Customer Reviews

Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 10)

5 star:		(191)
4 star:		(93)
3 star:		(81)
2 star:		(97)
1 star:		(137)

 

 

I was one of the fans waiting anxiously to read NIC. I heard the opening chapters read in Dallas, and, if I remember correctly, asked for a cigarette when it was over. It was that viscerally gripping.

The drivel that it devolved into in the finished work was a complete disappointment. I found it barely readable.

A few of the highlights (or would that be lowlights?):

1) The atrocious grammar, spelling and foreign language errors that have plagued the series from Day 1 were SO pronounced that, unlike in most of the earlier books (which also abounded with sloppy mechanics/editing), I couldn't ignore them. There was no story going on to distract me from them

2) Major characters exhibited illogical and contradictory behavior reeking of plot device (not only contradictory to their behavior in previous books, but from chapter to chapter in this book).

3) A new major character was introduced, apparently as a continuing romantic interest for Our Heroine. However, this is one of the creepiest "romantic" characters (if he can be dignified by the term character) I have ever encountered. From his description, he sounds more like a sideshow attraction than a romantic leading man. And I DON'T mean tentacles! (Now THEY were sexy.)

4) The endless tedious, joyless, loveless carnal acts.

5) The Anita-who-isn't-really-Anita. Plot device, again. It has been maintained, in various discussion fora, that, in NIC, Anita has "come to terms" with her sexuality. This is not in evidence on the page, as she continues to indulge in juvenile "THAT wasn't sex" arguments throughout the book. The fact that Anita simply accepts certain plot devices thrust upon her is SO far outside the scope of the character's evolution over the course of the series, that it might as well be a series about another person entirely.

6) Beloved supporting characters' mouths are filled with "Anita is the most wonderfullest being on the planet" pap. Virtually all the characters in this book exist to validate Anita as the best, baddest, most intriguing, alluring, etc. One that ever was. Including the bad guys.

7) There is no context for the events in this book. What made the series gripping and entertaining was the juxtaposition of the preternatural world with the mundane one. I remember the feeling I got reading the first couple of books that I, PERSONALLY, had been awake for days, living on coffee and adrenalin, as Anita shuttled from zombie raising to crime scene to preternatural face off, with an hour's sleep snatched here and there. I felt that THAT world truly lurked around the edges of ours. NIC lacked that spice of normalcy.

This is an ill-crafted work that does a disservice to a writer with a marvelous imagination.

This book represents, for me, just about the final nail in the coffin of what began as one of the neatest series ever. All the things that made me love the series to being with, and kept me buying them (with increasing reluctance) as they came out, are now pretty much dead.

Great plots/suspense/humor? There almost isn't any. All of the fascinating and funny stuff in the early books, attempting to integrate monsters into modern American life with all the questions about the legal rights of the undead, etc.., have been pretty much forgotten.

Great action? What made the early books so tense and exciting was watching the gutsy little human woman go up against awesome evil creatures with vast superhuman powers, and somehow come out on top. Now Anita is the mighty Queen of werewolves AND wereleopards, Master of Vampires, the greatest necromancer of all time, always right, all-powerful, and everybody, but everybody wants her hot bod <yawn>! I find myself almost rooting for her poor victims/enemies, especially now that the distinction between Anita and the "bad monsters" isn't that clear anymore.

Great support characters? The terrific Jean-Claude is now Anita's faithful little pet; merely one of her many lovers, he dutifully shows up to explain stuff and help out a little when needed, and then scampers back to his coffin at daybreak with a pat on his head. What a waste! Richard, who showed signs in Blue Moon of finally coming to grips with his bad furry self, is once again the self-loathing bleeding-heart trapped in a predator's body.... another waste! The only thing left to wish for, for those of us who cared about the Richard character, is to see him get the first cure for lycanthropy, marry the nice scientist from Blue Moon, and get the heck away from the Executioner. Our brand-new "hero", the new man in Anita's life, Micah? His only relevant characteristic is a you-know-what even bigger than Richard's, but he adds nothing, since "he doesn't mind bodies lying all around" -- that is, he automatically agrees with everything Anita does. Oh, he IS something of a rapist who doesn't take "no" for an answer, however -- but that's ok, since Anita really "wanted it", right? <gag>

Great heroine? Worst of all is what Hamilton has done to Anita herself -- fearless in fights, but nervous and insecure in her "dating" life (which used not to necessarily mean "sex" -- now that's the only thing it means). Over the last few volumes, she stopped being likeable -- now she's not even that interesting. In Blue Moon, we found her worrying whether a magical ward against evil beings would work against her; at the end of Obsidian Butterfly, she was horrified to find out that a certain psychopathic serial killer saw her as his kindred spirit or even "soulmate". All of these interesting concerns about the direction her life was heading seem to have suddenly disappeared, replaced by her smug contempt for Richard and HIS self-doubts. And, of course, the shy, "good Catholic", girl who was flustered by her attraction to Jean-Claude is long gone, replaced by something of a, well, slut. The downward moral slide, which began when she violated her own most important rule -- uncompromising loyalty to the people she cares about -- by betraying Richard (her fiance at the time!) in the most cruel way possible, has just about hit rock-bottom now.

Great romance/passion? In the meantime, the amazingly well-written eroticism of the early books has crossed the line into something more like porn: lots of graphic sex for its own sake. Judging from the new racy covers (even for the new printings of the older books in the series), this represents a deliberate marketing decision on Hamilton's part.

As I said, what a waste...

Normally, I write long detailed reviews of vampire books. I like the genre, and I like all the previous books in this series. But this one, well... If you want to see why I like the rest of the series, you can read my reviews of all of them, starting with _Guilty Pleasures_ and going through _Obsidian Butterfly_. That would give you a comparison for how I feel about this one. Let's start by saying I'm disappointed. At best.

Up to now, Anita has been feisty, moral, conflicted, and busy with her regular work as well as her love life. In this book, she appears to not be doing anything with her job at all - we never even hear about it, never hear from her boss, her co-workers. While for the past 6 months, and in the whole previous book, she was studying with a witch to learn to control her powers, in this book, although she refers to her time with the witch, despite all the problems she has controlling things, she never once thinks of picking up the phone and calling her mentor. And she appears to have abandoned her entire sense of moral conflict. This book brings in a new character, the male Nimir-Raj of another were-leopard pack, with whom Anita immediately has sex. And there's mental sex, virtual sex, interspecies sex... it gets downright tiresome. You never knew sex could be this boring.

Even the plot elements, such as they are, are inconsistent, both with the rest of the series and with each other. At one and the same time, we have a tribe of snake men who apparently aren't weres, they are something we never knew about before, nor had anyone in the book. And then there's a pan-were, who can turn into any species - likewise, something that's never been hinted at before in the series, and is inconsistent with what we've learned about before. And then, for reasons never very clear, the snake men who aren't weres decide as a tribe to follow the pan-were - and all of them are bad guys. Sheesh. Talk about contrived.

What I would really like to do is believe that Hamilton wrote this book as a parody; that now that she's got it out of her system, in the next book we will go back to where _Obsidian Butterfly_ ended, and start from there as though _Narcissus in Chains_ had never occurred. From the end of _OB_ she could take a different, more logical direction for the series, one which wouldn't change the character of Anita Blake to something unrecognizable, one which wouldn't include so much gratuitous sex that it offends even regular readers who are expecting the normal sexual content of the series. I will look forward to the next book in hopes it will meet this challenge - that's my hope for the series.

I WAS a huge Anita Blake fan - I loved the strong fiesty female character, the snappy dialogue and the original plot lines of earlier books. However, I found this book unsatisfying and shallow. It seemed to be a bunch of loosly linked erotic sex scenes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude - if Anita sleeps with everything (and it seems only a matter of time!) thats fine by me. I was dissapointed in the poorly developed plot and the lack of meaningful interaction between the major characters and also the complete lack of a convincing, or even a mildly interesting, antagonist.

LKH's convenient creation of Narcissus and his bunch of merry werehyenas was just so unconvincing. The ultimate bad guy, who is anti-climatically revealed, comes across as if it was a last minute insertion in the book. I get the feeling LKH's editor said -'Hey Laurell, this book is really flat and lacks suspense, graft on a mysterious bad guy and give it a lift!'

One redeeming feature of this book is 10-12 pages of interaction between Anita, Dolph and Zebrowski. It reveals the reasons for Dolph's antivampire views and also reveals something of Anita's feelings and priorites to Zebrowski. This type of character conflict - where the ideologys and firmly held views clash - is what I have previously found so interesting in LKH's novels, and is so absent in this one. (The scene about Jean-Claude's long-term imprisonment/torture of Gretal and his justification to Anita is another such example.)

The book's ending was convinient and anticlimatic. There was no sense of surprise or suspense in the revelation of the ulimate bad guy. You just knew that the ever more powerful Anita (whats next - she will leap tall buildings in a single bound?) was in no danger.

For me it was the emotional conflict of the 'Anita character' in her continuing fight to retain humanity in the face of huge odds that I find so engrossing in LKHs novels. In this book major events in Anita's life and emotional well being were glossed over, such as the radical change in her relationship with Richard, and her calm acceptance of becoming a monster and a sexual predator.

In this book Anita seems to have just given up, or maybe it is more accurate to say LKH has given up. One more book like this and I will.

Let me just start by saying that I've read all the books in this series. I may have had a quibble here and there with them, but overall I like them all. And then came this book, and I simply can't believe its this bad. Plot? Well, there isn't much of one. I think the point of this book is Anita getting in touch with her inner-monster, or something along those lines. No more need for those pesky morals, now its just sex and killing and threatening galore, and darn it, she likes it that way !! Pass the barf bag. Its especially amusing how the author has to constantly keep throwing in characters making comments about how wonderful and special and perfect and terrific Anita is, we are even assured God still loves her (really? I wouldn't be so sure). Its like the author had to keep reminding us "you are *supposed* to like Anita".

As for the other characters, Jean-Claude is relegated to bit status and mainly seems to be around to explain things to Anita, Richard is cruelly eviscerated with such malice it almost seems personal (can't help thinking that whoever she based this character is based on pissed the author off in a bad way), and Anita's human friends are essentially cast off as unimportant or "not understanding her". Anita has a new man now, her instant "yes" man/soulmate, who seems basically there to assure Anita, once again, that everything she does is the absolute best (ya know, in case we forgot the other 6534 times we are told in the book). If he's a permenant addition to the ever growing cast of characters, thats a real shame. And maybe the author should have tried to give him a personality based on more then his enormous...assets.

Lots of unsexy sex in the book b/c now Anita has the "arduer" so she can't help herself. Its too ridiculous a concept to even spend another minute thinking about. The book raises to the level of parody when Anita has to delay saving one of her "leopards" (who are so hapless, you'd like to push them all down a well) because she has to get in bed with 4 men for some magical screwfest. I can't believe I used to actually like this character.

This is the worst book I've read all year, and I've read many. Thats sad. The jury is out on whether I'll read the next one. Think I might just read the ...reviews and make my decision then. If you liked the Anita of the first books, and like the mystery/crime-solving element of the books, and enjoyed Anita's very real struggles with morality and her humanity be forewarned, this book is probably not for you. If you're someone that just says "Wow, Anita kicks butt and everyone wants to have sex with her, Cool!!", you'll probably love it.

Narcissus in Chains is a book that I have a strange history with. It's one that I have been valiantly trying to read since my Junior year of high school. I'd managed to read the first half from the library, I'd skimmed certain later scenes in the book, and as of recently I listened to it on audio cassette. It's taken me three years, but I've finally suffered through NiC! I think we all deserve T-shirts that proclaim our bravery.
I love the first six Anita Blake books. They were stay-up-til 3 AM on a school night kind of reads. The series started to shift away from what made it initial enjoyable in book 7, but in Blue Moon that series crashed and burned for me. Obsidian Butterfly was rock-bottom for me as I realized that Anita wasn't all that different from the jerk bigoted cop that had it in for her. NiC is even worse, surpassing rock bottom and trying to drill itself straight to Hades.
The only good thing about NiC is it looks like Richard is gone for good this time. I also thought his relationship with Anita was illogical. Richard only seemed to want her for being human, but he wanted her to be a normal normal Pollyanna. It's been clear since the first that he's barking up the wrong tree if he wants that from Anita. Anita on her part doesn't like him being a werewolf, and with her abandonment issues I've always wondered why she would waste her time pining over a man who wanted her to be something she wasn't. It was doomed from the start. Goodbye and good ridance Richard. I'm sick of your mind games and your pitiful whining. I don't like Jean Claude either anymore, and I sure as heck don't like Anita's new lover, Micah.
With this story, Anita Blake shifts itself even further on the wrong path as Anita gains the power of the Arduer and becomes this super-Nymphomaniac Witch. Seriously, the LHK is almost writing like she's trying to parody herself. Anita isn't back for five minutes before the hateful wereleopards that I wish would die are in trouble again. Anita goes to a bondage club to rescue them. She's wounded during the fight and wakes up to find herself in bed with a bunch of new characters to this cast that has long since reached maximum occupancy. Micah is a Nimir-Raj wereleopard. He spends like 80 pages giving Anita sexual healing and they have sex in the shower. You heard me, Anita Blake has sex in the shower with a dude she doesn't know from Adam. It's the arduer's fault of course, Anita Blake makes no mistakes. The arduer seems to posess her alot, forcing her to do kinky sexual stuff. I guess bludgeoning a character into acting completely against her nature passes for character evolution (or devolution) in Hamilton's mind. This forced erotica isn't even very good. Hamilton loved to reuse the beast, and itching along the skin descriptions over and over. Frankly, the proses become so florid when Anita goes into the sexual magic that the book begins to read like a penthouse letter! And Anita spends more time thinkings about how great it would be to drink her lovers' blood, eat their flesh, and grind their bones to make her bread than she does about how hot and bothered they make her. Only fans of Furry Vore porn will enjoy her myriad sexual encounters.
I think the arduer is only the latest blunder of Hamilton's biggest storytelling weakness: Character consistancy. Have you noticed how characters' whole personality can shift between books. Anita can't decide if she's completely depraved or not. Jean Claude has gone from being so into Anita to pimping her out to Richard for more powers and in NiC he's become this clucking mother hen. Richard went from mild-mannered werewolf to a psycho whiner and then to this macho man with 100% pure testorone in his viens.
I really really hate Anita. She's always right and no one can get along without her. Characters are pigeon-holed into two categories: Anita's booter-lickers or Anita's enemies. I mean even the supposedly dominant were-beasties have to bend over when Anita commands and they all want to have sex with her. Anyone who goes against the will of mighty Blake is bad and deserves death or some other sad fate because THOU SHALT HAVE NO GODS BEFORE ANITA!! She expects JC and Richard to not be mad at her for stringing them along and running out on them for six months. I'm tired of this selfish, emotionally immature woman thinking that the world revolves around her.
Late in the book some plot about missing were-alphas appears that ends with Anita gaining a gillion-bazillion new powers. Micah takes Richard's place in the end. The best part is that Anita doesn't love Micah for his sparkling personality. No, he's her soulmate because he's so desperate to get at the VD filled cavern between her thighs that he's become her ultimate yes-man, a personality-less doormat trying to lie flat enough to suit her needs. Doesn't such a beautiful relationship warm the cockles of your heart?

This book is the turning point. It's the death of the Anita we all knew and loved and the birth of the new Anita. The old Anita was a tough, no-nonsense girl who's life revolved around raising the dead, solving crime, and slaying vampires. From this book on, Anita loses more and more of her independence. The things that were most imporatant to her, the police work and the like, get pushed ever further back in lieu of more and more sex and relationships with an ever-increasing harem of emotionally damaged men.

If you like the crime solving, police work, hunting, and mystery found in all the earlier books you should stop reading the series now. From this book on, the series is completely different. It revolves almost totally around sex, with the story and plot shoved further into the background with each successive book. By the time you get to the most recent books, there's not really any plot left, just a sequence of sex scenes loosely connected by the vague skeleton of a story that's really just a timeline.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind sex in books as long as it doesn't interfere with the plot and story. There's just two problems:
One, in the later books, the sex completely takes over the plot and the story. That's all there is. 80% or more of the book involves sex scenes in one way or another.
Second, Hamilton doesn't write good sex scenes. They nearly put me to sleep. They're not interesting and they add nothing to the book (other than hundreds of dull pages).

Hamilton's success was never due to her skills as a writer. From a technical stand point, she's actually a pretty poor writer. Her books are filled with grammatical errors, and composed almost entirely of short choppy sentences. What made her worth reading was that she had made a very good and unique character, Anita Blake, and was proficient in telling the story through her eyes. Now, Anita has been stripped of nearly everything that once made the character unique. And, her point of view and perspective is now almost always atop an erection.

My advice, stop reading this series until Hamilton gets it back on track. There are many wonderful books out there worthy of your time and money, this series is no longer among them.

I have read every Anita Blake book since the first. I read the reviews on this one, and they were so conflicting I just had to read the book myself and see. Well, now I understand. You will either love this book or absolutely hate it. Helpful, aren't I? I was a huge fan of Anita - she had some weird powers, she hung out with weird people, but she was a tough broad who did her job and protected her friends. Then around Blue Moon or so, she started to really change. We no longer saw her doing any kind of her job - not raising dead, not executing rogue vampires, not going to crime scenes with the RPIT. Everything she did involved were/vampire politics, and every time we turned around she had some new awesome power. Come on now, she can't be the best at everything - she completely loses any interesting qualities if she is - the greatest necromancer that ever lived, the lupa of the werewolves, the servant of the master vampire, the nimir-ra of the leopards, able to heal with a touch, able to call the munin, has wiccan-like powers (and yet remains stoically christian) in a powerful triumvirate, possesses super-human speed and strength, has a were-beast without actually being a were anything, etc etc. Yes, there was a lot of repetetive sex in this book - if you didn't like the way the last 2 or 3 books have gone, you'll absolutely hate this one. The characters have all become one dimensional - they all follow the same track that they have in every book, nobody experiences any kind of emotional or mental growth, and the biggest dilemma Anita now faces is the fact that she has sex with pretty much everyone - both those she's known and complete strangers - and doesn't really care. Huh? Okay, I didn't think she should be such a prude, but going from no sex to casual sex with EVERYONE (and of course, every single male is superhumanly pretty and VERY well hung) is a bit ridiculous. And also, we're supposed to believe that every single male that sees her wants to have sex with her? Whatever happened to the character from the first couple of books? This Anita just bumps through the book, having rough sex with everyone, doesn't actually solve any crimes or discover any secrets, has everything fall into her lap, gets several people killed (the old Anita would actually have spared a thought about that) continues to out-tough everyone (and of course, she's the toughest person around) Starts a huge war, and then at the end enjoys a big party after lots of her friends and allies get killed for her - and doesn't even care that richard, who she's mooned over for half the series, wants to be dead? ugh. It is a kind of character assassination. However, the book is written in the same smooth flowing style as the rest of the series, which is the only reason I gave it 2 stars. If you liked the increased sex and violence in the last 3 books, you'll like this one. If you enjoyed the plots and character development, steer clear. I'm going to withhold judgement until I read the next in the series - Hopefully, Ms. Hamilton will get back to the snappy characterizations and plotting of the original books. Sadly, I don't think she will, and if the next book continues like this one, I'm afraid she's lost another dedicated reader.

This book is neither as bad as its most ardent detractors claim, nor as good as its admirers think it. I agree, if Anita Blake from Guilty Pleasures saw Anita Blake from NiC, she would run screaming. But I enjoy her evolving character. She's sacrificed a good many of her principles to save lives, and now she is reaping the whirlwind. I enjoyed her developing relationship with both her pard and with the pack. I was happy to see more of Asher, but I hope that Hamilton does not drag the bitter Asher out over several books. I suppose he has reasons to be bitter and nasty, but this is only a book, and the whining gets annoying. I also enjoyed seeing some more depth added to Jason's and Nathaniel's characters.

However, the sex has gotten completely out of hand. First of all, I don't see any reason why Anita sacrificing her principles to save lives has any bearing on Anita sacrificing her principles to have sex. Second of all, if Jean-Claude can manage to control the ardeur without having wild and crazy preternatural sex orgies, why can't Anita? Third, what is it with all Anita's men (even Bernardo in OB) being supernatural--supernaturally endowed, that is! What is the obsession with size? Fourth, is anyone else a little sick of every male creature on earth (evidently) having the hots for Anita? This has been an issue that has been developing for quite a while, and it really got me steamed (not in an erotic way) in this book. All the reoccuring characters seem to want nothing more than to get Anita into bed! Before long, Edward is going to confess his burning desire!

To sum up--Don't get this in hardcover, but it's probably still worth your money in paperback. I'll read Hamilton's next Anita Blake, and probably even the one after that, but if the series doesn't shape up soon, count me out.

Narcissus in Chains came across more as a dark version of some teenager spewing out sexual fantasies on a spiral notebook under the cover of night than a book fit of a professional author and publisher. Every man is endowed enough to make an elephant envious, and every male character (often instantly) wants to have sex with Anita. Those who don't, are just in love with her. Does this not sound like a hormonal teenager's dream? Heck, it would work for me, however..... Any night now, I expect to see Edward shower her with roses and drop to one knee professing his eternal love to her, and of course he'd be the most endowed of any of them, considering he "has all the best toys." All the men are wonderful lovers, and even better, there's ample chance to have all the great effects without even having actual sex in weird versions of supernatural sex. All the better for those orgies.
I've read (although I haven't reviewed) all of the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series from the first book to this one. The things which attracted me to them were the roller coaster ride pace they set, how the author kept me guessing to the very end on whichever mystery or situation Anita set out to solve, and the characters themselves. Everything I've reviewed to date has one common factor - it deals with shapeshifters in some ways. The good, the bad, the ugly, the adult fiction, the children's fiction, science fiction, gothic horror, romance, legends, or chiller, I've likely read it. I also like vampires, and something else which attracted me to the series was the closeness Anita's world has to the World of Darkness, a Role Playing Game by White Wolf Studios. Although I never played the game seriously, the world which it created was in many ways a mirror image of Hamilton's -- with one huge difference -- the "monsters" aren't in hiding. Fascinating concept, and wonderful characters as the readers began to get to know Anita, Jean-Claud, Richard, the Pard, Edward, and the others. I never liked the fact that every single book either had someone raped in it or at the very least the treat of rape. Where this isn't particularly offensive except in one case, I found it drearily overused to the point it was losing its impact and it seldom seemed to have any actual purpose. Some more creativity would be nice, as after all, there are considerably more horrific things a person can be threatened with. I overlooked the sexual violence, as did many of my friends, because the story was so great. Then we got to Narcissus in Chains, and the greatest mystery presented to the "old" readers ever. Where's the plot, and where did the characters go who we got to know?
Anita has devolved. Every good character should grow and change. They should lose their innocence, grapple with tough choices, and perhaps become someone we no longer recognize. However, all of this happening in a single book, to all the main characters, along with utter loss of plot is a bit much. Where once Anita was adamantly against casual sex, she's now bopping from orgy to orgy, man to man, bed to bed. Because of the ardeur, you say? When was the last time headstrong, stubborn Anita simply tossed the towel in at the first sign of trouble without digging her heels in either turning the situation around, or at least fighting it? Richard almost kills his own pack? Not the Richard we knew. Jean-Claud has gone from Master Vampire to some clingy Harlequin Romance figure gushing his eternal love (although he'll have to get in line, Eddie is probably waiting in the wings for the next novel.) Nathaniel, who Anita has always treated more as a sibling or child is suddenly her lover. Just as he was starting to heal and get himself started in a healthy direction, she jumps into bed with him. That's not the Anita we knew, who once cared about things like that, as well as her friends, all the way up to the last book. The book was almost over before anything of consequence happened - aside from sex, sex, and more sex. Even Anita's humor fled the scene for (you guessed it) sex. Part of her charm was doing minor things like lifting the cow cookie jar just to see if it would moo. She must have been too breathless to be bothered with those minor details. The idea of a Panwere was fascinating, but it was skimmed over for more (to borrow White Wolf's phrase) "way kewl powerz" via Anita, and of course, sex. The shower scene with Micha also left me a bit disturbed. In any major city, you have radio advertisements and ads which stress a woman's right to say "no" to sex, and no means no in an attempt to prevent rape. With Anita, no obviously means yes. What kind of signal is being broadcast here? Anita who never has casual sex, and says "no, no," and "no" thrice but then goes for a rough frisk around the shower with a stranger -- who makes great pubescent, heart throbbing hunk pin-up wallpaper, I might add. Of course there wasn't much else to him, but that's not unusual for this book. As for the rest of it, personally, I have no problem with erotica either realistically or supernaturally. It isn't the contents of the book itself which gave this novel an all time low rating with me, but the fact it didn't fit in with the rest of the series in any way. If Ms. Hamilton wants to write erotica, more power to her, but how about doing it in another series where it at least makes sense? It was wonderfully erotic, particularly if you're teased and tantalized by 'playing rough', but I'm not someone who does. This also isn't what I read the series for. Due to a recent interview which Ms. Hamilton more than hinted that the reader's opinions hold little sway, I will never buy another book by this author. If I wanted to read porn, I'd save myself the cover price and surf the internet for it.