Subject: Review: Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series.

From: [email-masked] (Edward McArdle)
Date: 22 Aug 1999 19:13:02 -0400

The Anita Blake series, by Laurell K Hamilton
	Review Copyright 1999 Edward McArdle

[contains conceptual spoilers for the series.  --AW]

It may be superfluous to review these books, since everyone I speak to is
already reading them. In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer newsgroup, articles
compare Buffy and Anita Blake.  Buffy kills giant insects, vampires, etc.
Anita kills everybody.

There are presently eight books in the series, and they do need to be read
in order. The others are Bloody Bones, The Killing Dance, Burnt Offerings
and Blue Moon. But I haven't read those yet.

My sister says the books are basically romances, but I can't see that.
They are more like the Indiana Jones movies, where the action starts with
the first frame, and every now and then you need to pause to breathe.
Easier in a book. You close it for a while.

The world is one where vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc., are real.
Anita Blake is a person with the ability to raise zombies - an animator.
She does this professionally. If your husband died without leaving a will
resurrect him briefly and ask questions (with a lawyer present, of
course).  She also used to kill vampires, but now that vampires have been
granted citizenship one can't do that unless the vampire has been
convicted of murder. She is, however, the state's official vampire
executioner.

Anita believes there is no such thing as a non-evil vampire. This becomes
complicated by her involvement with one of the master vampires. This is
where the romance supposedly comes in. My old-fashioned view is that
romance should involve some emotional attachment other than lust, which
makes this involvement hard to accept. Vampires are dead. They have no
souls. She becomes involved with other men later in the series, and the
romance angle takes flight in the fourth book, when she is fought over (in
fairly gentlemanly fashion) by a vampire and an alpha werewolf.

Personally, I find the romance a little harder to believe than the
zombies.  Anita has an extremely abrasive personality, and mentions at
times that she has never been chased by men. (Well, after she garrotted
them, she probably forgot them.) Why would the two Masters of the City be
fighting over her?  Anita also has a friend who is a psychopathic killer.

Apart from the rollicking action, which barely slows, the books are
extremely bloodthirsty and gruesome. Book 3 and 4 are not as bad as the
previous two, but none of these books is for the squeamish.

%T Guilty Pleasures
%T The Laughing Corpse
%T Circus of the Damned
%T The Lunatic Cafe,
%A Hamilton, Laurell K .
%I Ace books
%I Berkeley Publishing Group.
%S Oct 1993:
%G ISBN: 0-441-30483-4
%O US$6.50

Edward McArdle.
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~mcardle
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