I probably got to the next Anita Blake thing a little too quickly, but sometimes you just need a paperback in a hurry, to avoid getting too wrapped up in something big. And I’m sure I had a good reason at the time, though I can’t really remember what it was anymore. Be that as it may, the more important part of this story is that with The Killing Dance, the vampire hunter / necromancer chick’s ongoing stories of mayhem and angsty love have turned a corner.

I like that the stories have continued to get more engrossing. This time, the main plotline is about how person or persons unknown have put out a hit out on Anita, to the tune of a cool half a mil. As if that weren’t bad enough, things are coming to a head with her werewolf boyfriend’s pack leadership issues and with her personal love triangle between said boyfriend and the vampire master of the city. Which, okay, is probably every bit as trashy as it sounds. But a long-standing characteristic of mine (let’s call it a feature) is that I tend to be a fan of trashy, as long as it is also competent. This series surpasses that bar, if not by an excessive amount, and so onward I read.

Except, that corner I mentioned? I saw it coming in the setup phase, that this was probably going to be the last volume that didn’t regularly devolve into softcore erotic lit. Little did I know, I had been too optimistic by exactly one volume. So, yeah, things have pretty much fallen apart on that front. The sad irony is that the plotting stuff has continued to improve, and so I really do want to know what’s going to happen next. I have a sense that in no more than two additional books, the scales will have shifted too dramatically, though. I am going to dub this particular quality (or lack thereof, really) in an ongoing series “porn bloat”. Proper usage goes something like, “Can you believe the porn bloat in Winter’s Heart? Does Jordan seriously expect us to believe that every single feminine ceremony in the world involves boobies? Still, I can hardly wait for HBO to pick it up! ‘Cause, boobies!” (It’s possible that a more proper usage of the terminology would leave off the last two sentences. Still, though. Boobies! (Can you believe the porn bloat in Shards of Delirium?))