Micah

Anita gets one of her infamous early morning calls from her friend and fellow animator, Larry. His pregnant wife is in the hospital so he's unable to complete a contract with the FBI. He needs Anita to do him a solid and cover for him with the feds. It's a pretty simple job, raising a zombie to give testimony in an important trial. The intended zombie hasn't been dead long so it won't be much of a struggle. Micah will go with Anita to make sure she can keep the ardeur fed while on the trip.

The whole thing should be a piece of cake, except, this is the first time she and Micah have gone away together. They've been on dates before, but they haven't been together alone for more than a few hours before. Anita is nervous, even scared. Will show more this trip reveal a weakness in their relationship? Will Micah realize that they don't have much in common and dump her? Oh, and of course things will go wrong in the graveyard as well. Turns out the zombie she raises believes he was murdered and will go berserk trying to attack his killer.

This book is barely a novella. It's essentially a mediocre sex scene and an excuse to give Micah some back story. None of it is particularly unique or illuminating. More trauma. More male insecurities that sound extremely familiar. A lot of these books are starting to feel recycled. show less

"The Anita Blake series started off great and then when down a porn toilet, but I can't stop reading them because of the characters. This little novel is a nice departure from the trend of the series and almost, ALMOST, feels like the good ole days. Even if Micah is one of the most boring characters. Micah and Anita get their first alone time when they fly out of state to raise a witness in a trial. As usual, Anita is bizarrely prickly and easily offended, and obscure metaphysical crap makes it all go wrong wrong wrong, but there's stil something readable here."

The latest in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. The premise is interesting; in an alternate universe, vampires, werewolves, fairies and various other fantasy beings exist and (in the United States, at least) have civil rights. Our heroine is a professional necromancer; with appropriate magic, she can bring the dead back (temporarily). There are all sorts of reasons for this; you can ask Uncle Henry where he stashed the family silver, you can get clarification of the provision of a will, etc., etc. As a sideline, Ms. Blake is also a professional vampire executioner. It seems that while vampires have civil rights, there are certain problems associated with criminal law as it applies to beings that are supernaturally fast, strong, show more and able to control the minds of others. Thus once a vampire has been convicted of a crime, nobody takes any chances with appeals, etc.; you kill them right there before they get a chance to do the various fancy eldritch maneuvers.


So far, so good. The earlier novels in the series established various facts about the alternate world (which sometimes looks a lot like the World of Darkness game series; I surprised there hasn’t be a lawsuit, as there was over the Underworld movies.) Every major city has a vampire prince that is in charge of (and has a certain degree of supernatural power over) the other vampires in the city. There are various wereanimal “clans”; so far werewolves are the most important, but there are also wereleopards, wererats, werebears, and a rather nervous wereswan. These also have leaders (the leader of a werewolf pack is the Ulfric). Nagas, fairies, and zombies put in an appearance. And, since these are Gothic with a capital G romances, the heroine has extracurricular interests in all of them.


At first, these were relatively straightforward Vampire gets Girl, Vampire loses Girl, Vampire gets Girl or Vampire-Werewolf-Girl love triangle type stories. While riding home on the bus one day reading one, I explained the setup to the person in the next seat. When I saw her again a few weeks later, she was hooked. She set up a book reading circle where she and her friends debated whether Anita should go for the sensitive and caring junior-high-school science teacher and werewolf Richard or let the devastating sexy Vampire Prince of St. Louis, Jean-Claude, bite her in the neck. This is fun in a trashy and escapist sort of way. I’ve always found myself a little curious about romance novels as a psychological insight into what the opposing sex finds romantic. One thing that’s interesting is the attention to detail in the clothing of the men in these stories; apparently, it’s actually necessary for vampires to wear sexy clothes - something to do with their powers - and thus Jean-Claude and Asher and the rest of the coterie are always wearing ruffled silk shirts and tight leather pants and velvet jackets and the like. Perhaps “Vampire Eye for the Live Guy” would be a success.


There are, alas, some flaws. One is Anita’s extraordinarily casual use of firearms. Admittedly if you are dealing with the undead, it’s probably best to shoot first and ask questions later, but Anita Blake has a penchant for whipping out her Browning High-Power (enough gun for vampires?) and sticking it up somebody’s nose every time there’s a minor disagreement. Further, the author, at least in the early novels, is stunningly ignorant on firearm mechanics; in an egregious example, she gives Anita a handgun that “can be loaded with .22s, .38s or .44s”, apparently confusing three firearm models with a single weapon that can chamber any cartridge. (In a later book, she acknowledges the assistance of firearms and self-defense author Massad Ayoub in setting her straight on this). Anita Blake has a constant chip on her shoulder with authority; any encounter with a police officer, FBI agent, etc., always provokes a scene in which Ms. Blake has to prove herself to “the boys” yet again. You would think that since she has the highest kill list of any vampire executioner, word would get around among the law enforcement community. Further, Ms. Hamiliton has a problem not unusual in successful fantasy and science fiction series; the temptation to keep adding stuff to the world as you go along. Thus, the various vampires, werecreatures, necromancers, etc. keep acquiring new powers whenever necessary to help the plot along or get them out of a tight spot. The fantasy and science fiction that appeals to me the most is the most internally consistent; The Lord of the Rings and (to a lesser extent) Harry Potter are some of the best examples. In Anita Blake’s world, on the other hand, we are continuously finding new facts about the supernatural that we were apparently supposed to know all along.


This leads to the most recent novels, including Micah. Ms. Hamilton’s audience apparently indicated a desire for more sex scenes and Ms. Hamilton accommodated with unsettling enthusiasm. Her heroine, as the result of close encounters – extremely close encounters - with the undead, has acquired something described as ardeur, which has turned her into a polyandrous nymphomaniac. She’s currently involved with three vampires, a werewolf, and two wereleopards (I think; I may have lost track). I suppose there’s some chauvinistic sour grapes here; if the novels featured a male protagonist with a harem of exotic lovers; I probably would be snickering rather than being creeped out. As it is, I’m amazed the poor woman has time and energy for her day - um, night - job.


The plot of Micah is relatively thin. Anita is called in at the last minute to fly to Pittsburgh and raise a dead witness to testify in a Federal case. She has to bring one of her men (Micah) along so in case the ardeur strikes at the wrong moment she doesn’t have to tackle a stranger on the street. There is the usual confrontation with law enforcement - in this case the FBI - at the airport. She and Micah adjourn for an elaborate and anatomically detailed tryst which takes up the middle third of the book, and then show up for work in a cemetery at midnight. Raising the dead goes badly, a Browning High-Power is Not Enough Gun for a zombie, and Anita ends up in a hospital for about the twentieth time. She turns out to have a few more new powers and we’re left with some teasers for the next book.


Overall, three stars for the series, two for this book - unless you are particularly interested in wereleopard sex; then bump it up a star. show less

Although this installment in the series is more focused on character and relationship than any of the fuller mystery plots that you find in most of the series, it's still got a better balance than the similarly focused Jason, and Hamilton's descriptions of magic are so lush that the plot actually feels heftier than it is. The first portion of the book is far more focused on relationship and character, while the second half takes a turn toward plot, magic, and furthering the series itself.

I don't see this ending up as a favorite in the series for Hamilton fans who've been reading from the beginning, but it was a fast and satisfying read, worth the time.

I'd certainly recommend the series, and while it doesn't necessarily need to be read show more in order at all points (though that certainly helps), I definitely wouldn't start with this one since it's not particularly representative. show less

I bought a used copy in good shape and it's signed by the author!

I purchased the book sight-unseen. This book was very short, more like a novella. The page count is misleading because the font was rather large and the spacing was wide. Really a cheap shot to those buying the book. Glad I didn't pay full price, but wish I had paid less.

I did enjoy the book. It was more concise. No long rambling passages with Anita boohooing about her powers and her conflicted feelings about the ardeur that she has to feed with sex. Or Richard boohooing about hating being a "monster" and being jealous of Anita's lovers.

This book told us more about Micah's past--what is it with Anita that she's so attracted to broken people. Or Maybe people who were show more broken and are making the best of things.

This had the supernatural crime that I enjoy. A fairly decent mix of plot and sex. I'm just sorry it was so short and sold as a stand-alone book. show less

A nice little domestic novella with a single plot line for a change.

Rereading 2018 ..backstory for Micah and reintroduction and a bit more on Agent
Franklin. The zombie story was neat. Out of 245 pages only 23 involved sex, which for
Anita is practically celibacy. Again, I read the reviews and wondered at the vituperation, as well as at the fact that the most negative reviews were written by people that bragged that they didn't pay for the book..so why bitch at its size. A novella is a legitimate form of book, if the price isn't too high. I checked....it was the same price as Incubus Dreams and Dance Macabre which each had tiny fonts and 722 pages for Incubus and 516 pages for Dance is a lot for the money so I sort of feel like taking show more the three books..each the same price...add up the word count and divide and I wasn't being ripped off). I enjoyed the book, a quick easy read. show less

This reminds me of that classic yet devastating complaint: short, but not short enough. Don't let the 300 pages fool you--this is a novella, not a novel, using font tricks to make you think you're paying full price for a full novel. And even for a novella, this feels padded to me. And unfortunately, the padding is all about the title character, Micah. I admit part of my prejudice against Micah is that he came with Narcissus in Chains, where I felt the series went off the rails with the ardeur. With that as a factor, it felt as if Anita was taking Micah with her as take-out. I miss Richard and Jean-Claude. I also miss the focus on a supernatural mystery, and there Micah is a bit of an improvement on the plot/porn ratio of the later show more books. Not by much mind you. I still felt as if this book was claustrophobically centered on Anita and Micah's hotel room. show less