Blood Noir by Laurell K. Hamilton

Warning: There are spoilers re: who Anita sleeps with. Big surprise there.

Now the old bastard's dying and I won't have time to forgive him before he goes....

Jason Schuyler is a werewolf. He's also one of Anita Blake's best friends, and sometimes her lover. And right now he needs her -- not to be a vampire hunter, or a federal marshal, or a necromancer, or even for her rank in the werewolf pack, but because his father is dying. He needs Anita because she's a pretty woman who loves him, who can make him look like an everyday guy, who agrees to go home with him and help him say good-bye to the abusive father he never loved. The fact that Jason is about as much an everyday guy as Anita is a pretty woman is something they figure they can keep under wraps for a couple of days in a small town. How hard can that be?
Really, by now, Anita Blake should know better.

Marmee Noir, ancient mother of all vampires, picks this weekend to make a move. Somehow she has cut the connection that binds Anita and Jean-Claude, leaving Jean-Claude unable to sense what is happening. Dangerous even as she sleeps, buried in darkness for a thousand years somewhere beneath the old country of Europe, Marmee Noir reaches out toward power. She has attacked Anita before, but never like this. In Anita she senses what she needs to make her enemies tremble. . .

Reason for Reading: LKH is my literary crack. I cannot say no after all this time. But ever since the series picked up slightly with the Harlequin, I had to give Blood Noir a shot.

Summary: So Jason is one of those characters that has been around since the beginning. He is Jean-Claude's pomme de sang (blood donor basically) and Anita's friend. After breaking up with Perdita, a merwoman from the East Coast (whom I didn't even remember he was seeing), Jason comes knocking on Anita's door for some company. He finds her home alone with Nathaniel since Micah is out of town. Anita and Nathaniel console him and when Anita questions Jason's real reason for coming over, it turns out Jason's father is dying and he's always thought Jason was gay. So he needs a woman to come along to his hometown and pretend to be his sweetheart. Anita really isn't Jason's sweetheart, but she is his buddy so she agrees. Shocking I know.

So Anita and Jason head out for Jason's hometown and things hit the fan pretty quick. First of all, Jason bears an uncanny resemblance to the governor's son who is getting married that weekend and everyone thinks this famous guy is cheating on his fiancee. Then Marmee Noir shows up and more metaphysical crap goes down with the ardeur, and I gotta say, I was not cool with Marmee Noir raping Anita and two strangers. Not cool at all. Which leads us to...

My Thoughts: All right, let's get what I did not like out of the way. Marmee Noir, who is the mother of all vampires and maybe even the first ever vampire, has taken a liking to Anita in the last couple of books. Anita now wears an amulet to protect her against Marmee's evil ways but Marmee totally screws Anita over with the ardeur by making her screw two weretigers - two strange weretigers. This happens towards the end of the book and raises a whole bunch of crap. Richard shows up, Richard gets jealous, why is this guy still in the freaking series? Anyway, did not like that Anita is still gaining even more men to her bed. Also, Jason is going to be more available to Anita now too, she's fallen in love with him you see. After all this time, Jason finally gets a piece of her, he's not just an extra with a main guy.

Actually, now that I think about it, this book really wasn't about anything. LOL It's just raised some more questions about Marmee Noir and Anita is gaining yet more power and guess what? She re-inherits her rage from Richard, so at least he's going to calm down.

C-