Guilty Pleasures

Old review 2007: The world is ours today, except vampires, werewolves & such all exist & are legally recognized. Anita Blake is a tough gal who has a talent for raising zombies. She gets sucked in to paranormal politics & murder mysteries. Great fun to read. I love her character.

This started me & my daughter reading 'Paranormal Romance' (PNR) books & this was one of her best. There are 15 20 or so books in the series & I like the first 5 or 10 the best. After that, Hamilton puts in too much weird sex - BDSM & such. Not my cup of tea & there's enough of it that it detracts from the story - a common failing in the genre, I've found. I don't mind some sex & in some cases, it is needed, but it gets somewhat excessive.

Reread for group show more 14Feb2012: It's been a long time since I read this book & I wondered if I would like it as well, especially given how Hamilton has abused the series in the last 10 books. It stood up well. I still liked it a lot.

Hamilton draws the world quickly & well. It's our except for a few quirks, so that wasn't terribly difficult. She draws the characters well, too. I felt I knew most of them shortly after meeting them, with some obvious exceptions. I'd forgotten that we met Edward so early & the marks the Jean Claude put on her. For some reason I thought both came later in the series.

There was plenty of action &, while Anita is a kick-ass heroine, she's all too human. She's rightly terrified most of the time. I must say that I didn't feel her terror very well at the end, although I did in the earlier parts. Hamilton tells us she is, but there isn't a visceral feel of it. Possibly that's because so much happens so fast.

Anyway, this is an excellent introduction to Anita's world & the next 8 or 9 books are also very good. I highly recommend the earlier parts of the series to anyone. While the books can be read out of order, they're definitely better if read in order. Once you get to feeling that Hamilton's head is disappearing up her vagina, stop reading the series. Trust me, it just gets worse - far worse.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!! show less

This is such an incoherent mess, I barely know where to start.

It moves fast, I'll give it that. The constant action has a whirlwind effect, drawing you forward in hopes that something will eventually make sense (it doesn't). It felt like the book was written in one stream of consciousness dump. The result is rampant inconsistency in characterization and plot holes the size of the St Louis Arch.

The book neither demands nor rewards thought. The writing manages to alternate the pedestrian and the improbably lurid. This is the part where I lost any remnant of patience: "But there is another scent on the air, not just blood, but violence. Of course, violence has no smell."

With the possible exception of Anita, all of the characters are show more pointlessly vile, and there are a lot of them, poorly differentiated. Sure, vampires are likely to not be nice people, but it undercuts the whole "legal vampirism" thing if *all* of them constantly act like raging psychotics, taking out their own subordinates and threatening mortals (whom they supposedly want to do a job for them) in hysterically theatrical displays of rage. Everyone Anita works with, and her fellow occult experts? Horrible people.

The setting manages to be both grim and ridiculous, with no effort made to explain how society works with all of these undead around, but plenty of blood and torture. For all of their centuries of experience, the vampires get amazingly careless when fighting Anita.

I read this because I was curious about its popularity and status as a sort of urban fantasy keystone. Now I'm just baffled. show less

I love this series. This is probably my fourth or fifth time re-reading this. It's been a few years since the last time and I had been itching to get back at it. Per usual, I loved every second of it. Anita Blake is freaking awesome, she's such a badass character. The intricate plot and amazing array of characters are also some of the things that keep me coming back or more. Vampirism is legalized in the United States and with that brings a whole slew of problems. Anita is on a retainer for police as their resident expert. Besides being a vampire slayer, she is also a full time animator, raising corpses from the dead for clients to settle wills and say goodbyes. At only, 24 she has quite the reputation. She's known as the executioner. show more Her newest case, a series of bloody murders around the vampire district is going to be challenging in more way than one. If she doesn't figure out who is wasting vampires, her best friend's life may be in danger. Wonderful from start to finish, I love Anita's sarcastic, cocky bravado. show less

*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher through a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review.*

I was thoroughly surprised by how good this novel was. I’m sure the series has a different mood/atmosphere later in, but this first book was absolutely phenomenal. Anita Blake is a vampire hunter and does consulting work to help the police bring killer vampires to justice. In this book, the vampires are the ones being killed and they want to hire her themselves and try everything in her power to get her agree to their terms.

I was expecting a paranormal romance for this book, but what I got was strictly urban fantasy thriller, which I loved so much more. Anita is an amazing main character to have; competent, sarcastic, show more human enough to make the danger she faces seem tough, but also more than capable of handling herself. Hamilton doesn’t hold back and gives a dark view on this world, where vampires are in charge and have little to limit their activities since humans are so outmatched by them. The mythology surrounding the vampires and other supernaturals is on point; vampires are incredibly dangerous and being a vampire hunter is akin to having a death wish. I enjoyed that there aren’t only werewolves, but other animal shapechangers as well. Also, including necromancers in it? Brilliant and awesome. I love the world Hamilton has created; it’s dark and dangerous and makes for an entertaining read.

The mystery itself was well done; it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out who the vampire killer culprit was. However, this is. This is definitely a start to a series, taking its time in giving background information so that future books can just get going. I enjoyed it a lot and can’t wait to read the next one!

Also posted on Purple People Readers. show less

First read: September 2005
Re-read: many times!

I was recommended this book originally by a guy I went to college with who thought I would like this if I liked Anne Rice. He also recommended Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite. One of these books was really good...the other just made me lose my dinner.

New read: June 2015

Thoughts:
Guilty Pleasures is an incredibly good book. It introduces the character of Anita Blake and the dark alternate world she inhabits where vampires, werewolves, ghouls and other nightmarish creatures co-exist with the humans. What is so good about this novel is that Hamilton wrote a classic urban fantasy novel before UF was even a genre. Guilty Pleasures was published in 1993 and it is easy to see how much it has show more influenced the urban-fantasy novels that have come since; it's got the crime/mystery element, the protagonist who slowly gains power, magical elements from classic fantasy and creatures from myth and legend. I love this book. show less

This was a complete waste of time. The obscenely poor writing drove me crazy. If it hadn't been a library book, there were several occasions when I would have thrown it across the room. ("Bully...naw...dammit...goosebumps marched up my arms...")

Hamilton never took the time to set up the world we're reading about, or give any sort of motivation to the characters' choices/actions. This was confusing and annoying.

The lazy editing was incredibly distracting; I found at least four typos in the book.

I didn't like a single character in this book. Was Anita Blake supposed to be endearing? Cute? If so, I disagree. She alternated between insufferable bitch and whiny adolescent. Was Jean Claude supposed to be sexy? Was Edward? Was Phillip show more supposed evoke sympathy? I think that was the intention, but I was just disgusted with them all.

I don't understand the devotion so many people seem to have to this author/series. Needless to say, I will not be wasting any more time on the following books. show less

I love this series. This is probably my fourth or fifth time re-reading this. It's been a few years since the last time and I had been itching to get back at it. Per usual, I loved every second of it. Anita Blake is freaking awesome, she's such a badass character. The intricate plot and amazing array of characters are also some of the things that keep me coming back or more. Vampirism is legalized in the United States and with that brings a whole slew of problems. Anita is on a retainer for police as their resident expert. Besides being a vampire slayer, she is also a full time animator, raising corpses from the dead for clients to settle wills and say goodbyes. At only, 24 she has quite the reputation. She's known as the executioner. show more Her newest case, a series of bloody murders around the vampire district is going to be challenging in more way than one. If she doesn't figure out who is wasting vampires, her best friend's life may be in danger. Wonderful from start to finish, I love Anita's sarcastic, cocky bravado. show less