Amazon Review
Cerulean Sins is the 11th in Laurell K Hamilton's darkly erotic, blood-soaked series featuring Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. Think Buffy with more gore and sex. Anita, for the uninitiated, is almost like a supernatural police officer, taking on cases that involve, among other things, werewolves, the-undead and all manner of other creepy things. This time around, she is asked to reanimate a corpse that holds the key to a long-ago crime but there are several beings that don't want the past dug up again. Add to the mix a lot of bureaucratic vampire politics and the arrival of a positively psychopathic female vampire and Anita, as usual, is in for an action-packed ride. It's hard to imagine hardcore Blake fans not being entertained by this latest instalment even though it focuses on the more romantic elements of Anita's relationships.

Although the emphasis is once again less on the mystery and police work that made the earlier books so enjoyable, there are still plenty of developments in Anita's life that lead one to believe that, unlike a lot of her adversaries, her character has a lot more potential. With the disappearance of Buffy from the small screen, it's more than possible that many Buffy fans will migrate to this series to get their regular dose of un-dead butt-kicking action. But newer readers will be hopelessly out of their depth trying to understand the already complicated relationships and back story that so much of this book relies on. They should go back to the start and read Guilty Pleasures. --Jon Snow