Product Description

Readers haven't seen anything yet-new in the "fabulously imagined series" (Publishers Weekly) from the #1 New York Times bestselling author.

Anita Blake is about to face the challenge of her life. Into her world-a world already overflowing with power-have come creatures so feared that powerful, centuries-old vampires refuse to mention their names. It is forbidden to speak of The Harlequin unless you've been contacted. And to be contacted by The Harlequin is to be under sentence of death.

Long-time rivals for Anita's affections, Jean-Claude, Master Vampire of the City, and Richard, alpha-werewolf, will need to become allies. Shapeshifters Nathaniel and Micah will have to step up their support. And then there's Edward. In this situation, Anita knows that she needs to call the one man who has always been there for her...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14225 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-05
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
At the start of bestseller Hamilton's solid 15th adventure to star vampire hunter Anita Blake, Malcolm, the priggish head of the Church of the Eternal Life (the vampire church), is so desperate for help in dealing with the Harlequin, a troop of vampire enforcers and spies so feared vampires are forbidden to speak its name, he turns to those he considers sinful and corrupt—Anita and her sweetie, Jean-Claude, St. Louis's Master of the City. The Harlequin may have targeted Anita and the powerful triumvirate she has forged with Jean-Claude and Richard Zeeman (aka Ulfric of the werewolves). According to the rules, the Harlequin must make contact through delivery of a mask—white to indicate they are watching, red for pain, black for death. Anita receives a white mask, but the members of the Harlequin aren't playing by the rules. Shorter and more tightly structured than the previous entry in the series, Danse Macabre (2006), Hamilton's latest should prove more satisfying to longtime fans with its straightforward supernatural politics and steamy (but not extreme) sex.
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Hamilton just keeps getting better and better.

Publishers Weekly
Her books outsell any other current vampire fiction

Customer Reviews

Enjoying it for the very reasons critics whine - LKH offers us mirrors and possibilities
Goodness, all the whining and complaining, combined with all the hyperboloid praise, would turn any author's head ... into mush. Good thing LKH doesn't read reviews. Frankly, for me, and for many of us quietly enjoying her artistry, the very plot devices and dialogue qualities that people alternately whine and glow about are what simply please us the most.

What if the criticized and beloved characters and plot lines are actually imperfect and growing, on purpose, and neither mistakes nor genre-typical simplistic devices machined to keep the dough rolling in? What if we are invited to grow, too, through the seeming imperfections?

As a human development specialist, I've felt relieved to read LKH's style, to see the ludicrously predictable hyper-drek of this genre meet the deeper, less-attractive qualities of the real human spirit. Oh yes, our favorite characters (and there are many!) are bull-headed, inane, cruel, surprising, narcissistic, passionate, bellicose, stupid, grandiose, ridiculous, insightful, incomplete, cheesy, shallow, tender, and confused. *But then again, so are we all.* And THIS is where LKH shines above and beyond the usual drek of this genre, which I normally dislike intensely. The author gives us more than what we expect - through fantasy, she gives us a detailed mirror of our own selves, warts and all.

Frankly, unlike some of LKH's critics, after the first few novels, I never wanted to read about exploding guts and impossibly studly Anita's many, beloved, penis-oid guns, ever, ever again. Freud, save me from the boredom. But then LKH began developing Anita and some of her relationships. And then more of her relationships, and the relationships between the relationships, aka politics. And despite the surreal surface complexities, the deeper issues that each character faces are surprisingly realistic, in that the politics and politicians are also just as desperate, stupid, pathetic, surprising, smart, defensive, and inconsistent as we and ours are in real life. Again, LKH holds up the mirror for us to consider.

And the rampant sexuality, I find fascinating. Overdone, certainly. But still beneficial, in that the author offers a relatively mainstream readership in repressed/overwrought American society further insights into the variety and possibilities of the human sexual-relational experience. She offers us possibility - we could, if we wanted to, give ourselves permission to be even a little more open, exploratory, and creative with our hearts, minds, beliefs, and bodies. Furthermore, for those whining about what LKH has done so far with the ardeur, notice that it's no different than what *we've already done in our society* - superficially hypersexualized the experience, and wrapped it in a shiny, neurotic bow. So if you don't like what LKH is showing you in the mirror, change the image you offer her.

Blessedly, though, in this novel, the author takes the ardeur one giant step beyond where we are as a society and points to another possibility.... without spoiling the plot, I'll just ask readers to see what happens next.... could it be a growing maturity? A tentative step into a new direction? Can you stand the possibility?

As for the accusation of underdeveloped plotlines, all I can say is, Of Course! Keep us coming back for more - how does character X (whether it's Harlequin, Nathaniel, or anyone/thing else) handle life after getting lucky, or acting stupid, or missing the point, etc? What if not-knowing in one book becomes knowledge-gained in another?

I've read reviews of her next book that suggest that, among other surprises, Jean-Claude gets insecure. I cannot *wait* to see what LKH does to develop this. His impossibly smooth competence was getting on my nerves, and I've been hoping that he'd learn to be human again.

I wonder what would happen if fantasy as a genre became beautifully, imperfectly human again? I know I'll stick around to find out.......

The library is your friend...
Remember that and don't waste your money buying this book. I wasn't able to finish TH as I was seriously afraid it would turn me off reading altogether. When will LKH learn that stories need a plot and that sex is NOT a plot. If the sex was well written and erotic then I could almost forgive the weak plots in the past 5 or so books. But it isn't. It's simply bad porn - repetitive and boring. At least TH was consistent to her past few AB books as they have been: 1) consistently bad and 2) consistently inconsistent regarding characterizations and Anitaverse rules.

Have I read this book before?
Okay - number 15 - running out of plot ideas, are we? A few name changes and such, and !poof! you have "The Harlequin", a book that eerily seems familiar to all the other Anita Blake books, and not to far off from anything written by Laurell K Hamilton. If you liked her other books enough to read them again, go ahead and read this one. For everyone else, there are enough books out there that don't have that deja vu feeling to waste your time with repeat #15.