Laurell K. Hamilton, Incubus Dreams

What can I say about Incubus Dreams?? Other than it was the most boring pile of drivel I have ever had the most misfortune to read - it was that bad I did not finish it.

Anita Blake starts of as a spunky fiesty vampire hunter/executioner, but by the time you have got to the fifth chapter she has had sex with five different personas (not men, or not in the metaphysical term anyway), just to satisfy her "hunger" or her "ardeaur" - she has many different thirsts whether it be blood, sex or whatever that need to be fed constantly.

She is a vampire hunter, but has two lovers that are vampires, she also has a "pomme de sang", a live in boyfriend, a live-in the cellar vampire, and has triumvirate with the vampire and another werewolf - this is all of top of her also being a wereleapord, and has the ability to raise the dead from the grave (also part of her job) - keeping up?? Probably not.

After she had had sex with about seven more people with the next 12 hours of the story, I grew so tired of this, I threw it in the bin.

Not sexy, not fiesty, just boring, tiresome and drones on and on and on...........

Avoid if you want something that will not send you to sleep.

Incubus Dreams

Laurell K. Hamilton

Berkley, Oct 2004, $23.95, 672 pp.

ISBN: 0425198243

On an alternate earth vampires and shapeshifters exist with the same legal rights as mortals. Vampires who break the law can be killed as soon as a federal marshal, who is a vampire executioner, catches them. One of the most feared vampire executioners is Anita Blake, a necromancer whose powers just keep growing thanks to the triumverate she is part of. The other two members are St. Louis master vampire Jean-Claude and Richard the werewolf, who desperately wants to be human again.

A group of vampires, one of them a master vamp sneaked into the city unnoticed; they are killing strippers so the Regional Preternatural Investigative Team of which Anita is a member is assigned the case. When Anita is not looking for the rogue master vampire, she somehow forges a new triumverate in which she is the master and the vampire and the shapeshifter add their powers to hers. Richard, Anita and Jean-Claude try again to make the triumverate work because they know the whole is greater than the individual parts.

The heroine's life is obviously never boring as she jumps from one lover to another and one crime scene to the next one always knowing this could be her last leap. Anita Blake is one of the most original characters around and she remains as fresh as if this is her first appearance. INCUBUS DREAMS is highly erotic with plenty of sex scenes that add to the plot and the prime player as it enables the audience to see her growing power and its impact on her two lovers. This gender bender will appeal to romance, fantasy, and mystery and of course horror fans.

Harriet Klausner