Anita Blake, vampire hunter extraordinaire, is known for combining physical toughness and tons of attitude. Like a modern incarnation of a hard-boiled detective from the pulp adventure novels of the ’40s, Anita takes on every kind of monster imaginable, from vampires to wereleopards. But she also has a fragile, emotional side and undergoes episodes of depression and loneliness. Laurell K. Hamilton, the author behind the series, is a keen martial artist who has also suffered from dips in her mental health. She puts much of her own personality into the writing and the character. In a past interview, she boldly stated that “I pre-date Buffy.“
With thirty novels in the series so far, Hamilton shows no signs of quitting anytime soon. If you like Buffy, you’ll love Anita Blake.
The early Anita Blake books
The very first novel, Guilty Pleasures (1993), threw audiences in at the deep end of Hamilton’s dangerous world. Meet Anita – a 5’3” heroine with dangerous supernatural work on her hands in the city of St. Louis. Her job is to reanimate corpses and terminate the evil undead with extreme prejudice. She is put on the trail of a classic murder mystery but finds much more than she bargained for when she begins falling for French-born Jean-Claude, a sophisticated charmer with only one drawback – he is the vampire she has sworn to destroy.
The Laughing Corpse (1994) followed soon after. Supremely sketchy multimillionaire Harold Gaynor employs Anita to raise a 300-year-old corpse. The catch is that it will require a human sacrifice. Anita must face off against a voodoo high priestess who plans to literally raise hell.
Circus of the Damned (1995) has Anita cast in the role of the grand prize in an undead war between master vampires Jean-Claude and Alejandro, both of whom want her as their human servant. Needless to say, she is not impressed, and fights to put an end to the chaos.
Werewolves take center stage with The Lunatic Cafe (1996). Anita falls for Richard, the seductive leader of a pack of these night creatures. She begins dating Richard, only to discover he is a werewolf with some serious self-esteem issues. As ever, Jean-Claude remains his usual manipulative and jealous self.
Bloody Bones (1996) saw the action move to a land dispute in Missouri. Anita is called in to reanimate a field of bones. All seems to be going well enough until a deranged sword-wielding vampire enters the area and Anita must call on Jean-Claude for help in stopping him.
A different tone
After Bloody Bones, the series introduced more erotic fiction elements that had not been fully seen before. This left fans divided. Some enjoyed the new direction the series took, while others preferred the less explicit undertones of the early novels. Many fans also criticised the flippant and exploitative use of sexual abuse, incest, and rape as plot devices in later novels. The presence of sexual elements grew to the point where many fans and critics believed that they were almost totally subsuming the actual plot. The backlash to this change in direction was such that Hamilton penned a lengthy blog post in 2006 titled “Dear Negative Reader,” in which she accused upset readers of being unwilling to be pushed past the “comfortable envelope of the mundane,” suggested that disappointed fans should instead seek out “books that don’t make you think that hard,” and stated her belief that many of her critics hadn’t read her books. Predictably, the blog post itself then received a negative reaction.
Critical response to these later books included analyses such as The Boston Globe‘s “it does not take long for the clichés and the constant droning about sex to become tiresome” (from a review of 2006’s Micah). Nevertheless, some critics were somewhat more positive, with Denver Post saying that “few, if any, mainstream novels delve so deeply into pure, unadulterated erotica.“
If you are new to the series, it is highly recommended that you read the first five novels, before picking up any of the later ones.
The Killing Dance (1997), Burnt Offerings (1998), Blue Moon (1998), Obsidian Butterfly (2000), and Narcissus in Chains (2001) came next after Bloody Bones. Stand-out plots from these novels include Anita escaping a pack of professional hitmen, and meeting with an Aztec vampire.
With mounting commercial success, Hamilton then went on to pen a further 20 books about Anita.
The continuing saga
In an interview, Hamilton said that Anita Blake evolved as she aged. Somewhere along the line, her idealism became muddied as she underwent the realization that the world was mostly shades of grey. Anita started off as a heroic figure, often edgy, but always ended up sticking to her paladin-like morals. As the series went past the tenth novel, her goal “becomes less about saving the world because you realize you can’t save it all in one day. You want to come home alive to the people you love. Anita’s followed that process.“
If you’ve read up to Narcissus in Chains, another 22 years of books await. Cerulean Sins (2001), Incubus Dreams (2004), Micah (2006), Danse Macabre (2006), The Harlequin (2007), Blood Noir (2008), Skin Trade (2009) and Flirt (2009) form the rest of the books written in the 2000s. Standout plots from this era include Anita wanting to settle down and start a family, a vampire ballet company coming to town, and a violent trip to Las Vegas.
The 2010s began with Bullet (2010), Hit List (2011), Kiss the Dead (2012), Affliction (2013), Jason (2014), Dead Ice (2015), Crimson Death (2016), and Serpentine (2018). Finally, the books written so far this decade are Sucker Punch (2020), Rafael (2021), and this year’s Smolder.
This November, yet another Anita Blake novel will be released, titled Slay, which will see Anita being wedded to the newly-crowned vampire king of America, and having to introduce him to her religious relatives.
Anyone who embarks on a quest to read the full series has a lot of reading material to get through, with some incredible twists and breakneck changes in direction and tone to experience. It is strongly recommended that you pick up Guilty Pleasures and see for yourself what the series has to offer.
