INCUBUS DREAMS

In this twelfth installment of the Anita Blake series, the heroine again addresses the challenge of juggling a career as a vampire hunter, love affairs with supernatural creatures, and continued pressure from the human community to conform. While Hamilton’s multigenre story is still compelling, she sadly relies too heavily on her now-stock scenes as a backdrop for gratuitous erotic encounters. Cynthia Holloway, however, infuses the first-person narrative with the spunk and sass that Anita fans have come to expect. Her performance brings to mind conspiratorial gossip sessions with old friends, a style that works beautifully with the heroine’s thoughts but becomes jarring when the other characters recount moments of gruesome seriousness. Nevertheless, Holloway brings coherence and character to a book that is otherwise bereft of both. A.H.A. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 08]