Jason Schuyler is a werewolf. He's also one of Anita Blake's best friends, and sometimes her lover. And right now he needs her - not to be a vampire hunter, or a federal marshal, or a necromancer, or even for her rank in the werewolf pack, but because his father is dying. He needs Anita because she's a pretty woman who loves him, who can make him look like an everyday guy, who agrees to go home with him and help him say good-bye to the abusive father he never loved. The fact that Jason is about as much an everyday guy as Anita is a pretty woman is something they figure they can keep under wraps for a couple of days in a small town. How hard can that be?

Really, by now, Anita Blake should know better.

Marmee Noir, ancient mother of all vampires, picks this weekend to make a move. Somehow she has cut the connection that binds Anita and Jean-Claude, leaving Jean-Claude unable to sense what is happening. Dangerous even as she sleeps, buried in darkness for a thousand years somewhere beneath the old country of Europe, Marmee Noir reaches out toward power. She has attacked Anita before, but never like this. In Anita she senses what she needs to make her enemies tremble...
"What The Da Vinci Code did for the religious thriller, the Anita Blake series has done for the vampire novel." - USA Today
"[A] wildly popular paranormal series." - Entertainment Weekly

[Editor's Note: This is a combined review with THE HARLEQUIN]--Vampire hunter Anita Blake returns in Hamilton's popular series. Narrator Cynthia Holloway does little voicing, and this approach works well because most of the story's characters are male, and male voices are a challenge for her. Still, her wonderful delivery has lots of inflection and feeling, and her treatment of the erotic scenes in Hamilton's work is exquisite. The book is replete with a multitude of "were-animals"--from rats to lions, tigers, and leopards, as well as the traditional werewolf. Holloway's use of a variant pronunciation of this key word form throughout is a distraction. Still, this production will succeed with lovers of vampire fantasy, especially those who enjoy Hamilton's treatment of eroticism. M.C. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

 

Laurell K. Hamilton is the New York Times bestselling author of the Meredith Gentry novels: A Kiss of Shadows, A Caress of Twilight, Seduced by Moonlight, A Stroke of Midnight, Mistral's Kiss, as well as fifteen acclaimed Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, novels. She is a full-time writer; she lives in a suburb of St. Louis with her family.