49. 
Title: Kiss the Dead
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Pages: 368
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Medium: Hardback
Acquisition: Preordered
Date Completed: June 7, 2012
Rating: ***1/2

Fans are - and will continue to be - split on responses to the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, and I for one doubt that the severance will ever be rectified.  Anita as a character is extremely different in book twenty-one than she was in book one, and she will never be the same again.  I, for one, appreciate the change; I found her sense of morals and personal conflict rather stifling, and prefer her growing comfort with life, love, and sexuality.  Many readers will disagree with me, as the Anita that Hamilton writes now is not the Anita they once loved. 

Kiss the Dead will be no different.  More of a law officer than an animator these days, Anita is involved with a fair amount of police work in this latest episode, but neither her professional life nor her personal life grabs center stage; the narratives are relatively compartmentalized, much like Anita's current life, and the stories are disjointed.  I found Kiss the Dead entertaining, and it delivered on many of my expectations, but it isn't likely one I would return to again.  At twenty-one books, I don't know that I would expect such from the series.