Blue Moon
This book is an inbetweener book in the series.
Anita gets a call from Richards little brother saying that Richards in jail for rape. This is completely opposite to who Richard is. He's more likely to murder someone than to violate a woman. Anita of course comes riding to the rescue despite the fact that the local Master Vampire has forbidden her from entering his territory. Scared that she was there to kill him and take away his power base.
Outside of this it's clear that Richard has been framed and that the cops are in the bad guys pocket. So Anita is getting threats from the police, threats from the vampires and all she wants to do is get Richard out of jail before the full moon in 5 nights.
Anita does several things in this book that she's already done in the past such as take on Rainas’ munin and use it to heal, but they make it all a little extra in this book but the book just feels like it was written to be a tipping point and nothing else.
Yes Rainas’ munin didn't let Anita just do a bit of healing and let her go, no of course not it wants Anita to suffer, we already knew this. Yes Anita manages to activate the ring around the wolves ceremonial ground to make it a holy sanctity, not a big deal, Larry her trainee could have done it if he was there. The difference was there were several dozen rotter vampires there and Anita turned them all into smoke and ash and good thing too because rotters can only be killed with fire.
The bad guys capture Richards mum and little brother, torture them, rape them and send Anita a finger in a box. So Anita crossed a line she never believed she would. She tortured and then killed the messenger by cutting off his fingers one at a time till he told them where they were held prisoner. Anita almost spared him till he admitted to raping Richards mum. If becoming the monster saves Richards mum then so be it. But really outside mental and emotional preparedness, it's something anyone could have done and indeed several of her compatriots offered to do it in her stead.
Yet what bothers her the most is that she cheated on Jean-Claud with Richard. But also that because their triumvirate uses lust, by having sex with Richard, she had bound their triumvirate tighter and stronger. What upsets Anita the most is the feeling of losing control and so what does she do at the very end of it. She basically runs away and cuts herself off from pretty much every preternatural tie she had.
Thoughts
This is an annoying read. Everyone’s pissed at Anita and Anita’s pissed at everyone. Nothing much happens that hadn't already happened in previous books. We learn two bits of information. Since Anita healed Damian, he has no choice but to obey her every wish and yet because of that mystical tie, he would obey her every whim even if weren't a command because the magic makes him feel like when he's by her side, that he is 'home', and home is where the heart is.
We also learn that where some vampires are called night hags and can feed off of the emotion of fear just as easily as blood and find it almost as nutritious. We find out officially (though it has often been implied) that Jean-Claud is labelled an incubus and can feed off of the emotion of lust, and so even though Anita had never let Jean Claude take blood from her, every time they had sex, he had been feeding on her anyway just in a different method.
Both of these revelations piss Anita off and contribute to her noping the hell out at the end of the book.
I give this book a 6.2/10. You could probably safely skip this book in the series and not be missing out which is a lot coming from me, a completionist. (This also displeases me because it's book eight and eight is my favourite number and they had to go and waste it.)