Growing tired of the Anita Blake series. I can forgive Laurell K. Hamilton for Micha since, though I haven’t checked the dates, she was between husbands. (Before reading Micha you’ll need to get a pack of cigarettes.)
Now with Blood Noir she continues another never ending story line.
Let’s go back to when she raised a vampire in a bar during daylight, and she had Damien awake during daylight. Why not continue that story line. It never occurs to her, “Hey, Jean-Clod could face me during the day too!”
I loved the world she created, loved the Animator part of the books, and loved the way she was going in creating a new, involving mythos regarding vampires and werewolves.
Now, every story to me is just another example of badly-written porn.
I want to know about Mame’ Noir’s powers. I want to know what it means for Anita to raise the dead, and how those powers interact with the rest of the environment. I want to know more about Edward and how he’s adapting to family life. Heck, I even want to actually see Anita’s brothers and sisters in a family setting, rather than just hear about them.
I want her to delve into the world she’s created, and see how the various powers work together. I DON’T want to read about her seducing/getting seduced/being taken over by the Ardor, and have 30 pages of neo-bestiality. I don’t care in the least about Anita’s sex life. In the first five books or so, its a few interspersed scenes with sex in them. I understand that - these were written to be romance-y books. But damn - the all-out porn is just… detracting from the stories. She’s created very believable characters, and I’d like to read more character interaction that isn’t involving inserting Tab A into Slot B.
(And lets not talk about the Merideth Gentry series of porn books. )
I wish she’d get back to the Diana Tregarde mysteries. Those were very, very good.
Yep, great thread title, but a little late … I thought the premise of the series was great, but it got much too porny. And the porn was creepy to me, as there were a few scenes that made me wonder if the author had ever personally had sex other than in the missionary position. Some of the mechanics didn’t quite seem to work – and I don’t mean the mechanics of having sex with a werewolf, I mean the basic mechanics like where a woman’s vagina is located!
I read the Anita Blake series in high school, and boy did I get a lot of flak from my friends for carrying around a book named Guilty Pleasures. (“It’s the name of a club!” I say. “Sure it is,” they snicker.) When I read the series Narcissus in Chains had just came out, and the friend I was borrowing the books from said to not bother reading it. So I didn’t, in fact I haven’t touched a book of hers past Obsidian Butterfly, which is my favorite book in the series.
Do they still have the pattern where Anita is suicidally arrogant to every new villain and keeps getting more ubar-powerful? They keep saying “Vamps and weres are sooo dangerous. But I can kill them and it’s really nothing.” Has she had a real enemy yet?
Yeah, I had the exact same thought. In Blue Moon, Richard and Anita are going to get it on, after she’s recently caused a whole hell of trouble while channeling the munin of Raina. They’re in bed. They’re hot and heavy. And then there’s this exchange:
The hell? That exchange made me doubt that Ms. Hamilton owned a vagina, much less had ever used one.
I love trashy novels, but somewhere after the first handful of books I completely started to lose interest. It’s a shame, really, because Hamilton can write good trashy fiction. I have no idea why she’s chosen not to do so anymore.
I’m not sure who you’re talking about, but I’d say that with basic overuse, and now the mutation from “jumps” to “humps”, the phrase “jumps the shark” has now jumped the shark.
I wish. The new pattern is for Anita to overcome all obstacles by having sex with them.
I really like Jean-Claude, but there is less of him in every book, and more new men that I don’t care anything about for Anita to have weird sex with. I was also interested in Asher, and I’m still waiting for it to occur to everybody that maybe she could heal his scars with whatever she used on Damien to make him prettier.
I have sort of enjoyed even the later, really trashy books, but Blood Noir really stunk. Another pregnancy scare. More of Richard and the “I can’t handle this!” angst.
At this point they’re not even reasonable porn. Now they’re this weird mix of porn and therapy. Theraporn.
I really enjoyed the first few of these books (and am cursed by the need to find out what happens,* so keep reading the freaking things), but sweet mother of potatoes they’ve gotten really really bad.
*At this point, I’d be totally okay with “And everyone gets hit by a flaming comet” as what happens to tell the brutal truth.