Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 17) [Hardcover]

Laurell K. Hamilton (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 2, 2009

When a vampire serial killer sends Anita Blake a grisly souvenir from Las Vegas, she has to warn Sin City's local authorities what they're dealing with. Only it's worse than she thought. Police officers and one executioner have been slain-paranormal style.

Watch a Video

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hamilton's 17th Anita Blake novel draws the vampire hunter into a game of cat-and-mouse with a particularly monstrous vampire named Vittorio. Aided by sadistic serial killer Otto Jefferies, convenient sociopath Edward Kemper and fanged escorts handpicked by her lover Jean-Claude, U.S. marshal Anita offers her services to Las Vegas, now under siege from Vittorio's army of enthralled preternatural beings. Manipulated by the cunning Vittorio and occasionally misled by coincidental events, Anita employs her insight into Vittorio's condition and weaponized libido as the decisive weapons in this struggle. The book is largely concerned with the melodramatic conflict between hunter and hunter and Blake's soap-operatic love life, but Hamilton does manage some genuinely moving passages, particularly those describing the terror of innocent vampires caught up in the arbitrary and draconian U.S. legal system. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Laurell K. Hamilton is a full-time writer and mother. Her bestselling Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels include Narcissus in Chains, Obsidian Butterfly, Blue Moon, Burnt Offerings, The Killing Dance, Bloody Bones, The Lunatic Café, Circus of the Damned, The Laughing Corpse, and Guilty Pleasures. She is also the author of A Kiss of Shadows and A Caress of Twilight. She lives in a suburb of St. Louis with her family.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Hardcover; 1 edition (June 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425227723
• ISBN-13: 978-0425227725
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (329 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #452,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laurell K. Hamilton is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of two series that mix mystery, fantasy, magic, horror and romance. Her Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels from Berkley Books began with GUILTY PLEASURES (now a hugely successful graphic novel from Marvel - the first sexy paranormal comic ever!) and continues with the SKIN TRADE, number seventeen in the series, in which Anita's complex personal and professional relationships with a master vampire and an alpha werewolf continue to evolve. There are now more than 6 million copies of Anita in print worldwide, in 16 languages. Hamilton's Ballantine series features Fey princess and private investigator, Merry Gentry and there are now six novels exceeding one million copies in print. Divine Misdemeanors, the eighth in the series will debut Octobe 29, 2009. She lives in St. Louis County Missouri with her husband Jonathon Green, daughter, one pug dog and one boxer/pug dog.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#23 in Books > Romance > Fantasy & Futuristic

#30 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

#37 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy

#45 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

#70 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror

#23 in Books > Romance > Fantasy & Futuristic

#30 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

#37 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Fantasy

#45 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

#70 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Horror

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

239 of 253 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Better than the others - yes. Good? Sadly no. June 9, 2009

By J. Stanley

Format:Hardcover

This book started out with such promise. I can get past all the angsty stuff, but then 3/4 of the way through the book the plot just dropped. So many threads left blowing in the wind, like the first real suspect in the case Paula Chu - they just left her at the police station halfway through and never mentioned her again. Supposedly belle morte gives Anita a new power, but you never find out what it is. It was like in the last 50 pages Hamilton just got tired of writing and wrapped it up in the most ludicrous way that she could. One of the biggest baddies ever was killed by people not even in the story with a bomb. Then she sets up what could've been a really great villain with great new "allies" (the djinn), but turns him into a sexually frustrated nothing. Brand new vamps have been harder to take out in the past than this guy was - in fact the heroine didn't even actually kill him. Olaf, Edward and Bernardo just kind of disappear. Actually I don't think "the executioner" fired one shot in the entire book. I can deal with everything else, the sex really doesn't bother me in and of it self but as an end all be all to every plot it kind of sucks. Hamilton so could've redeemed herself with this book if she had actually finished writing it. Forget trying to put out at least 2 books every year - just try to get one good one in however long it takes. Please.

405 of 441 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Anita is not back. June 20, 2009

By AJ

Format:Hardcover

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. Read more ›

194 of 215 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars I wish I had nicer things to say June 28, 2009

By Ashber

Format:Hardcover

This story had So much potential, in the first two chapters.

Then it turned into something else. As someone who has police officers as family and friends, I find this book offensive.

The police in this story are portrayed right out of a bad, grade F horror movie shot in someones basement.

I thought that this book, of three hundred plug pages was going to blow my mind. Instead, it ended up being more horrific than I thought possible.

Rape is Rape, wither its rolling people with your mind or drugging them, its the same thing. But since its Anita, its okay? No it is not. Shes a ephebophilia. This isn't the first time shes had sex with a minor but since she can't remember and now the boy loves her, its "All good."
Why this keeps coming up in LKH's series,I have no idea but it makes me want to vomit.
Worse, this is either the 3rd or 4th time. I would check but I just dont care anymore and I refuse to reread the drek that LKH has published.

I said this before, that I wasn't going to purchase another LKH book and I'm glad that I didn't. My friend did and wanted to know if I had the same problems with it she did.

I dont like Anita anymore and I don't want to waste anymore of my time expecting the books to get better. There are better writers and they will have my time and money.

Please, dont purchased this thing. Save your momey.

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Well... there's 5.5 hours I will never get back. July 21, 2009

By D. Josephs

Format:Hardcover

I wasn't going to bother writing a review as most of the prior negative comments pretty much sum up my issues with this book, but I figured if more "real name" posters chime in, perhaps LKH and her publisher will take note.

The first few chapters of Skin Trade actually felt like old Anita Blake. And, to my even-in-retrospect disbelief, in almost 500 pages I bet there is less that 20 pages devoted to gratuitous sex (btw - I love sex, just not poorly written sex that is used as a substitute for a plot). Instead, LKH thumps us on the head over and over again about boys not believing girls can be taken seriously and concludes with a trite ending to super-powerful villains.

I stopped feeding money into the Anita Blake machine a few novels back, but kept up via my public library. No more. I feel sad because LKH's stuff now sucks so bad that I would rather sit through a (insert-your-least-favorite-actor's-name-here) film festival that read one of her books again.

I'm also chapped because I'll probably be doing myself Karmic harm by returning Skin Trade to the library, but I must if I want to check our more books.

Miss Hamilton, if you are reading this, PLEASE make up with whoever was ghost-writing your early Anita Blake books. If not for me, do it for the children.