Feminist Mystery Reviews
BURNT OFFERINGS
Laurel K. Hamilton
Ace, May 1998, $6.99, 400 pp.
ISBN: 0441005241
Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
On an Earth not much different than our own, monsters are real,
sharing the same rights and freedoms as humans. It was about four
years ago that the Supreme Court ruled that vampires should have
equal treatment under the law. This judicial ruling makes police
officer Anita Blake's job as a vampire executioner (as well as a
zombie raiser and necromancer) much more difficult to accomplish
if she wants to make a legal kill.
Anita's life turns more complex when she allows the master vampire
of the city to become her lover. She chose him over the gentle,
kind-hearted Richard, a werewolf. Humans, including her co-workers,
do not look at Anita the same way they used to before she hooked
up with a nosferatu. This proves troublesome when Anita is assigned
to deal with a psycho kinetic arsonist and a reckoning with the
feared vampire council. Even Anita wonders if she has become more
like the monsters than the humans she has been sworn to protect.
BURNT OFFERINGS is a delicious addition to the enthralling Anita
Blake series. The characters' personalities have cleverly evolved
so that they are different from their first appearances. Although
the mystery is quite complex and exciting, it is Anita's growing
relationship with Jean-Claude that is the heart and soul of this
work. From an entity she expected to kill because he (in her mind)
was an evil monster, she has gone to sharing her bed and perhaps
her heart with him. Is she becoming one of the monsters or is the
vampire becoming more humane? That is the question Anita (and us
readers) have to decide.
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