Book Review: Burnt Offering. Book Seven of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton
Burnt Offering
This book is jam packed with plot. The fact that it's fit so much plot into 408 pages of a mobile e book is astounding. There is not a dull moment in this book, so I might actually dot point this.
• Anita becomes the Alpha or 'Nimir-Ra' of the local pard (Queen of the local group of were-leopards)
• Anita takes in the 'munin', not a ghost but mixture of energy and memories of Raina, the previous lupa who was a masochist but it also allows Anita to manipulate flesh to heal or harm but the memory of Raina usually likes to force Anita to do something she wouldn't otherwise be comfortable doing.
• Anita uses this ability to heal Nathaniel, a were-leopard who is mentally/emotionally in the terms of S&M a 'pet' which is a level below a 'slave' in where a pet cannot function or look after themselves without an owner or master. Anita accidentally becomes Nathaniel’s owner.
• There is someone with pyrokinetic powers setting buildings ablaze like you doused them with petrol but lab reports say no accelerant was used.
• The Humans First, right wing nut job group tried to re-create The Inferno, basically a vampire holocaust event that occurred hundreds of years ago.
• There are usually 7 members of the vampire council until Jean-Claude killed one, or more accurately, Anita killed one in the book Circus of the Damned, but then Jean-Claude did not take his place causing a power vacuum. Now the council has sent two members and two proxies so four member votes to either force Jean-Claude to join the council or be punished for killing a member.
So now where up to scratch. Anita pulls off some insane power plays with help from the memories and powers of Raina the bitch queen. Almost kills ANOTHER member of the vampire council but manages to convince him to sacrifice his son in his stead who Anita is really after for having raped several members of the lycanthrope community.
We also get to have the glory of meeting Warrick, one of my favourite characters in the series whom I wish we could have experienced more of. He had been the whipping boy of a rotting zombie called Yvette (Rotting zombies can decompose and recompose at will, only sure way of killing them is with fire). Yvette was the proxy for a council member called Morte D'Amour.
When they left Europe they started finding that Yvette was getting weaker and Warrick was getting stronger until Warrick manages to become a Master Vampire and nobodies whipping boy. Turns out Morte D'Amour had been syphoning energy off of Warrick and giving it to Yvette. Why? because Warrick is/was a christian crusader whom as a human had control over fire, and believed it a gift from god. When he became a vampire he lost those powers and had believed god had turned his back on him, until now. He is also able to walk in the shadows of daylight which many vampires cannot even handle that. He is also the vampire I mentioned whose animal to call is Butterflies.
Thoughts
This is a heady book. There is so much plot going on that every page you read makes you eager for the next. Not just chapter by chapter, like most books but page by page. There's some steamy sections in this book but no out and out erotica. It's got drama, narrative, world building, metaphysical world building, character development, emotions and my favourite, a metric fuck-tonne of Anita telling big bad guys that she's all out of fucks and only has silver bullets left.9.6/10 Enthralling read.
With this series I apologise for the lack of cat photos, I only own e-book versions of this so screen shots and stuff on pixabay will have to suffice. Due to this series being quite long I apologise but there WILL be spoilers.
To better understand the world of Anita Blake, read my world synopsis here