Product Description

The first hit man came after me at home, which should be against the rules. Then there was a second, and a third. Eventually, I found out that the word on the street was that Anita Blake, preternatural expert and vampire killer extraordinaire, was worth half a million dollars. Dead, not alive. So what's a girl to do but turn to the men in her life for help? Which in my case means an alpha werewolf and a master vampire. With professional killers on your trail, it's not a bad idea to have as much protection as possible, human or otherwise. But I'm beginning to wonder if two monsters are better than one ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7828 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 387 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Even vampires get ill. In the sixth outing of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, The Killing Dance, Anita's occasional boyfriend Jean-Claude, vampire Master of St. Louis, is asked to help another Master who is rotting where he stands. Anita's necromantic powers may be enough to help Sabin, in conjunction with those of Jean-Claude and of Richard, the werewolf whom she is thinking of marrying. Anita, though, has problems of her own--there is a contract out on her life and the politics of the city's were-beings are even more complicated than those of its vampires. Richard has refused to take leadership of the city's werewolf pack, because he refuses to kill its current Alpha; just by existing and having defeated them in combat, he is a threat to the authority of Max and Raina, the wolves' current rulers. And it makes things worse that he is trusted by the wererats, say, and the various independent were-creatures.

Laurell K Hamilton's background in animal ethnology adds a lot to the mix in this book; Anita has to do some long hard thinking about what it means to be in love with a man who changes to wolf. --Roz Kaveney

Review
'Death and gore galore ... Hamilton writes with ease and vigour...Great fun' SHIVERS 'I was enthralled - a departure from the usual type of vampire tale which will have a wide appeal to any reader hunting for both chills and fun' Andre Norton 'This fast-paced, tough-edged supernatural thriller is mesmerizing reading indeed' LOCUS 'Supernatural bad guys beware, night-prowling Anita Blake is savvy, sassy and tough' P N Elrod, author of THE VAMPIRE FILES

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

Customer Reviews

A ripping yarn
"There are only two things you can do when you're dressed like Barbie Does Bondage; you can be embarrassed or you can be aggressive. Guess what my choice was."
Anita Blake, aka The Executioner, with over 20 vampire kills to her name (and those are just the legal ones), now finds that she is the hunted. There's a $500,000 contract out on her, dead. Edward must find out who ordered the hit. To make matters more complicated, Richard and Marcus must bloodily resolve who will be leader of the pack. On top of all this, Anita's complicated ménage gets distinctly steamy, and very à trois. Although with alpha werewolf Richard becoming less human as he fights for the pack, and Master vampire Jean-Claude becoming seemingly more human as he fights for Anita, it's difficult for her to decide who to choose. The sex scenes again are very explicit and can detract from the main plot.
It's fascinating to watch Anita's progress through the series. She has stayed as uncompromising and tough as ever, but she's getting a hardness that frightens even herself. And by the end of this book, because she's a much more powerful Necromancer, possibly even becoming one of the 'monsters', she finds herself paying a price and in a situation she would never even have considered in the first book.

Anita's Powers Increase & Her Love Life Expands!
"She is the 'Executioner' and has more vampire kills than any other human. She is a necromancer of such power that clients travel halfway around the world to consult her. She is my human servant, without a mark to hold her to me. She dates me without vampire glamour." So speaks Jean Claude, Master Vampire of St. Louis, as he describes the love of his very long life, Anita Blake, to a perspective client - one of the undead. And Anita is back, in Book 6 of Laurell Hamilton's "Anita Blake Vampire Hunter" novels, as feisty, savvy, and talented as ever!

Anita's preternatural powers are increasing, and in "The Killing Dance" the lines begin to blur between her humanity and the supernatural. Always an uncompromising and tough lady, she's is developing a hardness, a detachment, that makes her fearful. An assassin has been hired to murder Anita. There's a $500,000 price on her head...and she's only a human! No one knows who, or what, is responsible for contracting the killer. Anita's friend, of dubious nature, bounty hunter Edward, alias Ted Forrester, has volunteered his services as detective and bodyguard. Her two love interests, Alpha werewolf and wannabe "leader of the pack," Richard Zeeman, and the aforementioned Jean Claude, are the ones most capable of protecting her. They attempt to put rivalry and jealousy on hold until the emergency is over.

Meanwhile, the brutal werewolf king Marcus and his sadistic lupa Rania, are determined to fight Richard and Anita to the death. An extremely powerful, unpredictable new vampire enters the picture. Centuries-old Sabin is dying of an illness lethal to vampires and needs Anita's skill to help cure him. Dominic Dumare, Sabine's human servant and necromancer extraordinaire, accompanies his master to St. Louis. The pair have a malevolent air about them. Could their intentions be equally so?

There are major pluses in "The Killing Dance, and a few minuses also. The best of the best: Anita is inducted as a lukoi, (pack member) and Richard's mate; she also sees Richard "change, an event which alters their relationship significantly; a triumvirate of power is formed with unlikely members; a gala opening of "Dance Macabre," Jean Claude's newest enterprise, is held and the costumes are even wilder than the guests. On the downside, after five episodes of struggling through relationship crises with Ms. Blake, I think the resolution here is a bit facile. And there is a major and surprising denouement in "The Killing Dance" which may disappoint readers.

Ms. Blake is an excellent writer who mixes fantasy with mystery, romance and dark humor. Her take on this derivative genre is a most unusual one. The humor, as always, adds much to the novel....and there are plenty of laughs to counteract the violence. Ms. Hamilton's descriptive prose is outstanding, whether depicting room decor, landscapes, unlikely beings and characters, or the results of Jean Claude's outrageous penchant for designing clothes. These novels are addictive and will rivet the reader. I suggest reading them in order for maximum reading pleasure.
JANA

A preternatural soap opera
I have mixed feelings about this book. The plot is all over the place, things happen randomly, and I can already see this series getting steadily soapier and soapier. I knew it would happen... I just wasn't expecting it so soon.

The book opens with Anita being approached by a deteriorating vampire named Sabin -- his human servant asking the great Executioner to save his master from immanent insanity; but she's not sure she can (despite being a powerful untrained necromancer). This is just one of things Anita faces in The Killing Dance. Closer to home, Edward shows up and informs Anita that he's been offered a huge amount of money to take Anita out by midnight. Instead of taking the job he appropriates himself as her body guard. The other main plots in this book are the irritating love triangle and the werewolf arc, which is more or less concluded here.

I love Edward and thought his parts were the most enjoyable and interesting. I also loved the very brief appearance from Dolph, who apparently is very protective of Anita -- it added a interesting note to their relationship. I liked that neither Edward nor Dolph were very impressed by her becoming intimate with the monsters.

I really like Jean-Claude as a character and enjoyed the titbits of information we got about his past here (more please!), yet I had to wonder what on earth Anita was thinking at the end of the book. Poor Richard got hung out to dry. Richard in himself is not all that compelling but I've really grown to adore him -- he's a good person with decent morals, and he loves Anita very much. I felt really sad for him here and I'm annoyed that Hamilton didn't follow the organic frame of the story better. Anita's actions just made no sense to me. The focus on the love trinagle meant that the other story points sagged under its weight and weren't really fully developed; things that could have been exciting weren't. The writing was very hit and miss... it's a shame because there was a lot of potential here.

Overall, a very mixed affair. I found the book very difficult to get through despite some brilliance.