Affliction

August 12, 2013
Anita Blake, vampire hunter, is back in this exciting and sexy installment of the bestselling paranormal series. Facing zombies is part of Blake's job description as a necromancer, but rarely does she deal with the flesh-eating kind made popular by Hollywood movies. All that changes when Blake accompanies her lover, Micah, to his father's potential deathbed in Colorado; there she faces a kind of zombie she's never seen before: they're fast, cunning, contagious, and hungry for humans. While it occasionally gets bogged down by dialogue, overall Hamilton's latest is a meticulously plotted story featuring fantastically creepy action mixed with flirtatious sex scenes, making it the perfectly addictive read. Her take on zombies is invigoratingâeven for the purest of horror fansâit's no wonder readers keep coming back for more. . Hamilton also manages to embed contemporary issues in with the fast-pace action,; addressing sexism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, and racism from fresh and unusual perspectives.

July 15, 2013
U.S. Marshal Anita Blake, of the Preternatural Branch, faces down a zombie horde, a curiously elusive and powerful vampire, and a flood of prejudice in this far-too-talky installment of a seminal urban fantasy series (Kiss the Dead, 2012, etc.). The estranged father of Micah, Anita's wereleopard lover, is dying from a mysterious attack that left him with a rotting disease. So, Anita, her other wereleopard lover, Nathaniel, and a host of lycanthropic guards and lovers travel to Boulder to visit Micah's father, Rush, and determine the perpetrators of the attack. Her initial investigation is hampered by local law enforcement, many of whom object to her associations with shape-shifters and vampires as well as her busy love life. Hamilton/Anita make a valid point--it's unfair that it's more socially acceptable for a man to have many lovers than for a woman to do so; however, it seems unnecessary for the author to keep preaching to the choir that has followed Anita to Book 22. It's also understandable that Anita would be so defensive, given just how hostile Hamilton writes her adversaries, but that hostility feels contrived, as if the author was playing a chess game against herself. Plus, so much time is spent explaining, justifying and angst-ing about Anita's complex relationships that there's barely any room left over for plot. We're a third of the way into the book before there are any (admittedly excellent) action scenes and further still before there are any (steamy, but far too brief) sex scenes. There's so much telling instead of showing that the book's ultimately not much of an effective advertisement for polyamory. The already converted may consider a sermon interleaved with brief slivers of story acceptable; others will be bored rather than outraged.

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August 1, 2013
In the twenty-second volume of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels, Hamilton keeps the horror churning while returning to the emphasis on relationships that made her the original queen of paranormal romance. A sheriff in Colorado, the estranged father of her beloved Micah (a were-leopard and leader of the Coalition), is dying from a zombie bite. The story seems unbelievable, but Anita, in her role as a U.S. marshal in the preternatural branch, ends up going after a new type of fast zombie with a bite that causes victims to start rotting from the outside in. These zombies also have the ability to keep on going even when shot to pieces. Heck, they can even reassemble themselves when cut up like confetti. Edward, another marshal, turns up, wondering why he wasn't invited to the zombie apocalypse. BDSM and group sex are part of the story since Anita's powers are fed by it. It looks like Anita, her were-animal lovers, and the vampire king of St. Louis are taking their relationships to the next level in this cross-genre tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)