Series: Anita Blake

Sunday Spotlight: Rafael by Laurell K. Hamilton

Posted February 7, 2021 by Holly in Features, Giveaways | 4 Comments

Sunday Spotlight is a feature we began in 2016. This year we’re spotlighting our favorite books, old and new. We’ll be raving about the books we love and being total fangirls. You’ve been warned. 🙂

Sunday Spotlight: Rafael by Laurell K. HamiltonRafael by Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake #28
Also in this series: Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, Circus of the Damned, The Killing Dance
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: February 9, 2021
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 272
Add It: Goodreads
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Series Rating: four-stars

Rafael, king of the wererats, must fight to the death to defend his crown. He wants Anita Blake, one of his closest allies, with him as he faces an opponent unlike any he’s faced before. He will ask Anita to risk everything to be at his side.…

But some of the wererats fear that Rafael depends too much on Anita and her ties to the vampires. They believe that there is only room in America for one supernatural king, and Rafael will turn them into nothing more than food for the bloodsuckers.

Among his enemies, a new challenger has arisen who is younger, hungrier, and has dark secrets that could destroy both the wererats and the vampires. Rafael will go into the magical heart of his people to find the power and violence that he needs to save them all or die trying.

Excerpt

Excerpt from RAFAEL by Laurell K. Hamilton.

I’d killed the Mother of All Darkness by absorbing her essence while she tried to take over my body and use it for herself. It had been sort of the immovable object meeting the unstoppable force, and most people had been betting on her. She had been the very first vampire, maybe, so old that her original body had been lost and the last body she’d had had been one that she’d successfully possessed. That body had been blown up by a group of mercenaries hired to assassinate her, but all they’d done was destroy the body that had been trapped for a thousand years. They had freed her from her prison to wander like a nightmare to try and find a new body. She’d wanted mine.

Rafael stroked my hair and murmured, “She is dead and gone, Anita. You do not need to fear her.”

I moved out of the circle of his arms. “You never had her try to take over your dreams, or your body.”

“You are quite right,” he said; his face was closed down, reasonable, and blank, hiding what he was feeling and thinking.

“I feel like I should apologize to you, but I don’t know what for,” I said.

He gave a very small smile, but it left his eyes sad. “If I were truly a gentleman we would shower separately and I would prepare for tonight’s battle, but I want to be with you too much to play such games.”

“I want you, too, Rafael,” I said, because that’s what you’re supposed to say when someone declares that kind of attraction. It’s like when someone says I love you; you’re supposed to say it back if it’s even remotely true, unless you’re willing to have that most awkward of modern dating talks, the one where you try to explain that it’s not about love.

“I can only take your words at face value, search your face to see if it matches them, because I cannot read your mind, feel your emotions.”

“You can smell my emotions on my skin, all shapeshifters can,” I said.

“In this moment I know you are not feeling lust, because you are right, I would smell it on you.”

I fought not to look embarrassed or even uncomfortable. I looked at the floor and then forced myself to look up and meet his gaze. “I can’t smell your emotions, but I can read your face and you’re not feeling very lustful either.”

“I cannot disagree, and if this were any other day I would let you go to shower in the room where you shower with your other men, or perhaps that huge bathtub that Jean-Claude has in his rooms, but it is not any other day. I want you as a man wants a woman, but I also want you to feed the ardeur on me.”

“Won’t that weaken you for the fight tonight?”

“If you fed off only me, perhaps, but you will feed off the strength of all who call me king. If it is to be the last time, I want you to take as much power from us as possible for Jean-Claude to share among your people.”

I touched his arm, studying his face trying to read him. “I asked if you thought you would win tonight, and you said yes. Am I missing something? Am I not asking the right questions?”

“He is me thirty years ago, Anita. He has less to lose and more to gain. I have far more to lose and nothing to gain except his death, which I do not want. I think he believes that you will enslave us all, you and Jean-Claude. He is righteous in his goal to tear me from the throne. I am defending what is mine and I am decades too late for that righteous surety of youth.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

He smiled down at me, putting his bigger hand along the side of my face so that I could rub my face in against the weight and warmth of his hand. “Of course, you don’t, you still have that righteous surety.”

I moved away from his hand, frowning. “Not as much as I used to have.”

“You are starting to grow into the next stage of your life, Anita. Your job as a vampire executioner and now as a marshal has aged your attitude faster. Hector knows nothing but his clan. He has risen as high as he can within the local clan, so he sets his sight on the highest seat among my kind.”

“You said he’s you thirty years ago.”

“Very much so.”

“So how old is he?”

“Are you asking how old I am?”

I stared up at his raven-black hair, the unlined face. If I hadn’t looked into the wisdom and patience in his eyes, I’d have put him at no more than thirty, but his eyes gave it away almost like some of the vampires did. They were ageless, but their eyes could show an echo of the great weight of all those years, as if there were ways to grow old that had nothing to do with the body.

From RAFAEL published by arrangement with Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Laurell K. Hamilton.

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter

Giveaway Alert

We’re giving one lucky winner their choice of one of our Sunday Spotlight books. Use the widget below to enter for one of this month’s features.

Sunday Spotlight: February 2021

Are you as excited for this release as we are? Let us know how excited you are and what other books you’re looking forward to this year!

About Laurell K. Hamilton

Laurell Kaye Hamilton (born February 19, 1963) is an American multi-genre writer. She is best known as the author of two series of stories, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter and Merry Gentry.

Her New York Times-bestselling Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series centers on Anita Blake, a professional zombie raiser, vampire executioner and supernatural consultant for the police, which includes novels, short story collections, and comic books. Six million copies of Anita Blake novels are in print. Her New York Times-bestselling Merry Gentry series centers on Meredith Gentry, Princess of the Unseelie court of Faerie, a private detective facing repeated assassination attempts.

Both fantasy series follow their protagonists as they gain in power and deal with the dangerous “realities” of worlds in which creatures of legend live.

Laurell was born in rural Arkansas but grew up in northern Indiana with her grandmother. Her education includes degrees in English and biology from Marion College (now called Indiana Wesleyan University).


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Throwback Thursday Guest Review: The Killing Dance by Laurell K. Hamilton

Posted May 30, 2019 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Features, Reviews | 4 Comments

Throwback Thursday Guest Review: The Killing Dance by Laurell K. HamiltonReviewer: Melissa
The Killing Dance by Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake #6
Also in this series: Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, Circus of the Damned
Publisher: Penguin, Berkley
Publication Date: April 4, 2006
Format: Print
Source: Purchased
Point-of-View: Third
Genres: Paranormal Romance
Pages: 368
Add It: Goodreads
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Series Rating: four-stars

Dating both a vampire and a werewolf isn't easy. But just to complicate Anita's already messy life, someone has put a price on her head. Love cannot save her this time, so she turns to Edward, hitman extraordinaire, for help. But finding the person behind the threat won't be easy, because as both a vampire hunter and zombie reanimator, Anita has made a lot of enemies-both human and otherwise.

Every Thursday, we’ll be posting throwback reviews of our favorite and not-so-favorite books. Enjoy!

This review was originally posted on May 14, 2008.

Melissa‘s review of The Killing Dance by Laurell K. Hamilton.

So, I saw the new LKH book at a bookstore. It interested me. I started the series from the beginning. I’m now up to the 6th book in the Anita Blake series. I love them all.

One reason why I love Anita is that she has a hitman/hitmen after her and she is still making threats to monsters. She just can’t seem to keep her mouth shut and doesn’t give f*** who she pisses off. There are a couple of different bad guys in this book.

The bad guys caught me off guard. One, I totally didn’t see coming, I just thought it was beneath him/her to hire a hit man. The other, well traitors are among us. Good old Edward appears in this book. He is such a mystery to me, he just pops in and out of books, but we really don’t know too much about him. Anita’s love triangle is getting complicated. She knows she can’t date both of her monsters indefinitely, but can’t choose either. What’s a girls gonna do.

All 3 of them are powerful. More powerful together than apart. Richard is her ideal man, except he has one flaw, he is a werewolf that won’t kill. His morals are starting to make Anita think less of him, cause trouble in the pack for him, and piss him off. Jean-Claude is a vampire and although he turns her on, she can’t get down with it, because he is the undead. I will tell you that she makes some sort of decision in this book. But, was it the right one??? And how will it affect their combined power?

Now for the part, I didn’t like..there wasn’t one. I liked the whole book.

Favorite quote:

“Gag me with a spoon”

(you gotta admit, that’s just funny)

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

This book is available from Jove. You can buy it here or here in eBook format.

Anita Blake


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Sunday Spotlight: The Serpentine by Laurell K. Hamilton

Posted August 12, 2018 by Holly in Features, Giveaways | 5 Comments

Sunday Spotlight is a feature we began in 2016. This year we’re spotlighting our favorite books, old and new. We’ll be raving about the books we love and being total fangirls. You’ve been warned. 🙂

Sunday Spotlight

Sunday Spotlight: The Serpentine by Laurell K. HamiltonSerpentine (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #26) by Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake #26
Also in this series: Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, Circus of the Damned, The Killing Dance

Publication Date: August 7, 2018
Point-of-View: First
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 496
Add It: Goodreads
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Series Rating: four-stars

Vampire hunter Anita Blake has managed to overcome everything she faces. But this time there's a monster that even she doesn't know how to fight...

A remote Florida island is the perfect wedding destination for the upcoming nuptials of Anita's fellow U.S. Marshal and best friend Edward. For Anita, the vacation is a welcome break, as it's the first trip she gets to take with wereleopards Micah and Nathaniel. But it's not all fun and games and bachelor parties...

In this tropical paradise Micah discovers a horrific new form of lycanthropy, one that has afflicted a single family for generations. Believed to be the result of an ancient Greek curse, it turns human bodies into a mass of snakes.

When long-simmering resentment leads to a big blowout within the wedding party, the last thing Anita needs is more drama. But it finds her anyway when women start disappearing from the hotel, and worse--her own friends and lovers are considered the prime suspects. There's a strange power afoot that Anita has never confronted before, a force that's rendering those around her helpless in its thrall. Unable to face it on her own, Anita is willing to accept help from even the deadliest places. Help that she will most certainly regret--if she survives at all, that is...

Order the Book:

AMAZON || BARNES AND NOBLE || KOBO

Excerpt

Donna’s hand hesitated above my arm, as if she was going to touch the claw marks just below the burn. The scars from the shapeshifted witch made the cross a little crooked. Edward hadn’t been there for that wound. I’d been working with the police on my own that time, before I had a badge and was officially on the job myself, back when I’d just been a vampire executioner, consulting with the police. Edward had just been Edward, cold-blooded assassin who specialized in killing monsters, both human and otherwise. I hadn’t even known he had a legal identity as Ted Forrester, bounty hunter. Now we were both U.S. Marshals with the Preternatural Branch. We did the same job legally and for Edward, for far less money.

She pointed vaguely at the small slick scar on the side of my arm, and then the thin, almost dainty scar on my right arm that was barely noticeable. “I know that’s a bullet graze and that’s a knife wound, because Ted has similar ones.” She looked at me, her brown eyes going large in her tanned face. She looked suddenly younger, or more innocent, as if I got a glimpse of what she might have looked like at fifteen. “I stopped asking about where the other scars come from, because Ted told me the truth and they were almost all stories like the werewolf attack that killed my first husband, except that Ted goes out hunting the monsters. The monster that killed Frank broke into our house. It was a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy, but Ted and you go out looking for it.”

“We hunt rogue vampires and lycanthropes that have murdered people. We keep people safe by killing the things that kill them.”

She nodded, biting her lower lip, the frown lines deep between her eyes. There was real fear in them. Maybe she was remembering the death of her first husband, and that was probably in the mix of terror, but I thought it was more anticipating future tragedy than dwelling on the past. I looked into Donna’s eyes and saw the fear that every time the man she loved left for work, he might not come back. I could tell her that he was more likely to die in a car crash, or from a dozen innocent household accidents, than be eaten by monsters, but it wouldn’t help the emotions I saw in her eyes.

“I know you and Ted save lives. I know you keep other families safe from the monsters. I know that.”

I reached out and touched her arm. “You know that Ted is the best, the absolute best at this job.”

She nodded again, a little too fast and a little too often. “He says the same about you.” She grabbed my hand where it touched her arm and held on. “I always feel better when you’re with him, because he says you’re the best, next to him.”

“He helped train me, so he’s still complimenting himself.” I smiled when I said it and got a weak smile in return.

“I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to him,” she said. She started tearing up. I hugged her because I didn’t know what else to do, but apparently it was the wrong thing, because she started crying harder, clinging to me like she was really going to start sobbing. Fuck, what did I do now? How did I make her feel better about one of the truths of our job?

She went very still in my arms, and the crying slowed. She pushed away with her face still wet with tears and asked, “What’s on your back?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“I felt it.”

I half turned and she touched the edge of the place where a vampire servant had tried to drive one of my own wooden stakes into my back. It was low on my back, and they’d just tried to shove the stake in without using a mallet. It doesn’t work that way in real life, not if you’re only human-strong, anyway. Lucky for me it had just been a human in league with the vampire I’d been hunting, and not a vampire.

“That’s one of your own stakes driven into you, isn’t it?” she asked. She wasn’t crying anymore, so it was better, right?

“Yeah,” I said.

“Ted has one like it; that’s why I know what it is. You know it’s right there.” She touched the side of my hip where bathing suits and underwear covered.

“I’ve never seen that one.”

“Oh,” she said, and looked confused.

“I’ve never seen Ted nude, so I missed that one.”

There was a derisive snort, half laugh and half just rude noise, from the other side of the dress rack. Dixie, one of Donna’s oldest friends and a bridesmaid, came into view.

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter

Giveaway Alert

We’re giving one lucky winner their choice of one of our Sunday Spotlight books. Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter for one of this month’s features.

Sunday Spotlight: August 2018

Are you as excited for this release as we are? Let us know how excited you are and what other books you’re looking forward to this year!

About the Author

Laurell K. Hamilton

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST | GOODREADS

Laurell Kaye Hamilton (born February 19, 1963) is an American multi-genre writer. She is best known as the author of two series of stories, Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter and Merry Gentry.

Her New York Times-bestselling Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series centers on Anita Blake, a professional zombie raiser, vampire executioner and supernatural consultant for the police, which includes novels, short story collections, and comic books. Six million copies of Anita Blake novels are in print. Her New York Times-bestselling Merry Gentry series centers on Meredith Gentry, Princess of the Unseelie court of Faerie, a private detective facing repeated assassination attempts.

Both fantasy series follow their protagonists as they gain in power and deal with the dangerous “realities” of worlds in which creatures of legend live.

Laurell was born in rural Arkansas but grew up in northern Indiana with her grandmother. Her education includes degrees in English and biology from Marion College (now called Indiana Wesleyan University).


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Guest Review: Circus of the Damned (An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel) by Laurell K. Hamilton

Posted April 20, 2008 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 4 Comments

Guest Review: Circus of the Damned (An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel) by Laurell K. HamiltonReviewer: Melissa
Circus of the Damned by Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake #3
Also in this series: Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, The Killing Dance
Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date: September 24th 2002
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 336
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
three-half-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

First time in trade paperback: the third novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.
In Circus of the Damned-now in trade paperback for the first time-a rogue master vampire hits town, and Anita gets caught in the middle of an undead turf war. Jean-Claude, the Master Vamp of the city, wants her for his own-but his enemies have other plans. And to make matters worse, Anita takes a hit to the heart when she meets a stunningly handsome junior high science teacher named Richard Zeeman. They're two humans caught in the crossfire-or so Anita thinks.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

This is the third book in the Anita Blake series. If you haven’t read the first 2 books, or reviews of them, this won’t make too much sense. Halloween is approaching so Anita has been slammed at work. It makes sense, if I was going to have the dead raised, I would want it on Halloween. If there was a full moon on Halloween, I would pay double. Although Anita is still working with the police, it doesn’t seem to be as focal, or as gory. (Thank goodness, the kid’s hand from the last book still makes me gag!)

But there is a pack of vampires chewing on people. The strange part is, it’s almost as if they want to be caught. But why? Vampire war. That is what it is all boils down to. The new bad guys introduced are older, freakier, and meaner. There are “lamia” or “snake people”, a vampire that can be dated back to Aztec warrior times, and Oliver. Now Oliver, he is not what I expected. Oliver is compared to a reconstructed Homo erectus skull. Yeah, we are talking like the first rendition of man here. Which doesn’t really scare me, I would think I could out wit him, ya know. Throw a steak and he would run after it like my dog. But since vampires get more powerful with time, he is a force to be reckoned with. Jean-Claude, St. Louis’ master vampire, is young in vampire terms. So all the meanies are moving in on him. Attempting to rule the city. Getting to Jean-Claude, by getting to Anita.

Anita, known as the Executioner to vampires, has more vamp kills than anyone in history. Jean-Claude has been trying to claim power by “taming” her. The wicked games he is playing to make her give in and be his human servant just pisses her off. When he marks her for the 3rd time she looses it. Being a woman, when a man pisses us off, what do we do…hurt them where it counts, right? So, Anita sells him out.

WTF….Ok, I really like Anita, but come on, trading in one bad guy for another? That’s just plain stupid. Maybe she is just not thinking straight b/c she is falling for a werewolf???

I didn’t like this book as much as I like the first 2. A big part of it was the fact that Anita sold out Jean-Claude. She has been fighting her attraction to him for the first 2 books, and still in the 3rd. She has standards, and they don’t include the un-dead, but do include a were-wolf you just met? Hhhmmm, I have to digest this a little. I am secretly rooting for Jean-Claude. Now, that in and of itself totally freaks me out. By description, I didn’t think I would look twice. Well, ok, maybe look twice, but not drool over!

My favorite line from the book:

“So he gets furry once a month. No one’s perfect.”

3.5 out of 5

This book is available from Jove. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

three-half-stars


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Guest Review: The Laughing Corpse (An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel) by Laurell K. Hamilton

Posted April 16, 2008 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 6 Comments

Guest Review: The Laughing Corpse (An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel) by Laurell K. HamiltonReviewer: Melissa
The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake #2
Also in this series: Guilty Pleasures, Circus of the Damned, The Killing Dance
Publisher: Headline
Publication Date: October 1st 2009
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 300
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
four-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

'The older the zombie, the bigger the death needed to raise it.'
After a few centuries, the only death 'big enough' is a human sacrifice.
I know because I'm an animator. My name is Anita Blake. Working for Animators, Inc. is just a job - like selling insurance. But all the money in the world wasn't enough for me to take on the particular job Harold Gaynor was offering. Somebody else did, though - a rogue animator.
Now he's not just raising the dead... he's raising Hell. And it's up to me to stop it.

The Laughing Corpse is the second book in the Anita Blake series. I enjoyed the first, the second is just as good, and now I’m hooked. This is another piece of Anita’s life, and what she is up against. Anita is a very busy girl: she raises the dead to pay her bills, works on the side with the Police RPIT department (Regional Preternatural Investigation Team) handling supernatural crime, and slays vampires.

Jean-Claude, the new master Vampire, is still after Anita. He is trying to make her his human slave. Which totally has it benefits, but Anita has a strong attachment to her soul, so she fights her attraction to him. Anita is an animator by profession, which means she raises corpses, making them zombies. Mr. Gaynor, potential client, wants her to raise a 283 yr old corpse. But, in order to do it, she would have to sacrifice a human. She refuses. Man o’ man is he persistent. Money, violence, blackmail whatever it will take, Mr. Gaynor will try.

In Anita’s side job working for the police, she is chasing after some THING. Whatever it is, just scares the hell out of me. It is going across the city, consuming families, the whole family, very messily, leaving body parts here and there. And if that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, the most powerful voodoo priestess in the Midwest, Dominga Salvador, is trying to recruit her. Dominga plays in the dark side of Voodoo and Anita doesn’t want anything to do with it. But, Anita is Anita, and offends Dominga. Not good, not good at all, someone who can conjure up creatures of the night is not a person you want to piss off.

I like how there is more than one bad guy, and multiple things going on at one time. The story itself is good. I also like the characters, old and new, they are all interesting. It really makes the pages just fly by.

My favorite quote from the book:

I nodded. “Okay, you got a deal.” It was a business expense. Computer paper, ink pens medium point, one prostitute, manila file folders. See, it fit right in.

Now for the parts I didn’t like. Anita’s relationship with Jean-Claude isn’t moving fast enough for me, but I will survive. The other piece that I did not like has to do with children. Families are being eaten. I can deal with that, but there are just some parts that have to do with the children that are too graphic for me. (Spoilers, highlight to read)One part in particular, at a crime scene she picks up a toddlers hand (that is all there is left of the child) and pretended to throw it at a cop. It straight up made me gag. I have small children myself, not something I want to picture.

Overall a little graphic, but I’m still addicted.

4.25 out of 5

This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

four-stars


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