Review - Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kindle Edition, 332 pages

Published September 24th 2002 by Jove (first published 1993) 

Source: Own copy

Challenges: Ebook Challenge, A-Z Title Challenge

 

 

Synopsis:
'Anita Blake may be small and young, but vampires call her the Executioner. Anita is a necromancer and vampire hunter in a time when vampires are protected by law—as long as they don't get too nasty. Now someone's killing innocent vampires and Anita agrees—with a bit of vampiric arm-twisting—to help figure out who and why.

Trust is a luxury Anita can't afford when her allies aren't human. The city's most powerful vampire, Nikolaos, is 1,000 years old and looks like a 10-year-old girl. The second most powerful vampire, Jean-Claude, is interested in more than just Anita's professional talents, but the feisty necromancer isn't playing along—yet. This popular series has a wild energy and humor, and some very appealing characters—both dead and alive.'

My Thoughts:

I had a few mixed feelings about this book while reading it. Although I thought the story was great and I loved the unique differences in some of the characters so that it wasn't just your typical vampire slayer story, there was something about the way it was written that just bugged the hell out of me.
Anita Blake is a very confident and seemingly fearless woman who doesn't like to take any crap and who loves getting in the middle of situations that she really shouldn't be in. There is also a definite soft side to Anita though which comes through in parts where she openly admits to being scared or gets upset over certain developments which made me enjoy her as a lead female character.
Anita is what they call an 'Animator' where she has the ability to bring the dead back to life in zombie form plus some other weird talents.
Anita is also very prominent and well-known in the vampire world as a slayer of their kind and is enlisted to use her contacts and skills to help solve a series of vampire murders that have been occurring. This mission puts her and some of her closest friends in quite a substantial amount of danger that Anita herself soon becomes doubtful that she can get out of.
The one thing I liked most about this book was the fact it didn't just centre on the vampire world but also featured zombies, were-animals of different types as well as ghouls and black magic. It was a supernatural mixed bag which is what kept it interesting and fresh.
I have to admit that I hadn't heard of this series until recently and didn't really look into it much before starting this book so I had a completely open mind about what I was getting myself into. After reading some of the negative reviews that are out there about the whole series I don't know if I'll continue with it myself but we'll see.
In my opinion Guilty Pleasures is much darker but still very similar to the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, so if that series is one you found yourself enjoying then you should like this one too.

Links:
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The Book Depository