Writer's Block: Flashback films

[Error: unknown template qotd]Probably Arnold Schwarzenegger (improbably -- certainly to me!)

Blue Moon

A sudden jump ahead in the Anita Blake series, according to the random logic of which books I get my hands on -- and things have moved on a long way, chronologically (characters are contacted on mobiles in place of radio carphones), stylistically (there's little of the 'hard-boiled' flavour left) and not least in terms of Anita's complicated extracurricular life: she's now trailing an entourage of wounded, needy supernatural dependants with a high percentage of improbably attractive males among them, not to mention intermittent attentions from the ghost of a sadistic werewolf nymphomaniac she killed earlier...

Put like this, it should perhaps have been obvious that the series was about to disappear up its own metaphorical fundament; but in fact, although "Blue Moon" is by this stage hovering at the edge of what I could accept, Anita -- and the author -- still has things more or less under control. Most importantly it still has an interesting plot and characters you still actually care about...

( Reading the online discussion of Laurell K. Hamilton's latest books )

( The sex issue in Blue Moon )

( Why this is still one of the good books )