The first book in the Anita Blake series, it promised something new and exciting. Probably one of my top 5 Anita books.

This series was EXTREMELY reminiscent of the Sookie Stackhouse series, which I had quite recently finished before staring this book.
So this was hard to really enjoy because I felt like I was constantly comparing the two series. And finding Anita to be lacking.

Anita's character varies wildly between a young, naive woman to hardened cynical badass. She can't seem to put clues together that are staring her in the face, but at other times makes extreme leaps of logic at the critical moment to save the day. I found her constant reminders of just how petite and small she is obnoxious, and felt like her treatment of religion and her beliefs was odd. I know this is a series about the paranormal, and there is certainly plenty of paranormal here, but I felt like it was too much too fast: vampires, zombies, ghouls, ghosts, voodoo--there were too many elements happening and I as the reader wanted to understand more of how these different pieces fit together. It sort of felt like the author wanted plot to happen so just picked whatever she wanted to make it work, so there was constantly a LOT going on.

One interesting aspect of the writing was that the author certainly did not pull any punches on the gore and graphic descriptions. The scenes of violence and of examining crime scenes were actually a bit excruciating to listen to. So I have to give her props for having a character that tells it like it is, without glossing over details.

I've read 1 and 2 and won't be continuing.