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Blood Noir

\ Welcome to the Death of a Series\ Once upon a time there was a girl. She liked to read. A lot. She especially liked to read about books with paranormal alternate realities in them because the real world had lost its magic to things like “Reality” TV, male-dominated debates about women’s reproductive rights and vacuous celebrity worship. One day she stumbled upon a book titled Guilty Pleasures and though both the title and the cover seemed rather cheesy she figured she’d give it a try. Enter one imperfect, stubborn, narrow-minded but somehow highly lovable main character named Anita Blake. The girl had never met such a bad ass chick. Anita didn’t take shit from anyone, never compromised her beliefs because of the opinions of others and never looked to anyone else to get herself out of an impossible situation. The girl was intrigued. Did she like this wise-cracking hard ass? Or was her personality too strong and grating at times? With the arrival of one Jean Claude, master vampire and sex-on-legs love interest, the girl knew that she’d stick around to see where the series went. Who could resist such chemistry? Who could resist such an original and detailed paranormal world? Then came book two, The Laughing Corpse, and with it the progression of Anita as a character. The girl watched this stubborn MC learn from her mistakes, adjust her behavior and her mindset as she gained more and more knowledge of the preternatural crowd into which she had been drawn. The necromancer's mind began to open, just a little, but it was enough that the girl could see the character growth and could tell that there was more to this MC than the tough outer layer she’d been shown. Following this was Circus of the Damned and the girl was treated to more undead “Ma Petite” filled angst, an intriguing mystery and…the introduction of a love triangle. In The Lunatic Café the girl realized that though she abhorred most love triangles this one was executed in such a way that she could actually tolerate it. Not only that, but she could see no clear “winner”. Neither of the men seemed the obvious choice for the heroine, in fact, the girl herself couldn’t even make up her mind! She was also shown the detailed inner workings of a werewolf pack and though she would have preferred another murder-mystery she somehow didn’t mind that this book focused more on monster politics. Three books later the love triangle ended in such a way that the girl began to get nervous. Choosing a man because you fear him less than the other? Because he seems the more human of the two??? Should she stop? Could she go on? Yes. To both. By book ten the girl noticed that sex was beginning to become more prevalent than plotline. She wondered why the MC couldn't make up her mind and how she was able to love so many men at once. Why was the character she once respected turning into a misogynistic bitch? And what was with her raging lady boner for double standards and hypocrisy??? By book 12 the girl...fuck it, we all know it's me. By book 12 I wondered what happened to that character progression I had so looked forward to. It seemed if anything, my beloved Anita was moving backwards in her beliefs and was becoming unable to own up to her actions, blaming them on things like The Ardeur and even other people. She became whiny and overly combative and…unlikeable. I was also incredibly disturbed that Anita’s va-jay-jay was beginning to resemble a preternatural black hole. Why was one man not enough? Why were five not enough???Oh and lets not forget the bestiality. *shudders*By book fifteen I hated almost every character and began to question my sanity. I wondered if watching The Jersey Shore was a better use of my time.After reading the synopsis for Blood Noir as well as a few of the reviews I decided to bag up all the previous books I owned in the series and donate them to my father's skeet shooting club in the hopes that they'd serve better for target practice than they did as "literature". I then sought a hypnotist to erase the memory of this series from my mind. So far that hasn't panned out...This review can also be found at The Alliterates.

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