Anita Blake, tome 10

Like the other Anita Blake books, Narcissus in Chains is about power and responsibility, and the way that any increase in personal power ratchets up a sense of responsibility--or ought to. For much of the book, Anita, necromancer and executioner of the undead, is faced with the possibility that living dangerously has caught up with her--that one of the were-leopards whose protector she has become has accidentally infected her and that she has finally crossed the line into non-humanity. Or are the new strengths and powers she is feeling the consequence of extending the bond between her and her two lovers, the vampire Jean-Claude and the werewolf Richard? There are new and dangerous players in town and Anita is no longer sure that she can cope...

Laurell K Hamilton's inventiveness with supernatural menace has still not failed her, though more of this book than usual is taken up with Anita's complicated erotic arrangements--she has come a long way in the course of this popular series from the rather prim Catholic girl with a collection of stuffed penguins. This is not one of Hamilton's best books, but enough complicatedly happens in it that those already keen will want to know more.