Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #08 - Blue Moon

Laurell K. Hamilton

For the series over view and the other Anita Blake Vampire Hunter reviews click the following link. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter

Anita's knives make an appearance in the cover art for this novel, she tends to use them often to kill things, I find it surprising that they didn't show up prior to this. The knives in this piece of artwork are bloody huge, almost verging on short sword length.

Anita has several of these "small" knives, she also has a "big knife", that must be an impressive blade indeed.

For those that don't know Anita carries around knives in addition to her guns. The knives are rather expensive custom jobs, the blades on them are comprised of a steel/silver alloy. This alloy has the maximum silver content possible that will still allow them to be functional and keep a good edge. The exact ratio is not mentioned, probably because it would be pretty had to find out what this ratio would actually realistically have to be.

The reason for the alloy is pretty obvious once the rules of Anita's universe are know, silver hurts pretty much any supernatural bad guy with the exception of the Sidhe that she came across in one novel, since this is a rarity packing silver is a good bet when you are likely to be playing rough with monsters.

Of course you couldn't call the novel Blue Moon and not have a big moon in the background on the picture, nonetheless Anita brandishing her knives in front of the moon does look cool. Just wish I knew what it was she had strapped to her back.

The basic gist of this particular novel is that Richard has been framed in the assault of a young woman, it is of course a false charge, but basically someone is trying to get Richard out of the way. Richard and a group of conservationists are doing some research on some trolls in the local area. These are a small harmless breed of troll somewhat like chimps, I think they are some sort of endangered species.

Some crooked cops are in on the act hence the ease of drumming up the dodgy charges. Anita goes of with a group of vampires and some furry friends to pull Richards arse out of the fire and also use her police contacts to help.

Anita is taught how to control her inherited were powers by the local packs human witch.

The exploration of the ceremonies and customs of the werewolf packs that takes place in this novel is very interesting, apart from this it is not as memorable as some of the other Anita Blake novels.