Product Description

I'm Anita Blake, expert on creatures of the night. I've dined with shapeshifters, danced with werewolves, and been wooed - but not won - by Jean-Claude, the Master Vampire of the City.

And now a darkly dangerous vampire named Alejandro has hit town. He too wants me for his human servant. A war of the undead has begun. Over me.

I would be flattered. If my life weren't at stake.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29426 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-05
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Laurell Hamilton's wonderfully noir horror thrillers, Anita Blake never knows quite what is going to turn up walking the mean streets she lives on. She really does not appreciate the sexual attentions of Jean-Claude, vampire Master of the city she lives in and proprietor of the Circus of the Damned. No matter how cute he is, he is dead, and Anita gets enough of dead people in her work as zombie raiser and vampire executioner. His friend Richard strikes her as entirely more her sort of thing--sweet, polite and a high-school teacher; yet she knows with an awful inevitability that Richard probably has secrets of his own. Add to this volatile personal mix vampires with ambitions to seize Jean-Claude's throne and mount anti-human pogroms, an immortal snake-woman with agendas of her own and a hit-man with a contract on whoever the Master happens to be at the time, and Anita's problems start to be as entertaining and suspenseful as ever. Hamilton takes us to dark caverns and overlit night-clubs, and to the darker places that live inside human and formerly human sexuality--her books are terrific supernatural thrillers because she is keen to explore sexual heat as well as terror and excitement.--Roz Kaveney

ndre Norton
'I was enthralled by a departure from the usual type of vampire tale...'

LOCUS
'This fastpaced, toughedged supernatural thriller is mesmerizing reading indeed'

Customer Reviews

best so far - supernatural, violent and action packed.
Circus of the Damned, number three in the Anita Blake series is a huge step up in quality after the first two books.
This one has it all. Crazy violent action, plenty of blood and guts, a genuinely tense story, some absolutely dynamite pulp scenes (especially in the middle - Anita and police tracking vamp in morge etc) and was exciting and meaty in every chapter.
where Guilty Pleasures was absurd, this one is believable, where it was silly this one is cool.
And it has any and all supernatural fodder your into. Vampires, werewolves, lycanthropes, zombies, snake girls you name it.
i was disappointed by Guilty Pleasures, but The laughing corpse was a step up in plot, and Circus of the Damned is a huge step up in quality of writing, ideas for scenes, pulp violence and cool and a workable plot with none of the silliness of the first book.
Please keep it up Miss. Hamilton. i am off to get the next one - i hope it can live up to this.
earned itself a pulp sloshed - 7/10 (step up from the last 2)

A ripping yarn
"I had been stabbed, beaten, shot, strangled, and vampire-bit in the space of four months. There comes a point where you just have too many things happening too close together. I had battle fatigue."
Battle fatigue or not, Anita gets no reprise here. There's a rogue master vampire on the loose, killing humans, and challenging Jean-Claude for the city, with the heroine caught in the middle as they both try to make her their human servant. And the fanatical `Humans First' are gunning for her. To top it off, Edward, known by the vampires only as Death, is back, with a contract out on the Master of the City. Will Edward force Anita to reveal the master's identity? Will Jean-Claude force Anita to let him give her his Third Mark, to save her from the tyranical Alejandro? Well, as we've come to realise, it's rather difficult to force Anita to do anything she doesn't want to.
Rather less gory than The Laughing Corpse (the blood is just splattered on the walls, not drenching the carpets), but with a deeper menacing evil, the same breathless pacing, and a wonderful climactic battle.

Shockingly handsom werewolves and vampires ....... it can NOT get any better !!!!!


It just seems to get better and better. I am completely and thoroughly hooked on these books.
It is just impossible to give a short version of the story, and not ruin everything in the process. There are so many things happening, so many small, well thought details, so many intriguing and exciting characters....

Impossible not to love this book !!!!