#78 Rafael by Laurell K. Hamilton

 

Anita is backing up Rafael in his bid to hold onto his control of the rats.  There is a new challenger to the leadership and he is using Antia’s bonds with Rafael to say that he is no longer fit to be king. Turns out there is magic within the rats that Antia didn’t know about.  I enjoyed this book. There was feeding of the ardeur but it didn’t consume huge sections of the book.  During that scene, Anita finds out that the challenger is a servant to another vampire that is hiding from everyone.  The rest of the book centers on going to the place of power for the rats and the fight for the leadership.  The reader finds out more about the rat clans then has been discussed in the entire series. There is no US Marshall biz or zombie raising in this book just supernatural politics.

 

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#79 Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs

 

Anna and Charles receive a visit from the FBI agent they met in one of the previous books.  It seems that there were people living on land that is owned by the Marrok’s wife but they have now all disappeared.  Because this far enough away from Montana, the pack didn’t know about any of it happening. Once the FBI tipped them off they pretty much stayed out of it for the rest of the book.  Anna and Charles head out and Tag comes along as backup. There are several references to past events in previous books but a reader doesn’t need to know any of it to understand what is going on in this book.  There is one event that does happen in this book that I can’t wait to find out more about in future books.  There is insight to Leah and Bran’s relationship in this book. Only downside is there isn’t much Asil in this book.

 

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#80 Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

 

This book is set before Network Effect but after Exit Strategy.  It is good to remember that since how some characters react to Murderbot are different in this book than in Network Effect. There is a murder on station and for the most part security on board doesn’t have much experience solving them. There is no direct camera footage of what happened so there is an investigation. Murderbot gets drawn into it and uses the skills it has picked up from all the entertainment videos and it’s security background. This is a good locked room murder mystery with the entire station subbing as the locked room.  I don’t want to give any of the plot away but I do enjoy how Murderbot and Dr. Mensah interact in this series.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss