Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton

"When a fifteen-year-old girl is abducted by vampires, it's up to U.S. Marshal Anita Blake to find her. And when she does, she's faced with something she's never seen before: a terrifyingly ordinary group of people--kids, grandparents, soccer moms--all recently turned and willing to die to avoid serving a master. And where there's one martyr, there will be more... But even vampires have monsters that they're afraid of. And Anita is one of them.."--

These books have become way too light on story and plot for the sake of way too much improbable sex.

Anita is back on a down slope. Hit List was amazing, this book was so boring. I don't read these books for the crappy sex scenes, I read them to know about Anita, her abilities, the things she is supposed to be hunting and executing. Its like every other book is just smut. I hate reading smut! The most gripping part came at page 318! Seriously page 318 out of 334 pages, you put the oh my god what the hell is going to happen to Nathaniel scene!? And to top it off you make it as anticlimactic as you can with a simple solution? Other than the few pages of heart wrenching fear for Nathaniel, you blink and it's over. There is very little storyline at all about the unbound vampires. I was hoping Hamilton would go more into how they were created, what their general thoughts were, what their lifestyle was like. Instead she introduces you in the first few chapters to a new type of vampire kiss and then leaves it till the end of the book to have one person sum it all up. One person? How is this interesting at all? If Affliction bores me I will be giving up Anita Blake again. And this time for good.

The first two-thirds of the book deals with this-book plot and is very good. Most of the last third deals with the larger Anita and her men/metaphysical development stuff, and that has gotten a bit tired. There seems to still be stories to write here, but not so much dealing with the larger arc as in self-contained action mystery stories or character dev for this less major characters.

It may be time for Hamilton to consider writing books featuring one or more of the tigers or leopards other than Micah as viewpoint characters - or Claudia, or one of the other guards.