Micah (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 13)
by Laurell K. Hamilton
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.79 You Save: $4.20 (53%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Micah (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 13)
Book Review: More of the same
Summary: 1 Stars
Which is, after the disaster that was Incubus Dreams, not a good thing. But that's the best possible summary for this book. The same overdone themes present in the last three books are on full display in this one. Bigoted cops, endless whining by Anita, more mechanical and pretty disgusting sex, and yet another sob story in an attempt to create sympathy for a character.
There's only so long that sob stories work, and Hamilton has exhausted her quota. I'm pretty sure she wasn't going for a laugh when she revealed that Micah was dumped by his girlfriend because he's overly generously endowed, but that's all I've got at this point. There are other ways to develop a character than giving them a painful history, but Hamilton's imagination apparently doesn't stretch that far. Literally every single main and secondary character in the Anitaverse has been hurt/betrayed/tortured by a past or present lover. Every single one. There is flat-out no justification for that. Soap operas don't descend to this level of melodrama.
As a warning to new readers, the new formula for the plots is that the number of sentences the plot absorbs in the summary is approximately the number of pages the plot will absorb. Maybe ten pages (if you cut the repetition) actually pertained to working in Philadelphia. The rest was a seemingly endless round of angsting and complaining by Anita. Micah had the audacity to rent a NICE hotel room, and this was almost more than Anita could bear. Someone hand the woman a hankie. The nerve of him.
If it wasn't about the nearly-intolerable pressure of having a man around to love her and tell her how wonderful she is, it was about how hard it is for a woman to work in a man's world or how bigoted and sexist the cops are. Another word to the author: endless whining doesn't go far to win my sympathies. It's been done. Overdone. Ad nauseum. Exhaustively. Find a new theme.
There wasn't as much circular writing or "rich, sensual prose" (read purple to the point of being indigo) in this offering, and there weren't as many spelling errors as in Incubus Dreams, but that's really the only point in favor of a limping and repetitive story. Whatever points it won for that, this book lost more on the sex scene. To spare readers who don't find Hamilton's distinctive form of erotica appealing, there is bleeding due to Micah's...let's just say prodigious size, and discussion of what, precisely, Anita tastes like. Venturing so far in the realms of WAY too much information is not erotic. "Love" scenes shouldn't make the reader say "Ewwwwww" out loud.
All that said, if sex and whining constitutes character growth in your mind, then this is a book for you. If you were hoping LKH would get back to the formula that made her a best-seller, this book is emphatically not the turnaround book you were hoping for. I loathed Micah from his introduction. This book has not changed that opinion.
Book Review: Short and sweet
Summary: 4 Stars
I finished this one in an afternoon, a very pleasant afternoon spent curled up in a recliner, reading about sex and love and the undead, with murders being solved and new ones occurring, an averted procreation emergency, and secrets revealed all over the place. It was fun.
This was the shortest and easiest of the Anita Blake books I've read so far; it most likely should have been called a novella, since the 280 pages was a stretch: the font was larger, the printing had more white space as well as headers and footers, and there was a title page for each chapter, blank but for the chapter number. Reminded me a little of a student essay that doesn't quite hit the requirements. But going into it with the expectation of a shorter story, it was very nice, a little friendly visit back to Anita's world before moving on to something else.
The story was fine, with Anita going to her most annoying zombie-raising to date. It's for an important mob informant who had a sudden heart attack before he could testify, and so there is a judge and two sets of lawyers present at the raising. The raising starts off bad, because this is the first time Anita has walked into a graveyard as old as the one where the informant was buried since her triumvirate reached a new power plateau, and so the dead begin whispering to her, trying to goad her into raising all of them -- or perhaps not; the whispers are not coherent. The pressure she feels, however, is, and there's a great suspense scene where Anita is trying to move the whole raising along so she can get it over with and leave, and the lawyer trying to delay the proceedings -- we assume for the sake of slowing down the conviction, but it turns out to be for a much nastier reason -- while the judge slows everything down even more simply because he is a bombastic pedant, and demands Anita explain every step of the procedure in proper legalese, with proper respect to the court, of course.
The unusual aspect of this plot was that it actually wrapped up quickly once the action started -- and what's more, Hamilton skipped the bloody scene. For maybe the first time in these books, Anita was simply knocked unconscious at the beginning of the fight, and when she wakes up it's all over. I was a touch disappointed, as this has been one of the draws for me -- the fact that Hamilton goes into glorious, gory detail with all of the bloody bits as well as all the sex scenes -- and there was a detailed sex scene earlier, but at the same time, it felt like a nice bit of balance: there is no way that Anita can make it through every single fight she gets into without being sidelined at least once. Accidents happen, and sometimes, no matter how good you are, the other guy gets in a lucky shot. It was nice to see that happen.
So part of me wishes it had been longer, and part of me was glad I was able to move through it so quickly. In the end, I just liked it.
Book Review: Good story but the publisher should be ashamed!
Summary: 3 Stars
Micah is the first sign that hopefully the Author is going back towards Story driven Sex rather than Sex driven Story. If such is the case I applaud this and am eagerly looking forward to the next book. I really liked this one. Short cohesive story that dealt with little things that many wondered about Micah's past, without getting so bogged down with trying to make up excuses for sex (Incubus Dreams). One sex scene in the whole story with Micah.... and while it ran a bit long, it at least worked into the story.
Anita emotional hang-ups are becoming more excuses for turmoil than character quirks.... however it's good to see that Micah has his own problems, rather than being cardboard cutout man ;)
The Mystery/Adventure to it was a bit shorter than I like.... it started the mystery and solved it all in the last 80 pages of a 245 page book.... Everything else was interpersonal relationship drama and finding out about Micah.... it wasn't a supernatural suspense or mystery or even adventure up until those last 80 pages and even then... kinda light on anything more than a quickie in courtroom drama form... Lots of lead up, everything fell together all of a sudden, a few pages of action, and then resolution and end of story....Left you feeling satisfied that it was an ending, but it was kind of short on story and long on personal information.
Okay now the bad part.... This was /NOT/ a novel... 245 pages that should have been maybe 100 and that's being generous. This is nothing about the Author, and all about the publisher... 2 FULL pages of blank space for the chapter break so between 2 and 3 pages added for every chapter depending on if the last page of the previous chapter was odd or even... Double spacing everything, huge footer space, couple points larger fonts, half again larger margins than any of the other books and big thick top and bottom borders for every page... The Publisher should be ashamed of itself for packaging a short story in the form of a novel by pulling cheap high school level tricks that would have dropped you 2 letter grades automatically on a Term Paper without someone having even read it, just for insulting the teacher's intelligence. Thus the 3 instead of 5 star rating.
I don't mind paying $8 for a book I like even if it is short, but don't treat us like we're idiots by packing a book so full of sophomoric editing tricks that it looks longer than it actually is and then labeling it a 'NOVEL'. If you didn't visit LKH's website and know this was a short story, you'd definitely feel ripped off by the false feel and size of the book, the label of Novel and the $8 price tag.
Definitely buy used, the Publisher doesn't need to be encouraged to pull this sort of stunt again.
Book Review: Trip through the present
Summary: 1 Stars
Micah. The one character in the Anita Blake series that nobody really wants to see more of -- really, we've heard too much about his physique already.
And because of this, Laurell K. Hamilton has turned out a very short novella, "Micah," to show off her latest creation and his enormous member. "Micah" has many of the same problem as her latest books -- too much emphasis on sex, annoying attitude -- but it's also horribly boring and unnecessary.
Anita Blake is woken when a coworker calls her. A federal witness died before he could be put on the stand, and the coworker can't go, since his wife is suffering a miscarriage. So Anita hops on a plane. But since she needs the occasional quickie to feed the ardeur, her boyfriend Micah tags along.
Though Anita has been shacking up with Micah for the last year or so, she actually doesn't know much about him -- he's a wereleopard, has kitty-cat eyes, and that's about all. But as they spend time alone together (no Jean-Claude, alas, and no Richard), Anita begins to find out what her boyfriend's past contains.
Here's a warning for potential readers: "Micah" is short. Very short. Too short for its size. It strains to fill the few hundred pages of its length. In fact, it's more like a longish short story than a novella, really.
And at the end of the day, "Micah" commits that cardinal sin -- it's completely unnecessary. There's not much of a plot, no exposition, no new revelations worth knowing. There isn't even any excitement until the ending of the book, and that peters out quickly.
Even Hamilton doesn't seem terribly enthusiastic. She's going through the motions: unimaginative (and sometimes gross) sex, lots of Anita whinging, and soap-opera angst about Micah (horrors!) being a good boyfriend. The writing suffers the most, since there's little detail and equally little atmosphere. The sex scenes, of course, are the exception. We get too much detail in those.
Admittedly, Hamilton DOES try to give Micah new dimensions as a character, by giving him a traumatic background. Unfortunately, this trauma is that his girlfriend dumped him because Micah's Magnificent Member was, uh, too big for her to handle. It will move readers to tears... of laughter. And you can only imagine how the Magnificent Member's, uh, size has an impact on the rather icky sex scene that follows. Although since they have been together for a year, it's not clear why the size is suddenly such a problem.
With "Micah," Laurell K. Hamilton has served up a pint-sized story that doesn't really accomplish anything. It's not much of a story, but somehow that seems appropriate for someone who is not much of a character.
Book Review: Disappointed with the turn Laurell is taking
Summary: 2 Stars
Anita Blake was once a wonderful character. She's a necromancer who raises zombies for a living in a world where vampires have legal rights as citizens. She's a licensed vampire hunter - even though they have rights, they're still too dangerous to lock up if they do bad things and the punishment for every crime is death. In the original books, she is very hung up on her Catholic upbringing, and struggles with the way it messes with her head when she becomes tied to both the Master of the City vampire and the head of the local werewolf pack. She's conflicted, she's surrounded by sexy men who have supernatural powers that once she considered the bad guys and she begins to identify with them. Things were good.
Along the way, in earlier books in the series, Anita's metaphysical ties to all the creatures of the night gave her a little curse - the ardeur - which was a vampire power from the Incubus/Sucubus line of Belle Morte. Translation: the books stopped being supernatural mysteries as much, and delved more into a fascination with long drawn out sex scenes.
The Anita Blake universe is such a rich and wonderful place to visit, I want more, but lately that's been very disappointing.
'Micah' surprised me. First, the paperback is extremly thin. Upon opening it, I discovered that the font was double spaced. It was like the large print edition of Readers Digest. Every chapter gets a full page devoted to the chapter number, and one or two completely blank pages, with the text starting three quarters down on the next page. You are getting a short story, at best a novella, marketted as a novel.
That doesn't have to be all bad, you can pack a lot into a short story. Hamilton doesn't, not this time. The content should be the first two chapters of a good novel, not a stand-alone. She gets a zombie raising case, has a long sex scene, meets the client, raises the zombie, things (as anyone who has followed the series should expect) go bad, and then there's one closing scene. That's it.
It was named 'Micah,' which might lead you to leave that there will be some development of his character. Not so much. We already knew he was a were-leopard, so learning that he became one through an attack isn't so much news as stating the obvious.
Fans of the series can skip this one. If you're delighted with the sexual exploration of the more recent books, then give it a whirl, but otherwise, you miss nothing. Let's hope the next installment takes the potential that this book took so long to set up and runs with it in the style of the earlier books in the series.