Laurell K. Hamilton - Guilty Pleasures

[andydecker]

Laurell K. Hamilton – Guilty Pleasures (Ace, 1993, 266 p.)

I DON'T DATE VAMPIRES. I KILL THEM.

My name is Anita Blake. Vampires call me The Executioner. What I call them isn't repeatable.

Ever since the Supreme Court granted the undead equal rights, most people think vampires are just ordinary folks with fangs. I know better. I've seen their victims. I carry the scars …

But now a serial killer is murdering vampires – and the most powerful bloodsucker in town wants me to find the killer …

I guess it is fair to say that the success of this series is an important mark in the history of the urban fantasy vampire romance deluge. It appeared around the time of Smith' Vampire Diaries and the cozy vampire novels of P.N.Elrod and introduced the neo-noir ass-kicking female protagonist - which has become such a boring cliché in such a short time - Anita Blake in a sort of alternate universe. Before this Hamilton wrote a generic Fantasy and a Stark Trek Novelization, but her third book became a real success. The last novel, No. 26, was published in 2018, so she is cranking them still out 25 years later.

Along the run Hamilton changed the focus of the books which got always longer (No 25 was an unbelievable 700 pages) from neo noir to more erotica. Apparently this doesn't sit well by some vocal fans, but Hamilton responded to the critique with a blog post called Dear Negative Reader. They must still sell enough that Berkley still publishes them, even in hardcover.

Hamilton had - or still has - this easy listening style of writing. I read the first four or five and found them entertaining, the approach was fresh back then, and Hamliton captured the atmosphere well. But the always more complicated becoming romance elements and increasingly simple plots talked to death between the characters bored me after a time. I only follow them on Wikipedia now and then. Her other series Merry Gentry about a faire princess turned P.I. I never sampled. Not even the erotica angle could persuade me to wrangle with 400+ pages of this. I hate elves.

[helrunar]

That was a fun review, Andreas! I was never at all attracted to any of these latter day vampire series although as a fan of shows such as Dark Shadows and Forever Knight, one would think that I would be. I never even bothered to examine the paperbacks or read the blurbs when they'd show up in the shops.

There was this hilarious TV show adapted from one of these series... it might have been called Blood Ties. The vampire protagonist was named Henry and was, of course, a British or French aristocrat from the 14th, 15th or 16th century. I only watched the one episode and I only got through that much because Henry was kind of cute. He slept in a big meat locker... I still laugh whenever I think of that. I think the rest of the plot was a mixture of the novels of Miss Rice, the novels of Miss Hamilton, and whatever else was trendy at the time. Anyhow that show for me encapsulates this entire genre, or is it a sub-genre... I suppose the latter.

You do write really well-turned reviews. I'm sure your notes on these books are a lot more amusing and interesting than the books themselves.

Best, Steve

[andydecker]

Apr 26, 2020 15:21:55 GMT helrunar said:

That was a fun review, Andreas! I was never at all attracted to any of these latter day vampire series although as a fan of shows such as Dark Shadows and Forever Knight, one would think that I would be. I never even bothered to examine the paperbacks or read the blurbs when they'd show up in the shops.

There was this hilarious TV show adapted from one of these series... it might have been called Blood Ties. The vampire protagonist was named Henry and was, of course, a British or French aristocrat from the 14th, 15th or 16th century. I only watched the one episode and I only got through that much because Henry was kind of cute. He slept in a big meat locker... I still laugh whenever I think of that. I think the rest of the plot was a mixture of the novels of Miss Rice, the novels of Miss Hamilton, and whatever else was trendy at the time. Anyhow that show for me encapsulates this entire genre, or is it a sub-genre... I suppose the latter.

You do write really well-turned reviews. I'm sure your notes on these books are a lot more amusing and interesting than the books themselves.

Best, Steve

You mean Tanya Huff . :-) I have read too much of this vampire stuff, I fear, until I burned out. I think the last urban fantasy vampire novel I read was Mary Janice Davidson's Dead and Unwed, the first in a - you guessed it - series, which was at least genuinely funny and missed most of the overwrought melodrama, but this was in 2006 or so. So I am not up to date what the cool kids read today. Can't even muster the enthusiasm to watch new vampire tv-shows. The last I tried was A Discovery of Witches, which bored me to tears.

Thank you, Steve. But I don't know. At the end it is of course a matter of personal taste. The scans of my lockdown posts are all taken from my shelves, if I have read the work in question or not. And gathering tid-bits which amuse me is no big effort thanks to technology.

[helrunar]

I've been enjoying Kev's posts with scans, tocs and notes on vampire zines of the last century. I never got to see any of those (not even the ones in the US) and the way Kev presents them is witty and erudite (yes, one can be erudite about zines) and fun.

I officially gave up on current TV a few years ago. The last series I watched regularly was Penny Dreadful. I have an enormous backlog of unwatched televisual material at this point, plus loads of films I have either never seen, or maybe saw once.

I often choose to revisit old favorites when I want to do media now, because so little of the new material seems to be remotely interesting or coherent when I take a chance on it.  All that said, I really enjoyed the new films The Lighthouse and Knives Out (a pastiche of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and the old TV series Columbo) when I went to see them last year. But both of those played on motifs or themes of the past, of actual folklore or how old popular culture is mediated in today's scene. 

I feel a rant coming on so will stop here.

cheers, Steve

[cauldronbrewer]

Apr 26, 2020 16:42:38 GMT helrunar said:

All that said, I really enjoyed the new films The Lighthouse and Knives Out (a pastiche of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and the old TV series Columbo) when I went to see them last year.

I watched Knives Out today. It's a lot of fun, and I can only imagine Daniel Craig had even more fun playing the detective. His version of a Southern accent is quite possibly the most bizarre, but entertaining, one I've ever heard.

I still need to see The Lighthouse.

[helrunar]

The Lighthouse would be a tough watch right now--the movie is pretty claustrophobic, and very creepy. It's brilliant but quite harrowing to watch. 

Not only is it in black and white, but the aspect ratio is this very narrow gauge, like you're looking through this closed in frame or window at what is happening. It adds to the claustophobic feel of the movie.

I thought Daniel Craig was a riot in Knives Out. Pretty sure that accent was quite deliberately warped but not everyone agrees.

Jude Law had a really whacked out Southern accent in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Jude was pretty much just a baby then.

H.