On an Earth not much different than our own, monsters are real, sharing the same rights and freedoms as humans. It was about four years ago that the Supreme Court ruled that vampires should have equal treatment under the law. This judicial ruling makes police officer Anita BlakeÆs job as a vampire executioner (as well as a zombie raiser and necromancer) much more difficult to accomplish if she wants to make a legal kill.

AnitaÆs life turns more complex when she allows the master vampire of the city to become her lover. She chose him over the gentle, kind-hearted Richard, a werewolf. Humans, including her co-workers, do not look at Anita the same way they used to before she hooked up with a nosferatu. This proves troublesome when Anita is assigned to deal with a psycho kinetic arsonist and a reckoning with the feared vampire council. Even Anita wonders if she has become more like the monsters than the humans she has been sworn to protect.

BURNT OFFERINGS is a delicious addition to the enthralling Anita Blake series. The charactersÆ personalities have cleverly evolved so that they are different from their first appearances. Although the mystery is quite complex and exciting, it is AnitaÆs growing relationship with Jean-Claude that is the heart and soul of this work. From an entity she expected to kill because he (in her mind) was an evil monster, she has gone to sharing her bed and perhaps her heart with him. Is she becoming one of the monsters or is the vampire becoming more humane? That is the question Anita (and us readers) have to decide.