Anita is faced with a new challenge- a professional
hitman. For vast sum of money, someone is paying professionals to kill her –
and kill her quickly. In many ways this is far more terrifying than anything
she has faced before – she has faced witches and werewolves, vampires and even
faeries all with murderous intent, but never a coldly professional human
killing her for business. And never one willing to use modern technology to do
it.
She and Edward have to find a way to keep her alive and, for preference draw out both the hitmen and the person paying for them so they can be put out of business. Permanently.
Alas, she can’t focus on anything so simple as a death
threat – not with werewolf politics playing such a large role. Tensions between
Richard and his pack leader, Marcus are getting ever higher, with the pack
splitting in half between the two contenders. Richard could defeat Marcus – but
the only way to be the new king is to kill the old one – something Richard refuses
to do. Marcus and Raina have no such compunctions and are doing their best to
use his morality – and his vulnerable people – against him.
There’s also a visitor in town. Sabin is a vampire who
has given up blood and has suffered from a virulent disease because of it,
rotting alive. It’s hoped that Anita’s powers as a Necromancer may be able to
cure him. But to do that involves Anita exploring her powers with both Richard and
Jean-Claude and discovering how their magic can work together – which could
also be useful in making Marcus and Raina back down.
And of course, there is the big relationship conflict.
Anita and Richard go ever closer but Jean-Claude is still there, demanding
equal time. Anita has to make her choice – and deal with the fallout of it when
she does. To say nothing of the standard dramas of vampire politics, new
arrivals and the drama they can bring.
As ever with Anita Blake, I love how we have several separate
storylines yet they all come together. Anita has a busy life but you see how
the threads are connected at the end. The only thing I will say is that it’s
becoming expected now – an established part of Hamilton’s style that we don’t expect
side-plots to be side-plots per se, but more likely a separate branch of the
main plot we haven’t seen yet. Still it’s interesting, really well done, comes
together elegantly with excellent pacing and the right amount of attention paid
to each line. The clues are there, even if you don’t put them together until
hindsight. It’s, in short, a brilliant mystery story. Well paced, information
well delivered and action, tension and theme well maintained. The world
building was also extremely well done, there were some lectures but always within
appropriate context and never just info-dumped. Questions were answered but not
over explained and plenty was shown as well as told.
I like the wordiness of Anita’s point of view, it sets
them theme, adds context, world building and wonderful snarky commentary as
well as having an almost noir feeling to it. It is something I’ve liked in
previous books as well. But this book definitely crosses the line into over-description,
especially with the men. There is too much description of how she and Richard interacts,
of what Richard looks like and even of Richard’s house – I really didn’t need
an itemised list of Richard’s furniture, or details like his washing up. And
with so many vampires and people in spiffy clothes, there was just a lot more
excessively lenthy description here that became dull and overdone. Some pages
felt skippable simply because so much time was spent on Anita describing things
or Richard’s angst train going round and round in circles.
There’s an interesting theme that’s ongoing about Richard’s
self-acceptance and whether he could even endure Anita’s acceptance of him
since he hates what he is so much. If she accepts him, when he is so awful,
then doesn’t that say bad things about Anita? There’s a similarly huge conflict
over Richard’s idealism. His morals aren’t wrong – but are they appropriate for
his situation? And it’s all very well being willing to die for your convictions,
but what about when people have supported you and rely on you for protection?
What do you do to protect those you love and care about? Which, of course, also
brings us to Sabin’s situation. To say nothing of Anita’s increasing
willingness to kill when necessary.
While I do like Jean-Claude as a character and I do like
his relationship with Anita, the foundation is shaky. I’ve said before that
it’s skeevy that Jean-Claude continued (and continues) to push Anita into a
relationship even though she said no. This gets worse when he threatens to kill
Richard unless she dates him – and allows him equal access to her body as
Richard has. Yes, it’s worded in ways around it – that Anita dismissed
Jean-Claude because he wasn’t human and the only reason she allowed Richard
close is because she didn’t realise he was a werewolf. That’s a valid argument,
certainly. But while Jean-Claude may have a point about Anita’s biases, it
still doesn’t change that she said no and the only reason that no changed into
a grudging and limited yes is because Jean-Claude threatened violence. That is
not ok.
And, to try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, I’m
similarly unhappy that sex between them happens only when Anita is hurt, lonely
and extremely vulnerable. She describes herself as broken and wounded and in
pain, screaming in rage and sobbing heart broken, desperate tears. This is not
the time to have sex with someone. Even if they do initiate, even if they do
consent – it’s predatory, it’s exploitative. That’s when you say “look, sleep
on it, if you feel the same in the morning, certainly. Now let us spend the
night in comforting cuddling and eating a full tub of ice cream”.
This is a huge barrier in what is otherwise a fascinating
internal debate about relationships. Anita, stepping outside the endless
stereotype of what a woman should want/need, continually looks at whether life
with Richard would even work. Beyond the werewolf/vampire angst, she wonders
about life behind a picket fence with children – a “normal life” would actually
fit her. Does she even want it? She continually looks at Richard’s life and
Richard’s home and Richard’s morals and Richard’s expectations and it’s jarring
how it doesn’t fit her as a person. Then she turns to Jean-Claude and sees the
many ways they do fit, their morality, their ruthlessness, their lifestyles –
but then she turns that back on herself and wonders what it says about her if
she cannot – or does not want to – fit into the white picket fence norm.
It started in the last book and continued into this one,
sometimes it’s overt, sometimes subtle, but it’s a maintained theme of Anita
doubting whether all the things she’s expected to want (represented by Richard)
really fit what she actually wants – and is she a bad person for wanting
something different (represented by Jean-Claude). It’s a wonderfully subtle theme and one that
is pretty masterfully presented.
Now for some major inclusion problems – Raina and Gabriel. Both bisexual, both into BDSM, both perverted, evil, raping, sadistic monsters. Depraved bisexual and sadistic kinky person are both overdone and lazy tropes
There were more women in this book – Catherine and Silvie
(who is barred from the upper levels of the pack due to being a lesbian) but
both play very minor roles. Anita is very much in a very very male world.
All in all this book has some major flaws and the writing
is shakier but at the same time it maintains some excellent ongoing themes and
concepts. There is depth here and nuance and a lot of fascinating food for
thought. The moral questions, the life questions, questions of self-acceptance,
societal expectation and images of who we want to be versus images of who we
actually are. If you look for it there is a lot more depth here than you generally
find in any fiction, let alone urban fantasy.
