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.
There is some wonderful conflict about Anita’s mortality
explored here, the lines she feels she has to cross, the limits she removes for
the sake of protecting the people she cares about. The moment is not treated
lightly, it’s fully given the full horror and gravity it deserves. And, when it
finishes, we can see how it has changed Anita, how cold and hard and disconnected
it made her, how it literally broke a piece inside of her. It was not only one
of the best scenes I’ve read in the series, it’s one of the best scenes I’ve
read in any series.
Her moral questioning is an ongoing theme in the book
that is very powerful. When she does what has to be done repeatedly, she
questions not only whether she is a good person, but also whether she is even
human and whether he can be a good person. With her vampire marks and, of
course, her Necromancy giving her powers above and beyond what she imagined –
can she include herself among humanity? And how many people can she kill – even
torture – and still remain in the good graces of heaven?
It’s almost a shame to go from this to the relationship
drama that inevitably appears in this book. Yet, the relationship drama is
reasonable and no-one acts unreasonably, well, not by the standard of later
books. Jean-Claude has reason to be insecure about Anita dropping everything to
rescue her ex. Richard clearly has feelings for Anita still and, while I cannot
remotely be comfortable with him pushing her when she clearly doesn’t want to
be pushed, there is a foundation for a relationship there – though he needs to
back off. I was interested in the idea of them both seeing other people (at
least, I would be if it didn’t involve so much self-destructive jealousy) but
that was torpedoed in the end.
In general the relationship issues, while not my
favourite thing, are relatively reasonable with a bit of skeevy seasoning. The
sex however?
This is the book where Anita finally has sex with
Richard. And,
as I’ve discussed before, it’s bad bad bad, awful, bad. Raina’s Munin has
control of Anita and decides to invoke a werewolf rite that involves her
running while all the male werewolves chase her down to try and rape her. She
cowers and hides while the men fight each other, sometimes to the death, in
order to reach her. At the end of the chase she is losing time, unable to
think, unable to hold her gun any more, she mystically needs sex that much –
this is their first time together. And, yet again, Anita does not consent.
Similarly, Anita
and other women raise their head again in this book. First of all, the
whole reason for Anita going to
Tennessee is to rescue Richard who has been falsely accused of rape, an
unpleasant trope to begin, especially when their lawyer’s tactics are “let’s
bring up all her past sexual partners!”. Of course, the woman in question,
Betty, is evil, ”wanton” and gets eaten by a demon – especially bad since her
soul is in jeopardy.
Richard has been a busy boy so has plenty of other
lovers. We have Lucy who Anita hates and who returns the sentiment – up to and
including violence and Carrie who Anita tried to hate, but she was crying
pathetically, so is lower enough down the rungs to be spared the hate. Then we
have Mira - evil women who betrayed Nathaniel
- using her wicked wanton sex no less! And then was killed. Roxanne isn’t one of Richard’s lovers but,
guess what? She and Anita don’t get on and end up fighting.
That leaves Richard’s mother (hardly there, argument and
arguing with Richard over his relationship with her) and Marianne. At last, a woman
Anita kind of respects, mainly because Anita throws lots of suspicion at her
constantly and Marianna just takes it. But, it’s ok, Anita reminds us every 5
seconds about her weak heart and how she’s prey and, of course, she needs a
bodyguard to even hang out with the pack – so much weaker than Anita.
Racially, this book is highly erased – but at the same
time it mentions this and acknowledges it. Jamil even talks about how he’s one
of only 2 Black men in the area and that it’s impossible for him to even try to
fit in or be unnoticed, with distinct tones of frustration. It’s not a lot, but
there is an undercurrent of the precious Jamil and Shang-Da face as open POC in
a massively white area – but it’s a passing mention at most.
On the GBLT front we have Asher pining after Anita (and
Anita forgetting his bisexuality) and yet another gay villain. A demonically
evil gay villain who likes to rape his straight captives – needless to say I am
not impressed.
In general I enjoyed the book and it had some amazingly
powerful scenes. Anita’s morality debate, the richness of the world with its
vampire politics and the consequences of travel, the epic show down against a force of
literally pure evil thrown in with some truly excellent scenes make for a
compelling, exciting and fascinating read. Unfortunately it is let down by some
majorly problematic issues and Anita’s personal life is slowly swelling to
affect the plot.
