1.9 Book review: Anita Blake series

Fangs in the blood

It was 2004 and my sister got the sixth or seventh book in a series she was rather fond of. At the time I had been devouring just about anything with vampires in it- I was going through ‘that’ phase so many of us go through and the urban fantasy/paranormal scene was just starting to slowly slide out of the shadows it had been hiding in for years.

I’d finished Tanya Huff’s Blood Ties trilogy and was eager for more of this gritty dark and sexy vampire thing that was still a fresh new taste to my reading palate.

So my sister said, ‘you might like this’ and slid Guilty Pleasures by Laurel K Hamilton across to me.

I was a slow, slow reader in those days; getting through a book took about a week. I gorged myself on Guilty Pleasures in about two days (which was a record for me). I stayed up until dawn the night I read Circus of the Damned (the third book) and I can tell you with total honesty, I have read the first nine novels of the series at least 6 times each (my favourite novel of the series, the Killing Dance, I have read 13 times.)

She and I share an unusual obsession with the early novels in this series. We’ve done tabletop RPGs about it (using the rules for Vampire Masquerade), we’ve debated it for hours on end. I spent a lot of time in that world during my young-adult life.

Voice

Until these novels, the strongest voice I ever found in fiction were those used in the Animorphs series. Grown-up novels all felt much more watered-down and first-person was almost non-existent. Then wham! Along comes this strong, sassy, female character with guns and attitude and badassery to spare. She was strong, convicted and compelling; a hero who got dirty and did the right thing. She was the one saving the damsels in distress, not the other way around. It was really powerful and invigorating and I think the voice is something that just stuck with me for the rest of my life.

Plot

One of the biggest appeals is that the novels are self-contained, but also spell out a larger series arc as they go. Each novel contains a murder mystery/action adventure plot and also has the characters dealing with all sorts of personal issues along the way; from healing old wounds to love to mastering strange supernatural powers and exploring the universe. This wasn’t the case so much in later books, but the first nine shared this formula and were superb.

Themes

This is where the books were rather intricate; from blurring the lines between monsters and humans, questions about whether the undead still had souls and asking how far would you go to do the right thing; the novels always have a strong moral quandary to pose to the reader. Then we have action and adventure, and the social ramifications from a life of hiding, hunting and dealing with people who have conflicting religious beliefs, including hate-groups. There’s a lot going on in these books and the world is rich and full of fascinating and interesting outer characters.

The end of the series

For reasons I won’t go into, for me, the series ends at Obsidian Butterfly. This book was incredible and one of my top selection for the series, but was also very solid and powerful. I think Obsidian Butterfly may have been such an incredibly good novel that whatever came next was not going to do as well in my books. I won’t talk about the rest of the series, but there are more books after Obsidian Butterfly and I have read them. I still go back and read the first nine novels (like I said, I’ve read all of them at minimum 6 times) from time to time.

That Special Something

I don’t know what it is in a novel that really gets to people’s heart, but the early Anita Blake series was definitely one for me. There was a delicious strength in those works that I look for in novels today. World-building and character voice are all important but I think there is some elusive magic that happens in some novels and the early series most certainly has this magic.