Narcissus In Chains

Laurell K. Hamilton

Catchy title, as most of them have been. One of Hamilton's trademarks is to use the name of a fictitious club in St. Louis, Missouri as the title for her books. It works, the titles are unique and often quirky. However, in this volume, it's truly unfortunate that Narcissus in Chains was not condemned before opening. I've spent time with all the other novels in this series featuring Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter and Necromancer. Hamilton has given much of herself to creating the characters and the settings and never sacrificing plot. Anyone who has read her and enjoyed the series knows that it's one of those which leaves you waiting for the next book. Not this time fellow Vamp fans. Hamilton has written what is probably one of the worse books in her career. She leaves the characters loose and empty, and unfamiliar to the reader who has followed them through the other novels. The plot never works to gratify the reader, it just moves around the characters with no substance or direction. Instead Hamilton has chosen to fill the pages of this novel with sex and violence, then in all the empty spaces where she's forsaken her characters, she dumps in some more sex and some more violence and calls it finished. Sometimes as fans we get what we ask for and sometimes it's not at all what we expected. I know that many of the Blake fans pleaded with Hamilton for a continuation or a finalization of the triumvirate made up of Anita Blake, Richard, the lycanthrope, and Jean Claude, the Master Vampire. Hamilton would have done us all a favor to have let our own imaginations carry us to fruition on this. She has no interest in these characters any longer, she neglects them and she abandons them, bringing in new characters which are neither inspiring or supportive to the story. I think a really wise author listens to their characters and knows when their stories are done, when there is no where else to take them to continue breathing life into them. Hamilton listened to her fans who wanted more, and then she produced so much less. I wish she'd been a wise author. So, wait for the paperback? By all means, better yet, if you really must read this, hope to find one another reader has abandoned on a bus bench.