Bloody Bones By Laurell K. Hamilton Book Review - Anita Blake # 5

Bloody Bones starts off with Anita's boss booking a job that would be impossible for anyone but Anita without human sacrifice; raise an entire grave of 200 year old zombies.  The client is a business tycoon with way too much money who needs proof that the land he wants to build his new hotel on doesn't belong to the Bouvier family, and he needs these zombies' identities to find out if the piece of land is their burial grounds.  He offers an exorbitant amount of money for this job, and Anita is shipped off to another town to be bathed in luxury and do her necromancer thing.

Surprise, surprise, it's not going to be that easy.

Anita knows that Stirling - her client - has a reason for needing this particular plot of land, a reason he has no intention of letting slip.  Simultaneously, there is a series of vampire murders and abductions involving young boys in the same town.  But don't worry, folks, Anita is right on it.  Oh yeah, there are also some faeries involved, too.  It all ties up nicely at the end, as always.

I love the Anita Blake books.  Love them so much, in fact, that this is my second reading of them.  But this particular installment just didn't have quite as much to love as the previous ones.  It was good and entertaining, but it somehow lacked that compulsive need to keep reading and tear through the pages.  But I must admit, Jean-Claude was absolutely fantastically fantastic in this book.  He just may be my favorite sexy vampire of all sexy vampires.  I love virtually everything about him; the mystery that surrounds him but slowly gets revealed just a little more each novel, his endearments for Anita that do nothing but annoy her, his single-minded determination to prove to this woman that he is not a monster, and that he really does hold a very special place in his heart for her. "I love you, ma petite, as much as I'm able." - page 286

I know she has some moral reasons for keeping her emotional distance from this master vampire, but if I were her, I'd have given into that particular brand of necrophilia in book one.

I also loved Larry, Anita's protege, in this one.  And Jason, who goes on to become one of my favorite characters.  For you Richard lovers, you might be a bit disappointed with his one short appearance.  My fellow Jean-Claude fanatics, prepare to fall in fictional-character love even more somewhere around chapter 30.

Bloody Bones - 4 stars, but only because of Jean-Claude.