Rafael by Laurell K. Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Let's get some of the housekeeping taken care of first.

If you're still reading Anita Blake, you know what to expect. Perhaps 3/5ths of the opening of the novel will be relationship angst with a particularly high focus on -- you guessed it -- Rafael. A quick note: every one of these novels that have a name as a title are all rather short, focused, and almost entirely relationship stuff.

That being said, this particular novel DOES pick up in both action, consequence, and a whole bunch of new metaphysical goodies that call back to the 8th book and some of the better books in the upper-mid teens. If most of all the sex-fixation stuff had been cut out, I would have been rocking to this book. Maybe add a good murder mystery to ease us into the were-rat kingdom stuff, first, and I'd have been saying this is one of the better Anita books. As it is, I give it a 3.5 rating.

Unlike the other name-title novels, it has some important stuff in it. I wouldn't skip it.

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