Rafael

Written by Laurell K Hamilton

Narrated by Kimberly Alexis

Rafael, king of the wererats, must fight to the death to defend his crown. He wants Anita Blake, one of his closest allies, with him as he faces an opponent unlike any he’s faced before. He will ask Anita to risk everything to be at his side....
 
But some of the wererats fear that Rafael depends too much on Anita and her ties to the vampires. They believe that there is only room in America for one supernatural king, and Rafael will turn them into nothing more than food for the bloodsuckers.
 
Among his enemies, a new challenger has arisen who is younger, hungrier, and has dark secrets that could destroy both the wererats and the vampires. Rafael will go into the magical heart of his people to find the power and violence that he needs to save them all, or die trying.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Release date: Feb 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9780593347911

Laurell K Hamilton

Laurell K. Hamilton is the bestselling author of the acclaimed Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Novels. She lives near St Louis with her husband, her daughter, two dogs and an ever-fluctuating number of fish. She invites you to visit her website at www.laurellkhamilton.org.

Reviews for Rafael

[library_breeder · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Yak, Yak, Yak, Yak, Yak, Yak, Yak, sex, Yak, Yak, Yak, Yak, magic, fight, fight, magic, fight, fight, fight, fight, magic, magic.

That about sums it up in order.

I skimmed a lot. A LOT...there was much more internal dialogue than normal. The story really didn't start until about 25%. However it was filled with our favorite (and not so favorite) characters. Since the last two books were police/crime books that had the Marshall's they were nowhere in this book. Also, there were no wolves/Richard. It was straight up vampire/were politics and Anita dealing with her feelings. The actual "action" took place about 50% in.

[glennis.leblanc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

[juva_3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Anita has a date to feed the Ardeur on Rafael, the king of the rats, before he faces off against a challenger. This time, a promising wererat named Hector has called him out and Rafael is less confidant than he should be and is feeling discouraged about the whole thing. He's beginning to think his time as leader is coming to an end and although he might have some more years left, he doesn't want to continue killing the most promising young members of his people.

Matters become more complicated when Anita realizes that Hector is the animal to call of a powerful master vampire. Some big bad vampire is using this challenge as an opportunity to weaken and possibly take over the wererats. If they succeed, Jean Claude's leadership will also be in jeopardy. Anita decides to accompany Rafael to the fighting pits and ensure that he is successful and the mystery vampire is located and executed.

This book is bad, but relatively short which is always a blessing. Essentially two things happen in this book, preceded by near endless expository conversations that are tedious, rambling, and almost entirely pointless. The first thing is that Anita has sex with Rafael. The fact that they are going to have sex is established in the first chapter but it will be almost two hours before they actually do the deed because they just keep talking about literally anything that occurs to them. They wander through the Circus of the Damned, discussing Rafael's previous relationships, his penchant for dating "crazy" women, intricacies of Rat culture and political complications around the kingship. Anita's internal monologue is constantly bringing everything to a screeching halt by reminding the reader of things they already know and over explaining everything she says and even informing the reader of things she didn't say and why. Also, the dialogue is so painfully awkward and just simply not how people talk. I'll give an example of the type of thing I mean below:

Random Guard: "Well hello there, Anita Blake, or as my people call you, Gatita Negra."

Anita: "Greetings, Rodrigo, and thank you for using my nickname. It means black kitten, which is a term of endearment and honor. As you know, the wererats are really bigoted about women, but they respect me because I'm not like the other girls."

Rodrigo: "It's true. You're so logical and strong. Which makes you unique among all women who are usually flighty and emotional in a way that displeases us culturally."

The author will not hesitate to just let a boring conversation drag on for pages so that she can be sure to get all her info dumping out and also take time to have people compliment Anita in very cringe ways. In this book, Anita is praised for not "tricking a man by offering him a threesome". It seems that Rafael has only dated women who said they wanted a threesome and then freaked out and stabbed him when he agreed. You know. Because women are liars.

The wererats are the focus of this book which, honestly, was probably a mistake. I won't pretend to be an expert, but the wererats have always seemed like a racist construct to me. At first I just thought that Rafael, the king of the rats, was Mexican. But as we have learned more about the wererats as a group it has become clear that they are all Mexican. Or at least all Latinx. No other shapeshifter group is delimited by race. Some of the tiger clans have Asian influences, but that's only because they've developed ways of bearing live children rather than making new weretigers through their bite. But even they have members of other races. Apparently, not so, with the wererats.

In this book, we learn more about wererat culture. Like that they have witches who gain power from an ancient Aztec goddess. And they settle all their disputes through armed combat. And their only law is machismo and might makes right. Which I suppose isn't that much different from the other groups, really. Of course Anita spends the entire second half of the book ricocheting from one obnoxious confrontation to the next. In each one she has to prove she's the biggest and baddest all over again. This song and dance stopped being interesting about ten books ago, but it's clear that LKH has nothing else to offer.

There's nothing to recommend this book, and nothing of import happens. The bigbad of the book is someone Anita's already fought before and he barely does anything before he's roundly defeated again. At no point is there any tension or worry that the good guys won't come out on top. The final knife fight that the book was leading up to was very boring and anticlimactic.

[drled_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Synopsis: 'When Rafael, Anita’s friend and lover, is challenged to a fight to the death for the throne of the wererat community, Anita is bound to stand by his side—and the outcome could drastically alter the balance of supernatural power in America. Wererats only respect strength, so Anita must repeatedly prove herself against a host of opponents, even as she and her allies navigate the complicated politics that govern vampires and shape-shifters alike. Further complications arise when Anita realizes Rafael’s challenger has ties to a powerful foe with their own sinister agenda for the wererats. Amid the intrigue, Hamilton still devotes plenty of time to Anita’s ever-expanding polyamorous relationships and upcoming wedding to vampire king Jean-Claude.'
Review: Love that Anita is learning something new about the groups of animals and that her groups are not all that they can be because they are missing witches. The ending of the bad guy was a bit abrupt.

[carolesrandomlife · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My feelings are a little mixed with this book. There were some things that I really liked about the book but there were also things that I didn’t care for at all. This is the 28th installment in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series and I have read most of the books in the series. I am the first to admit that I haven’t loved them all but I haven’t quite given up on the series just yet.

I was actually pretty excited when I found out about this book. As a long-time reader of the series, I consider myself a fan of the title character in this book and couldn’t wait to see Rafael as the main focus of the book. I really liked learning about the wererats and seeing how things worked in their community. Rafael is facing a serious challenge and I really wanted to see things work out in his favor.

There were some things that I didn’t enjoy quite so much. I love action in books and this book had some of that and I really enjoyed those sections. Unfortunately, it sometimes seemed like the characters would have to talk everything over at great length before anything could be done. At the start of the book, Anita and Rafael decide that they want to have sex. Okay, great. They spend so much time talking about where they will have sex and how they will do it that by the time they actually got around to it, I didn’t care anymore. It seemed like 2/3 of the book was the characters talking about what they would do and the other 1/3 was them actually doing those things. I really would have loved less talking and more doing.

Kimberly Alexis did a great job with the narration. I think that she does a great job with the entire cast of characters and I like the fact that she had a very distinctive voice for each individual. I thought that she had a very pleasant voice that was easy to listen to for hours at a time. I do believe that the narration added to my overall enjoyment of the story.

I would recommend this book to fans of this series. I don’t think that this would be a good place for new readers to jump into the series but fans of the series shouldn’t miss this one.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Berkley Publishing Group via NetGalley and purchased a copy of the audiobook.

[bgknighton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another trip into the supernatural world of Anita Blake. More politics, less sex. More world development— a good thing. If she ever learns to really trust her powers, the world had better watch out.

[kmartin802_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This shorter than average entry into the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series still managed to fit in all the usual subjects. Anita is dealing with a new superpower: super strength this time. She is still very concerned with her complicated sex life including a jealous guard who resents her for "stealing" the object of his infatuation and her feelings for Rafael the Rat King who is a friend with benefits.

Rafael has a problem. Because of his relationship with Anita and Jean-Claude, members of his rodere are concerned that he is selling them out to the vampires. Rafael is facing to-the-death challenges frequently by rivals who are afraid of where he is leading them and who want his throne.

The current rival vying for the throne is Hector. Rafael had been grooming Hector to possibly become king when he was finished but Hector wants the throne now. Rafael has enough mixed feelings about this up-coming fight that Anita is afraid that he might lose the fight. He wants her to make him her animal to call which should give him more power. But it will cause political problems for her.

Rafael asks Anita to attend the fight but doesn't tell her she'll have to fight for the right to attend. Her super strength lets her defeat the first one to attack her with a silver blade which is a rules violation. Then she's tested by the rodere's brujas. She uses a power gifted to her from the Obsidian Butterfly to win.

But the biggest problem comes when she meets Hector and realizes that he is under the influence of a vampire that Jean-Claude didn't know was in his territory. This unknown vampire is a massive threat that has to be neutralized right away.

The story was fast-paced and brought in characters and powers from earlier books in the series. Thankfully, the shorter length didn't allow for the long-drawn-out sex scenes that dominated other books in the series. I liked the focus on Rafael and the rats. They have been side characters for quite a while and it was nice to get a closer look at their society.

Fans of the Anita Blake series won't want to miss this one.