The Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't own or have anything to do with Laurell K. Hamilton. Neither do I have anything against her; I'm sure she's a wonderful person who rescues stray puppies in her spare time. Her writing, however, is far from perfect.
Needless to say, spoilers abound. Proceed with caution.
Have finally read Incubus Dreams. Surprisingly, it was not as bad as I predicted, but then my expectations for it were absolutely rock-bottom. Considering that I thought it would be literally illegible drivel, this is not necessarily a compliment.
For starters: There are mistakes. Oh God, are there mistakes. Mispellings, random italicizations, and misplaced commas abound. Some sentences were indeed nigh-illegible. For example, during movie night: "The wereleopards had all complained, that at least werewolves had some movies, that once you'd named, Cat People, the leopards didn't have any movies." I AM NOT ADDING COMMAS I SWEAR TO GOD.
And the redundant cliches. If I never again hear the analogy of rolling fear/lust/insert emotion here "like candy on the tongue", it will be too bloody soon. The same lengthy comparison of vampires bites to poisonous snakes was made three times. Then there's the "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" analogy--again, made three times. "Pretty to think so" crops up frequently in both the Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series. And of course, the constant, endless "spilling" of hair and magic and various bodily fluids.
The "diety" issue: At one point Anita starts talking to her metaphysical therapist Marianne, and a tarot spread is laid for Anita. During their discussion, numerous references to "diety" are made. No, they're not discussing weight-loss methods; it's "deity", misspelled. This mistake is never corrected, and is consistent throughout the entire book.
I was so happy to see mention of everyone's favourite insane touch clarivoyant, Evans. It bothers me that LKH created all these great little side characters in the first few books, then promptly dropped them for newer, shinier fucktoys things. I really looked forward to seeing the psychic Unabomber (who is apparently somewhat stable now, doing police work again, and married). Sadly it ended up like the Missing Edward Fragment in Cerulean Sins (remember Anita's "I think I'll call Edward now!" paragraph?): enough to get our hopes up, then no follow-through.
Incredibly minor events are explained in meticulous detail. For example, pages 54-57 (bear in mind, this review is based off a large hardcover book, so three pages is a lot) are devoted to Anita walking out of a building with Nathaniel, crossing a parking lot to her car, him opening the car door for her, buckling their seatbelts, and driving off. Period. Oh, there are lengthy internal monologues in the process, mostly about how she doesn't want Nathaniel to leave, because she'll (and this is a direct quote) "miss him, miss the vanilla scent of him...the spill of his hair like some tangled, living blanket", but from a strictly narrative viewpoint, nothing happens.
LKH has developed this really annoying style of repeating phrases in a sentence. A random example from page 156: "I couldn't blame him, but Jean-Claude had been working on his power base for too long not to see the advantages of things. I couldn't blame him, but part of me wanted to. Part of me still wondered if I was more important to him for the power or love." (The book goes on and on in that fashion, by the way...very tedious.) It's just filler material. She's gone from her earlier terse, almost too-stark style to flowery repetitive nonsense.
Then there's the porn. Suffice to say that Anita has sex with SEVEN DIFFERENT MEN over the course of maybe three days, two of whom are almost total strangers she has known for two weeks. But, hey, Richard's conquests are reportedly in the triple digits now, so compared to him, she's pure as the (repeatedly) driven snow!
Every single officer in St. Louis must have a grudge against Anita because she's a) an attractive woman or b) just so darned good at her job she makes them look foolish. At one point she arrives at a strip-club crime scene from a "date" (read: random sexual encounter) in a revealing shirt and short skirt, and the officers on duty mistake her for one of the dancers, which of course HIGHLY offends her, because she may be screwing every Y-chromosome in the city, but she'd NEVER sink to taking her clothes off for money! *eyeroll*
A lot of ID is a big game of "spot the issue". LKH has said in the past that Anita Blake has been her form of therapy, and nowhere is that clearer than in ID. There were whole chapters that could have been lifted verbatim from a group therapy session. Literally hundreds of pages of talking, with nothing resolved by book's end--not even the murder plot described on the jacket flap!
An especially ironic fifty-odd pages is devoted to Anita lecturing her best friend Ronnie on her love life. In fact, Anita lectured a lot of people over the course of this book. Some of it was esoteric supernatural stuff and therefore marginally understandable, but much of her tsk-tsking was over relationships, and hypocritical coming from AB.
I keep hearing about the Nathaniel subplot that everyone touts as the one redeeming factor of ID, and while I was pleased by his pseudo-development, the changes are minor and superficial. By book's end he's still Velcroed to Anita, and she even buys him a frilly apron and string of pearls to make him feel more like her wife. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. In fact, there are REPEATED references to Micah and Nathaniel as Anita's "husband" and "wife", respectively. O.O There's protecting someone and being responsible for them, and then there's Just Plain Wrong.
And no, the relationship-triad is NOT happy and functional, no matter how many times the author tries to persuade us otherwise. Micah is a boot-licking housecat (neutered in more ways than one, I'll tell ya) and Nathaniel has the emotional maturity of a fifth-grader, if not younger. Both are securely under Anita's thumb and tied to her because she's their only means of safety.
The most ironic factor? Anita repeatedly spouts about how she's almost exclusively attracted to strong, borderline-dangerous men. Because that totally explains the harem of jellyfish she's surrounded herself with.
Seriously, reading this was like reading coded notes from someone's therapy session. This woman has so many issues surrounding men, love, sex, morality and ethics...it's actually a little frightening. She's both open and candid, and at the same time in deep, deep denial about whatever issues she hasn't worked out in real life (and feels compelled to share with the world). Anita Blake is so obviously the author manifest that I can't believe LKH is still fooling herself about this whole "separation of character from real life" business. It's sad, and more than a little scary.