Incubus Dreams (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter) (Hardcover)

by Laurell K. Hamilton (Author) "IT WAS AN October wedding..." (more)
Key Phrases: Master of the City, Belle Morte, Guilty Pleasures (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
As Incubus Dreams opens, Anita Blake may be America's most powerful vampire hunter and necromancer. So it's no surprise that the Regional Preternatural Crime Investigation Team seeks her assistance when a St. Louis stripper is murdered and the evidence points to unusual serial killers: a group of seven vampires. It appears a master vampire has gone rogue--and may prove too powerful for Anita Blake, even if she can gain help from not only her vampire consort, Master of the City Jean-Claude, but from the wereleopard king Micah, her other lover, and the alpha werewolf Richard, her bitter ex-lover.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Laurell K. Hamilton's Incubus Dreams is just one sex scene after another. This twelth novel in her bestselling Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series presents a wedding, a murder, and a lot of relationship angst before getting down and dirty on page 89; and the sex scenes pause on page 377 to let the mystery plot resume. The series deftly blends elements of alternate history, horror, romance, erotica, and mystery, but anyone reading Incubus Dreams for the murder plot is going to be frustrated. However, Incubus Dreams is a considerably stronger and more interesting book than its talky predecessor, Cerulean Sins, and fans will enjoy the many new developments in Anita's complicated love life. --Cynthia Ward

Amazon.com Exclusive Content

Interview with the Vampire Writer
With two bestselling series featuring supernatural heroines under her belt, one has to wonder if Laurell K. Hamilton is truly in touch with a world beyond ours. Hamilton spoke with Amazon.com about her work, her characters, and her plans for the future.

From Publishers Weekly
Fans of bestseller Hamilton's vampire hunter Anita Blake will be thrilled with at least one aspect of this transitional 12th installment (after 2003's Cerulean Sins): Anita finally resolves her relationships with werewolf ex-boyfriend Richard Zeeman and vampire boyfriend Jean-Claude. They'll also be pleased to see Anita finally get comfortable with her own behavior, despite crossing many lines—sexual, psychological, professional, paranormal—that she previously thought uncrossable. In her role as vampire-executioner and preternatural-crime investigator, Anita pursues a band of serial-killing vampires who prey on female strippers, but much of the novel focuses on her responsibilities as a leader in St. Louis's vampiric-lycanthropic community. Those obligations are often intertwined with sex, the basic tool of her ever-growing magical powers. The ardeur that compels her to have sex in order to fuel her two "power triumvirates" must now be fed with increasing frequency. Old foes threaten as new enemies emerge. There's plenty of life (and undeath) left in this series, and Hamilton's imagination is apparently as inexhaustible as her heroine's supernatural capacity for coupling.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 658 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Hardcover; 1st ed/1st printing edition (September 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425198243
• ISBN-13: 978-0425198247
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (762 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #49,501 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 12 in The Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

695 of 740 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This. Book. Blows., October 9, 2004

By	JunkyardMessiah "jonkadane" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

I hate to slam an author's hard work (658 pages can't have come easy) but MAN did this book suck. I have been an Anita fan since Guilty Pleasures, but found I REALLY enjoyed the series when it took a darker turn, around Obsidian Butterfly. Cerulean Sins was great, because when Anita really started to feed the ardeur, at least she was doing it (literally) with characters I had come to know and like. The pairings were interesting and compelling, and I couldn't WAIT to see how the delicious menage a trois between Anita, Asher and Jean Claude would play out, how they would battle the big Bad Mother of All Darkness, and what that would mean in their relationship with Belle Morte. So many delicious threads left dangling, and twelve excruciating months to wait....then finally the wait was over! Incubus Dreams was at last here!

Cut to 658 pages and 200 typos later, and here I sit horrified and dumbfounded. What the holy (insert Anita's favorite expletive here) was this?? It was as if Cerulean Sins never existed! All those threads I mentioned? Still dangling. No room to address them when you've got 500 pages of talky porn to write!

Yes, before Anita and her lovers (some of them strangers introduced a mere half a page before Anita goes all ardeur on them) have sex, they TALK ABOUT IT for at least TWO CHAPTERS beforehand. Perhaps Anita must feed the "talkeur" before the "ardeur". Though the sex is pretty hot, you'll be amazed that the lovers haven't talked themselves into a coma first. Like all die-hard Anita fans, I was expecting another great read. Instead, here's what I got.

100 pages of unresolved mystery story,
200 pages of psychoanalytical musings (of the "Richard loves to hate himself more than he loves to love me!" variety).
150 pages of sex with people you could care less about.
150 pages of sex with people you DID care about but now can't stand anymore.

The character work is repetitive, with only one spark of interest--Nathaniel. His character arc is nice, and is the only reason I'm giving this book two stars instead of one.

Jean Claude? morphs into an emasculated Machiavelli.
Richard? a spineless repressed prude, no matter how many three-ways he's in.
Asher? Missing in action.
Jason? Harmless brother-figure.
Micah? still a well-endowed yes man.
Nathaniel? Surprisingly still interesting.
Damian? Quickly-forgotten sextoy.
Requiem and Byron? ("Who?" you ask?) Two unknowns who get more action than poor Asher.

Save your time, your expectations and your twenty bucks. Donate it instead to Proofreaders of America, or any organization that could help LKH find a decent editor. Sorry to vent, but man am I pissed at spending hard-cover money on this! >:(

120 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Another reader lost, August 12, 2005

By	Kaley Watson (New York) - See all my reviews

Incubus Dreams represents a turning point, at least in this readers mind. I'm done with the series! A once interesting series has devolved into a chaotic mess where the author doesn't even bother trying to write a coherent plot or storyline any more.

What's touted as character growth reads more like character assignation. Anita Blake and the huge supporting cast of characters have been transformed into two-dimensional cardboard cutouts loosing all of their original uniqueness and appeal in the process.

And lastly, if the author chooses to write nothing but erotica that's fine, but market it as such and quit hiding behind the mystery and suspense elements dangled as bait in the dusk jacket.

This one time fan is done and moving on.

86 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Who woulda thought sex would be so boring......, August 27, 2005

By	Giddyup "R" (None of your biz) - See all my reviews

.....well, the sex scenes in this book were major snoozers that's for sure! Hamilton was never a great writer to begin with and I read her AB book series for entertainment value only. No more. This book is no longer bad in the good sense, it is just plain bad. Badly written. Badly executed. Boring, mechanical sex scenes. Pretty vampires and weres that sound so gay it ain't funny. And this is what you'll get from this offering in a nutshell:

* Sex with vampires and weres
* Anita gets some new powers brought on by (you've guessed it!) sex
* Some vampire or other is killing strippers, this is supposed to be the "plot", however, the "plot" lasts for about 30 pages in the 600-plus book.
* More useless sex scenes in which Anita has conversations with her boy toys while having sex
* Inner-conflicts before and during the sex scenes (why bother? just accept that you're a slut and get it over with!)
* Rain-making, back-breaking orgasms
* Pretty boys with long hair "spilling" all over the place
* Conclusion to the vampire stripper killer "plot". A bad conclusion at that.

And there you have it. A waste of time, money and energy for a reader. SOMETHING mind-altering in a very bad way. Either Hamilton was under the influence of something while she wrote this or she didn't bother to create something that was at the very least plausible. Even for her who is not a good writer to begin with, she's obviously waaaay out of it.

What's worse, I have the sneaking suspicion that these non-plot stories are going to monopolize the series from hereon in. I read the sample chapters of her next AB novel on her website and I have already decided that I'm off Anita Blake for good. Danse Macabre will be an outstanding novel for Jerry Springer/Maury Povich fans but not for the rest of us who prefer something a little less trashy and vulgar. It is laughable when Hamilton describes her latest efforts as erotica. Erotica?? Emma Holly, MS Valentine, Lucinda Carrington..... they write erotica!! Hamilton writes cheap porn that not even Penthouse readers would be turned on by it. My advice? Don't waste your money on this garbage. If you must read it, do what I did and make a trip to the library. But whatever you do, do not spend your hard-earned money on this tragedy of a book. And if you already bought it and are regretting it, don't buy the next one. The three sample chapters were simply something horrendous that not even Danielle Steele could outdo in trashiness, and I don't think it'll get better!! Remember: say NO to crap!!