Product Description

"Fans have been waiting to sink their fangs into an all-new Anita Blake hardcover in the New York Times bestselling series. These days, Anita Blake is less interested in vampire politics than in an ancient, ordinary dread she shares with women down the ages: she may be pregnant. And, if she is, whether the father is a vampire, a werewolf, or someone else entirely, he knows perfectly well that being a Federal Marshal known for raising the dead and being a vampire executioner, is no way to bring up a baby."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3413 in eBooks
• Published on: 2007-04-11
• Released on: 2007-04-11
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

From Publishers Weekly
The uniquely complicated life of Anita Blake, the St. Louis–based necromancer, gets even more complicated when Anita discovers she may be pregnant in the 14th novel in bestseller Hamilton's vampire hunter series (Micah, etc.). Her sexual magic powers require multiple lovers, so there are six potential fathers. One possible dad, werewolf Richard, has trouble understanding that, baby or not, Anita's still a federal marshal who raises the dead and executes vampires. In addition, terrifying, life-threatening obstetrical challenges are involved, since the maybe-mommy has to deal with vampirism and several strains of lycanthropy coursing through her veins. That Anita has no detecting to do may disappoint some fans, but playing hostess to a gathering of North American vampire Masters of the City, ostensibly in town for a performance by a vampiric ballet troupe, keeps her plenty busy. When the vampire ballet takes the stage toward the end, several new plot elements emerge. The very lack of a finale suggests that there's no end in sight for this fabulously imagined series. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Last seen in Incubus Dreams (2004) and the novella Micah (2006), Anita Blake is back and more embroiled in supernatural politics than ever. She is in the market for a new pomme de sang to feed the otherworldly passion known as the ardeur that she and her lovers are subject to, but she has a more pressing problem on her hands when she discovers she might be pregnant. Anita can't imagine how a baby would fit in with her vampiric lifestyle, nor does she know which of her lovers is the father, though she suspects either possessive werewolf Richard or sensual wereleopard Nathaniel. To make matters worse, vampire masters are converging on the city for a massive meeting, and Anita is wary of her role in the gathering. This time Hamilton relies a little too heavily on complex vampire politics, though sex and intrigue abound, and Anita's pregnancy dilemma makes particularly compelling reading. Longtime series fans will enjoy the yarn while probably hoping there will be more action for Anita next time. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Hamilton just keeps getting better and better. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Hamilton really does come off like the genre's answer to Henry Miller. -- Denver Post

Customer Reviews

Just bad.
Another series killer, though at least (unlike Goodkind) the first several books of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series were fun little supernatural mysteries.

Literally no plot, though there were a couple of strands of something that might have become a plot if the author had bothered to develop them.

Mostly very boring and badly written sex scenes, very boring and badly written scenes of vampire politics (all revolving around whose servants could enter into sexual service to Anita Blake next), and endless emo yammering about sex. Yuck. This is what happens when writers go bad.

3.5 Stars -- Liked it but couldn't relate
I have to admit, I'm getting a little tired of some parts of these books. But then, I've now read, what, fourteen of them? I have to think there would be elements of any series that would get tiresome after that many books. I know I got sick of the Aes Sedai in the Wheel of Time, and of Rand trying to make himself hard as stone, and of the regular theme of the battle of the sexes, and several other themes that Robert Jordan kept coming back to -- and those books are my all-time favorites.

In these books, it isn't that I'm tired of the sex scenes. I enjoy the visceral, no-holds-barred writing in these books, in both the violent scenes and the sexual scenes; I don't get many chances to read this sort of writing, and if I did move more into reading erotica, I'd end up with far more graphic sex and far less plot elements unrelated to the sex, so this is a good compromise for me. No, what I'm getting a little tired of is the necessity of sex, and all the discussion of the meaning of the sex or the lack of meaning of the sex. I don't mind that Anita needs to feed the ardeur, but I do mind that she needs to feed herself, and then Jean-Claude, and then Nathaniel and Damian, and then herself again, and then she needs to have sex with Asher because he feels left out, and so on and so forth. It's basically me having trouble with the same thing that Anita is having trouble with: there are just too many freaking men in her life. As a brief side note on that, Anita's greatest value to Jean-Claude, in terms of being his human servant and increasing his power, is that she can give him energy when she feeds; she can act as a power source. So how come Damian is nothing but a drain? I get that her power keeps him alive, but shouldn't he be able to maintain that power level, and even add to it for Anita, when he feeds? Is it just that he doesn't feed enough?

The other problem I had with this book was that I couldn't relate to the main tension: the idea that Anita might be pregnant. When I read that, and read the moment when she thought to herself that a child simply could not fit into her life and her relationships, I nodded; so when Richard confronted her and demanded to know if she could kill their child (Which, as a pro-choice person who believes in science over souls, irritated me right there, because it's a hunk of cells, not a child) and she said no, she couldn't, I was just annoyed. I realize that people feel that way about children, but I don't, so it was tough for me to be sympathetic; instead, I was just vastly annoyed by Richard's smug assumption that now he'd get Anita to move behind his white picket fence and dump everybody else that she loves. Every time Richard said, "But when you get someone pregnant, you marry them. It's just what you do," I wanted to slap him. So that whole plotline got on my nerves terribly -- though I loved how it ended up.

On the plus side, I liked the new City-Masters who were introduced, both Auggie and Samuel, and their separate concerns; I liked that Hamilton managed to write Auggie as this stunningly obnoxious overbearing male, and yet managed to keep him from being that and nothing more. As bad as Auggie behaves, he has his sympathetic moments and his good side, and so I liked him as a character and hope he recurs. I really like the mermaid connection, both the pushy witch of a mother and the shy-but-eager virginal boys -- though I'm annoyed that numeric age keeps coming up as an issue; okay, Nathaniel is only 20, and the mermaid twins are only 17, but why does that mean anything? Age is not an indicator of maturity, and it annoys me that they act as if it is. Though I do, of course, understand the objection to having sex with minors, or taking the one boy's virginity. And I wonder how an ancient vampire like Samuel managed to father children, something that wasn't explained . . .

I liked the dance element, but wanted more information, and hope they come back, since there is the connection to the Mother Of All Darkness through Merlin -- who's a great character. I don't think much of London, or of his apparent role as the deus ex machina for dealing with the ardeur -- but since he may solve the problem I was complaining about at the beginning of this review, I guess I'll just take him as a blessing for now and hope a better solution presents itself.

Still enjoying the books, still excited about reading the next one.

yuk
This series started out great. Now it's just the tiniest of plots to hold together a ton of porn. No thanks. This was my last Anita Blake.