This book finds Anita Blake planning for her big wedding extravaganza with Jean-Claude. I loved seeing Edward again. He is one of my top five favorite characters. A couple of other characters showed up in this book that I absolutely HATE, but, wonder of wonders, I found myself hating them much less than normal. I was very shocked about that. Anita and Company face a new adversary in this book, and the character development for that person was really good. I am looking forward to seeing how much all of my favorite characters continue to grow, while hoping beyond hope that a few of these people die in the next book and die quick.

The only complaint I had about this book was Rodina and her use of the word woke. I do not care for Rodina and her attitude, but I am looking forward to seeing how her character continues to develop. I will say that I appreciate that LKH keeps up with the times and includes current events in her timeline to keep it relevant and fresh, but I could really do without that woke nonsense. Granted it was in there twice, but it just crawled all over me. I typically read nonfiction and the two series that I do read that are fiction, I read because I enjoy and it is a nice escape from history and the nonsense going on. I am so sick of seeing and hearing people screaming about wokeness and snowflakes...I just simply do not care for it in my fiction reads. The premise is stupid to begin with, and it makes people sound stupid when they go around screaming woke woke woke. (As though wanting to educate yourself on history and experiences of other people and attempting to recognize bias and be inclusive and generally not a shitty person is so horrible.) Anyway, the point is I hate that and that is the only complaint I have about the book, which isn't really a complaint so much as a personal disdain for something. I will not reduce my four star rating over two sentences, that's equally stupid.

My library FINALLY got this book in for me, so I stayed up until one in the morning to finish it. I have the rest of the series in paperback, and didn't want to purchase a hardback and be all mismatched. I cannot wait until it comes out in paperback so I can add it to the collection. I am so pleased that this book enraged me far less than some of the previous ones. The back half of this series has consistently irritated me with the CONSTANT going over and over the same point in a group conversation about relationships, and this one did have some conversations working through some things, but nothing like some of the previous books where 97% of it was relationship speak and none about getting to the bottom of a mystery and fighting enemies. I have been missing that so much in this series, and am glad to see some of that making a comeback. I am still seeing a lot of complaints about the amount of sex in this book and the rest of the series, but this book didn't have nearly as much of that as some of the other books, so I am unsure why people are still complaining. This is book number 29 in the series....if you do not expect that or understand that sex magic is part of how this whole thing works, I have no idea what to tell you. (I will concede that it is really annoying when we spend the whole book talking about the same relationship issue and having sex and none of the crime fighting or mysteries, but come on.) I am really looking forward for the next book later this year, and plan to do a massive re-read of the series for the 30th anniversary. As much as some of the characters and some of the books get on my nerves, I am so glad that I randomly found this series back in 2009 and caught up on it. This has certainly been one of my comfort series, next to the Vampire Chronicles. I just cannot wait for the next one