Bullet excerpt (Anita Blake series) by Laurell K. Hamilton

 

Laurell K. Hamilton has finally put a page up for Bullet, the next Anita Blake book. You can see the page on her site (with a blurb) here, and you can dowload a pdf of the first chapter excerpt here.

To be honest, the first chapter doesn't make me feel great about how good of a book Bullet may be. Anita had to put up with catty stuff from almost every man she came across in Skin Trade, the last regularly scheduled series book. I hope she doesn't get it from all of the women in Bullet.

The blurb Ms. Hamilton put up does make it sound like Bullet will be a much better book - something closer to The Harlequin, perhaps. I mostly liked The Harlequin, so that would be good.

Here is the blurb:

The music came back up and the next group of little girls, slightly older, came out. There was a lot of that in the next hour and change. I liked dance, and it was no reflection on the kids, but my will to live began to seep away on about the fifth group of sequined children…

My name is Anita Blake and I am back in St Louis and trying to live a normal life - as normal as possible for someone who is a legal vampire executioner and a US Marshal. I have my lovers, my friends and their children, school programmes to attend. In the midst of all this ordinary happiness a vampire from my past reaches out. She was supposed to be dead, killed in an explosion, but the Mother of All Darkness is the first vampire, the dark creator, and it's hard to kill a god. She has reached out to me here - in St Louis, home of everyone I love most. She has decided she has to act now or never, to control me, and all the vampires in America.

The Mother of All Darkness believes that the triumvirate created by master vampire Jean-Claude with me and the werewolf Richard Zeeman has enough power for her to regain a body and to emigrate to the New World. But the body she wants to possess is already taken; I'm about to learn a whole new meaning to sharing my body, one that has nothing to do with the bedroom. And if the Mother of All Darkness can't succeed in taking over my body for herself, she means to see that no one else has the use of it, ever again. Even Belle Morte, not always a friend to me, has sent word: 'Run if you can …'

I'm guessing that means Bullet will be more about the vampires than the shifters, though there is no guarantee of that. I'm hoping Jason can act as a proxy for Richard so we won't have to listen to Richard's self-obsessed whining, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one, either. There is always the hope that Richard may eventually grow up, but I don't think it's very likely.

We have about five and a half weeks until Bullet is released. I may start at The Harlequin and reread (or at least skim) the books in the series since then, so I'll be ready for Bullet.

The books in this series are:

1. Guilty Pleasures
2. The Laughing Corpse
3. Circus of the Damned
4. The Lunatic Cafe
5. Bloody Bones
6. The Killing Dance
7. Burnt Offerings
8. Blue Moon
9. Obsidian Butterfly
10. Narcissus in Chains
11. Cerulean Sins
12. Incubus Dreams
12.5. Micah
13. Danse Macabre
14. The Harlequin
15. Blood Noir (2008)
16. Skin Trade (2009)
16.5 Flirt (Feb 2010)
17. Bullet (June 2010)