Like the other Anita Blake books, Narcissus in Chains is about power and responsibility, and the way that any increase in personal power ratchets up...
more Like the other Anita Blake books, Narcissus in Chains is about power and responsibility, and the way that any increase in personal power ratchets up a sense of responsibility--or ought to. For much of the book, Anita, necromancer and executioner of the undead, is faced with the possibility that living dangerously has caught up with her--that one of the were-leopards whose protector she has become has accidentally infected her and that she has finally crossed the line into non-humanity. Or are the new strengths and powers she is feeling the consequence of extending the bond between her and her two lovers, the vampire Jean-Claude and the werewolf Richard? There are new and dangerous players in town and Anita is no longer sure that she can cope... Laurell K Hamilton's inventiveness with supernatural menace has still not failed her, though more of this book than usual is taken up with Anita's complicated erotic arrangements--she has come a long way in the course of this popular series from the rather prim Catholic girl with a collection of stuffed penguins. This is not one of Hamilton's best books, but enough complicatedly happens in it that those already keen will want to know more. --Roz Kaveney
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