Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #1)

by Laurell K. Hamilton

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

The necromancy in this book is so good.

The vampire stuff, though, is not great.  But it's not the worst ever.  To be honest, I actually like Guilty Pleasures.  I've read it a few times.  I really like Anita Blake as a character and while the series lost me after a while, the early books make good stories.  Anita is still an animator and the necromancy scenes are so gruesome and well-written.  The sex is super limited.  The first handful of books are great.

However, this is the first time I have listened to the audiobook... and good god y'all.  If this was my first read-through, I'd've stopped here and now.  The narrator of this first book does Anita no justice at all.  Anita is a four-foot-something spirited necromancer and vampire hunter, with a sharp sense of humor and ruthless attitude.  In the world of paperback paranormal romance, Anita sets precedents by defending herself, drawing lines, and being totally kick-ass without melting at every pretty face.  This narrator makes her sound like a two-dimension lusty woman.  It's just sad, because reading this book is loads of fun.  Listening to this book was boring and disappointing.

I think she'd do better narrating historical fiction, or something a little less snarky and humorous.  All the jokes fall flat.

Beyond all that, I still can't get past how much I genuinely like this book.  It's sneaking around the corner of "out of my genre" but the world is really well formed.  There's a scene in the middle of the book where Anita is helping Zachary raise a zombie, and the way it is written is so poignant and stunning, you're draw right into the cemetery.

My main complaint would be that the characters outside Anita are a bit flat.  Nikolaos definitely comes off better in the books, but she still feels a bit like a Claudia (a la Interview with a Vampire) clone.  The boys in particular are really flat, and that's an issue that continues throughout the series.  I do find Edward interesting, but he's a barely-contained serial killer.

Overall, I do still like this first book.  I think it's much better read than listened to, and it's a relatively short book, so it's an easy weekend read.  For anyone interested in paranormal romance (like the Kate Daniels books or Sookie Stackhouse), I'd definitely recommend Guilty Pleasures.
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2012 REVIEW

This review comes from a different perspective than many of my other reviews because I have read this book before - not once, but three times.

I was introduced to Anita Blake by a faraway friend who thought that with my love of (traditional) vampires, I may enjoy it. He was right. I argue though that it may not have been appropriate reading material for a 16 y/o, but what happened happened and I loved not only reading this series in high school, but passing the books around in my group of friends. Guilty Pleasures is the second-most tattered book I own, and that is saying something considering the fact that I love to keep my books looking shiny and new.

I love, and always have loved, Anita's cattiness and witticisms. I think she is delightful in a sort of I-am-so-glad-I-don't-know-her-in-real-life-but-I-love-reading-about-her sort of way. Of the series, I will endlessly argue that Guilty Pleasures is the best because it has (to me) the most substance. My personal downfall as the series goes further is that Hamilton's focus switches from the supernatural to supernatural sex, which is well and good for some readers, but not really my forte. I love Animators, Inc and the way Hamilton has crafted Anita's necromancy abilities into a sort of business. I love her ideas and her writing as well... I don't often get into first person but Anita has so much passion and so much life, how can you not gobble the story up?

I recently bought this book for a friend with similar tastes and she told me, halfway through, that "something seemed not quite right about it" and as I reread it, I think I understand what she meant. Despite the fact that at the end, I still want to pick up The Laughing Corpse, in the middle there is a lot of information and people and yet nothing is happening, and the stuff that happens, you wonder why. As a reader, I try to push past knowledge out of my mind so I can enjoy the book without already knowing the ending but that's almost impossible. I think that maybe the reason that Hamilton changed the plot of her books is simply there was too much - vampires, were-animals, sex, zombies... a girl can't have everything.

I would still recommend this book because despite the fact I have stopped reading her books, I love Hamilton's writing style and I think she is worth a read to anyone who enjoys fantasy, urban fantasy... and seriously, any fan of the Sookie Stackhouse series.