Raising the Dead for Bad Reasons

“I’ve earned my reputation, but if you really did your research on me then you also know that I don’t raise zombies for kicks, or thrill seekers, or tormented relatives unless they have a plan.”

When Anita Blake meets with prospective client Tony Bennington, who is desperate to have her reanimate his recently deceased wife, she is full of sympathy of his loss. Anita knows something about love, and she knows everything about loss. But what she also knows, though Tony Bennington seems unwilling to be convinced, is that the thing she can do as a necromancer isn’t the miracle he thinks he needs. The creature that Anita could coerce to step out of the late Mrs. Bennington’s grave would not be the lovely Mrs. Bennington. Not really. And not for long.

Anita has been relaxing just a bit with the men in her own life. The affectionate warmth of being with them brings out something softer in her, a sense of safety she can almost trust. They do love her; that part is forever and for sure. But flirting with feeling safe is a dangerous thing…

Title: Flirt
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake, Book 18
Start & Finished: 7/17/10
Published: February 2, 2010
Publisher: Berkley Publishing (Penguin)
Pages: 171
Genre: Mystery, Urban Fantasy-Romance

The eighteenth book and second shortest book (Micah is the shortest) in her Anita Blake series, Laurell K. Hamilton goes back to the root of what made this series so popular with Flirt. A lot of flirting happens in this book- hence the title- some casual, some not-so-casual, and some that can be downright deadly. With no zombie raisings for the last couple of books, it’s great to see Anita back to doing what she does best, raising the dead. However, she finds out fairly quickly that it’s not too much safer than any of her other work, especially with her having so many men in her life that can be liabilities.

Ms. Hamilton said that Flirt was inspired by an incident with friends at a diner. She and her husband went to a party at a friend’s house that she had to fly to (like Anita, Ms. Hamilton is afraid of flying) and met the writer for The Devil’s Panties. Ms. Hamilton said she realized that “here were two artists experiencing the same weekend, but taking entirely different things away from it.” While Jennie Breeden (the webcomic author) seemed to walk through a world that was “brighter, happier, even funnier,” Hamilton experienced a version that was “darker, more overtly sexual, even aberrant, violent, sometimes violently sexy, and an innocent moment turned into a potential for murder and horror in [her] head.” Ms. Hamilton claimed that this was an eye-opening experience and helped her lighten up somewhat so that when she was out to lunch with the same friends later on (without Breeden), the scene in the book in the diner with the waiter, Nathaniel, and Anita occurred in real life. She said as she was leaving, “If Jennie were here she’d turn this into a funny, charming comic strip, but if I ever used it as an idea, it would all go horribly wrong. There would be violence, or violent sex, or both, and a high body count.” Well, it didn’t go wrong but it did lead to those things eventually and this one incident was what inspired her to write Flirt.

Again, like Skin Trade, this book is more plot driven than the last two books and less about the sex, however because Anita is practically a succubus now it does crop up. I found it interesting because Flirt seems more like the earlier books in this series which I’ve always loved (the later ones are good but I tend to not enjoy those as much) but Anita does collect a new man in this book, he’s a werelion. Not sure how that will effect Haven (Cookie Monster) yet. I really like him but it doesn’t seem like Anita does very much. There are actually no vampires in this one but of course, they are mentioned however, it was very refreshing to not have an Anita Blake story that wasn’t cluttered with all of her men.

This was a fairly quick read that the author wrote at the same time as one of her Merry books Divine Misdemeanors. Though the next book Bullet was released on months after this one, there is a year between them so we’ll see how well everyone has adjusted to everything by then. So in Flirt there are "new bad guys, new werelions, romance, flirting, fighting, sex, violence, preternatural psychics, and zombies." We also learn just how far will Anita go to save herself and those she loves in this book. Sometimes I think this series has gone on long enough and then Ms. Hamilton pulls something like Flirt out of her hat and it renews my faith in her and her lovely characters.

Note: A short comic strip appears in the back Flirt by the writer Jennie Breeden for the webcomic The Devil’s Panties illustrating the inspiration scene mentioned above.

Favorite Quotes

“If I could raise her from the dead for real for you, maybe I would. I won’t debate the whole religious/philosophical problem with you, but the truth is that even I can’t do what you want. I raise zombies, Mr. Bennington, and that is not the same thing as resurrection of the dead. I’m good, maybe the best there is in the business, but I’m not that good. No one is.”

Seemed this was my week for people wanting my very “alive” zombies for very bad purposes.

I was remembering why I didn’t flirt for fun-- because I didn’t know how. I could flirt with intent of dating or sex, but I sucked at casual flirting. Shit.

Hope was a bad friend when men with guns have you. But my lioness and their lions lusted after each other, sort of. Lust I trusted. Hope will lie to you, but lust is what it is; it never lies. Hope would keep me hoping, but lust might be a weapon I could use to divide them. Divide and conquer has been a strategy for thousands of years; there’s a reason for that.

“I watched them comfort you, and then watched you flirt with the waiter. You wouldn’t give me back my flirt, so I took yours, and if you take my Ilsa away from me again, I will take your men away from you forever.”

Anita Blake Series
1. Guilty Pleasures (1993)
2. The Laughing Corpse (1994)
3. Circus of the Damned (1995)
4. The Lunatic Café (1996)
5. Bloody Bones (1996)
6. The Killing Dance (1997)
7. Burnt Offerings (1998)
8. Blue Moon (1998)
9. Obsidian Butterfly (2000)
10. Narcissus in Chains (2001)
11. Cerulean Sins (2003)
12. Incubus Dreams (2004)
13. Micah (2006)
14. Danse Macabre (2006)
15. The Harlequin (2007)
16. Blood Noir (2008)
17. Skin Trade (2009)
18. Flirt (2010)
19. Bullet (2010)

20. Hit List (2011)

First Paragraph: “I want you to raise my wife from the dead, Ms. Blake,” Tony Bennington said, in a voice that matched the expensive suit and the flash of the Rolex on his right wrist. It probably meant he was a lefty. Not that his handedness mattered, but you learn to notice primary hands when people try to kill you on a semiregular basis.

Find Laurell K. Hamilton Online
Official Site
Blog
Facebook
Twitter

Links
Author Wikipedia
Book Wikipedia
Anita Blake Wiki

Interviews
Bitten By Books (this is the afterward of the book)
Author Blog Podcast (direct link)
Author Blog Post about Flirt

Book Trailer:


Source: My personal collection, special thanks to Zoe Reads

Picture Explanations
Cemetary: Like in The Laughing Corpse, Anita ends up in a cemetery
Lion: Quite a few werelions in this one!

Serial Killer in Sin City

Once you tell someone certain things—say, you got mailed a human head in a box—they tend to think you're crazy.

Anita Blake's reputation has taken some hits. Not on the work front, where she has the highest kill count of all the legal vampire executioners in the country, but on the personal front. No one seems to trust a woman who sleeps with the monsters. Still, when a vampire serial killer sends her a head from Las Vegas, Anita has to warn Sin City's local authorities what they're dealing with. Only it's worse than she thought. Police officers and one executioner have been slain—paranormal style...

Anita heads to Las Vegas, where she's joined by three other U. S. Marshals, including the ruthless Edward hiding behind his mild-mannered persona. It's a good thing Edward always has her back because when she gets close t to the bodies, Anita senses "tiger" too strongly to ignore it. The weretigers are very powerful in Las Vegas, which means the odds of her rubbing someone important the wrong way just got a lot higher...

Title: Skin Trade
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake, Book 17
Start & Finished: 7/15/10- 7/16/10
Published: June 2, 2009
Publisher: Berkley Publishing
Pages: 496
Genre: Mystery, Urban Fantasy

In an interview, Laurell K. Hamilton said that the seventeenth book in her Anita Blake series Skin Trade was one of the hardest books she wrote for this series for various reasons but mainly because she had to scramble to do the research she usually does for the books. For example, there's a morgue scene in Las Vegas with Olaf and Anita yet Ms. Hamilton hadn't visited a morgue in ten years and many things had changed. The bad guy from Incubus Dreams is back in this book and we finally get to meet him instead of just his minions. Oh and Anita has moved into the Circus with Jean-Claude and all her other lovers but it’s becoming a strain on everybody so this little “vacation” to Las Vegas to hunt the serial killer is just what the doctor ordered: ‘If I hadn’t been convinced that Vittorio wanted to kill me and mail my head somewhere, I’d have looked forward to the trip to Vegas. I needed some distance between me and the men in my life.’

While I haven’t been overly disappointed like some of the fans of this series, I have to admit that this was the first book that I didn’t buy and read as soon as it came out. I’ve heard for awhile now that it has some of the flavoring of the earlier Anita Blake books that we all loved and it kind of did. However, there was just something about this that screamed, “trying too hard” at times. My main problem was just how almost soft that Edward has gotten (Hamilton has said that she thinks that now that he‘s a family man he‘s more dangerous but I just didn‘t see it here). There still isn’t a sexual vibe between Anita and him thank goodness but he’s not quite as cold blooded as he used to be. Don’t even get me started on how creepy Olaf trying to be somewhat normal for Anita is either. I did like Vegas’ SWAT team, of which most had some kind of powers. One even feeds off of memories like Anita feeds off of sex.

Anita Blake has always worried about becoming one of the monsters and now she practically is one. However, she’s not evil and because of Wicked and Truth (two vampire warriors that she blood -oathed in The Harlequin) she now has a fail safe in place if she ever becomes that way. Anita has faced a lot of incredibly scary things in the previous books but Olaf is the only one besides Marmee Noir that really scares me. Speaking of which, Hamilton finally lets us know what Marmee Noir wants with Anita in Skin Trade.

Though Edward and even Olaf have appeared in other books, Skin Trade is more like Obsidian Butterfly than any other (Bernardo Spotted-Horse even comes back for this one). Well, Olaf is a Marshal now too… but he’s still a serial killer. Just one that plays with vampires now. Of course it has been three years according to the series since Olaf, Bernando, and Anita first met (nine since that book was actually published though). Unlike in Obsidian Butterfly, Anita now has the ardeur to contend with and ends up having to bring her own “snacks” and bodyguards which includes everyone from Wicked, Truth, and Requiem, to wereanimals like Haven (Cookie Monster) etc, though they seem like more of an afterthought, besides the vampires which have important roles. I’m truly impressed with how long Ms. Hamilton held out on having sex in this story since most of her books past Narcissus in Chains are more sex than plot driven. From all of my complaints it does seem like I didn’t like Skin Trade when I actually did. I thought it was one of the stronger books that have been published in recent years and I look forward to seeing where the author will take her characters next.

Favorite Quotes

Of course, there were people who said that I was a serial killer. I still had the highest kill count of all the legal vampire executioners in the United States. I’d topped a hundred this year. Did it really matter that I didn’t enjoy my kills? Did it really change anything that I took no sexual pleasure from it? Did it matter that in the beginning I’d thrown up? Did the fact that I’d had an order of execution for most of my kills make them better, less brutal? There were serial killers who had used only poison, which caused almost no pain; they’d been less brutal than me. Lately, I’d begun to wonder exactly what set me apart from people like Vittorio. I’d begun to question if to my oh-so-legal victims it mattered what my motives were.
A woman answered the phone in Las Vegas, and I began the process of getting passed up the line to the person who might be able to tell me whose head I had in the box.

Without talking to each other, or even looking at each other, the four of us formed points of a square to watch the room. I made sure my point was watching the coming tigers, but we all knew our jobs. I might have issues with Olaf, and even Bernardo, but it was nice to work with people who knew how to deal. We covered the room, not like cops but more like soldiers. No, we covered the room like people who were used to pulling guns and shooting first. None of us were really cops. Cops save lives; we took them. Four executioners standing in a room; best to be elsewhere.

I sat in the back of the squad car musing on what it meant to have a badge when your job description hadn’t changed. We were assassins. Legal, government-sanctioned assassins. Some of us tried to be good marshals, but in the end, the other marshals saved lives, and all we did was take them. In the end, all the badges in the world didn’t change what we were and what we did.

Anita Blake Series
1. Guilty Pleasures (1993)
2. The Laughing Corpse (1994)
3. Circus of the Damned (1995)
4. The Lunatic Café (1996)
5. Bloody Bones (1996)
6. The Killing Dance (1997)
7. Burnt Offerings (1998)
8. Blue Moon (1998)
9. Obsidian Butterfly (2000)
10. Narcissus in Chains (2001)
11. Cerulean Sins (2003)
12. Incubus Dreams (2004)
13. Micah (2006)
14. Danse Macabre (2006)
15. The Harlequin (2007)
16. Blood Noir (2008)
17. Skin Trade (2009)
18. Flirt (2010)
19. Bullet (2010)

20. Hit List (2011)

First Paragraph: I'd worked my share of serial killer cases, but none of the killers had ever mailed me a human head. That was new. I looked down at the head, ghostly, through the plastic bag it was wrapped in. It sat on my desk, on top of the desk blotter, like hundreds of other packages that had been delivered to Animators Inc., where our motto was Where the Living Raise the Dead for a Killing. The head had been packed in ice, for all the world like some employee of the postal service had done it. Maybe they had; vampires can be very persuasive, and it was a vampire who had sent the package. A vampire names Vittorio. He'd included a letter with my name written on the envelope in lovely calligraphy: Anita Blake. He wanted me to know who to thank for my little surprise. He and his people had slaughtered over ten people in St. Louis alone before he fled to parts unknown. Well, not unknown now, maybe. There was a return address on the package. It had been mailed from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Find Laurell K. Hamilton Online
Author’s Blog
Author’s Facebook
Author’s Twitter

Links:
Author Wikipedia
Anita Blake Wiki
Book Wikipedia
Project Paranormal (video)

Interviews:

The Author Hour (podcast)

River Front Times

Source: From personal collection

Skin Trade Interview:


Picture Explanations
Tiger: There are a lot of weretigers in this book and that’s in addition to all the colors of the rainbow of tiger that Anita carries inside herself.
Las Vegas: Where the book is set at and Anita gets to see it like this when one of her vampires flies her somewhere.
Cops: Anita gets to play with out of state cops. None of whom are fun to be around besides the special unit.

The Jungle is Jumpin’!

Snap your fingers, tap your toes and swing into the jazziest jungle of them all in Walt Disney's coolest Classic, The Jungle Book!

This animated gem springs brilliantly to life when Mowgli (Bruce Reitherman), an orphan boy raised by wolves is encouraged by his animal friends to leave the jungle before the return of the fearsome man-eating tiger, Shere Khan (George Sanders). With Bagheera (his loyal panther friend voiced by Sebastian Cabot) at his side, Mowgli's journey back to the "man-village" begins. Along the way, he is befriended by a free-spirited bear named Baloo (Phil Harris), who rescues him from hilarious run-ins with some of the wildest Disney characters ever created-- eccentric elephants, a bewitching boa (voiced by Sterling Holloway) and a be-boppin' orangutan named King Louie (Louis Prima)! Through it all, it's lovable Baloo who teaches Mowgli the "Bare Necessities" of life and the true meaning of friendship. Filled with wonderful music and thrilling adventures, The Jungle Book is a swingin', singin', song-filled celebration you'll never forget!

Title: Jungle Book
Release: October 18, 1967
Genre: Animation
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Based On: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Writer: Larry Clemons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson, Vance Gerry, & Bill Peet
Director: Wolfgang Reitherman
Music By: George Bruns, Terry Gilkyson, & The Sherman Brothers
Produced By: Walt Disney
Distributed By: Buena Vista Distribution
Run Time: 78 minutes

Walt Disney’s nineteenth animated feature film The Jungle Book is the last film that Mr. Disney himself was involved in from start to almost finish before he died. It was nominated for an Oscar, had all of his legendary Nine Old Men working on it, and became such a popular film that it inspired many of today’s animators on their career path. Not to mention that this was the first time so many high profile actors were used in a feature film. Many characters from this film even appeared on the Disney Channel cartoon show Talespin from the early 1990s and Jungle Cubs from the 1996-1998.

When Walt Disney decided to make his next all-animated feature film after The Sword in the Stone, it was decided that it would be an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. However, when he learned that his storyman Bill Peet, Terry Gilkyson and a few others were making a faithful adaptation of Kipling’s book, he stepped in. Walt essentially wanted to make a film about a child raised by animals who now has to go back to human civilization because he can no longer survive in the jungle. He didn't really want Rudyard Kipling's somewhat darker, mysterious story to get in the way of that. Peet had worked a year on the material so when his ideas were discarded he left the studio. However, a good majority of his ideas were actually used if not exactly the way he intended them.

According to one of the main composers of the film he said that Walt called a meeting and “Woolie Reitherman who was called in, Larry Clemons who was a writer, came in, [the Sherman Brothers], and a number of other key people were brought in to a meeting in Walt’s office. The conversation went something like this: Walt said, “How many of you fellas read Kipling’s Jungle Book?”… “No? Good. I don’t want anybody to read this book. I want to tell you what I want to see in this picture.” And he started describing the story, and the storyline was simply that a boy was raised by wolves and he was taken to the man village for his own safety and he had to live there but reluctant to go because he wanted to stay and he has adventures along the way. He meets all these various characters.” In other words, “Disney simplified the story to the bare necessities.”

Walt told the Sherman Brothers, “I want fun songs. Find the scary places and write fun songs.” Write fun songs they did! “The I Wanna Be Like You” number and scene was actually inspired by Louis Prima (and his band) who voices King Louie and the vultures were inspired by British invasion bands like the Beatles and their song “We’re Your Friends” was originally a rock-type of song but to give it a more timeless feel it became a barbershop quartet song. Even Kaa the snake (Sterling Holloway) got a song that was originally intended for Mary Poppins called "The Land of Sand" that became "Trust in Me". The one song everyone remembers the most from the film was actually the only one not written by the Sherman Brothers and was from the original score done by Terry Gilkyson and that was "Bare Necessities", which was nominated for the Best Song Academy Award (it lost to Doctor Dolittle’s "Talk to the Animals").

What I like the most about The Jungle Book is the characters though it’s never been one of my favorite Disney movies; I’ve always appreciated the fun songs, brilliant actors and animators, and the beautiful overall look of the film. I’ve always loved Bagheera; who is voiced by Sebastian Cabot (the narrator from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which had director Woolie Reitherman’s son Bruce Reitherman (Mowgli) in it as Christopher Robin as well), but Baloo is my favorite character in this film. I believe he was many people’s favorite… especially because Phil Harris (who always improvised half his lines) came back to voice more main characters in Disney animated films like Thomas O’Malley in The Artistocats and an almost carbon copy of Baloo as Little John in Robin Hood. That’s not to say that the other characters in this film aren’t just as compelling because I’ve stated on many occasions my love of Sterling Holloway (Kaa in this film but more famously known as the original voice of Winnie the Pooh and the Cheshire Cat). George Sander’s voice alone is what makes Shere Khan such an imposing figure and Louis Prima’s “I Wanna Be Like You” is my favorite song and scene in the entire film; however, Baloo has always been my favorite. Oh, and though she’s only a minor character in this film Verna Felton is certainly memorable. She’s more recognizable for her roles in other Disney films like the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella and the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland but she played a number of other characters throughout Disney films. Like Walt Disney, she didn’t get to see the end result of The Jungle Book because she died a day before he did.

The Jungle Book boasts some of the best character animation the studio ever did and inspired many of the Disney animators of today on their career choice. This is animator Andre Deja’s favorite Disney film and the first Disney film he ever saw (he was the talent behind films like The Lion King). By the time this movie was being made, the Disney company had started using the Xerox process which was essentially taking the animators drawings and transferring them to cels instead of redrawing everything by hand like it was done pre-One Hundred and One Dalmatians. “So from the early 60’s on, the animator’s drawings were then Xeroxed. It was a big artistic, graphic statement and Walt was not that crazy about One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the way it looked. It was a little too, I guess too artsy for him and the crew had to keep that in mind and by the time it came to Jungle Book they actually softened the look a little bit more. The backgrounds became again painterly like the earlier films. The characters had black lines, so Jungle Book was the one movie where you really had soft backgrounds with somewhat hard edged character drawings but it still works beautifully.”

My two favorite animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas actually animated about 50% of this film. The “Jungle Book is a distillation of a long, rich friendship between Frank and Ollie, of a loving relationship between Woolie and his son Bruce, it’s desolations of the relationships of people in that studio, the lives they’d lived, the emotions they’d felt and they found a vehicle that they could really express all these things through.”

Favorite Quotes

Mowgli: Oh, Baloo, I wanna stay with you.
Baloo: Certainly you do.
Bagheera: Oh? And just how do you think he will survive?
Baloo: "How do you think he will... " What do you mean how do you think he... He's with me, ain't he? And I'll learn him all I know.
Bagheera: Oh? That shouldn't take too long.

Buzzie: Hey Flaps, So what we were going to do?
Flaps: I don't know, what'cha wanna do?
Buzzie: Look Flaps, first I say, ‘What were going to do?’ then you say, ‘I don't know, what'cha wanna do?’ Then I say, ‘What we're going to do?’ Then you say what'cha wanna do’- Let's do something!
Flaps: Ok. What'cha wanna do?

Mowgli: [sees the girl] Look. What's that?
Bagheera: Oh, it's the man-village.
Mowgli: No, no. I mean that.
Baloo: Forget about those, they ain't nothing but trouble.
Mowgli: Just a minute. I've never seen one before.
Baloo: So you've seen one. So let's go.
Mowgli: I'll be right back. I want a better look.
Baloo: Mowgli, wait a minute.
Bagheera: Oh, Baloo. Let him have a better look.

Featured Songs
Colonel Hathi's March
The Bare Necessities
I Wan'na Be Like You
Trust In Me
That's What Friends Are For
My Own Home (Jungle Book Theme)

Find Jungle Book Online
Official Site
Imdb.com
Wikipedia

Links
Covering the Mouse (Disney cover songs for Jungle Book)
The Cartoon Cave (Article on character caricature)
Michael Sporn (Article for the complete opposite opinion from the above)
Michael Sporn (Article on Milt Kahl’s King Louie contribution to the film)

Interviews
Disney Legend Floyd Norman-Storyman
Bruce Reitherman- Mowgli (video)
Andres Deja & Bruce Reitherman (video)
The Jungle Book Panel (video)

Trailer:


The History of The Jungle Book:


The Making of a Musical Masterpiece:

Metaphysical Beasts & A Pregnancy Scare

Anita Blake needs to be concentrating on a dangerous situation: The ardeur, the sexual power that flows between Anita and Jean-Claude, the Master Vampire of the City, and Richard, the volatile werewolf who loves her passionately, is reaching new levels, perhaps evolving into something altogether new. The ardeur seems to be choosing new lovers for Anita, acting with a will of its own. As Jean-Claude says, the ardeur is hunting powerful prey. The unexpected effect of this is that Jean-Claude’s own power as a master vampire has grown to new levels-- and Richard, never predictable, is changing, too.

But as the days pass. Anita’s less interested in vampire politics than in an ancient, ordinary dread she shares with women down the ages: She may be pregnant. And, if she is, whether the father is a vampire, a werewolf, or someone else entirely, she knows perfectly well that being a Federal Marshal known for raising the dead and executing vampires is no way to bring up a baby…

Title: Danse Macabre
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake, Book 14
Start & Finished: 7/12/10- 7/13/10
Published: March 27, 2007
Publisher: Berkley Publishing
Pages: 483
Genre: Romance, Urban Fantasy

A pregnancy scare was bound to happen eventually in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series ever since Anita inherited the ardeur from Jean-Claude and she has to have sex to “feed” it. Like a vampire needs blood, Anita needs sex to keep herself from draining the life out of her new triumvirate with Nathaniel (wereleopard) and Damian (vampire) but unlike regular hungers, the ardeur just may have gotten Anita pregnant in the fourteenth book of this series Danse Macabre.

There’s also a lot of Master Vampires of the Cities around the United States (Hamilton’s version of it any way) in town to enjoy the all vampire ballet that Jean-Claude is sponsoring and they bring a lot of problems with them as well. A major one is Anita needs to a new pomme de sang (someone to feed the ardeur on that‘s not tied to her metaphysically) and these vampires are bringing ones for her choose from which makes her feel very squicky. Only two vampires are really introduced: Augustine (Auggie) of Chicago (who is also a mobster) and Samuel of Cape Cod. Samuel brings his sons that are part mermaid/ siren and part vampire (very rare) and Auggie brings his werelions as candidates which is especially fortunate because one of the new beasts in Anita (she has four: wolf, leopard, lion, and unknown at this point), the lioness is getting out of hand and trying to come out even though Anita isn‘t really a shapeshifter. The newest man that is drawn to her through metaphysical stuff she calls Cookie Monster (from his blue hair and tattoo) but his real name is Haven. He’s a professional thug for Auggie but I still think he’s neat, even if he is bad news for the way Anita’s life works right now.

There is no police investigation in this book but Marmee Noir, the Mother of All Darkness appears in Danse Macabre too. There’s always something bad from book to book but she’s the buildup, the extremely scary bad guy. She’s still asleep (kind of a coma sortof) but she’s waking up and it’s partly because of Anita because she interests her and that’s like having the devil himself take a particular interest in you. Oh and Richard is a big part of this book too though I still can’t stand him and it’s getting to the point where I think Anita will be agreeing with me soon. Overall, Anita collects some more men and discovers new powers in Danse Macabre. She also helps give a lot of her original men more powers, learns how she and the men in her life would react to a baby, and just how far she can push the ardeur before it pushes back.

Favorite Quotes

I thought about it, then nodded. "Yes, it is, because it has to be. My life wouldn't work if I wallowed in every disaster, every moral quandary. I can't afford the luxury of self-doubt, not to that degree."
"Luxury," Richard said. "This isn't luxury, Anita, it's morality. It's your conscience. That's not a luxury item, that's what separates us from the animals."
Here we go again, I thought. Out loud I said, "I have a conscience, Richard, and my own set of morals. Do I ever worry that I'm a bad guy? Yeah, sometimes I do. Do I wonder if I've traded away pieces of my soul, just to survive? Yeah." I shrugged. "It's the price of doing business in the real world, Richard."
"This isn't the real world, Anita. This isn't the normal workaday world."
"No, but it's our world."

Part of me hopes that someday I get over being so damned uncomfortable about group scenes like this; part of me hopes I don't. It's sort of the same part of me that mourns that I can kill without feeling bad about it, most of the time. Yeah, that same part thinks that doing metaphysical sex in front of a bunch of men, for any reason, is just another step down the slippery slope to damnation. But if the alternative is having the ardeur go off like a metaphysical bomb during the party tonight, well, what we were about to do was the lesser evil. Still it might be nice, once in a while, not to have to choose between evils. Just once, couldn't I choose the lesser good?

I shook my head, and the world swam in streamers of color. I had a moment of nausea, and that was the moment that I realized I was sick. Sick at heart, sick of soul, sick of it all. Somewhere deep inside me, I was trying to undo all my decisions. I was trying to do a take-back, on a game that had played too far for a do-over. The front part of my brain knew it was too late, but it wasn’t the front part of my brain that was in charge. How do you argue with the subconscious? How do you argue with a part of your brain you don’t even know is there most of the time? The real bitch of the situation was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to argue.

Anita Blake Series
1. Guilty Pleasures (1993)
2. The Laughing Corpse (1994)
3. Circus of the Damned (1995)
4. The Lunatic Café (1996)
5. Bloody Bones (1996)
6. The Killing Dance (1997)
7. Burnt Offerings (1998)
8. Blue Moon (1998)
9. Obsidian Butterfly (2000)
10. Narcissus in Chains (2001)
11. Cerulean Sins (2003)
12. Incubus Dreams (2004)
13. Micah (2006)
14. Danse Macabre (2006)
15. The Harlequin (2007)
16. Blood Noir (2008)
17. Skin Trade (2009)
18. Flirt (2010)
19. Bullet (2010)

20. Hit List (2011)

First Paragraph: It was the middle of November. I was supposed to be out jogging, but instead I was sitting at my breakfast table talking about men, sex, werewolves, vampires, and that thing that most unmarried but sexually active women fear most of all-- a missed period.

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Source: From personal collection

Picture Explanations
Ballet: The reason for a lot of the vampires being in this book
Lioness: The strain of lycanthropy Anita caught from Chimera is starting to manifest itself.

The Nimir-Raj and Nimir-Ra are Out of Town

“RAISING THE DEAD WAS EASY; LOVE WAS HARD…”

There are lots of reasons to raise the dead-- some private, some public. In this case, the Feds have a witness who died before he could speak on the record. They want him to be raised so his testimony can be taken. So here I am, on a plane to Philadelphia, flying off to do my job.

But I’m not alone. Micah is with me. Micah, head of the St. Louis wereleopard pard. King to my Queen. The only one of my lovers who can stir my blood with just a glance from his chartreuse cat’s eyes. I was happy to have him at my side.

Until he mentioned that this will be our first time alone together. No master vampires. No alpha werewolf. Just me and Micah. And all my fears and doubts…

Title: Micah
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake, Book 13
Start & Finished: 7/12/10
Published: February 28, 2006
Publisher: Jove (Berkley Publishing)
Pages: 245
Genre: Romance, Urban Fantasy

The thirteenth book in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series is a short, quick read called Micah named after one of Anita’s boyfriends. Micah Callahan was first introduced in Narcissus in Chains but this is the first time some of his background is told even though he‘s Nimir-Raj (King) to her Nimir-Ra (Queen) of the wereleopards. Micah has always been this quiet pillar of support that let’s Anita lead and he follows but this was the first time they get to spend time alone together in the series without all the other guys as distractions. Anita doesn’t go out of town (Bloody Bones, Obsidian Butterfly) too often but when she does it’s always interesting and that’s what happens in Micah. They go to Philadelphia to raise a zombie for a federal case and of course it’s not that cut and dried!

This novella is such a quick read that it felt more like a short story. After the mammoth size of the previous book Incubus Dreams, I can tell why Ms. Hamilton didn’t publish an Anita Blake book in 2005 and why this is so short. It’s no less important though I’m honestly not 100% sure if the character Micah was an essential addition of the series or not. He doesn’t put any pressure on Anita whatsoever which must be relaxing after everything else she puts up with from her harem (sorry, it’s not really a harem and she can’t help it since she needs to feed the ardeur) and he doesn’t need her to take care of him either so technically, he’s the perfect guy for Anita. There is a tiny bit of plot in this book where Anita has to raise a zombie and he’s not particularly happy about it but that was just the reason to get these two out of town together alone.

Favorite Quotes

I raised the dead and was a legal vampire executioner. That's what the police knew for certain. I was a federal marshal because all the vamp executioners who could pass the firearms test had been grandfathered in so that the executioners could both have more powers and be better regulated. Or that was the idea. But I was also the human servant of Jean-Claude, the master vampire of St. Louis. Through ties to Jean-Claude I'd inherited some abilities. One of those abilities was the ardeur. It was as if sex were food, and if I didn't eat enough I got sick.
That wasn't so bad, but I could also hurt anyone that I was metaphysically tied to. Not just hurt, but potentially drain them of life. Or the ardeur could simply choose someone at random to feed from. Which meant the ardeur raised and chose a victim. I didn't always have a lot of choice in who it chose. Ick.

Micah and I looked at each other and had one of those moments. We'd all been living together for about six months. But he and Nathaniel had both moved in at the same time. I'd never dated either of them alone, not really. I mean I'd gone out with them individually, and sex wasn't always a group activity, but the sleeping arrangements were.

Micah had had about the same effect on me from the first moment I'd met him. It had been lust at almost first sight or maybe first touch. I was still a little embarrassed about that. It wasn't like me to fall for someone so quickly, or so hard. I'd really expected it to burn out or for us to have some huge fight and end it, but six months and counting. Six months and no breakup. It was a record for me. I'd dated Jean-Claude for a couple of years, but it had been off again, on again. Most of my relationships were. Micah was the only one who had ever come into my life and managed to stay.

Anita Blake Series
1. Guilty Pleasures (1993)
2. The Laughing Corpse (1994)
3. Circus of the Damned (1995)
4. The Lunatic Café (1996)
5. Bloody Bones (1996)
6. The Killing Dance (1997)
7. Burnt Offerings (1998)
8. Blue Moon (1998)
9. Obsidian Butterfly (2000)
10. Narcissus in Chains (2001)
11. Cerulean Sins (2003)
12. Incubus Dreams (2004)
13. Micah (2006)
14. Danse Macabre (2006)
15. The Harlequin (2007)
16. Blood Noir (2008)
17. Skin Trade (2009)
18. Flirt (2010)
19. Bullet (2010)

20. Hit List (2011)

First Paragraph: It was half past dawn when the phone rang. It shattered the first dream of the night into a thousand pieces so that I couldn’t even remember what the dream had been about. I woke gasping and confused, asleep just long enough to feel worse but not rested.

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Source: From personal collection

Picture Explanations
Cemetery: Anita is asked to raise a zombie witness and discovers her magic is a little more powerful than usual and wonky too.
Leopard: Micah always has kitty-cat eyes but he’s a black leopard when he shifts.