Book(s) Review: The Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter Series

By CC Staff

…So I finished Danse Macabre, the 1,123rd* book in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series.

Well, kinda.

I finished it in the sense that I got about halfway done and said to myself “I’m so finished with this series.”

If you aren’t familiar with the series (which is now actually on the 16th book) it follows reluctant heroine Anita Blake as she tries to save the world, or whatever. She does this by raising the dead, killing rogue vampires and having sex. Lots and lots of sex. Don’t get me wrong, the first couple of books are great, they would have to be for me to even get to Danse Macabre (which was the 14th in the series) in the first place.

Before I got to Danse Macabre I had read all of these user and critical reviews of the books and sort of rolled my eyes as they lamented about how horrible the once-great series had become. Everyone talked about how tedious and unsexy the constant sex in the story was and I thought, hey, I’m totally all for non-stop sex in books. In fact, that is one of the main things that drew me to the series in the first place.

I could not have been more wrong.

It’s partially my fault for letting some of things in the reviews subconsciously inform my reading. Someone mentioned, for instance, that the books are total masturbatory fantasies for Hamilton, who casts herself as Anita Blake and the men in her real life as the men who fall over themselves to have sex with Anita in the books. I don’t remember who said it, but they got it so exactly right.

So every time someone in the story would say (and this happens probably five or six times a book) something about how Anita doesn’t know how beautiful she is, or how Anita is the best sex in the tri-county area and, indeed, beyond, or how if they don’t have sex with Anita !right now! they will die or have to kill their family (?!!!) , all I can think is “who does this crazy Hamilton woman think she is?” Does she think that by writing this and her other inexplicably popular series that she is sex god of Missouri and the world? And if these are truly her sexual fantasies — to be desired by everything with a penis, have countless orgies in the span of one day, and boyfriends by the thousands, why in the world would I want to read long book upon ridiculously long book about it?

I’m all for a little kink if that’s your bag and its not the sex that I’m concerned about, its the utter egotism that the world should be like one of Anita’s sex obsessed interspecies playthings, lining up to fawn and watch others fawn over Hamilton.

Hamilton has responded to the harsh criticisms of her novels by saying, and I’m paraphrasing, that her novels challenge people and you can’t just passively read them, they make you really think. I agree with her, but I think that the challenge lies more in actually finishing the book, extra points if you can do so without needing to shower.