Bullet is the next book in the long running series by Laurell K Hamilton starring her heroine, Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. This book has everything her loyal fans have waited for; including lots of sex, violence, vampires, werewolves, and other paranormal creatures of the night. If one has not read one of Ms. Hamilton’s books, I would not suggest this be the one to start with, however.
Anita Blake started out as a mere human with some extra ordinary powers. She was or should I say is a necromancer. She can literally raise the dead. In the world Ms. Hamilton has constructed, Vampire’s have just come out and are struggling to retain their rights in a still, very much human world and still run their own confusing Vampire hierarchy of rules and regulations. Anita is in the United States Marshals Service as a Vampire Executioner and much like James Bond, has a license to kill – Vampires. She is also the girlfriend of the Master Vampire of the city of St. Louis. It gets more confusing because she lives with the reigning king of the Were Leopards in the area and another of the were leopards is one of their “housemates”.
To fully appreciate this series, I would strongly suggest starting at the very beginning of the series and working your way to Bullet or you may be totally unprepared for the graphic sex and violence that is the hallmark of the Anita Blake Series. There are also many characters that are central to the plot that need explaining and their stories are told in earlier books. One in particular, Richard, who is the reigning king of the werewolves and an ex love of Anita’s is featured heavily in Bullet and has been almost absent in a few of the latest of her works.
Honestly, I made the mistake of reading one of her books that is in the middle of this series as my way of introduction to Ms Hamilton’s work and was so disturbed by it that it took me a while to get my courage up to read any more of them, but I did. I started at the beginning as I am suggested anyone else do and work your way into her fascinating world where our morals and norms just don’t work. In a world where the central figure is surrounded by creatures so very much stronger than she, it really is fascinating to read how she changes in order to survive and to deal with the evil that is just as prevalent among them as it is in our own world. Good and bad “people” are represented in both worlds.
I must admit, though, that I do enjoy the Vampire Hunter Novels in which Anita Blake is actually out there acting as a vampire hunter and doing her job with the marshal’s service better than the ones that are more sexual in nature. Bullet is the latter, but Ms. Hamilton does not fail to bring excitement to every page and always leaves her fans wanting more.
