Incubus Dreams (2004)

TOTAL CRAP! This book was the worst of this series. I only read 45% of this book. I tried to go on and force myself through it but I just can’t do it anymore. It’s time for me to say goodbye to the Anita Blake series. I know there are at least 8 more books in this series but I won’t be reading them. I stuck with them this long because I thought the author, Laurell K. Hamilton, was slowly developing the character of the protagonist, Anita Blake. I also liked some of the secondary characters but since they are now all in love with the great and powerful Anita, I no longer can stand them.

I thought the author intentionally made her readers dislike Anita Blake’s character by making her rude, narcissistic, judgmental and bigoted and then by life lesson’s would allow her to mature into someone more likeable. Instead, she made her a cold blooded killer and a sex fiend. She did get less prejudice but that is probably the only thing that improved. Unfortunately, the author really believes Anita Blake’s character is cool. After looking up the author and seeing her pictures, I think that the author made Anita Blake to look just like her and may be vicariously living through her character which makes me think that maybe Laurell K. Hamilton is a little narcissistic herself. She makes every man in the book…and there are a lot of men…want Anita Blake like she is irresistible. All the men lust after her and want her to be theirs. She is so irresistible that men are willing to share her with other men just to be able to have her attention. It’s pathetic.
I didn’t even get to the halfway point of this book and Anita had already had sex with 3 men in one day. She had sex with Damien, the vampire, in the morning in front of a bunch of people or were-animals in her living room. Later, she was at work and had sex with Nathaniel, the were-panther, in her office. Then at night she had sex with some random vampire stripper named Byron in the back room at the strip club. Of course, all of this sex is supposedly because she is possessed by something called the ardeur that she has to feed by having sex or she could go crazy blah blah blah.

The sex and men part of this series has just become ridiculous. At first, Anita was dating Richard, the were-wolf, and even agreed to marry him but she wouldn’t have sex with him because she had some kind of old fashioned values so she wanted to wait until marriage even though she wasn’t a virgin. She had sex with her fiancé in college but he had dumped her when his family found out that she was half Mexican and they were white and thought she wasn’t good enough for him. She didn’t want to make the same mistake again. She was dating Jean-Claude, the master vampire of the city, at the same time because he was in love with her and told her that he would kill Richard unless she gave him an equal chance. He told her if she chose Richard over him then he would step away and let them have their life…well, as far as he could. You see, they all were connected through some metaphysical bond that can’t be undone.

She sees Richard turn into a were-wolf and runs to Jean-Claude and has sex with him. Richard breaks up with her. Then she goes on a trip to get Richard out of jail and ends up cheating on Jean-Claude and sleeps with Richard. They agree to share her but Richard tells her that as long as she is with Jean-Claude, he will sleep with other women. Then she decides to stop sleeping with both of them for six months. Jean-Claude gives her the third mark to make her his human servant and it gives her the ardeur which makes her into some kind of sex fiend where she has to feed off of sex all of the time. Richard breaks up with her. She sleeps with a stranger named Micah who is a were-leopard. She has some metaphysical bond with him too. Jean-Claude agrees to share her with Micah. Nathaniel is a were-leopard who is a submissive. He’s been abused most of his life. Anita saves him and he now sleeps with her in her bed like a security blanket but they are both hot for each other. She feeds her ardeur off of him but never has actual intercourse with him. She sleeps in between Nathaniel and Micah when she is at home. She then involves Asher into sex with her and Jean-Claude. She won’t let any of the men have sex with anyone else not even each other even though Asher and Jean-Claude love each other. She acts like it is her right to sleep with them because she needs it and all of these so called powerful beings agree with her terms. Oh and once, she had sex with Jason, a were-wolf, because she was desperate and needed to feed the ardeur. The author makes it all the fault of the ardeur. It is like she has to find an excuse for Anita Blake to be such a slut.

It’s funny how Anita has defeated the most powerful vampires with her awesome powers but she somehow cannot manage to control the ardeur. The author just wants to have an excuse for Anita to have sex with everyone.

I’m tired of it. The men who I thought were great characters and powerful have all turned into sniveling idiots who pine after Anita and it has ruined the story for me. So, now I am off to find a new series. Any suggestions?
www.paranormalromanceslut.com ( )

Holy graphic and continuous sex scenes, batman! I really enjoyed this book, but actually found myself hoping that Anita would start working on her case again. It was interesting, and she kept getting distracted by her very, very many amours. ( )

Synopsis: 'Incubus Dreams apparently takes place a few weeks after the events of Cerulean Sins. As usual, Anita must juggle several problems simultaneously.
First, in her job as an animator, Anita must respond to the request of Barbara and Steve Brown that Anita raise their dead son, Stevie Brown, a high school student murdered three years earlier, probably by an acquaintance. Anita explains that it is not possible to raise a murder victim and question them, because that kind of zombie has only one purpose (to kill the murderer), but agrees to assist the police in investigating the murder.
Second, Anita continues to wrestle with the metaphysical problems raised by her recent increase in power. She, Jean-Claude, Richard, and Damian are all experiencing unexpected increases in their magical power, with unpredictable results.
Third, Anita continues to assist Jean-Claude with vampire politics, as Jean-Claude confronts a challenge from The Dragon and her offspring, Primo and as Anita and Jean-Claude realize that the vampires in town that follow Malcolm rather than Jean-Claude have not been bound by blood oath, leaving them as essentially unrestrained predators.
Fourth, Anita's personal life becomes increasingly complex, both as a result of Anita's increasing ardeur and as a result of the personal problems of the various people involved. In particular, Nathaniel has decided that his relationship with Anita should advance to a sexual relationship, Damian continues to struggle with his role as Anita's vampire servant, and Anita's love/hate relationship with Richard remains as powerful as ever. Anita also must deal with jealousy from Jessica Arnett, an RPIT detective with a crush on Nathaniel, and with increasing distrust by various police officers as a result of her close relationship with the city's vampires and shapeshifters and as a result of her increasingly sexually-based abilities.
Fifth, Anita attempts to assist the police in solving a series of vampire serial killings, apparently focusing on area strip club workers or patrons.
Unlike previous novels, although Anita resolves some of these issues by the end of the book, many remain unresolved.
With regard to the Stevie Brown murder, although Anita agrees to investigate, she is unable to make progress on the investigation during this novel, and notes in the epilogue that she intends to review Brown's personal effects with Evans soon. (Evans is a very powerful psychometrist).
With regard to Anita's metaphysical problems, she makes considerable progress. Anita learns that she can partially control the ardeur by drawing power from others' lust and by ensuring that her other desires, such as physical hunger, do not go unfulfilled. Richard realizes that a great deal of his unstable behavior in recent novels is a result of his acquiring Anita's rage through their spiritual link, and Jean-Claude begins to stabilize his own power after Anita gives him permission to feed on the lust of his club patrons.
Anita also makes progress on resolving the vampire politics issues that arise in this novel. Using her own powers and her link to Jean-Claude, she binds Primo to Jean-Claude's service, and, with her challenge defeated, The Dragon expresses interest in negotiating with Jean-Claude. Anita also accepts Wicked and Truth, two other warrior vampires, into Jean-Claude's service, greatly increasing Jean-Claude's ability to resist physical challenges. However, the issue of Malcolm's vampires remains unresolved, as both Anita and Jean-Claude believe that without a blood oath, some of the vampires of the Church of Eternal Life will eventually revert to predators.
Anita's personal life also resolves in a number of ways. She accepts Nathaniel as the fourth of her concurrent lovers, and she and Richard also agree to renew their relationship. (Although Nathaniel and Micah appear to accept or want Anita as their only lover, Anita reluctantly agrees to accept Richard's decision to date other people, and allows Jean-Claude to begin feeding his lust from others, at least spiritually). The major unresolved issues in Anita's personal life appear to be her relationship with Damian, who she attempts to offer more independence but who also wants to be one of her lovers, and her role as a law enforcement officer, which is becoming more and more difficult as she continues to identify with the "monsters."
Anita is unable to resolve the serial killer investigation fully. Although she and the police kill several of the lesser vampires responsible for the murders, the more powerful vampires escape to kill in another city, particularly their leader, Vittorio. Anita promises herself that she will track Vittorio and his remaining followers down.
In the epilogue, Anita explains that she has bought gifts for her various lovers (except for Richard), and that she is committed to continuing her life as a vampire executioner, and to resolving the remaining open plotlines discussed above.'
Review: This is a very long and complicated book. It drags in some areas, and by the end I wasn't sure what was resolved and what was not. ( )

Anita Blake's love life has been getting progressively complicated. The source of the most recent complication is Nathaniel, her pomme de sang and wereleopard who lives with her, sleeps with her, but is not yet having sex with her. It's been hard for Anita to accept her attraction to Nathaniel because he is young and has been abused for his entire life. She's afraid of continuing to victimize him, but things are reaching a breaking point. If she's not willing to take the relationship to the next level, she risks losing Nathaniel and damaging her relationship with her other boyfriends.

If that all weren't complicated enough, she's also receiving frequent calls from the police as a group of vampires have been murdering local strippers. It seems likely that the Church of Eternal Life is involved, and Anita is horrified to learn that Malcolm, the head of the church has not been binding his vampires with a blood oath.

Despite this bloody distraction, Anita is determined to make things work with Nathaniel. However, while she's trying to do that, she accidentally binds Nathaniel and Damien into her own triumvirate. Unfortunately, that makes Anita the master, and she has no idea what she's doing. Operating entirely by instinct, she manages to succeed without realizing it. They all survive, but this new binding has launched the original triumvirate consisting of herself, Jean Claude, and Richard to a new power plateau.

The new power is exhilarating, but difficult to control and as luck would have it, Jean Claude's authority is under attack by a new vampire that has recently joined the Kiss. Anita is able to help avert disaster, but between her beast and the ardeur, she's almost always hungry and seems to need to feed more often than before. She, Richard, and Jean Claude will need to work together to learn to control all this new power if they will be able to survive an help Anita catch the rogue vampires that are killing people.

This book contains barely any plot. It's almost non stop sex scenes with semi random participants from beginning to end. That being said, I still kinda like it. I love to see the original triumvirate working to grow closer. This book also takes a lot of time for Jean Claude which I appreciate. At this point, Anita's harem is so large Jean Claude is usually in the background or barely present. However, it loses points because there is almost no Asher and quite frankly too much Richard. I really have no patience for his whining and self-righteousness, judgmental and abusive behavior. Richard has always been a bully, more than content to physically attack anyone weaker than himself, and Anita is much too willing to forgive him. The prolonged conversation between Richard and Anita where she explains female anatomy to him was BIG CRINGE.

Anyway, if I remember correctly, this is the last book in the series that I even moderately enjoyed. ( )

I really loved Laurell K. Hamilton's early Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series books but I did feel like she lost the thread a bit in the middle of the series. I am glad to say that it seems like she is focusing more on the story line and less on the sex of late which makes the books better in my opinion. I think Anita is a great character and Laurell K. Hamilton can write a great plot but her overly complicated sex scenes can somewhat take away from the book. ( )