Review: Incubus Dreams

Incubus Dreams is more or less about the extremely complicated love life of Anita Blake, vampire executioner. Okay, that isn’t exactly true. There is a group of serial killer vampires out there, but really what is a couple of murders when compared to the many men in her life and the complicated supernatural powers that just seem to be multiplying.

Anita lives in a world that mirrors ours with a couple of glitches. First and foremost, just about every type of mythical creature that we know of exists plus several we have never heard of. Magic is the norm even though it still faces the prejudices that anyone or thing that is different has to deal with. Anita is a necromancer, which means she can raise the dead and is probably capable of controlling anything that is dead.

Up until a few years ago, anything that wasn’t human could be killed and no one really cared. Of course in America people believe everyone and everything should have rights, or at least we pretend to. So now the undead are legal. Anita has three fundamental jobs as an executioner: first, if someone dies of vampire bites and they specifically say that they don’t want to be a vampire, she has to make sure that they don’t become one. Second, if a vampire, or any other supernatural creature the cops can’t handle, kills someone or does something wrong she has to kill them. She is also on retainer for the cops. Basically she gets to see the gruesome murders and decide what done it.

The part of her life that Incubus Dreams mostly focuses on is her extremely complicated love life. When the book begins she has three guys that she calls boyfriends. Before she got involved with the vampire master of St. Louis, Jean-Claude, she was a bit of a prude. She started by dating Richard, who is now the wolf king of the local werewolf pack, and Jean-Claude together, and then she and Richard broke up. Well, Jean-Claude, Anita and Richard formed what is called a triumvirate. They combined their powers with Jean-Claude taking the lead. Anita received some of Jean-Claude’s powers. One of them is called the ardeur. Something he never told her until she received this “gift” was that he was an incubus. He can feed off of sex, he has to. When they combined their powers, Anita received this power inadvertently.

Now she has a new boyfriend named Micah, who is the nimir-raj, or leopard king of the local wereleopard pard, which she just happens to be the human (at least sort-of) nimir-ra. Add to that: Asher, (who unfortunately doesn’t really show up in this book) a vampire that she and Jean-Claude have formed a ménage à trios with, and that is how she starts off.

The crime she has to solve is the death of a stripper but what appears to be a group of vampire serial killers. The question is do her intimate ties to the monster community of St. Louis prevent her from seeing who the real killers may be?

I have two big problems with this book. The first one is that there are hardly any action scenes. One of the things I like most about this series is the sometimes-gruesome action and Anita’s sarcastic humor. I’m disappointed that she has made the series all about Anita’s love life. My second complaint is the language. I’m sixteen and go to an inner city school and I have never heard anyone cuss that much. I think it is vulgar and immature and not something I want to read over and over again.

Other than those two things the book was pretty good and I am waiting for the next book and hoping that my favorite character, Edward, makes an appearance.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Kayla - student - Kansas City

Book Review: Incubus Dreams