Rafael

This shorter than average entry into the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series still managed to fit in all the usual subjects. Anita is dealing with a new superpower: super strength this time. She is still very concerned with her complicated sex life including a jealous guard who resents her for "stealing" the object of his infatuation and her feelings for Rafael the Rat King who is a friend with benefits.

Rafael has a problem. Because of his relationship with Anita and Jean-Claude, members of his rodere are concerned that he is selling them out to the vampires. Rafael is facing to-the-death challenges frequently by rivals who are afraid of where he is leading them and who want his throne.

The current rival vying for the throne is Hector. show more Rafael had been grooming Hector to possibly become king when he was finished but Hector wants the throne now. Rafael has enough mixed feelings about this up-coming fight that Anita is afraid that he might lose the fight. He wants her to make him her animal to call which should give him more power. But it will cause political problems for her.

Rafael asks Anita to attend the fight but doesn't tell her she'll have to fight for the right to attend. Her super strength lets her defeat the first one to attack her with a silver blade which is a rules violation. Then she's tested by the rodere's brujas. She uses a power gifted to her from the Obsidian Butterfly to win.

But the biggest problem comes when she meets Hector and realizes that he is under the influence of a vampire that Jean-Claude didn't know was in his territory. This unknown vampire is a massive threat that has to be neutralized right away.

The story was fast-paced and brought in characters and powers from earlier books in the series. Thankfully, the shorter length didn't allow for the long-drawn-out sex scenes that dominated other books in the series. I liked the focus on Rafael and the rats. They have been side characters for quite a while and it was nice to get a closer look at their society.

Fans of the Anita Blake series won't want to miss this one. show less

Anita has a date to feed the Ardeur on Rafael, the king of the rats, before he faces off against a challenger. This time, a promising wererat named Hector has called him out and Rafael is less confidant than he should be and is feeling discouraged about the whole thing. He's beginning to think his time as leader is coming to an end and although he might have some more years left, he doesn't want to continue killing the most promising young members of his people.

Matters become more complicated when Anita realizes that Hector is the animal to call of a powerful master vampire. Some big bad vampire is using this challenge as an opportunity to weaken and possibly take over the wererats. If they succeed, Jean Claude's leadership will also be show more in jeopardy. Anita decides to accompany Rafael to the fighting pits and ensure that he is successful and the mystery vampire is located and executed.

This book is bad, but relatively short which is always a blessing. Essentially two things happen in this book, preceded by near endless expository conversations that are tedious, rambling, and almost entirely pointless. The first thing is that Anita has sex with Rafael. The fact that they are going to have sex is established in the first chapter but it will be almost two hours before they actually do the deed because they just keep talking about literally anything that occurs to them. They wander through the Circus of the Damned, discussing Rafael's previous relationships, his penchant for dating "crazy" women, intricacies of Rat culture and political complications around the kingship. Anita's internal monologue is constantly bringing everything to a screeching halt by reminding the reader of things they already know and over explaining everything she says and even informing the reader of things she didn't say and why. Also, the dialogue is so painfully awkward and just simply not how people talk. I'll give an example of the type of thing I mean below:

Random Guard: "Well hello there, Anita Blake, or as my people call you, Gatita Negra."

Anita: "Greetings, Rodrigo, and thank you for using my nickname. It means black kitten, which is a term of endearment and honor. As you know, the wererats are really bigoted about women, but they respect me because I'm not like the other girls."

Rodrigo: "It's true. You're so logical and strong. Which makes you unique among all women who are usually flighty and emotional in a way that displeases us culturally."

The author will not hesitate to just let a boring conversation drag on for pages so that she can be sure to get all her info dumping out and also take time to have people compliment Anita in very cringe ways. In this book, Anita is praised for not "tricking a man by offering him a threesome". It seems that Rafael has only dated women who said they wanted a threesome and then freaked out and stabbed him when he agreed. You know. Because women are liars.

The wererats are the focus of this book which, honestly, was probably a mistake. I won't pretend to be an expert, but the wererats have always seemed like a racist construct to me. At first I just thought that Rafael, the king of the rats, was Mexican. But as we have learned more about the wererats as a group it has become clear that they are all Mexican. Or at least all Latinx. No other shapeshifter group is delimited by race. Some of the tiger clans have Asian influences, but that's only because they've developed ways of bearing live children rather than making new weretigers through their bite. But even they have members of other races. Apparently, not so, with the wererats.

In this book, we learn more about wererat culture. Like that they have witches who gain power from an ancient Aztec goddess. And they settle all their disputes through armed combat. And their only law is machismo and might makes right. Which I suppose isn't that much different from the other groups, really. Of course Anita spends the entire second half of the book ricocheting from one obnoxious confrontation to the next. In each one she has to prove she's the biggest and baddest all over again. This song and dance stopped being interesting about ten books ago, but it's clear that LKH has nothing else to offer.

There's nothing to recommend this book, and nothing of import happens. The bigbad of the book is someone Anita's already fought before and he barely does anything before he's roundly defeated again. At no point is there any tension or worry that the good guys won't come out on top. The final knife fight that the book was leading up to was very boring and anticlimactic. show less

When I saw that this was on NetGalley I got excited. Even though I got declined for an arc of the story I just used it as a friendly reminder that the next book would be out. Short, quick read. Felt rushed in parts and dragged on in others. Wish the author would find a balance in the way the story progresses. She tends to drag out descriptions and history that we don’t really need or at least I didn’t considering that this is book 28 and I have read them all to date. Some parts were really well written and some parts could have used some tender love and care. I felt as though Anita has become more compliant where it comes to her relationships. I didn’t think Anita would acquiesce to her relationships as easily I am so used to her show more being a spitfire. I know that Anita has her regulars and that poly is a big theme in this series but some of it comes across forced. Don’t hate me I will pick up book 29 with a big smile if it is anything like book 27, I loved the story and crime-fighting of 27. I just wish there was a little bit more to the story my favorite parts were from chapter 24 until the end. I only hope that Neva is in the next book the witch is my favorite new addition to the series. With all this being said this is going to be my first Anita Blake book that is getting a 3-star review. show less

Well there

I miss the old Anita books. Why must simple things be explained? Why must characters be explained in great detail in every book we get it Nathaniels eyes are purple but he has to put blue on his license it doesn't need to be said in every book. Why must the same things be explained multiple times in the same book? It's like she's just trying to hit a certain length so she describes things unnecessarily to add more length instead of more plot.

My feelings are a little mixed with this book. There were some things that I really liked about the book but there were also things that I didn’t care for at all. This is the 28th installment in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series and I have read most of the books in the series. I am the first to admit that I haven’t loved them all but I haven’t quite given up on the series just yet.

I was actually pretty excited when I found out about this book. As a long-time reader of the series, I consider myself a fan of the title character in this book and couldn’t wait to see Rafael as the main focus of the book. I really liked learning about the wererats and seeing how things worked in their community. Rafael is facing a serious show more challenge and I really wanted to see things work out in his favor.

There were some things that I didn’t enjoy quite so much. I love action in books and this book had some of that and I really enjoyed those sections. Unfortunately, it sometimes seemed like the characters would have to talk everything over at great length before anything could be done. At the start of the book, Anita and Rafael decide that they want to have sex. Okay, great. They spend so much time talking about where they will have sex and how they will do it that by the time they actually got around to it, I didn’t care anymore. It seemed like 2/3 of the book was the characters talking about what they would do and the other 1/3 was them actually doing those things. I really would have loved less talking and more doing.

Kimberly Alexis did a great job with the narration. I think that she does a great job with the entire cast of characters and I like the fact that she had a very distinctive voice for each individual. I thought that she had a very pleasant voice that was easy to listen to for hours at a time. I do believe that the narration added to my overall enjoyment of the story.

I would recommend this book to fans of this series. I don’t think that this would be a good place for new readers to jump into the series but fans of the series shouldn’t miss this one.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Berkley Publishing Group via NetGalley and purchased a copy of the audiobook. show less

Anita is backing up Rafael in his bid to hold onto his control of the rats. There is a new challenger to the leadership and he is using Antia’s bonds with Rafael to say that he is no longer fit to be king. Turns out there is magic within the rats that Antia didn’t know about. I enjoyed this book. There was feeding of the ardeur but it didn’t consume huge sections of the book. During that scene, Anita finds out that the challenger is a servant to another vampire that is hiding from everyone. The rest of the book centers on going to the place of power for the rats and the fight for the leadership. The reader finds out more about the rat clans then has been discussed in the entire series. There is no US Marshall biz or zombie raising show more in this book just supernatural politics.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss show less

Another trip into the supernatural world of Anita Blake. More politics, less sex. More world development— a good thing. If she ever learns to really trust her powers, the world had better watch out.