Besides the erotic sex and the disturbing gore mixed with a tad bit of fantasy, what in general do people think of her books?
I have only read one so far ( " Caress of Twilight" ) and I have begun “Obsidian Butterfly”. I loved the first book I read and even though I seemed to catch the second book of the series. I don’t read them in order, but it doesn’t seem to matter… I still understand what is going on in the story.
I’ve been to used bookstores before and searched for her books, none could be found.
To those of you who have heard of or read Laurell, what did you think?
Her early novels are great, I would highly recommend Guilty Pleasures. Her books have become parodies of themselves, tossing out all the interesting noir style hard boiled detective stuff and replacing it with S&M sex.
Anita Blake was a lot more interesting before she started banging the bad guys. (Although the early flirtations with Jean Claude were hot hot hot!)
I agree with Glory’s assessment. I became a fan due to the early books in the Anita Blake series. I don’t consider myself a prude, but the sex scenes were too nasty for my tastes. I stopped enjoying the series after Obsidian Butterfly. I still bought Narcissus in Chains but that book really disturbed me. I guess I won’t buy any more of that series until Ms. Hamillton returns to her original premise. I still like the Meredith NicEssus series but I’ll drop that too if the quality suffers.
I just bought A Kiss of Shadows. Way too much sex. I’m not a prude, but reading about sex bores me, and makes me feel like the plot is moving WAY too slowly. I thought the early Anita Blake books were pretty cool, but I haven’t really bothered reading any from Blue Moon on. I don’t know why, really.
Of course, I’ll probably end up reading them sometime. Just not intentionally.
I’ve read a few of them, and it seems pretty obvious that the Anita Blake books were written by a female – the emphasis on her relationships rather than the cases implies (but of course doesn’t prove) a female viewpoint. Unfortunately, the books seemed to head in the same direction that Patricia Cornwell went with her Kay Scarpetta character – the characters spend all their time worrying about their screwed up and often not very interesting lives instead of concentrating on their jobs. The Kay Scarpetta books were at least readable as long as Cornwell kept to forensics; similarly, the Anita Blake books were readable as long as she kept up the monster killing. Once she moved over to bodice-ripping relationship porn – bleah…
I agree. I liked Hamilton’s style, but then it seemed she started getting repetitious and all over the sex scenes. The anticipation was so much better. I liked her book Nightseer and would have loved a sequel, but never got one.
I haven’t read a book of hers since Blue Moon. There was too much of the same stuff over and over again. What a disappointment.
I actually thought she was repetitive all over the damn place, but still thought the detective and vampire stuff (especially the civil rights things) were enough to warrant my reading it.
With NiC, however, I found myself skipping whole pages at a time as it was “power rushing over me” sex stuff. Thanks, no go kill something, would ya?
I think I’ll go read Sunglasses After Dark now. That’s a vampire book (even if it is excessively gory).
I would recommend Tanya Huff’s great Victory Nelson vampire novels set in Toronto (Blood Debt, Blood Oath, Blood Price, Blood Trail). They are really good!