I read the first of these books and thought I wouldn’t get another. Then I saw this at the library and thought I’d try it.
There are so many reasons why I want to like these books. Among them is the fact that there are gay characters, one of whom has HIV. It’s handled so matter of factly but I just can’t finish it. Too bad.
I thought this was a new book but it was from 2005. It was just in the New Book section of the library for some reason.
In this book, Sylvia remembered a quilt her Great Aunt Lucinda started, her mother worked on, her sister worked on and now Sarah found it and took it up.
It’s a nice story as all the Elm Creek Quilt stories are.
I think that I’ll have to re-read the entire series to really “get” this book. There were just too many details, too many people that I didn’t remember.
This book did wrap it all up, though. Everyone got what was coming to them, in one way or another. Richard made some new friends and ran across a few old ones.
It was a good story but I think that I am going to have to write about them like I do the Anita Blake books so that I can keep track of everyone and everything. These books are *complicated.*
For some reason, it never occurred to me to wonder before whether or not these books are anti-Christian. The Imperial Order behaves similarly to early Christians, though I think more organized and more bloody. It wasn’t so much magic that they were trying to rid the world of but opposition. There are similarities between The Order and Christianity. Interesting. I’m going to have to pay attention to that as I re-read the series at some point.
Bloody Bones begins with Bert showing Anita photos of a construction site that is filled with bones. There is a dispute between two families as to who owns the land. One family won the legal argument because the second family couldn’t prove that there was a family burial plot on the land. It appears that the plot has been found so Anita has been hired to raise as many bodies as she can, preferably all, and find out who they are.
This is the book that has the scene between Anita and Richard that I think is so hot: the one where she goes to see him at school to tell him that she’ll be missing their date for this business trip.
This book also seems to be the one that I can remember the least about. I hardly remember it at all.
Anita is afraid of flying and has to take a helicopter to the place where she is to meet Raymond Stirling to view the remains on the mountain and decide what she can do. He insists that he and Anita go alone to the top of the mountain and there he tries to bribe her to say the bodies are not Bouviers, even if they are. She, of course, declines.
While she is there, she gets a page from Dolph. There is a homicide near Branson that he wants her to go check out. The local police aren’t that excited about her coming but they have little choice. The officer in charge is a woman and she isn’t impressed with Anita, really. Anita tells the officer, Sergeant Freemont that it’s a vampire kill but a dangerous vampire since 3 boys were killed and none tried to run, which means that a very strong vampire was able to cloud their minds.
Anita left the crime scene with Larry and they went to get something to eat. Anita decided to try going to “Bloody Bones” since it’s owned by a Bouvier. She goes there and meets Dorcas (Dorrie) and Magnus Bouvier. Turns out Magnus is a fairy and he uses glamor to have “Lovers Night” once at week at his restaurant. It’s vaguely illegal. What alarms Anita is that Magnus can affect her mind in ways that vampire even can’t. She also finds out that he lost his temper and tore down some trees outside the restaurant. Anita reports to Dolph that he’s a possible suspect but asks him to keep the fact that he is a fairy out of the investigation until it’s decided whether he’s a true suspect or not. Magnus uses glamor to escape police, so he’s facing a felony charge, even though he wasn’t guilty of the crime they were questioning him about. Anita has no idea why he would run, if he wasn’t guilty.
Anita talks to Dolph when he pages her about another murder. In this one, a 17 year old girl, Ellie Quinlan is found dead in her bedroom. It appears to be a straight killing, not related to the prior killing. Ellie appears to have known her attacker because she is dressed in a provocative manner and she quieted the family dog when the dog barked when her boyfriend came over. Her boyfriend, Andy, of whom Ellie’s parents disapproved has been missing for a couple of weeks. Anita thinks that Andy is a new vamp and was trying to bring Ellie over. Anita isn’t sure why Andy left Ellie at home, though. Ellie’s family - her father - wants her staked immediately so that she doesn’t rise as a vampire. Anita wants to stall them, partly because to stake a person who intends to rise as a vampire is murder. Anita gets more information out of Ellie’s brother, Jeff, than from her parents.
Anita and Larry go back to help the local police find Ellie’s killer. Officer Granger, Officer Wallace, Office Coltrain and Sheriff St. John go with Anita and Larry, looking for the vamps. The vamps find them. The vamps also get into the Quinlan’s house, take Jeff and kill Sheriff St. John’s wife, Beth. Officer Coltrain dies. Anita realizes that the vampire is “ancient.”
Detective Freemont is pretty mad that Anita didn’t contact her about the Quinlans. The Quinlans threaten to sue Anita. The vampires not only took Jeff, but Ellie’s body. Anita calls Jean-Claude to help her contact the local Master of the City. It turns out that the land had been JC’s but he agreed to have it given to someone else because he thought the area could sustain two vampire kisses.
Anita and Larry return to the Stirling Project and Magnus Bouvier shows up and tells Anita not to raise the dead. The Stirling crew threatens to shoot Bouvier but Anita objects. They have words and Anita thinks she’s fired. Larry and Anita go back to the hotel thinking that they will probably have to leave it since they are no longer working for Stirling. JC and Jason are there. Lionel Bayard shows up to tell Anita it was all a misunderstanding and that Stirling wants her to continue.
Jean-Claude’s coffin was stolen at the airport, so he has to stay in Anita’s room. She isn’t that happy about it. Jason stays with him. Anita gets the sofa. Before she goes to bed, Anita calls Federal Agent Bradford (who had shown up at the Quinlans after Jeff was taken) and gave him a possible name for who could have committed the murders: Xavier, a pedophile vampire.
Dorcas Bouvier shows up thinking that Magnus is with Anita and tells Anita that he has gone missing. Dorcas also tells Anita about Rawhead and Bloody Bones, which is supposedly only a myth but is real. The Bouvier’s ancestor made a deal with it that gave his descendants fey power even though they were mixed blood. If Anita raises the dead on Stirling’s land, then it will loose RBB and that would be bad. I was expecting RBB to be something like Dominga’s creation in a previous book but it wasn’t. More on that later.
The next evening, JC tells Anita that they will go see the Master of the City, Seraphina. JC seems excited to see her and Anita gets at least vaguely jealous. They have to dress up and Anita is ill-prepared but she does what she can.
They get to the house and are greeted by Ivy, then Janos. The rules are that JC, Anita & Co will not be hurt if they don’t attack first. However, they were tricked: Seraphina’s crew has two human women who will be tortured. Serafina’s vamps were hoping that Jason and Larry would volunteer to take their place. They did, of course. Jason was to have sex with 2 female vampires - who promptly began to rot all over him. Apparently, some vampires can rot and then get back to “normal.” This, needless to say, freaks Jason out. JC challenges Janos. Janos more or less kills JC but Anita gives him CPR then lets him have her blood, Jason gives his as well and JC survives. Seraphina declares a truce.
Magnus is with these guys. Seraphina wants Anita because she is a necromancer. Seraphina tries to get to Anita by giving Anita visions of her mother. Seraphina can even make the scent of Anita’s mother’s perfume noticeable to Larry. Seraphina can raise ghosts, a unique talent among vampires.
It’s in this book that we first learn about The Council. Seraphina doesn’t want to submit to the laws of the Council.
Anita comes closer to making love with JC but she feels like she is cheating on Richard.
Anita and Larry to go try to raise the zombies at the Stirling Project. Seraphina sends Ivy to try to kill Anita and Anita kills Ivy. When she does, she has enough power to raise RBB. Anita raises the Bouviers, but also RBB. Stirling says that now that RBB is dead, they will kill Anita and Larry. RBB promised Stirling all the land and more. Anita orders the zombies to kills Ms. Harrison, which is a capital offense even in self defense. They do it. Bayard dies as well. Stirling is still alive. Janos shows up and announces that they have Jeff. They tell Anita that Seraphina wants to see her again and then they kill Stirling. For various reasons. The vamps are “in league with” RBB.
Seraphina and JC have their words, then RBB shows up. RBB is basically a 10 foot tall being in human form but skinless. Gross, right? Seraphina makes a big mistake: she lied to RBB. She told him that if he did what she wanted, she’d free him. When you lie to a fey, all bets are off. They aren’t bound to the original agreement. RBB tries to kill Magnus for having kept RBB captive for so long. Seraphina wants Anita and somehow bespells her. Anita passes out and dreams of her mother, but realizes that the dream isn’t real. She wakes up in a coffin with Seraphina. Magnus is there, guarding them. Anita realizes that she can control more of the dead than just zombies when she is able to wake Ellie from her sleep during the day and control her. She gets Ellie to hold onto Magnus. When he tries to chase Anita outside, Ellie bursts into flames and burns Magnus alive.
Anita gets a ride from two old people and goes to the police deparment. She tells the agents what she knows and they go to burn the place down as the only way to kill Seraphina and Xavier is to burn them. Seraphina tries one last time to trick Anita by pretending to be her mother. It sort of works, but Anita realizes in time to tell the police to handcuff her and put her in a car, which they do. They have to sedate her as the fire kills Seraphina, but they do kill Seraphina.
Anita has to go to the hospital but everyone is ultimately okay.
So: in this book we see the first of Anita’s abilities as a necromancer as they relate to vampires. Here is the second time that Anita is considered dominant: this time with vampires, she is acknowledged as a master. Not master vampire, obviously, but master something. We find out that vampires only have first names, for the most part. If a vamp has a last name s/he is both American and newly dead. We find out about JC’s childhood and that he was both a whipping boy for a noble family’s son and also that when he was first made a vampire that he was given to whomever wanted him. He wound up with Seraphina back then because promised him power to get away from them and he didn’t know that the power to be a master vampire was within him.
This was a cute story written for children. Princess Cimorene is a terrible princess - she doesn’t want to embroider things or learn about protocol and certainly not dance! She convinces various people in the castle to teach her fencing, cooking, Latin, magic and economics. Her parents get so frustrated with her that they decide the only way to settle her down is to get her married. So they go off to the next kingdom over to arrange her marriage with Prince Therandil. Cimorene finds him an incredible bore and she decides there is only one thing to do: she must run away.
She runs away and finds herself volunteering to the the princess of a dragon. It’s unusual since princesses are usually captured by dragons or their parents send the girls to the dragons in the hopes of getting them married - since princes love to rescue princesses from dragons.
Cimorene herself has to dissuade several princes from rescuing her, including Prince Therandil.
Various things happen and Cimorene finds herself the Dragon King’s Cook and Librarian and is fairly sure she’ll live happily ever after.
The book begins with Anita meeting a client who is looking for his wife - a lycanthrope - who is missing. He doesn’t want to go to the police because of the publicity. Anita refers him to Ronnie.
Then Anita goes to a date with Richard. They see “Guys and Dolls.” Jean Claude shows up at the end and informs Anita that Richard is in a succession “battle.” I don’t think that’s the right word but I don’t have the book here to check it out. She gets called out of that date to go to a murder scene.
On her way to the murder, she runs into Gretchen who is in love with Jean Claude and thinks Anita wants him.
This is the scene with Sheriff Titus and Deputy Aikensen They are small town cops with an attitude and aren’t impressed with The Executioner. They think that the dead body they have is a bear attack, despite the fact that there have been no bear in the area for years. Eventually, they agree that it is not a bear but Anita isn’t sure what actually did do it. They send tracks that they made plaster casts of to the university lab, where Dr. Louis Fane (a wererat) works to analyze.
Anita goes home to find Irving, her shapeshifter reporter friend, waiting for her. He’s in a bind: Richard has ordered all The Pack to keep Anita out of Pack business but Marcus wants to meet Anita so he orders Irving to bring Anita to him. Irving tells Anita that he thinks that she will protect him. As it happens, that means she is dominant to him.
We meet Raina, Gabriel, Marcus, Kaspar Gunderson and Jason for the first time. Rafael, the Wererat King, is there as well. Christine, but I can’t remember if she shows up later or not.
Irving takes Anita to meet Marcus at The Lunatic Cafe (owned by Raina) and they establish that Anita, while not Pack, is dominant in that Irving has asked Anita for protection and she’s agreed. Marcus basically engineered that scenario but Anita uses some fairly circular logic to get out of whatever Marcus orginally planned. Marcus pushes Anita into killing one of his bodyguards, Alfred. Marcus thought Anita was bluffing when she said she’s kill Afred if Alfred didn’t back down. She wasn’t, he discovered.
We meet Jason, who is at this point a fairly new werewolf because the smell of blood and the energy of the room is bringing on the change. Jason is pretty interested in Anita - and not in a good way. Marcus helps Anita get out of the room when the wereanimals decide to eat Alfred. On the way out, Marcus gives Anita some papers and tells her that Kaspar will answer any questions. We find out Kaspar is a wereswan and we see that Edward is at The Lunatic Cafe.
Marcus needs Anita’s help, but for what? Remember the missing lycanthrope in the beginning of the book? She is only one of several.
Edward calls Anita the next day and she goes to his hotel to see a film he has - it’s a snuff film: 2 weres (a wolf and a panther) have sex with a human on camera and then the wolf (who turns out to be Alfred) kills her. Edward has been hired to kill both weres. Anita brings Richard to see the film - he didn’t know about the killing - he thought Raina had done sex videos but didn’t know about the killing.
Anita buys a Christmas present for her half-brother, Josh. Since LKH doesn’t usually have extraneous details, chances are good that Josh is going to show up at some point.
A reporter, Elvira Drew, shows up at Anita’s office looking for a wererat to interview for a book she is writing.
Anita and Richard argue about R’s “boy scout” tendencies. He thinks he can remain in the pack as the second without fighting Marcus since to do so means one of them has to die.
Gretchen attacks Anita and Louis and Anita gets a concussion. Nonetheless she has to carry Louis out of the place they are so the police don’t find him and “out” him. Anita calls Richard who is L’s best friend. Richard and Stephen show up and take care of them. Before Gretchen will leave them alone, Anita has to agree to go tell Jean Claude that Richard has proposed and Anita accepted. Anita gets there and does it, JC finds out what Gretchen did and puts her in “the coffin” as punishment. JC tells Anita that he wants a chance to date her before she makes up her mind.
After Anita returns from telling JC, Richard is still at her apartment. He watches over her as she sleeps so that he can wake her every hour. Dolph calls and tells her that they’ve found a skin. She goes. Titus and Aikensen are there and Anita has an altercation of sorts, of course. They find a naga. The skin was his. The naga goes to the hospital. Anita goes home.
She gets there and both Richard and JC are there. JC announces that things have to be equal - Anita can’t kiss Richard unless she plans to kiss JC, etc. They feel the first stirrings of the power that happens between the three of them.
Anita agrees to go with Ronnie to talk to George Smitz because Ronnie has photos of him with another woman. He admits to killing his wife but has no idea about the other missing lycanthropes.
Richard calls and tells Anita that Jason has gone missing. Anita figures out who has the missing lycanthropes but Jason isn’t among them. She gets a call from Kaspar and she, Edward and Richard go there. It’s a trap, of course. Kaspar gives Titus and Aikensen lycanthropes and they, for a price, allow people to hunt them. Jason is there. They escape, with Titus and Aikensen killed but Kaspar disappears.
This is the book that got me started on the LKH books. My friend’s husband said this was one of his favorite books, so I decided to read it. I found out that it was third in a series, so I read the first two and enjoyed them.
In this book, we have more Jean Claude and we meet Richard and Stephen.
The book begins with Karl Inger and Jeremy Reubens from Humans First trying to get Anita to give them Jean Claude’s daytime resting place. As it happens, she doesn’t know it, so she can’t tell them.
Anita gets a call from Dolph. There has been a murder. It turns out that several vampires - at least 5- have attacked the person. Anita decides she needs to see Jean Claude to find out if he knows who this Master Vampire might be.
She meets JC at Circus of the Damned, another business he owns. It really is a circus with supernatural creatures. Anita meets Stephen (a werewolf) as he escorts her from the entrance to where Jean Claude is. Anita is tricked into a fight with Marguerite, the human servant of Yasmeen. Richard is also there, naked in bed, for some reason. I think we never find out what it was.
The fight is interrupted because there is “the world’s biggest snake” that has gone amok and killed its trainer. It takes everyone to get the thing under control, including Anita.
Anita and Jean Claude spend an inordinate amount of time debating whether Anita is or isn’t Jean Claude’s human servant. She has two of the 4 marks necessary to make her “officially” his human servant so she is resisting.
Anita takes Richard and Stephen home and Richard asks her out. She says yes. While working out with Ronnie, Anita realizes she has made a date for a night she is supposed to be at a party, so Anita asks Richard to go to that with her.
Again, Anita gets called by Dolph. There’s another murder. This time it’s a woman. Anita realizes that the woman is going to rise as a vampire. They thought she couldn’t since she’d been bitten by so many vampires. She realizes that the first victim wasn’t put in the special vampire room because she’d said that so she, Dolph, Zerbrowski and others go to the morgue to see what they can do. They find that the vamp had, in fact, been put in the special vamp room but he’d broken out.
The next thing that happens is that Anita finds out that Bert has hired another animator, Larry. She meets Larry and they are attacked by vampires. She doesn’t know who these “bad guys” are but one of them was made a vampire as a very small boy.
At some point before this, Edward shows up and tells Anita he needs to know who the Master of the City is. For some reason, Anita lies and says she doesn’t know. She doesn’t even know why since she doesn’t like Jean Claude at all.
Anita meets up with a lamia, supposedly extinct but as they are immortal, there is no way for them to be extinct, right? The lamia, Melanie I think, is working for Oliver. Oliver is a million years old and supposedly damn near unkillable. He can even be outside during the daytime, which is why it takes Anita so long to figure out that he’s a vampire.
There’s another vampire, Alejandro, but I can’t remember who he is. There are too many characters for me to keep them all straight.
The lamia comes to get Anita because Mr. Oliver wants to see her. She takes her to a cave only it isn’t Mr. Oliver, it’s Alejandro. They try to convince Anita to let Alejandro give her his marks, but she refuses. She barely escapes and Edward picks her up and takes her home. Richard shows up for their date, but Anita was bitten by the lamia and the poison finally takes effect and she passes out. She wakes up in Jean Claude’s house. Richard took her there and JC has given Anita the third mark. She is furious, to say the least, so she calls Mr. Oliver and tells him that JC is the Master of the City and where his daytime resting place is, now that she knows it.
Anita finds out that Mr. Oliver’s plan is to take over the city and to send all the vampires on a killing spree since the thinks that vampires should be illegal again. Anita calls Jean Claude and tells him everything. He arranges to have a “battle” which is staged as a show at Circus of the Damned. They have the fight and somehow Mr. Oliver gives Anita all 4 marks to make her his human servant. She kills him and passes out.
Anita wakes up and Richard comes to visit. Richard, who had his throat torn out by a vampire the night before, so she finds out he’s a werewolf. Somehow, Mr. Oliver’s marks reverse Jean Claude’s so Anita no longer has any marks and is free of JC. She is relieved.
They call Anita “The Executioner” and they call Edward “Death”
I decided to end my reading slump by re-reading the Anita Blake books. First thing: these books are definitely gory. You don’t really wanna read them if you have a vivid imagination and a weak stomach.
The story begins with Anita and Bert going to visit Harold Gaynor. HG wants Anita to raise a very old corpse, which will require a human sacrifice. Anita says no and even Bert the Greedy draws the line at a human sacrifice.
Then Anita gets a call from Dolph. A family has been mutilated and eaten, by what no one knew. Anita thinks it’s a zombie but doesn’t really understand how it’s possible for a couple of reasons: 1) they don’t eat, let alone humans and 2) they usually stay near a grave and this zombie is far away from a cemetary. They try to figure out who could have done it and Anita comes up with several names: Manny Rodriguez (her friend), Peter Burke (who is dead), herself and Dominga Salvador, the local vaudun priestess. She gets Manny to arrange a meeting with DS.
At their meeting, DS assesses Anita’s skills and wonders why Anita wasn’t a vaundun priestess. DS agrees to help them if Anita submits to some “tests.” Anita agrees but at one point she ticks off DS and so, DS sends 2 zombies to try to kill her. They come into her apartment while she is sleeping and she shoots them to bits. Well, her and some police the neighbors were kind enough to call when they heard shots.
Gaynor continues to harass Anita - or rather to send his man Bruno and Tommy to do it. She still says no to raising that corpse since it requires a human sacrifice.
There isn’t much Jean-Claude in this story. He pops up nearly incidentally.
There are more murders and we meet Detective Clive Perry. Also in this book is Charles and Jameson, both fellow animators who work with Anita. Oh, and Irving. I can’t remember if Irving was in the first book. Irving is a werewolf and a reporter. He keeps his werewolf-ness quiet because of discrimination. He gets an interview with JC which makes him happy as a clam to have an exclusive interview with the Master of the City.
In the end, Anita has to kill two men because they are about to kill someone else. When she does that, she has enough power to call all the dead in the cemetary where they are. They kill the men, kill HG and kill DS.
These books are funny sometimes and I meant to find this one funny bit to put here just in case someone else actually reads this but I’ve lost it, more’s the pity. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Or read them yourself. That would work as well.
I read 6 months of Martha Stewart Living last night, a Family Fun and looked at some catalogs. I haven’t felt like reading because it requires too much concentration. I think I’m going to re-read the Anita Blake books since I don’t seem to be interested in any of the other things I have to read.
I asked my sister to get me a book on CD from the library while she was there but I didn’t give her any instructions as to what. This is what I got. My sister loves these books - so much so that she named her cats Coco and Yum Yum. Me? I’m not such a fan. I listened to it anyway and here’s my thoughts:
1. Coco gets too much press and Yum Yum not enough. You hardly ever hear about Yum Yum
2. Qwilleran didn’t waste any time finding a new girlfriend when Polly decided to stay in France.
3. I have no idea what the point of this book was.
4. I listened to the unabridged version so it wasn’t that I was missing stuff but I have no idea what this book was about at all. I’m going to go over to Amazon.com and find out. Hold please.
Well, interestingly, amazon says that this book won’t be released until 12/18 but I have the audio book in my truck.
Also, the book takes place in Michigan. I wonder if LJB is from Michigan. It’s a fictional town and the characters seem very UP-ish, now that I know it’s in MI. Oh, right. There was a death and Qwilleran had to solve it. *That* was nearly incidental in this book. Clearly, since I only remembered it when I read the amazon bit.
Thanks to Wikipedia, I know that Ms. Braun is from Michigan, or at least lived here once, and they think that the town is based on Bad Axe, MI, which is “in the Thumb.” But she now lives in North Carolina.
I’m pretty sure I won’t get any more of these books. This one was only okay.
