Review: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 1 Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 1 Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
The Story
Guilty Pleasures is a great book from the first page to the last—a masterful way to open one of the premiere urban fantasy series—one that helped to establish the now-archetypal tough as nails female investigator/practitioner of supernatural crime. Anita Blake is both an animator—a person cursed with the ability to raise corpses from the grave—and a vampire hunter in an America in which the Supreme Court has just given civil rights to the bloodsucking undead. Now vampires are out of the closet and viewed by many as an exotic tourist attraction—dangerous, but safe—right? Because the Supreme Court wouldn’t have given them rights if they really hurt people, would they? Except that sometimes vampires still kill people and the normal legal authorities can’t handle them. So, judges issue a writ of execution and hunters are set loose to try and kill the rogue before it kills other people. Anita Blake is so successful in this trade that the vampires have nicknamed her the Executioner, but it has come at a heavy cost. Her body is a mass of scars and there is clearly psychological trauma as well.
The novel opens very effectively with a vampire, Willie McCoy, trying to hire Anita to look into the illegal murders of several vampires in St. Louis. Willie is the first person Anita knew as a human before he became a vampire. The difference between live Willie and undead Willie is the vampire scares her. Anita can’t even risk meeting his gaze lest he mesmerize her. Anita refuses to take the job and Willie sadly warns her that her answer will anger powerful vampires setting the stage for the main plot of the story.
The novel kicks into high gear a few chapters later when Anita is dragged to a bachelorette party for her friend, Catherine, at the vampire strip club, Guilty Pleasures. Multiple important elements of the story and the series are introduced in the next few chapters. First, and most important, Hamilton introduces Jean Claude, the sexy master vampire who will play games with Anita for the rest of the series. He is very powerful and clearly enjoys flirting with Anita. She, on the other hand, understands he is a monster but clearly is attracted to him just the same.
We also learn that there is a Master of the City who controls the other vampires and meet two particularly bad undead creatures of the night. Aubrey illegally ensnares Catherine as a lever to be used against Anita. Catherine is now under his complete control and can only be released by his death. Valentine is a vampire who almost killed Anita and her mentor, Edward. They thought he was dead, but he survived with disfiguring holy water scars across his face. Both Aubrey and Valentine are only waiting for Anita to finish her work for the Master of the City before coming after her to kill her. We also learn that the Master of the City is a terrifying thousand-year-old vampire who looks like she’s twelve. She needs Anita to figure out whose killing her vampires but definitely gives the impression that she plans to break Anita rather than let her go afterward. It’s a terrible situation made all the worse by something magical that Jean Claude does to Anita before the Master turns on him in a dominance struggle that he clearly loses.
Anita barely escapes, returning home to find her mentor, the assassin, Edward, waiting for her in her apartment. Edward is the best character in the series—a stone cold killer who started hunting vampires, lycanthropes and other supernatural creatures because mere humans weren’t a big enough challenge. Edward has accepted a contract to kill the Master of the City and wants Anita to tell her where she sleeps during the day but Anita is worried that if she gives him the information, Catherine will suffer.
With this, we have all the pieces in place. Anita is trying to investigate the vampire killings, but the Master is crazy and she and her vampires keep interfering with the task they are forcing Anita to pursue. It took me a while to figure out why, but the death of her vampires, many of them master vampires, has disrupted the Master of the City’s reign and she fears that all of this is a play to dethrone (i.e. kill) her. And Jean Claude’s games with Anita have created a bond between them that is preventing the Master from punishing him in her traditional fashion (locking him in a coffin and letting him go mad from his unsatisfied bloodlust). Add to that her crazed need to dominate and break everyone she meets and Anita is in terrible trouble. What the Master doesn’t understand is that Anita isn’t the sort of person who lays down and dies. When she’s terrified, she strikes back, setting up a phenomenal ending with Anita and Edward going after the Master of the City on her own turf.
It’s just hard to say too much good about this novel. It establishes the urban fantasy reality of the series. Gives us important information on vampires and introduces animators, lycanthropes, and ghouls to the reader. Everything fits together very nicely. And, of course, the ending begs for a sequel without actually giving us a cliffhanger.
