Paranormal/Horror Romance Review "Affliction" by Laurell K. Hamilton

Title:  Affliction (Anita Blake #22)
Author:  Laurell K. Hamilton
Publisher:  Berkeley
Publication Date:  July 2, 2013
Genre:  Paranormal / Romance / Vampires / Shifters


Buy this book on AmazonAuthor's Website
Author's Goodreads Profile

Synopsis from Goodreads

Some zombies are raised. Others must be put down. Just ask Anita Blake.

Before now, she would have considered them merely off-putting, never dangerous. Before now, she had never heard of any of them causing human beings to perish in agony. But that’s all changed.

Micah’s estranged father lies dying, rotting away inside from some strange ailment that has his doctors whispering about “zombie disease.”

Anita makes her living off of zombies—but these aren’t the kind she knows so well. These creatures hunt in daylight, and are as fast and strong as vampires. If they bite you, you become just like them. And round and round it goes…

Where will it stop?
Even Anita Blake doesn’t know.

My Thoughts...
If you have been reading this blog for long and you saw my review for the last Anita Blake book, Kiss The Dead, then you know that I was pretty harsh with my review.  I am happy to say that this book was so much better.  I was pretty fed up with the whole Anita story line after that train wreck, but this book had an actual story and it was a good one.  One other thing that put this one firmly in the plus column for me was Edward/Ted.  He is one of my favorite long term characters and his appearance just made this book that much better.  I think he needs his own spin off series!  I would read that for sure.

So this book finds us in Colorado where Micah's, somewhat estranged, father has been infected by something and is dying.  They have no idea what has infected him, but Micah's mother reached out to Anita knowing that he doesn't have much time left.  She wants Micah to be able to say goodbye to him while he has the chance.  In true Anita fashion, they show up with her entourage in tow because she can't go without guards, partners, etc... Then naturally she is pulled into the case, as a marshal she feels it's her duty to get to the bottom of what is going on.  Micah's family is a wild one!  His aunt and uncle are way out in left field with their beliefs about shifters/weres and they are quite impossible to like.  Micah is naturally hesitant to explain his relationship with Anita and Nathaniel, little does he know that his parents are going to be much more understanding than he can possibly imagine.

The zombie/vampire story in this book is really good.  It's like classic Anita and then you add Edward and it's like way back in the first 4-5  books when it was more horror driven and less about Anita and all the metaphysical shit she has had going on for the last 10+ books. In fact we get almost 50% of the way through the book before she even needs to feed the ardeur and there are only maybe 3 sex scenes in the whole book.

Now, I am still going to rant about all the unnecessary crap that LKH insists on putting in every single one of these books.  I think I bitch about it every time I write a review on one of her books now!  There are literally PAGES, unnecessary pages, of clothing, appearance, weapon, etc... description.  This isn't even touching on the extra pages of vomited out dialogue about past books and story lines.  Micah has just found out his dad whom he hasn't seen in 10 years is dying and while he is waiting to leave to see him Anita and Jean Claude are having this LONG phone conversation about all this crap that we readers remember from past books.  We know why Asher was sent away, we remember all that shit, we don't need pages of awkward dialogue that's meant to remind us.  It doesn't flow well, it's obvious that it's a synopsis of the previous book and quite frankly that wasn't a book worth remembering anyway!

So, if we could have cut out about 100 pages of descriptions and synopsis I probably would have given this book 5 stars instead of just 4 on Goodreads.  I did enjoy the story this time, I do think it's time to start wrapping up this series though.  I think that there is just only so long that you can keep a story like this alive when it spans nearly 20 years of writing.