Guilty Pleasures

I purposely waited to write this review because I wanted to see how the series grew and if the write would be able to keep me wanting more of Anita Blake. I read a lot of paranormal romance and my preference leans toward long series because I enjoy getting to know and love the main character and secondary characters vs learning a new one each time I pick up a book. Ive read Charley Davidson, Mercy Thompson, Jane Yellowrock and thought all three of those series have great plot lines, were always interesting, diverse in characters and development/evolvement of the main character, witty and made me laugh out loud often enough that I would give All a 5 Star review easily. So if you know those three series then you know what I like and my taste isnt bad. If you havent read them and your considering this series – go read them. There are more series I could name but those should be enough.

While I can honestly say I like the books, I dont know that I would recommend them to my fellow readers without a few warnings. My review is my own and is not influenced by any outside entity.

1. Anita has great potential if only the author would stop making every situation a mind screaming debate. Whenever there is a sex scene or a good chance that the book can have potential to reach that next level you end up with Anita screwing it up or asking so many but why? Or I dont understand questions that it takes 20 pages (not kidding) to get to the part that means anything. Not to mention how she has, by this book at least, 6 or 7 men that pretty much kiss her ass and try not to always make her mad so they tip toe around everything and have to have a therapy session to even have sex. The same goes for many of the other situations. I enjoy the cop scenes the most because there are usually less internal agony you have to read through in her brain and more witty conversation. Obsidian Butterfly was probably my favorite so far because the book enjoyed a better plot and less of the long boring why why why sex scenes, conflict of which man she was going to screw the next minute and more of an actual good story.

2. The books move SLOW. You must have patience. Too many of these books take forever to get to the plot and more time dealing with Anitas screwed up sex life. Each time you think something good is going to happen – someone has to have their hand help through whatever it is and it takes a while to get to the point of it. Im not saying its not good but its a long build up of internal and external crap that you will wish by book 4 you didnt have to read. I wish the write would educate herself that a book doesnt have to be a slow build to be Good. If you think that then go read the V Plague series. Ive never enjoyed a non romance/paranormal series better than that one and it keeps you so interested you read the whole book in a day. If Hamilton has HALF of Dirk Pattons skill she would have a lot more 4 & 5 star reviews.

3. The plots are poorly written. Not to say that they are bad but there isnt enough of the plot explained in most of these books so that by the end it leads you to the climax and you feel satisfied. Most of them I felt cheated like there should have been more story. Obsidian Butterfly for example should have gone into more of the backstory of the bad guy or history of his people but even that one, as my favorite, had a lot of holes that she tried to fill in with a long last couple
Of chapters. The Character backstory even has holes. Hamilton constantly goes back to the mother died in a car crash and the step mother is a bitch and she woke up to her dead dog in her bed that she accidentally raised. But there is no meat to even that. Youre left wanting more.

4. There is a lot of group sex. So if you dont mind that (I dont) then youre good. The sex scenes are pretty good all in all and enjoyable …except for the we have to have an hour long conversation first or internal debate about our morality and everyone placate Anita beforehand.

5. There are no strong male characters. Every male, even Jean Claude and Richard pretty much are scared of what Anita thinks or will do. Everyone of them falls at her feet or is unwilling to stand up to her in any way. Its sad that if ALL the guys in this book there is not one good strong lead male or males that can stand up to her and still be a part of her life. And Anita is to strong she just cant let any man be strong or brave too.

6. There is no sidekick/best friend or consistent person that is there for her. Charley has Cookie. Jane has her witch friend and then the two guys she partners with. Mercy has Z and Adam and the vampire and Coyote. Oh yes she has a few people here and there that make appearances but no one that stays in every book that isnt really involved in her love life in some way shape or form. She has no one to talk to really that she has a bond with that she isnt having some type of sex with and even those ones change so often you never get to really see them enough to love the character.

7. Comic relief. See above. If Anita had some
Type of sidekick or friend that would help but ANY comic relief would be refreshing. There is barely any in these books which hurts the star rating big time IMO.

Good things about this series:

1. It has a lot of potential. Anita is a good character with a lot of cool things about her that I like. Shes a strong woman. Shes smart. Shes brave. Shes got a lot of cool powers.

2. The side characters are all interesting. Its hard to love them because there just isnt enough backstory on any one and even then you dont get them consistently enough but they are cool and diverse.

3. If you are like me you like a series that never ends. Im totally bummed about the three books I mentioned above and Ill prolly go re-read them because I enjoyed them so much. I love knowing a new book about a character I love is coming out. And while I dont love Anita, I still hold out hope that Hamilton will get better. She did, after all, write the Merry Gentry series and those books are better written.

Overall if you can deal with those things you will probably enjoy this series. Personally I will PROBABLY end up reading them all because I cant put down a series once I start but the Anita Blake series will never end up on my recommend to read list unless the books get a lot better down the road.

I hope this review helps you decide whether to read it or not.

I found this recommended on an UF website, and made it half way through and lost interest. I thought it was going to be a supernatural police procedural with a kick ass protagonist, but she winds up being pretty much a beta that things happen to. And there is no PP detecting. And it is all about the sex. Hoping the series would get better–it is 25 books long so there has to something there, I thought–I read reviews which took me to the author’s blog post stating “if you don’t like it, or where I am taking it, stop reading.” So I stopped.

This book is now a bit dated, with answering machines and pagers and people scrambling for change to use pay phones. And it is not among the best constructed, most well written, or even most entertaining works of paranormal fiction I have read. What it is, is revolutionary, and I recommend it as much for its place in the history of vampire novels as I for its own merits.
Hamilton adds a postscript to the end of this edition (from the hardcover edition) which talks about how a publisher rejected Guilty Pleasures because the vampire novel was dead. I have heard this myself in reference to a vampire novel that I am working on and scoffed derisively. You cant kill vampire novels (even with a wooden stake and silver bullets).
What Hamilton did was take the (previously resurrected at least once) genre and move it away from both the horror and romance poles, doing something completely different with it. She made vampires ubiquitous and used mystery and a sleuth as the plot driver. She went further, creating a central character who is connected to a completely different branch of paranormal lore (zombies) and throwing in werewolves and others for good measure.
There may be older examples of this treatment of vampires as object rather than subject (I am not pretending to be a historian on the subject) but this is a well known, successful exemplar.
As a novel, what Guilty Pleasures does well is develop the lead character. Anita Blake is a great character. Part sleuth, part reluctant vampire slayer, all cranky, under-slept and slightly (just slightly) over her head, she is tough, smart and funny. It is a compelling character that I would want to follow in other novels.
The supporting characters are developed with different degrees of success. There are slightly too many transient secondary characters, which distracts a bit from the narrative and leads to a bit of confusion. Some of the vampires are strong, compelling characters, others are a bit exaggerated, but some not inappropriately so. It is largely in the human characters that I feel improvement could take place. Some are characters that are important for the plot (Catherine, for instance) but are not developed, rather, used as plot objects.
Plot development resembles traditional sleuths, hunting for clues, hitting dead ends, death treats… the difference is the death threats are coming from the undead. The plot is peppered with occasional paranormal-relevant asides which adds to ambiance. Without spoiling, I will say that the plot could be stronger.
Description and ambiance is very good, particularly for the paranormal sections. St. Louis is an unexpected setting for a vampire novel. However, except for the stifling summer heat, Hamilton does not spend much ink describing the city itself, and the novel could have taken place elsewhere.
As far as internal coherence is concerned, I am on the fence a bit. There is an enormous challenge that Hamilton has to overcome, somehow normalising vampires, zombies, and weres, and making them part of society, while still keeping them frightening. This leads to some contradictions and logical traps which the book is too short to be expected to deal with. Maybe in a sequel.
All-in-all this is an entertaining read and certainly one that has a certain historical importance in the genre.

Unfortunately i couldn’t finish it. Got through 78% of it and a majority was forced or just skimming the pages. The story line started out pretty good and i was excited to read a good vampire series. But the author lost me half way through, she got very side tracked. Im not even sure who the main love interest is. I didnt like that the main character is supposed to be some bad ass vampire hunter but it doesn’t seem like she knew a lot about them. Her personality seems to change at the end, its just all very inconsistent.

It’s a really good book, but I didn’t understand some of what was going on and it was frustrating. By page 80, I stopped and looked things up online. After getting answers online I started the book from the beginning and enjoyed it. I’ve never had to do that with a book before and I read a lot. For a first book in a series I found it a little reader unfriendly. That said, after going online and getting answers, I then enjoyed this book a lot. It was a rough start, but I plain to continue reading this series, because it’s an interesting world the author created and the characters are interesting now that I understand them better.

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