Customer Reviews
Setting up the plot for future books - By: John Nunn, 30 Dec 2007 
The night starts off reasonably for Anita -- she has a straightforward job of reanimating a recent corpse to establish the cause of death. But things rapidly spiral out of control: the vampire Musette, Belle Morte's servant, arrives in town three months early, before negotiations are complete, causing chaos & consternation; there's a werewolf serial killer on the loose & Lieutenant Dolph is acting angry; & some rather spooky men are following Anita around.
Still rather too much emphasis on sex, but lots less angst, & rather more action this time around, as Anita gets to blow away, or at least severely inconvenience, several different classes of bad guy, & gets to be The Executioner again. Also, in a quite clear foreshadowing, we discover Belle Morte isn't the Big Bad after alll, but that something else is Stirring....
I enjoyed this, again. - By: Cathy Heinemann, 04 May 2007 I don't think that newcomers to the series would get any kick out of it. They should definitely start at the beginning of the series. Little plot, emphasis on sex & Anita's personal development. Belle Morte & vampire politics figure large. And a shapeshifting serial killer. The synopsis on Amazon about a corpse & a long-ago crime is rubbish. To be ignored! Yes, Anita at the beginning is asked to raise a corpse & the "why" will become apparent later on in the book, but it has little to do with that corpse. Dolph's character is developing into a disturbing direction & I don't quite get why. It doesn't make sense to me. I understand the reason, but not his extreme reaction. I like Zerbrowski being around more & also the development of alll the shapeshifting characters. Can someone please kill Richard, he is going on my nerves....
Bearable - By: Morbida, 26 Feb 2007 
After the shocking change of the mood & complete destruction of the series in "Narcissus in Chains", this book was somewhat bearable. There is a story to follow (weak but better than the previous one), there is a crime scene & even though Dolph has gone completely mental, he is included in the story.
Unfortunately Anita is still jumping everything that has a pulse, & each scene takes up pages & pages *yawn*. Everything seems to be only about sex, & it is reallly tiresome. The crimes, whatever is happening outside the bedroom wallls, seem to have no importance. They are just there .... Quite sad !!!
The book is not awful (very close though) & it's not good either. Just .... bearable !!!
Porn Free... - By: , 15 Feb 2006 
Like a lot of people I love the Anite Blake books, at least, I did. Then came the introduction of sex, & more sex, & more. It was getting silly in the last few books & just became ludicrous in Cerulean sins. Forget the plot *30 pages scattered at the start & finish* this is the adventures of Anita (bury me in a Y-shaped coffin)Blake the porn queen. For a book that's so large (you could knock a buffalo senseless) this is tiresome after the first two encounters.
If the books continue like this then count me out, I'll look elsewhere for my jollies & if you want story I suggest you do, too.
Sickly blue - By: E. A Solinas, 29 Dec 2005 Laurell K. Hamilton is aging well, but her Anita Blake series is not. The eleventh volume of the fantasy-horror series is heavy on supernatural sex & light on plot. While Hamilton comes up with a handful of cool ideas for "Cerulean Sin," her book is sunk by an irritating heroine & a plot relegated to subplot status.
St. Louis is swarming with vampires, werecreatures, & who knows what else. And Anita Blake is in the thick of it, enmeshed with alll of the above. Now with her personal life in an uproar, she still has to hunt down a very messy serial killer who can change his shape -- & unfortunately, she's not getting a lot of help from the more typical police authorities.
But things get even more difficult when a sadistic vampire, Musette, arrives & demands that the traumatized Asher come back with her to super-vampire Belle Morte. Since Belle Morte once tormented Asher, Anita ain't about to let him go. So now she has a mystery serial killer, & a very angry ancient vampire on her tail -- things are starting to get a lot worse.
Try reading this book while skipping over the erotica, as I did. I guarantee you'll be done in less than half an hour. Sex is the new supernatural in Hamilton's series, & the actual plot starts slipping into the shadows. Where does the plot go? It gets buried in Anita's many vaguely disturbing & very detailed sexual encounters. To thumb her nose at Belle Morte, is it necessary for Anita to bed Asher? Not reallly. But it still happens.
Hamilton seems to be on strong footing with some of the plot elements. Super-vampire Belle Morte is quite cool, as is the intricate vampire politics. But reallly, readers can only take so much of Anita's self-adoration before the narrative gets tiresome. The sex scenes -- it's impossible to miss every page -- are clinical & dull, & the climax is more of a sputter.
Anita herself is the biggest problem -- if she doesn't like someone, she offs them. And she apparently will do the wild thing with any guy who says yes. And everyone adores her, & never disagrees with her. Yeah, she's reallly easy to relate to -- she's more Mary Sue than Dirty Harry. Her new boyfriend Micah has big body parts but no personality. Richard is the only one of Hamilton's characters who acts like a real person. Despite Hamilton's efforts to convince us that he's crazy, it's hard not to sympathize with the poor guy.
"Cerulean Sins" is more of a sickly blue annoyance. Hamilton's eleventh Blake book is a collection of vague narcissism, riddled with weird sex & weirder characters. An exercise in mediocrity.
