| Cerulean Sins | |
| Author: | Laurell K. Hamilton |
| Cover Artist: | Craig White (US editions) |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter |
| Genre: | mystery, horror, Erotic novel |
| Publisher: | Berkley Books (Berkley edition) |
| Release Date: | 2003 (Berkley edition) |
| Media Type: | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages: | 405 (Berkley edition) |
| Isbn: | 0-425-18836-1 |
| Isbn Note: | (Berkley edition) |
| Dewey: | 813/.54 21 |
| Congress: | PS3558.A443357 C4 2003 |
| Oclc: | 51150692 |
| Preceded By: | Narcissus in Chains |
| Followed By: | Incubus Dreams |
Cerulean Sins is a horror/mystery/erotica novel by American writer Laurell K. Hamilton, the eleventh book in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter.
Cerulean Sins apparently takes place some time after the events of the previous novel, Narcissus in Chains. Anita is happily living with Micah and Nathaniel and dating Micah and Jean-Claude. However, as usual, Anita is confronted by a series of simultaneous problems.
First, she appears to be attracting the attention of a number of spies, including Leo Harlan, a professional assassin who claims to want Anita to reanimate one of his ancestors to assist in genealogical research and two mercenaries who Anita arrests via her Federal Marshal status after noticing them following her.
Second, Jean-Claude is unpleasantly surprised by an early visit from Musette and her entourage, all of whom are representatives of the founder of Jean-Claude's bloodline, Belle Morte and represent an attempt by Belle Morte to test and possibly punish or capture Jean-Claude and his followers.
Third, Anita learns of a series of shockingly brutal rapes and murders, apparently committed by a shapeshifter serial killer. However, because of her deteriorating relationship with Dolph, Anita is unable to get cooperation from the police in solving the crimes.
Anita ultimately learns that the mercenaries have been spying on her to consider recruiting her for a secret mission overseas. As Agent Bradford warned Anita in Obsidian Butterfly, Anita has come to the attention of one or more secret agencies within the US government. Luckily for Anita, at her mentor Marianne's insistence, Anita had stopped using animal sacrifices to raise zombies. Without the additional power granted by an animal sacrifice, Anita's zombies were sufficiently "zombie-looking" to convince the mercenaries that she would not be able to perform the job, arguably validating Marianne's belief that the animal sacrifices would result in bad karma.
When the kidnapping lies, Anita confronts, outmaneuvers, or defeats Belle Morte several times. First, she and Jean-Claude take Asher to their cerulean bed in a menage a trois, making Asher their lover and therefore immune to most of Belle Morte's advances. Second, Anita, with help from Richard, Jean-Claude, and her wereleopards, is able to block Belle Morte's attempts to make Anita her human servant. Third, Anita is ultimately able to trap Musette in their game of courtly politics, proving that Belle Morte and her proxy Musette has violated the terms of her invitation and forcing Musette and her people to leave.
More alarmingly, Anita begins to believe that Belle Morte is planning a war against the Mother of Darkness, the oldest and most powerful of the world's vampires. Although Anita and Jean-Claude do their best to avoid that conflict, the Mother of Darkness is beginning to awaken from a millennia-long sleep, and seems interested in Anita. Finally, Anita helps Zerbrowski track down the shapeshifting serial killer, who turns out to be a werewolf member of the mercenary team sent to observe Anita herself. After a confrontation in which several police officers are killed, Anita tracks down the werewolf a second time and executes him.
In the epilogue, Anita explains that she is continuing to date Micah and Jean-Claude, and that she has also added Asher to her list of lovers. She and Richard are still broken up, but Richard appears to be overcoming his death wish. Two of Belle Morte's vampires have received permission to remain in St. Louis, both to repair the damage done by their visit and to attempt to stay out of the way of any conflict between Belle Morte and the Mother of Darkness.
Cerulean Sins features the following major characters.
Recurring characters include:
Non-recurring characters include: Two werewolves that were used to track the rapist who was an alpha werewolf from a different country.
The death toll in Cerulean Sins includes: Four murder victims, three women and one man. The man was running from something and his death was a message for others who had tried to hide. The other three were unrelated but by the same bad guy who died in the end after Anita received an execution order for him. He had slaughtered the three women, reduced them to handfuls of meat and other body parts, essentially painting the wall with their blood.(2 police officers also die while trying to apprehend the suspect)
Power struggles are central to this novel, and at this point Anita has become an equal power to the Vampire Council, as discussed in a comparison of the series to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by media scholar Kevin Durand.[1] Durand argues that the power imbalance between men and women in earlier novels, where Anita is still gaining new powers and learning to deal with new responsibilities, is now equalised.