Status
Call number
Publication
Description
Meet Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, in the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series that "blends the genres of romance, horror and adventure with stunning panache"(Diana Gabaldon). Laurell K. Hamilton's bestselling series has captured readers' wildest imaginations and addicted them to a seductive world where supernatural hungers collide with the desires of the human heart, starring a heroine like no other... Anita Blake is small, dark, and dangerous. Her turf is the city of St. Louis. Her job: re-animating the dead and killing the undead who take things too far. But when the city's most powerful vampire asks her to solve a series of vicious slayings, Anita must confront her greatest fear--her undeniable attraction to master vampire Jean-Claude, one of the creatures she is sworn to destroy... "What The Da Vinci Code did for the religious thriller, the Anita Blake series has done for the vampire novel."--USA Today… (more)
User reviews
The good news is that this is the starting book of what is one of the coolest horror/action series. If you like a scrappy woman kicking supernatural bad guy butt, this is a set I'd recommend. Anita Blake strikes just the right notes of vulnerability and
The bad news is that, after about book #8, it becomes one of the uncoolest porn series—by book #12 we spend the bulk of the novel in blow-by-blow (no pun intended) descriptions of our heroine in the sack with just about every male character in the books, singly or in groups. If you don't mind a lot of sex in your books, you'll still mind the total absence of plot and the thoroughly unpleasant woman you used to like.
Definitely read the first eight or so, then switch to Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, Tanya Huff or their ilk.
Anita Blake is the first
And lately she's had a string of them. In her world, zombies, ghouls, weres are known to exist and a US Supreme Court case has recently given vampires rights as people. That doesn't mean they're not dangerous and when Anita's friend is threatened she must solve a string of vampire murders and deal with some of the most powerful and dangerous vampires of St Louis. I like all the thought Hamilton put into her vampires: they have "animals to call," "human servants" and there is a whole subculture attracted to vampires including a religious cult...and oh, a vampire stripper club called "Guilty Pleasures" that features a smexy owner--Jean Claude who is one of the most intriguing and prominent characters in the series. And the most chilling monster of all may be a human--Anita's sometime ally and colleague Edward.
I also liked LK Hamilton's style and pacing in this. I read this book in one sitting, feeling as if nothing was filler and liking how she can choose details that bring characters and settings sharply to mind. There are winning touches of humor as well--the book features witty and snappy dialogue.
Sounds like a rave, doesn't it? I do have to sound one warning note though. If you're the kind of person who, if you like the first book in a series, can't stop reading the others even once it jumps the shark. Well, you may hate taking me up on my recommendation. I think if anything, the books get better in the next 8 volumes. I liked Anita's arc up through Blue Moon. I thought Hamilton was working through some interesting themes about walking the line between fighting monsters and becoming one--and just what it means to be a monster. But imo the series badly, badly jumps the shark in the tenth book, Narcissus in Chains, of the jaw-dropping, book hurling, she-didn't-just-do-that! kind and with every book after that I thought Anita became more and more a caricature of herself. It's at the point that I'm absolutely astounded the most recent Anita Blakes are published, let alone inhabit the bestseller list.
Reading this first book though reminded me exactly why I persisted reading this series long after I should have given up. I was struck with just how rich Anita's world was in the beginning. She had co-workers, a boss, colleagues, family--her step brother is mentioned as someone she cares about--friends, neighbors. Later what she has...well, you might want to find out for yourself. But yes, this first novel is good. A guilty pleasure.
But hey, my friend was right - no sex in the first book!
In this story Anita Blake is an animator, one who can raise the dead as zombies. A rather odd occupation. On the side she was apparently a vampire hunter, earning her the name of “The Executioner”. When we join this particular tale Anita seems to be partially retired from the active vampire hunting scene and even though she still has no love for them, she tolerates them. Jean-Claude is the vampire owner/proprietor of the bar, Guilty Pleasures. When vampires start getting murdered Jean-Claude arranges it so that Anita is brought in as an investigator. Unfortunately for all concerned he loses control of the situation causing Anita’s friend to become threatened and Jean-Claude to undergo a horrid punishment at the behest of his master. This story has Anita playing an investigator of vampire deaths while all the while trying to keep the master vampire’s fangs away from herself and those she cares about.
This was a much slower story than I thought it would be. In depth description, an abundance of characters to try and keep straight and convoluted loyalties and agendas made it all a bit confusing. I also figured out early on what was happening with Jean-Claude and kind of had an inkling of how thing would work out with Phillip and the majority of the other characters. I had to work a little bit at staying interested but I still enjoyed the story. At this point I’m kind of curious what will happen to Anita in her future adventures and may pick up the next in the series in the future. Personally I wouldn’t mind something a little bit steamier than what this was. I am happy to say that I’ve finally read what seems to be one of the main starters of the current vampire/urban fantasy genre and that it was a bit more unique than I had anticipated it would be.
In this, the first Anita Blake novel, the thousand-year-old master of St. Louis is gunning for Anita. Someone or something has been killing vampires, and has already managed to take out two of the most powerful vampires in the city. Nikolaos, the master, wants Anita to make these killings stop - and she will go to great lengths to ensure Anita does what she wants.
Having read most of the series in the past, and knowing what the series' reputation is, let me say that it starts off very good. The first half of the series is a horror series, with some mystery. Anita goes against different baddies, figuring out who is behind the recent slayings she investigates with the police. There is increasingly more sexual tension as the series progresses, and yes, the second half of the series is little more than porn interspersed with a little plot and bigger and badder bad guys.
BUT. The first few books are, without a doubt, very well written. I enjoy them immensely, and reread them every year for a reason.
Anita had a nice since of humor, the story moved quickly, and the needed background information did not get tedious. I also kind of liked that Jean-Claude, who I think has a more prominent role in other books, was locked away for the bulk of the book.
I liked this book and would definitely recommend picking it up. Nice story, lots of action, moved quickly, didn't get hung up in the world building. And I really didn't think I would like this series, but I read Guilty Pleasures in one day! I have high expectations for the other 18 books in the series (wow, that's a lot of books). I'm hoping for a bit more character development with some of the side characters and more background information on Anita. I'm also hoping that Hamilton will not use the sarcastic question answered with a "Naw" so much in the future. I was really tempted to start counting how many times she did that.
The novel is in the “hardboiled detective” genre, and Anita Blake bears much resemblance to Sue Grafton’s character Kinsey Millhone: a no-nonsense woman doing a no-nonsense job. She is tough, no nonsense, hates seeing her friends hurt by her own actions--the usual stuff for a genre like this.
Guilty Pleasures takes its name after a vampire strip club, where we meet a number of the incidental characters of the novel, and where Anita Blake becomes embroiled in a murder mystery. Someone in the city is murdering the city’s powerful vampires, and they want to know why. We meet Jean-Claude, a vampire who will be featured more heavily in future novels.
The primary antagonist is a thousand-year-old vampire in a child’s body named Nikolaos, who rules the vampire underworld through fear.
The writing is solid, but not exceptional. The plot moves along nicely. My only gripes are with the character development. Anita Blake is, frankly, not a very likeable character. She is framed by all the things she dislikes: he hates blackberry pie. She can’t stand vampires. She is annoyed by her pager on vibrate... and the list goes on. Aside from her private detective friend Veronica, she has no close friends, and one wonders why Veronica bothers to hang around with her at all.
The vampire world itself is very dark and chaotic. Nikolaos is near-insane in her despotic rule over St. Louis, and is presented as, basically, an evil creature without a redeeming value whatsoever. This doesn’t sit well with me: I prefer my villains with a little psychological meat on their bones.
This was, by all accounts, Hamilton’s first novel, written in 1993, and time has worn the story around the edges. It seems odd that she has no computer, and that she uses a pager, and there are no cell phones. The novel holds up quite nicely though, and as an adventure, managed to keep me interested enough through its 260+ pages.
I will be reading the second novel in the series. My wife assures me that Hamilton gets better as a writer, and Anita Blake becomes a more interesting character.
Here is the bottom line on this book: it is so terribly written. Hamilton writes like a 14-year-old that doesn't understand the finesse of the English language, or the difference between inner thought and conversation. It was incredibly painful to read at times because you know that Anita could actually be pretty kick-ass if only she had better PR. However, the world that Hamilton has created here is really interesting. And the characters, even though their mouths are not connected to their brains (Hamilton), are somewhat endearing.
It is for the world that I have decided to move on to the second book. But it's books like these that wish books could be more like movies, where another author could come along and write a re-make and give Anita the personality and world that she deserves.
Hamilton's vampires are of the Anne Rice sort -- easy to look at with usually impeccable manners and absolutely lethal personalities. The universe she has created is one of horror and fear, and you definitely have to suspend belief when opening the pages of one of these novels. The writing is just a tad too straight-forward and blunt. The action starts immediately and seldom lets up, and the writing style reminds me of those old "noir" crime novels, but with a heroine who is anything but dainty and delicate. Still, it all comes together oddly enough, and I've managed to collect several more in this series so I'll be revisiting Anita fairly often, I think. This first episode was a tad too blunt, with characteristics that have little of no backstory to explain things. I'm hoping that further books in the series will begin to flesh out these characters just a bit more. The fact that it takes place in St. Louis is a plus for me, too. I don't live too far from there and an pretty familiar with most of the places she mentions in this book. I'll give it a 3 and hope for better in future reads.
Some of the vampire characters were pretty stereotypical, particularly Jean-Claude and Nikolaos, but that didn't negatively affect my enjoyment too much. I had a good time reading this book, and I'll be picking up the next in the series.
When Anita turns down a request from the local vampires to find out who's been leaving mutilated vampire corpses strung about town, she unwittingly endangers not only
Obviously, after
This was a good introduction into Anita's sphere, a world built off of the idea of an alternate history based on the supernatural being real and not just myth or legend. Anita is an established animator (which is who she is), vampire slayer (which is something she does), and preternatural expert-on-call for the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team (which is really more of a sideline in this novel, though it plays a much larger role in future novels). Anita is approached by an old human friend turned vampire about solving the recent slew of vampire murders that have occurred in Saint Louis. When she refuses, the Master Vampire of the City turns to more inventive methods of convincing Anita that she should solve these crimes. Because of Anita's absolute insistence on never doing anything that could cause an innocent harm (a very central theme to the entire series), she is drawn into the underworld. There we meet several vampires, including Jean-Claude (who, while a somewhat minor character in this novel, becomes a very important character) and the current Master of the City, Nikolaos; the rodere pack of wererats, including their king (who becomes a fairly major minor character and one of Anita's good friends); a werewolf; strippers; Edward (hitman for the preternatural--humans just weren't good enough); and an assortment of other characters who turn up in various books.
This novel sets up the fairly standard Hamilton method of writing Anita books--background is set up, nothing happens, nothing happens, and then suddenly in the last fourth of the books, everything explodes and suddenly there's a conclusion. Don't get me wrong--there's action all the way through, and it's a fun read. But it can be somewhat disconcerting to feel like you're getting down to the wire and still no closer to a conclusion than you were before (though I'm sure that's what Anita feels like most of the time).
I enjoyed reading the book. It's not my favorite in the series, and if I had begun with it I don't know that I would have continued reading. It doesn't have enough of a draw into the full preternatural world that we come to expect in later books. I also feel like there were a couple of inconsistencies (if vampires have to have an invitation to enter someone's domicile, as shown vividly with Jean-Claude in a later book, why is Anita so worried that vampires have broken into her home?), almost as if Hamilton hadn't finished fleshing out the details of how some of the preternatural works in her world. However, it was still a great introduction into Anita's world, and it was fun to read.
I found this book totally engrossing and I really warmed to the lead character, Anita Blake, who reminds me a bit of a more serious Stephanie Plum.
I hope the rest of the series keeps up this high standard.
That said, I will probably pick up the next book of the series at some point.