Book Review: Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
- Review: Guilty Pleasures
- Series: Anita Blake – Book 1
- Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
- No of Pages: 266
- Release Date: 1 October 1993
In the novel that introduces Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, the monster she’s sworn to kill becomes the man she can’t live without.
“My name is Anita Blake. Vampires call me “The Executioner”. What I call them isn’t repeatable.
Ever since the Supreme Court granted the undead equal rights, most people think vampires are just ordinary folks with fangs. I know better. I’ve seen their victims. I carry the scars…
But now a serial killer is murdering vampires—and the most powerful bloodsucker in town wants me to find the killer… “
“In a world where vampires, zombies and werewolves have been declared legal citizens of the United States, Anita Blake is an “animator” – a profession that involves raising the dead for mourning relatives. But Anita is also known as a fearsome hunter of criminal vampires, and she’s often employed to investigate cases that are far too much for conventional police. But as Anita gains the attention of the vampire masters of her hometown of St Louis, she also risks revealing an intriguing secret about herself – the source of her unusual strength and power.”
Review:
A zombie raising, penguin loving, vampire killer who is working with the police to see who is killing vampires in her town, and no it’s not her. It almost goes against her grain and she tells those that ask that if something is strong enough to kill vampires, imagine what they would do to helpless humans. To top it all she has to work with humans that love to get bitten by vampires and the vampires themselves. She has quite the arsenal of weapons that she tries to keep hidden beneath a jacket, when she hasn’t been pushed to her limit and decides to leave that jacket off, of guns, knives, stakes, and holy water
Cover via Amazon
along with her fierce instincts but she normally fights alone. This book makes her work with others even when it’s putting her and their lives in danger.
When it rains it pours, Anita literally goes through hell in this book as Laurell K. Hamilton takes us through one epic scene to the next. After dealing with her job as a necromancer you think a girl could wind down but Anita is put to the test in this book, over and over and over again. She is one of my favorite heroines, strong but still lovely. She cries, screams, get scared, bleeds, curses like a sailor and doesn’t do everything correctly.
Anita refuses to cower behind others and that is what made me instantly fall in love with her. People cower behind her, even men. Anita is smart, brave and extremely cool in her mannerisms and techniques and she stays true to what she makes out to be and lives up to that hype. — From StoryWings
Funnily enough, it took me a while to pick this up. I’ve had it sitting on my desk for over a year and I finally decided to read it for the 2012 Summer Challenge. I read this in a day and I have to say, I did enjoy it by the end. I like Anita Blake quite a bit but for some reason I could not enjoy the entire book. I have the second in the series and since I really enjoyed the climactic ending, hell the entire book was climactic for Anita, I do plan on sticking with Anita and seeing what her life has in store. Hopefully something to do with Jean-Claude, the sexy, over bearing, way too confident vampire who Anita is attracted to, whether she wants to admit it to herself or not.
I’m giving this 3.5 stars but I have a feeling if I read it again later it’ll grow on me.
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My Seryniti 
[…] quite political actually more than gruesome, but still all in all it was quite interesting. Guilty Pleasures was pretty much a breeze, not completely a Laurell K. Hamilton fan but I may have to get the next […]
[…] 15- Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton (Read a book in a day, at least 150 pages) […]
I’ve read most of the series and loved it. She is the master.