The latest in Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, Serpentine continues the series with the planned wedding of “Ted” and Donna. Of course, things never go quite according to plan, and there are the usual supernatural complications that seem to follow Anita whereever she goes. Since we’re talking about book 26 in a series, this is not the place for new readers to start.
Further, we’re talking about a series where the closest thing to a Dark Lord threatening the world was killed off something like 10 books ago. So we’re basically running on fumes and leftover melodrama.
What this book has: Edward, Anita, Otto, and Bernard, the “four horsemen” boogiemen to the supernatural. It has wedding drama, a few of the old characters, a new supernatural monster, a chapter or two of pornographic sex (I skipped them and didn’t notice any resulting plot holes), and a sort of half-hearted investigation.
It gets positive marks for having less sex than some of the recent books. The rest of the book is wedding arrangements, investigations, and interpersonal relationship drama. There are some interesting developments there that will likely pay off in future books.
The author is clearly still going through the motions rather than writing from inspiration, but there are some positive signs of a return to form. I don’t regret reading it, just paying full price.
