LoveVampires - the website dedicated to vampire fiction.
With vampire book reviews, information and author interviews.

Flirt

Laurell K. Hamilton

Published 2010        192 pages

Reviewed by Ania Tyburska

Summary (from the book jacket)

When Anita Blake meets with prospective client Tony Bennington, who is desperate to have her reanimate his recently deceased wife, she is full of sympathy for his loss. Anita knows something about love, and she knows everything there is to know about loss. But what she also knows, though Tony Bennington seems unwilling to be convinced, is that the thing she can do as a necromancer isn't the miracle he thinks he needs. The creature that Anita could coerce to step out of the late Mrs. Bennington's grave would not be the lovely Mrs. Bennington. Not really. And not for long.

The Review

This review contains strong language and spoilers.

For the better part of Flirt some of many Anita’s boyfriends are held on a gun point in order to force her to succumb to the villain’s wishes. For most of this time I was hoping that someone will finally pull the trigger and end their sorry asses. That is how bad this book is.

Readers that never heard about Anita Blake books should keep the hell away from Flirt. The fans of the series would do better to read again Guilty Pleasures than even open this sad excuse for the work of fiction. To list all the things that are wrong with Flirt would be simply a waste of time so here are just some examples:

The main character, namely the acclaimed Anita, is a sanctimonious bitch, with virtually no morality, but a healthy dose of self-rightfulness. The dialogues remind me of Uwe Boll movies and I can just picture them being uttered with the same wooden expressions. The only real surprise in the plot is the fact that Anita makes out with only one of the villains, taming the exuberant sexuality that was the trade mark of Laurell K. Hamilton’s previous works.

And do not even get me started about the male heroes. I was never really a fan of the Hair cast, that seems to be Anita’s “type”. The only half decent character was Edward, but even he got pussy whipped by the middle of the series. So I will just state that the describing the men of Anita’s life lying on a warm puppy pile is just gross. And wrong on so many levels.

The only reason that this book gets any stars at all is the length of the whole embarrassment. Flirt is more of a novella or even a short story than a real book, which ends the torture faster. I will not try and foresee the future of Anita Blake series. But if the huge meteor was to target St Louis and smash it the hell up together with all the retarded inhabitants of Flirt’s universe, that would be a great contribution to the urban fantasy genre. Oh, and there are no vampires…

Editor’s note: Flirt is the eighteenth book in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, although it’s fairer to say that this is actually a scanty novella rather than a book. Readers considering paying full price for this hardback “novel” should be aware that the story is only just over 150 pages in length and to pad the volume out there is a 20 page essay on how the author came up with the idea to write this story and that essay includes pictures (this refers to UK edition.)

Before we get added to any terrorist watch lists we would like to point out that the comment about the annihilation of St Louis refers to the fictional one in Laurell K. Hamilton’s books not the real St Louis in the actual non-fiction world – which we are sure is a nice place that doesn’t have a vampire population or monster problems.

LoveVampires Review Rating: