A Review of Micah by Laurell K. Hamilton

Well, it's been awhile since the greybeard posted a review.


Judging by the cover artwork, I doubt that Laurell K. Hamilton's Micah has male Science Fiction geeks in mind as a core audience. Quite honestly it looks a bit like a romance novel. Despite the beefcakey cover artwork and romantic aspects of the plot, this male Science Fiction geek did enjoy the book.


Basically, Anita Blake, the vampire hunter and necromancer, has to travel out of state to animate a zombie to testify for the feds. Because of weird complications from being the human servant to a vampire, Anita needs to have sex on a fairly regular basis, so she brings along one of her boyfriends, Micah. Micah is a wereleopard, which is like a werewolf but with the transformation being from human to leopard rather than wolf.


Along the way, more about Micah’s origin is revealed. Lycanthropy, the catch-all term for shape-changing as a condition including among others werewolves, wereleopards, werehyenas, and wererats is transmitted as a disease by bites and scratches from an infected creature. Micah caught his case as result of a violent attack by a serial killer wereleopard who targeted hunters.


After a rather lengthy bit of dialogue and lengthy sex scene that kind of intermingled, we get to the animation that Anita was called out for in the first place. It goes wrong because zombies who were murdered in the first life have an unstoppable drive for vengeance once animated. This zombie died of a heart attack but believes that it was brought on by another person’s actions, so he feels like he’s been murdered. And that’s just about the end of the novel.


Why did I like this book? I think the intermingling of supernatural horror elements with other human feelings and even the sex and romance bits add up to something unique and kind of cool. It’s also interesting that Hamilton seems to have rules in mind for how the supernatural critters work in her novels even if they aren’t necessarily spelled out for us or clear to the characters involved. There’s also the fact that it is quite simply a good supernatural horror novel.