Damned" is a bit too reminiscent of the climax of the previous Anita Blake novel. However, Hamilton scores points by continuing the exploring the "real world" implications of her America where vampires have legal rights and the characterization of Anita Blake continues to develop nicely. There is plenty of action and the book is not as gory as its predecessor, but is still one of those "may be too intent for younger children" type reads. Do not come here expecting Buffy.

I had heard of the Anita Blake books, but never thought that I would read them. I like books about the supernatural, but I was going to be stubborn and stick to those that I had already read. But then my friend suggested them to me. Finally, I decided to buy the first one (Guilty Pleasures). I read it, liked it enough to buy the second book (the Laughing Corpse), but stopped halfway through it. Finally, a few days ago, I decided to finish it... and I cannot understand why I didn't finish it when I first started it. I was instantly caught in the story, and finished it instantly, and began with this one: Circus of the Damned. There is something strange about Laurell K. Hamilton that lures me to her. Anita Blake is not the flawless Buffy, and the books are not your standard vampire novel. They take place in the future-ish, where vampirism is legal. Anita is a short, sarcastic woman who fights vampires and raises zombies and sleeps with stuffed penguins. The way Laurell K. Hamilton writes is addicting, and hilarious. I find myself laughing at some parts.

So try it. :)

This third book in the Anita Blake series was a major disappointment after the first installment, "Guilty Pleasures".

Admittedly, the character of Anita is still enjoyable to watch in action, and the writing style, first-person narrative from her perspective, is still enjoyable. But for one thing, the quality of the writing wasn't nearly as good as it was in the first book; I found as many sloppy errors in this book as I've come to expect in a mass-market paperback; this, after finding NONE in the first book. For another thing, there were numerous flaws in plot continuity; what ever happened to Edward's contract on the Master Vampire of the city, that suddenly, he's fighting with Anita on Jean-Claude's side, no questions asked? Was this just a case of Edward showing faith in Anita's judgement, and he'll get back to that later on? We're never given a clue.

But the biggest problem I have with the plot is the concept of the super-master vampire, so old he's not even of homo sapiens stock; if a 1000 year old vampire is notably more powerful than a 500 year old, then a million-year-old vampire does NOT need any help from Anita to find and kill Jean Claude. He automatically knows the name, address, and zip code of every vampire on the continent. Nor can he be killed as easily as all that; if he can be killed at all, it ought to be at the end of an epic struggle. Further, if he CAN be killed that easily, he HAS to be smart enough not to put himself in that position; if he wasn't brighter than that, he'd have died about 985,000 years ago. At least.

The book's fun, but not particularly good. A shame; I hope the rest of the series more closely resembles the first.

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Zombie Queen, Necromancer, really didn't love Jean-Claude. At least, that's what she kept telling herself. But soon Jean-Claude is not the only vampire trying to make her his servant. There seems to be a bunch of Master Vampires and they ALL want to become Master of the City. To do that they have to find and kill Jean-Claude. Which means they need Anita to tell them where he is, whether she wants to or not!
The undead battle is about to begin, with vampires, werewolves and even an immortal tossed in for the fun of it. Add Edward (and his lovely flamethrower) and you have the fight of the century. Winner take all. The only problem Anita has with all this is she seems to be First Prize.
Lets get ready to rumble!

Laurell K. Hamilton, Circus of the Damned (Berkley, 1995)

This is the third installment of the long-running and wildly popular Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. Hamilton assures us that the series changes somewhat after this in her afterword. I'm thinking that's a good thing, because at this point, it was starting to get into a rut.

It's mostly the small stuff. It seems that Anita punctuates every piece of sarcasm with "Honestly." or "Really." here-- she did it before, but not, it seemed to me, to the extent she does it here. The cat-and-mouse games with Anita and Jean-Claude have just gotten boring-- there's no real progress, even when there seems to be. It's almost like the characters have no chemistry, despite both of them professing same constantly. Honestly, if this book lacked a plot, I'd have probably given up on the series right here.

But a plot it has. There's a rogue pack of vampires loose in the city, and they're led by a master-- someone who might make a challenge for the leadership of the city, presently in Jean-Claude's hands. To complicate things, Anita meets a vampire whom she suspects of being infinitely older than either of the masters already on her plate. This one has goals that seem to be in line with Anita's-- and the only price he requests for his involvement in the situation is for Anita to hand him Jean-Claude's daytime resting place. Which, it seems, everyone and their mothers wants.

As far as plots go, it's certainly not a bad one. It gets weighted down by the story's soap-opera aspects, but it's readable once Hamilton gets the ball rolling and starts throwing in the actual plot elements. I'm hoping the next one is back up to the standard set by the first two. ***

To recap (for those who don't read every one of my reviews, because I've heard that there are a few of you out there) I really didn't like the first book, "Guilty Pleasures." I thought that book two, "The Laughing Corpse" got a little better. This installment of the series seems to have finally hit some sort of stride. It is far from perfect, but I enjoyed this one more than the previous two.

I felt that there were fewer things that came up out of nowhere (such as the Deus Ex Machina villain in book one) and I felt mostly satisfied with the characterization. I thought that the inclusion of a new Animator and an extremely ancient vampire were interesting. Overall, this novel seemed to flow better than the previous two.

I did have a few problems with the book, however. The characters were drawn well, but their actions did not always seem consistent with previous books (didn't the bounty hunter still have a contract on the Master of the City?). Some things still seemed thrown in with no regard for plot (okay, so why was one of the new characters naked when we first meet him?). And I would still like a better analysis of the world this story is set in (what, exactly, are the first two marks? where did vamps come from? are they evil? if not, why do crosses burn them?).

In short, this series does not seem to be terrible. It can kill some time and satisfy a vampire craving. However, don't expect the intelligence or depth of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the intriguing ambiguity of Anne Rice. I don't know where the series will go from here, but so far it's kind of fun. Maybe not fun enough to get me to read the rest of them, but we'll see. :)

Looking back many years ago to when I was reading this book for the first time, I think this is the one that got me hooked. This is partly because of the love triangle that is introduced and partly because this is where the series hits it's stride. This installment, more than any other, has the perfect blend of romance and plot. This is one of my favorites in the series and after four or five rereads it's still highly enjoyable.

Circus of The Damned, a book by Laurell K. Hamilton, and it rocks. This book is book #3 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series, telling the story about Ms. Blake, a legal Vampire Executioner, called by the Vampires: the Executioner.

She is dancing with death, in between a Vampire War, due to her being the prenatural expert for the police. On one side of this war for St. Louis, is Jean Claude, the Master of the City, with a real bad thing for Anita. On the other is Alejandro, a Vampire from the Aztec era. Somewhere in between is Mr. Oliver, the Oldest living Vampire in the World, who looks and acts human, but is actually so old as to be from the Stone Age. Then enter Edward, aka Death, looking for the Master of the City. Edward is an assassin, who kills the 'monsters'. Anita is the only person that Edward knows, who knows who the Master of the City is, and Edward will do anything to get the information. The four meet on Halloween night, in the Circus of the Damned, to fight for the fate of St. Louis.

Throw in a Lamia, a creature long since believed extinct, an animalistic Vampire, that feels no pain, crosses can't stop, and is going on a killing spree, a rogue group of Humans, trying to kill all, and any Vampires. We shouldn't forget to mention the rogue group of Vampires, who are going on a killing spree, and Richard, a mild mannered teacher, with some very strange friends. And you get a prelude to the disasterous meeting that is going to happen Halloween night.

This book is a must read, for anyone who wants too know anything about Vampires. You don't need to read any of the others, but I strongly urge you too anyway. The Series is one of the Best in the Business, and this one is the best of the them all. I wouldn't suggest reading it, unless you have a couple of Hours to spare, because I couldn't put the book down.