general

First, I have to express what a huge fan I am of Laurell K. Hamilton. I wait impatiently for the next installment. So, please take this into consideration of what I am about to say.
Cerulean Sins is an excellent fiction read. It doesn't offer the meaning of life or the cure for cancer. However, it offers the reader a ride through a world full of colorful characters.
Yes, there is more sex and violence, but one has to consider that Anita Blake is falling deeper and deeper into a world completely ruled by magic and non-human elements. If you wish to revisit the 'old' Anita, then I suggest you reread the first books.
Hamilton has allowed her character to grow, perhaps in ways we don't all agree, but grown nonetheless. When there are so many cookie cutter series, Hamilton tries to give the reader new and inventive plots each time. This current installment focuses on the vampire element in Anita's life. Something we have missed for awhile. Also, a greater force (scary, too) starts to raise it's head. Without revealing any of the plot, I would consider this story one that should be read by those interested in strong women, mystery, and the paranormal.
I consider my time reading an investment, and I will always invest in Ms. Hamilton...no matter what road she decides to take us down.

First of all, if you have not read any other Anita Blake book do yourself a favor and read Guilty Pleasures first. This is not the type of series that you can just pick up in the middle. Also be aware that this series is full of intense violence and sex, along with action, wit, and romance. If you liked Sigorney Weaver in Aliens then you are going to love Anita Blake!

For those that have read the other 10 books, CS picks up where NIC left off and continues on in much the same vein (so to speak :-)). If you absolutely despised NIC you probably will not like CS. I thought NIC was pretty good and I liked CS even better.

What I loved about CS:
I love the way the characters continue to grow and develop in this book. In so many series, the main characters either stagnate or become caricatures of themselves as the series advances. But in the Anita Blake series, the characters are becoming more real and complex. It's wonderful! It's so much fun to think about what the real motivations are and where these characters will be heading. Even Richard has begun to grow and I must admit I still have hope that he and Anita will form a relationship that will be even stronger than before.
I also loved the sex in this book. I thought there was just the right amount of sex and it was very erotic and well done. I never thought I would like the fact that Anita is having sex with more than one man but in CS the sex seemed very natural and relevant to the book. So many people have criticized how much sex is in CS that I went back and counted the pages. I counted approximately 27 pages of sex (in the French sense) being described. If you add in all prose of an erotic nature you probably come up to about 50 pages max. 50 Pages out of 400 does NOT seem like an excessive amount to me! Please keep up the good work Ms Hamilton (and could you try to include Damian somewhere :-)).

What I didn't like about CS:
Although the book is highly readable and enjoyable I saw many signs of sloppiness. The plot was rather weak and at one point there was a time disconnect. The book end B plot was not well integrated into the A plot which made it feel disconnected and abrupt. Finally, the use of a dues ex machina (once again a major character effortlessly acquires a new power) to resolve the A plot seems lazy. Please Ms Hamilton, this series is too good to shortchange it this way. Give us a plot like Guilty Pleasures along with the character development of CS and you will have one outrageously fantastic book!

Having begun with Guilty Pleasures and read with constant enjoyment up through the first hundred pages of "Narcissus in Chains", I feel tricked and cheated. I had hoped with the last book that Hamilton would steer the series back on course, and that hope was hideously thwarted. Both "Narcissus in Chains" and "Cerulean Sins" are colossal disappointments for anyone who read for mystery, crime drama--or anything, really, other than sex.

Almost all of the major relationships in these books have been destroyed or relegated to the back burner, and anyone who disagrees with Anita gets pages full of badmouthing. It's tiresome, tedious, poorly plotted, and not much more than an endless and emotionless sexathon. The edge Anita's tangled love life gave the books is gone. The promise of the TRI--the metaphysical and emotional entanglement between Anita, Richard the Ulfric, and the vampire, Jean-Claude--has been destroyed by Anita's unceasing selfishness and incredible demands.

I adored Richard, and Micah, Anita's "soulmate" as introduced in "Narcissus in Chains", is a one dimensional, contrived, gutless wonder, and an absolutely pitiful substitute for the vastly fulfilling Richard and Anita dynamic. He is much more of a Stepford Wife than any kind of believable partner, with only one endowment to recommend him. Fans that look to "Cerulean Sins" for resolution of Richard and Anita's dilemma will be sorely, and bitterly, disappointed. Richard gets little page space, and most of that is spent with Anita's internal wondering of "how long it would be before she hated him." Less time than it takes for the devoted to begin to hate you, Anita.

There are no good aspects of this book. The mystery is underhand, poorly developed, and is more an afterthought than any active device of the plot. It is resolved in a slipshod manner that is to me indicative of Hamilton's poor opinion of her readers. The plot devices are contrived, the vampire villainess less than believable. It is remarkable that a villainess can consume so much page space and still manage to accomplish so little.

Most importantly, as far as being relevatory of Anita's abrupt personality transplant, is the destruction of her relationships with all of the human, or humanish, characters in these books. It is only the characters that embrace Anita no matter what that win Anita's and the author's stamp of approval; Dolph, Ronnie, and Richard in particular have been treated abominably. Dolph was throughout the series a rock, and his breakdown is poorly planned and poorly executed. Anita speaks repeatedly of getting rid of Ronnie, her long-time "best girlfriend," apparently for the dastardly crime of daring to question Anita's lifestyle choices. The characters have been reduced, almost in toto, to poor caricatures of what they once were. It makes for bland and occasionally offensive reading.

With "Narcissus in Chains", I was looking for the book I had somehow missed between pages 100-101. With "Cerulean Sins", I'm looking for the other half of the book that was somehow swallowed up by meaningless automaton sex. The ardeur, which might have had interesting possibilities, is merely a device for Anita to sleep with almost all the main and secondary characters...and the ones Anita managed not to sleep with this time are assured of getting their turn in the next book. I am disgusted with the way the promise of the TRI has been sold out, and disgusted with the author for such sloppy writing. If she can't write two series well, don't try. The readers are getting shortchanged on both ends of the spectrum.

The only way I would consider continuing with this increasingly Anita-worshipping cult of a series is if Anita were to get over her fiance in college, Richard was restored to the man we fell in love with back in "Circus of the Damned", Micah were killed, and the ardeur was relegated to the background it deserved: another need, and not one that we need to hear every detail about fulfilling. I have no problem with sex and violence, but only when they serve the plot. Largely due to the sex, there is, in "Cerulean Sins", not much plot to speak of.