Summary
An old vampire named Benjamin heads up a new group of vampires who choose to be free...that is, not tethered in any way to a Master Vampire. Because of the very nature of vampires, in order to keep all of them safe and able to contine to live with humans, this arrangment is not normal and is heavily frowned upon by other Master Vampires. A rogue vampire or group of vampires is a threat to all vampires. Anita is called in to help SWAT and other preternatural law enforcement with containing a large group who've broken away from Benjamin and want to start a war.

What I Liked
Jean-Claude - the 5 pages that were actually devoted to him anyway :(
I actually feel a little tricked bc somewhere over the last year, I got the impression that this book was going to be more Jean-Claude than we've had in several books. I think it was less! The only thing less would be nothing.

Micah and Nathaniel - Anita has my permission to keep these two...they are there for her, when she needs them and they don't whine like babies. They each have their own comfortable lives and responsibilities outside her house; they do their own things and come home to her and they don't question her about what she does or where she goes.

The premise of the story...what could have been a very interesting plotline...just wasn't...but it was bc the plot wasn't given time to develop, and the connections (if there were any) weren't made in between the beginning and the end and all the extra-curriculuar activity in the middle.

What I Didn't Like
The F bomb - I don't necessarily have an aversion to the "F" word (and I ain't talkin' about "fruit"), but geez Louise...I honestly started rolling my eyes every time it was used. And then I got an eye cramp. Ok, ok, ok, I got it. Things are bad.

The sex - sex as a part of a storyline, I'm ok with...sex as just sex thrown in so that you feel like you're reading a porno novel...not so much :p

The cliches - I got so tired of the Anita-isms - her "live-in sweeties," "girls do this; guys do that; I'm so guy," "main honey-bun," everybody gets "pissy," her collection of penguins, "my second yummy boy," "we're police; we run toward the trouble, not away from it, silly ringtones, dressing in a thong and 9 inch heels and falling down where everybody can see her undies" and on and on and on and on and on and on...

# of Characters - We are so way past too many characters...I cannot in any way imaginable keep up with who's who...how am I supposed to remember which animal is Anita's to call when, who came from where, how old everybody is, why who needs who, who's which personality, and for Heaven sake, just how many lovers am I supposed to believe are ok with sharing her. Really now? Seriously??
Jean-Claude, Micah, Nathaniel, Cin, Nicky, Devil, Richard, Asher, Jade, Damian, Ethan, Crispin...I can't even remotely begin to remember even their names!

Plot - Hello? Could we please have a plot?? We learned about the rogue vampires in the very beginning...then sex, sex, and more sex, a little violence in between and then finally in the last chapters (pg. 327 out of 359) we returned to the plot. Ahem.

Cynrick - Sin - whatever he wants to be called...kick his whiney hiney out the door, Anita...I just cannot take any more.

Repeitition, repetition, repetition, repetition...and did I say repetition????
Where the heck was Hamilton's editor?? She explained the elevator being a killing box and whether or not she knew about Jean Claude taking power from lesser vampires in at least 2 places close together...I swear, I wondered if Hamilton worked on these chapters out of order and then forgot where she mentioned what.

Overall Recommendation
I am not a negative reviewer. You can take a look at my review archives and see that I would come closer to being accused of at least liking something about everything I've read and reviewed. That's because I purposely only read books that I think I'll like. I don't care how high on the Bestseller list something floats; if it doesn't sound good to me, I'm not gonna read it. Most importantly, because I just don't want to. But almost as important are the questions I have in my mind about whether or not I can give that book an honest read.
I like the Anita Blake series...I hated Kiss the Dead.
I really did.
So, I can't recommend it to anybody. I think even a lot of Anita fans will be disappointed in this one.
I'm not going away though...I'll be here when Hamilton publishes the next one, but two stinkers in a row will have to be my limit. :(
I'm sorry for the snark, but I really felt cheated by this one.

I think this was the worst Anita Blake novel to date. Previously, I had problems with all of the sex in the books but, at least, it seemed to be plot driven. There was little sex in this book (by LKH standards) but it seemed pointless and boring when it happened. The only sex scene worth mentioning was the one that turned out very badly for Nicky but then that part was dropped without further delving into why it happened and what to do to prevent it in the future. And then, after that totally terrifying moment, Anita turns around and has sex with someone else?!

Also, I was tired of Anita contradicting herself from one page to another. First she says she has been with Nathaniel for 2 years; then it was almost 3 years and, near the end of the book she mentions they are almost at their 4 year anniversary. Another time she says killing a master vampire will kill the rest of the bloodline (with the exception of what happened with Wicked and Truth) and on the next page she says that killing a master vampire does not kill all of its bloodline from her experience.

Another big oops came near the beginning of the novel when a vampire Anita is taking into custody tells her something she finds disturbing about Jean Claude's powers and she tells herself that she'll ask him about it later. But a few pages later, she recalls a conversation she had with Jean Claude ages ago addressing this very issue.

I think the worst mistake was when one of the vampires taken into custody revealed the locations of where these bad vampires should be sleeping. The plan was Anita and police would get something to eat while waiting for dawn and then go take care of the bad vamps. However, after they got something to eat, apparently everyone forgot their mission because they all went home!

Did anyone proofread this book?

It is shocking that this book was published with so many glaring errors and inconsistencies. It seemed like LKH attempted what could have been some very interesting plot lines but changed her mind mid thought and dropped each one. So there wasn't any real resolution at the end of the novel because there was never any real plot. I'd rather LKH kill off the characters and end the series than churn out anymore of this kind of rubbish. Maybe she should go back to writing the more porny Anita Blake novels as at least they made sense.