WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!
The title of my review says it all : Anita is not back. She's been gone too long, and Ms. Hamilton seems to have forgotten how to write anything but repetitive and distasteful sex scenes. While it's true that there is much less sex in this book, there isn't much of anything else, either. "Skin Trade" was unspeakably dull. It moved at a pace that would make a geriatric snail on Valium look like Jackie Joyner. It took nearly a hundred pages for Anita to get from the airport in Las Vegas to the sheriff's office in the same city.
What was she doing during those one hundred pages? The same thing she always does : getting into pissing matches with any and all law enforcement officers she comes across to prove that she's the biggest and baddest of the men and talking at length about her sex life. Apparently, everyone in the Anita-verse cares far more about Anita's sex life than most of the readers do. It's brought up by every single person she meets, though she's never fired for being unprofessional when she brings her Stunt Penis along on police matters, feeds on unsuspecting police officers, or sleeps with underage boys. In one scene, Anita is told by Edward that the only reason why she still has a badge is probably because she's a woman. Not because she's The Executioner (though we haven't seen Anita kill a vampire without "loving" one to death in about 4 books now), and not because she knows how to do her job, nor because she's more powerful than all the X-men combined. No, it's because she's a woman and could sue if she's terminated. Apparently, the Anita Blake series is a fantasy in more ways than one.
What sex there is has been made worse than the author's standard fare due to the addition of underage characters and the fact that the author recycles the same three or so scenes (with variations of the same male characters) over and over again. Anita continues to get away with metaphysical rape (and to not believe that it's wrong in the slightest), though we are reminded over and over that using psychic powers to compel someone is cause for the death penalty. Ms. Hamilton seems to enjoy making rules just so that Anita can either break or ignore them completely. Anita would like us to know that 16 is the legal age of consent in Nevada. No, it's not, and I truly hope that Ms. Hamilton was aware of this. I also hope that she was speaking for the Anitaverse, and not for actual law. Hamilton insists that she does vast amounts of research for her books, yet one can rarely, if ever, tell. This could very well be a shining example of that. No matter what, it's disgusting and unnecessary. This is made even worse by the fact that Anita becomes a metaphysical sex-slavery charged version of Voltron and The Power Rangers by finding out that she's the queen of all colors of tigers at the same time. Not only can the 16 year-old literally not say no to her, but he wouldn't want to, because of course, Anita is his "queen".
Ms. Hamilton's writing style has also degraded to a point where it's difficult for me to understand how she continues to get published. Her prose is not purple, it's juvenile and ridiculous. One of the most horrid lines is said by brand-new Stunt Penis Domino : "My Queen, if by my flesh or my seed I can feed you, then feed." Another gem is said by Fluffer SWAT member Sanchez to the all-powerful Anita : "It's like if you let all your shields down, you'd burn. But it would burn black, as if the night could catch fire and eat the world."
The bottom line is that "Skin Trade" has everything wrong with it that the last several "AB:VH" books had. All women are portrayed as weak and jealous of Anita, or stereo-typical butch lesbian cops who are jealous of Anita. Any strong women other than Anita are raped, tortured, abused or murdered. All attractive men are obsessed with Anita, while unattractive men who dislike Anita are portrayed as jealous of her power and accused of being homosexuals. All of Anita's "boyfriends", Jean-Claude especially, take on the role of two-dimensional, whining, clinging, and emotionally weak girlfriends to Anita's two-dimensional, strong, stoic and seemingly uncaring "male" character. Characters attack Anita's sex life or personal beliefs for the sole purpose of allowing Anita to lecture the reader about intolerance, while Anita herself is the single most intolerant person in the series. The book, like all of the others, starts out with a plot, but loses it in a miasma of melodrama centered on Anita's sex life and her ever-growing powers, none of which she seems capable or willing to control. Anita still insists that she doesn't have casual sex, without realizing what a joke that is.
The worst thing about "Skin Trade" was its unoriginality. While Hamilton has never given credit to those who came before her, such as Joss Whedon and Anne Rice, she did come up with quite a few interesting ideas of her own. Not anymore. The plot in "Skin Trade" bears a striking resemblance to that of Carrie Vaughn's "Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand" and "Kitty Raises Hell". Las Vegas, were-tigers, djinns. It's all been done by Ms. Vaughn, and done much better at that. If these ideas had been Ms. Hamilton's first (which they were not, as Ms. Vaugh's published manuscript predates Ms. Hamilton's by 4 months), the book would at least get points for having a decent premise. Even the one thing that Hamilton did seem to create on her own, her villain, was destroyed by her inability to to see her ideas come to fruition. It ended like every other Anita Blake novel : A gimme fight which took no skill, either of Anita's or Ms. Hamilton's. The way that Anita defeats the bad guy is so laughable that I just put the book down and decided that there was no possible way without aid of a time machine, Anita is ever coming back. In case you're wondering, she wins by giving him an epic orgasm. I'm serious.
Ms. Hamilton's attachment to her "darlings" makes it impossible for her to see what she's done to her series. She cut down the sex, but without it, as badly done as it was, there is nothing left. Rehashing the same basic plot of Anita getting more and more powerful while winding up with more and more "boyfriends" is old, tired, and was never very good to begin with. I personally do not believe that Anita is ever coming back. If you are a fan of urban paranormal fantasy, Jim Butcher, Carrie Vaughn, and Kim Harrison are all much better bets.
***EDIT***
There was a mistake made in an earlier version of this review. The text should now read: "One of the most horrid lines is said by brand-new Stunt Penis Domino : "'My Queen, if by my flesh or my seed I can feed you, then feed.'" The "under-aged" line has been omitted, as it is Cynric who is under-aged. If Amazon does not publish the change, please note that I am aware of it and that I did submit the correction.
