Review: Blue Moon by Laurell K Hamilton, Book 8 of the Anita Blake Series

 

Anita is awakened by a phone call from Richard’s brother – Daniel. Richard has been arrested on charges of rape. Anita is more than a little doubtful of the charges and, naturally, having police and legal connections, she drops everything and makes the flight to Tennessee, despite Jean-Claude’s insecure reservations.

Travelling as a human servant and Lupa is not simple, however, and she quickly finds herself embroiled in local pack politics and in conflict with the local master of the city, who fears and invasion and the power of Jean-Claude’s triumvirate in his territory. Having to dance to werewolf politics and being openly at war with the local vampires complicates things a little.

But then there’s the reason they’re there. Richard has been opposing the sale of land that an endangered troll species inhabits – but the person doing the buying is far more dangerous than he imagined. With his full resources – both mundane and mystical – he is determined to make Anita and Richard leave, but this is a battle they cannot walk away from.

To complicate things further, there’s also Anita’s relationship issues – namely that she left Richard after sleeping with Jean-Claude. Between that and Richard’s exes, there’s a lot of tension to navigate.

The plot is actually really involved and written. We start with a simple mission – to save Richard and find out what’s happening. This quickly escalates not only in to a perplexing mystery (why go to this much effort to evict the trolls?) but then adds a layer of epic to become a fight that Anita simply cannot avoid. As the book says, when evil draws a line in the sand, good can’t just walk away. The depiction of Niley and Linus, their backstory and the books’ descriptive style establishes them as EVIL with a capital E. This lends a strong sense of epic to the story and the sense that there is no way Anita and Richard could just go home and let the trolls get on with it. There’s more depth and strength to it – more hangs on it than a simple local land issue and it gives and extra urgency and power to Anita’s actions and those of her enemies.

The book also continues one of the strength of many of the Anita Blake novels, there are several plots running alongside each other yet, at the same time, linked. We have Verne’s werewolf pack, the vampire and their fear of Jean-Claude, there’s Anita’s regular power hiccoughs – and there’s the core plot, Niley and his nefarious plots and the influence he spreads. All of them run together, they’re all well paced, none dominates the other and they all come together in a really neat fashion. None of them feel like distractions so much as the actual consequences in the supernatural world of moving out of state. It’s not a case of simply focusing on the plot line and the rest of the world conveniently fading into the background (except Anita’s job – which regularly seems to be cancelled at short notice without damaging Anita’s income at all).

I also like the book’s portrayal of police corruption – and how Anita and Richard are both very dependent on both their extensive connections and the fact they have lots of nice, upper class, respectable witnesses to prevent the worst of the Sherriff’s excesses. It’s made clear that these are the only things holding the corrupted police at bay – and also just how much power a crooked sheriff in a small town can actually have.

Review: Raven Cursed by Faith Hunter, Book 4 of the Jane Yellowrock Series

Jane Yellowrock has a job from Leo Pelliser, Master of the city of New Orleans and, as it turns out, Master of the whole South-east of the United States, meaning he has far more oomph than Jane imagined.

He has sent her to escort Gregoire, one of his top vampires, to negotiate with the local vampire Shaddock who wishes to become Master of Asheville on account of his children becoming vampires super-quickly without decades of madness. It’s an important bodyguard job and Jane is focused on it and in charge despite the distraction of Rick, her sort-of-boyfriend turning into a wereleopard.

Unfortunately things are complicated by the remaining werewolves from the pack she destroyed in the last book seeking revenge – and by revenge that means slaughtering people in her area. Jane is forced to work with local police to find the wolves, balancing law enforcement with orders from Leo who wants them dead as soon as possible. Jane has her own reasons since Molly and her family (and coven witches) are in the area –Molly’s husband blames her for putting their children in danger, Jane cannot stand the idea that she has put them at risk again

But even Molly’s coven isn’t a source of peace – with it being betrayed from within with dark magic, old secrets and an ancient evil being summoned at the heart of it – an evil whose influence is making all Jane’s jobs that much harder and that much more complicated.

This book was overwhelming. There was a lot happening – with the parley talks, lethal werewolves running around killing people, the Grindylow apparently with its own agenda, Kenmebi both mentoring and threatening to kill Rick, the rogue vampire to hunt down and, of course, Evangeline playing her own game. At times I was almost lost, I kept wondering what plot line we were on and where we were going and why. Usually, such a book annoys me, I wish they’d remove a plot line so the story would flow better, there wouldn’t be so many distractions and I wouldn’t feel like I had to take notes to try and keep up with everything. But not in this case. Yes it was overwhelming but it was equally clear that it was meant to be. As Jane bounced from crisis to crisis, slipping sleep, desperately trying to fit everything in – this was one of the themes of the book; exhaustion, stress and constantly have to run to keep up with everything – and everything being too important to just cast aside or even realistically delay. It makes for a very strong part of the book, being very sustained and well balanced. I was overwhelmed, but I wasn’t lost.

I also like how the storylines come together – it adds the plausibility of not having everything just spontaneously happen at once and prevents everything in Jane’s life happening in complete isolation. It is very well done and doesn’t feel even remotely strained or convoluted – it flows naturally and it’s also completely and utterly unpredictable. I didn’t see the ending, I didn’t see what was happening and discovered everything as and when the characters did – the mystery was mysterious and the confusion was natural and shared with the protagonist.

The pacing was excellent, I was never bored and it never dropped and got lost. The action scenes were well laid out and described – nothing was too rushed or dragged. Everything was described appropriately – it was a very well balanced book, really well written and never once made me want to put it down.