Title: Guilty Pleasures
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #1
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Paranormal romance, Urban fantasy, Vampires
Pace: Medium
Format: eBook, Novel
Year: 1993
As keen as I’ve been to actually get into this series (I love some of the older urban fantasy / vampire books), it took me 1) forever to actually pick this up and 2) a little while to actually get into this storyline. I love that Anita’s background (both socially and genetically) is quite a mystery from the very beginning, and it makes you ask a whole lot of questions from the very first page. But, it did take quite a bit to get into the actual action. I appreciated all of the work that Hamilton went to to actually set up the whole background story and this world. But it was also somewhat slow going to get there. Having said that, as soon as I FINALLY started to get into the action, this became a very hard book to put down.
As much as I might lament how long it took to get into the action of this story, I did seriously love how this is the beginning to a series. From the very first page you can feel all the things that Hamilton is trying to set up in her storyline. That there is going to be reveal after reveal throughout the series. There are just so many secrets, not just in some of Anita’s partial immunity, but also what kind of connection she now has to some of the master vampires in the city, the politics that she’s facing going forwards, and whether we’re going to see the rat king again. I also loved that although it’s obvious that Anita has some extra-ness to a normal human, she’s also so completely human. In fact, throughout most the story she tends to lament how human she is and what danger she is placing herself in. The battle is won by intelligence and trickery, not brute force, the only way to win against a bigger and scarier opponent.
I have a lot of urban fantasy / vampire books on my shelves that I truly love reading. However, most of them are most definitely a lot less adult in feeling than this one. There is talk about sex clubs, orgies and fetishes. All things that are not as blatantly addressed in many of my other books. Which, of course is part of what I loved about this. I mean, a lot of people sexualise vampirism today, so why not include that in a story which actually features these beasties? I love how it is such an uncomfortable relationship in this book – the woman who hunts the vampires and the people who fetishise them. There’s a wish to not totally ignore each other and be a total dick, but also serious discomfort which left me feeling a bit uncomfortable on reading some of these scenes too.
Although this was a slow start and it took me a while to fall in love, once I did, I dived right in. I can’t wait to read The Laughing Corpse and hopefully have a few of my lingering questions about Anita answered. Although, I’m sure that there will then be a whole slew of new questions to ask…
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