Sex, Sex, and More Sex
Written: Feb 25 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The relationships between the characters finally move forward
Cons: The unnecessary sex detail could make a sex manual blush, no plot worth mentioning
The Bottom Line: Things move forward, if you don't mind a lot of sex and a lack of a plot.
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| angel011's Full Review: Laurell K. Hamilton - Incubus Dreams |
Incubus Dreams is the book number twelve in the Anita Blake, the Vampire Hunter series. Some books in the series are quite good – they’re fluff, but good fluff – some of them are less good, and some of them are next to disgusting. Incubus Dreams is next to disgusting. Or, at least, rather irritating.
For the beginning, some background. Anita Blake started out as an animator – a person who raises zombies for various purposes (testimonies, legal disputes and so on) and a vampire hunter (a person who hunts down and kills vampires and other non-humans who commit hideous crimes) in a world where vampires exist as legal, though not exactly well-liked, citizens (they own businesses, pay taxes…), together with werewolves and other shapeshifters (humans become shapeshifters after being infected by a lycanthropy-causing virus), an occasional faery, demon, and other non-humans. She’s small (five feet something) and in constant need to prove that she’s tough, which gets her in the trouble more often than not. During the series, she also became a necromancer (a person with power over all the undead, not just zombies), human servant and lover to Jean-Claude, sexy Master Vampire of the City, lover to Richard, the Ulfric (a werewolf king) and therefore a lupa (female leader of the werewolf pack, basically the Ulfric’s girlfriend), Nimir-Ra (female leader of wereleopards), lover to Micah, the Nimir-Raj (the leader of the wereleopards), and a succubus, which brings us to the main part of the Incubus Dreams.
Jean-Claude, except for being a vampire, is also an incubus, which means that he must feed on lust and sexual energy, not just on blood. While that gives him more power, he sees that lust-hunger, ardeur, as a curse, because that sort of hunger can be just as overpowering as hunger for blood, and before he had learned to control it, it has caused him to do many horrible things (think rape and murder – and Jean-Claude, even though vampires in this world are usually monsters, hates rape and kills and harms only when it’s necessary for survival). In book number ten, Narcissus in Chains, he had accidentally passed the ardeur to Anita, and now she must feed on lust too. Meaning, she has to have sex quite often, and with different people, because if she fed on one person only, she would drain that person to death. Jean-Claude hates the fact that he had infected, so to say, a woman he loves, but there’s no going back – both of them now have the ardeur, and while he can help Anita to learn the necessary control, she must learn to live with the new hunger. The problem is, she had grown up in a conservative family, and taught that sex is filthy. She doesn’t believe in exactly that, but it’s still difficult for her to get used to the necessity of having sex with various people on regular basis.
And it’s even more difficult than that – even more difficult that having to have likable guys around, or she’d end up having sex with just anyone.
In the book six, she had formed a triumvirate of power, Jean-Claude is the master of that triumvirate, and the third guy is Richard. That gives them all more power. Now, Anita had accidentally formed another triumvirate of power, with her vampire servant Damien and one of her wereleopards, Nathaniel. She’s the master of that triumvirate, and since Damien is an undead, his energy level depends on her. She makes his heart beat. And if she doesn’t feed the ardeur on regular basis, she begins to drain her triumvirate members – in other words, she begins killing Damien.
The majority of Incubus Dreams is about Anita learning to live with the ardeur – that is, a lot of talking, a lot lot of having sex, and no plot worth mentioning. Oh, close to the end of the book there’s something about a vampire serial killer who kills strippers and Anita is invited to help solve the case – she works with the police on preternatural murder cases on regular basis – but it is almost an afterthought. Something to give us the information that Anita should give up murder cases for a while, or she risks a burnout. Other than that, it is Anita having sex with, well, a lot of people.
Now, while I’m not a fan of books with plenty of sex scenes in them, in this one, each and every scene was necessary. The author had involved too many important characters in the series, and now we have to see Anita’s relationship with every one of them. Since she’s a succubus, a lot of those relationships are also sexual relationships. It was the author’s mistake to involve that many characters and to bring them in a situation where too many things must be resolved (they were not resolved in the previous books), but it has been done in the previous books so the author had to solve that somehow. And indeed, in Incubus Dreams, many personal problems are being solved, and things are moving forward (the more detailed explanation would be too long; basically, Anita had a problematic relationship with just about every one of many guys in her life, except with Micah who always says "yes"). But.
But, while the sex scenes (Anita doing this with this guy, Anita doing that with that guy – there are threesomes, too, though that is not new in this series, and there’s also Anita having sex with Nathaniel while he’s in half-leopard form, which is new) were necessary, the level of details was not. For an example: there’s really NO reason for us to know that Anita is now able, after practicing with Micah (who has a wide penis, not as long as some of the other guys sleeping with Anita, but wide), to deep-throat Richard (who has a big huge penis), which she couldn’t do before because he’s so big. And there are plenty of such details, enough to make a sex manual blush.
Not to mention the irritating fact that all of Anita’s lovers are either centuries-old well-endowed vampires with centuries and centuries of sexual experience, or lycanthropes with big huge penises. What’s wrong with normal human lovers?
Overall, this book was a disappointment. While the relationships between the characters did move forward (finally!), so the series can also move forward after this one, read as a book for itself Incubus Dreams doesn’t have a plot worth mentioning, and the level of unnecessary sexual details given is irritating. Still, while I didn’t like this book, some people did – I know for a fact that some people began reading the series from this book, and liked it so much they went to the closest bookstore and bought all the other books in the series.
Do I recommend this book? No. Yes. Maybe. If you can stand plenty of sex with a lot of details, and don’t mind the fact that there’s no real plot, it might be worth your time. If not, skip this one.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
angel011
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Member: Ivana
Location: In front of a computer, writing
Reviews written: 65
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I am a black kitten! Honest!
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