/Laurell K. Hamiltonshelf | Guilty Pleasures

Anita Blake may be small and young, but vampires call her the Executioner. Anita is a necromancer and vampire hunter in a time when vampires are protected by law–as long as they don’t get too nasty. Now someone’s killing innocent vampires and Anita agrees - with a bit of vampiric arm-twisting - to help figure out who and why.

Trust is a luxury Anita can’t afford when her allies aren’t human. The city’s most powerful vampire, Nikolaos, is 1,000 years old and looks like a 10-year-old girl. The second most powerful vampire, Jean-Claude, is interested in more than just Anita’s professional talents, but the feisty necromancer isn’t playing along–yet. This popular series has a wild energy and humor, and some very appealing characters - both dead and alive.

This time (the second) reading through, I picked up on the grammar mistakes that the many reviewers at Amazon often complain about. Some I say were one purpose, because the style she writes in is choppy at best [or worst], and a few of them go well with it. I had a giggle when reading that Anita was “tireder,” though. Points off for that.

I zoomed through this book even quicker than the first reading, mostly because I was reading it more for writing style than for pleasure. I swear I missed a few scenes that I knew I read before. Oh well.

Okay, now for the more serious reviewing. Serious, right.

Guilty Pleasures is a mix of mystery, horror, erotica, and everything supernatural in between. If you want to read between the lines, yeah, one could classify it as chick. Barely.

With so many genres touching on it, it’s natural to think that it would be a very faced paced novel, and it is. This book is the shortest of all the Anita novels (Micah doesn’t count - it’s barely a story) and you’re on one thing before you finish reading the last sentence of the next.

We get dropped right into the middle of Anita’s world at the opening of the novel, because it is that - the middle. I like how Hamilton crafted the timeline so that we don’t have to put up with her learning about vampires, slaying the vampires, and all that nitty-gritty. Her friends are already made and laid out on the board, so there aren’t as many new characters to meet. Introductions are quick, neat, and over with. And thankfully, don’t just disappear into thin air.

It starts out like a mystery case, only with vampires trying to get Anita - animator and vampire slayer extroidinaire (after watching Buffy, though, 14 doesn’t seem like too much) - to solve it. She doesn’t so they resort to less than open methods.

Anita’s character just pores out of the first-person narrative, which a lot of people seem to dislike. It works, though, and sets this book apart from the standard vampire novels (though narration isn’t the only reason).

Still, this book was a lot better the first time I read it. I can say one thing for Hamilton - she certainly knows how to take a cliche and turn it to her advantage. Guilty Pleasures is an engaging first-read, a less engaging second, but still a fun one nevertheless.

Granted, the cover art is still as pretty - it was one of the reasons I first picked it up from the library. It’s also what the title is - a guilty pleasure. It’s a great book for some fun reading, and it’s never going to win any awards. I would never expect it to. Though I still think of it as a great read, I would definitely not class it as high as I did a year ago, when I compulsively bought the entire series after reading the first five from the library.