Title: Beauty Author: Laurell K. Hamilton Series: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #20.5 Cover Art: N/A Genre: Paranormal Romance Excerpt: No Source: Netgalley Reviewed by: Julia Print Length: 33 pages Publisher: Berkley; May 8, 2012 Sold by: Penguin Publishing ASIN: B007FEFCD4   Sexual Content: A ménage à trois. Rating: Okay – A few good points, but with significant flaws. Library/swap/borrow if you want.

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Throwdown Thursday is a weekly thing [hosted by The Neverending Shelf] where we tackle books with similar characters, covers, themes, etc. to determine which one rocks more. And it is up to YOU to determine the winner!

Last weeks Throwdown asked Which Kelly’s Urban Fantasy debut are you most psyched for? Sadly, I think most of you missed this throwdown because it occurred on Thanksgiving, but from the votes I did get, the winner was: Kelly Meding’s Three Days to Dead.

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           VS

Last week Laurell K. Hamilton announced on her blog that there would be no Anita Blake Vampire Hunter movie/tv show:

• The Anita Blake TV show on IFC is not happening. Now no wailing and gnashing of teeth about it. In the two years and some change since I sold the rights to my series its been very educational… It has been frustrating watching other shows in the genre I pioneered go on the air while we didn’t, but in the end I believe most things happen for a reason. I would rather have no television show than a bad one…
• I was writing vampires long before the publishing industry realized it was a hot market…
• What fascinated me at the beginning of the series was our world if we woke up tomorrow and all the creatures of nightmare were real and everyone knew they were real. It’s still what fascinates me. I was the first one to bring them out of the broom closet, or coffin, whatever, and throw them into modern medicine, law enforcement, politics, and society in general.–Laurell K. Hamilton

  As noteworthy as that news was, it was her comments on ‘pioneering the genre’ etc. that have caused the biggest response from the public.  Check out the backlash in the comments on ScifiGuy’s post if you want to see how heated some people got.  What I want to know is:

Have LKH’s comments and any perceived arrogance on her part damaged your opinion of Anita Blake (assuming the evolution of the series itself hasn’t done that already)?

  Now, to be fair, LKH is hardly the first author to make controversial comments, but do you think they will damage her sales?  Does an author’s public comments/opinions influence your feelings towards their books one way or another?  Or can you separate the two?

The beginning of the end for both Anita and me.  What do we say about the girl with the bad reputation? I had decided to suspend judgment on the Anita Blake books until I had read some of them.  I thought the first three were pretty fun (click here to read part 1 of Anita Blake: Love her or Loath her), but after reading Midnight Cafe (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Omnibus books 4-6 Lunatic Cafe, Bloody Bones and Killing Dance) I’m less then keen.  In The Lunatic Cafe there are scenes of rape and bestiality.  In Bloody Bones we are introduced to necrophilia and pedophilia.  In The Killing Dance we are see a ménage a trios and a pretty hardcore sex scene that spans several pages.  I have to say I was pretty bummed when I finished reading The Midnight Cafe (and a not a little disgusted).  I was really starting to enjoy this series and mentally kicking myself for not starting it sooner.  It started out as a great ride that went irrevocably(in my opinion) off course.  One reviewer said it this way:

The tragedy is that the promise of these early novels was so thoroughly unfulfilled, the incredible potential so comprehensively derailed. If we choose to believe Laurell K. Hamilton, the author of this once-fine series, the story arc--if it could be described as such--is exactly as she envisioned from the start. If we choose, however, to believe the rumors, Hamilton's marital difficulties are to blame for the dramatic and horrendous swing in the character of the series. The character of Richard, it's claimed--allegedly on the testimony of those close to the author--was based upon Hamilton's husband and his subsequent humiliation, emasculation and vilification were little more than vengeance for their divorce. Whatever the explanation, the series has sunk to the level of cheap and tawdry pulp erotica. Blake is forced into increasingly unlikely situations simply in order to copulate with an increasingly large number of increasingly well-endowed male characters. Anita--who once told Richard that she would not sleep with him until she was sure that his love for her was genuine--ends up getting serviced on a regular basis by what seems like half the vampires and most of the various wereanimals in the state of Missouri. Some characters even travel across the USA--and beyond--in order to enjoy the privilege of bedding the former vampire hunter with the consent of her vampiric pimp, and there is no more appropriate descriptor for Jean-Claude--certainly there is no love in that relationship. –Doombreed

So what does LKH say in response to all this?  She addresses all this and more at great length on her blog:

(from LKH Blog Posted by LKH on 05/03 at 01:51 PM )

You complained that there was too much sex…you wanted less sex in the books...you wanted Richard to win...the sexual content? Is it going up or down? I think up, definitely up. I'm going to have to take a nod from Ms. Rowling. She said in an interview that nothing anyone says, or wants, will change a single word she's writing in her wonderful series. Well, folks, guess what, me either. But unlike Ms. Rowling, you are having an effect on me, one I keep fighting against. A very negative one. You tell me that there's too much sex, and part of me thinks, you ain't seen nothing yet...tell me how am I to please everyone? There is no way, so I shall please myself, because in the end if you don't please yourself, then what is left to you? You are all allowed to disagree with the direction the series has taken...but be nice about it...The arduer is a major metaphysical ability, and curse/blessing. It cannot be brought into the series and then fixed just like that...I've always planned on Anita getting to the point where she can control the arduer and not have to have sex every few hours. (And already I hear some fans complaining that I'll be cutting the sex down. We actually have vastly more people who love the higher sexual content than hate it. ...as the sexual content has gone up, so have the sales of the book...The arduer traps her here in St. Louis, unless she takes a harem for food. You can't do police work that way, not out of town. So, have patience, and it will calm down. I honestly don't know where her domestic arrangement will go. I didn't plan on us being where we are. Anita is more contrary than I am, and every time I push one person over another, she digs her feet in and does the opposite of what I had planned. A trait we share, for good, or ill. But I will not rush the transition. I will not hurry my overall plot because some of you are not happy with it. I am sorry you seem so unhappy. If you are truly that unhappy with the direction the series has taken, then stop reading it. Stop reading what I write. There, simply, fixed. If you don't like it, don't buy it, don't read it.(from LKH Blog Posted by LKH on 05/03 at 01:51 PM )

I, for one, have noted my objection--in a polite way-- to the drastic change this series has taken.  But LKH is the author of the Anita Blake series and can chose to have Anita become an astronauts if she chooses; that’s her right.   And I, in turn, have my rights.  So I intend on taking LKH up on her offer: I don’t like it, I’m not going to buy it, not going to read it.

 

Book blurb The Lunatic Cafe: Members of the local werewolf pack have gone missing. Not only that, but other shapeshifter groups have lost members as well. They need Anita's help to find their family and friends. Anita must use her contacts with the police and the preternatural community to solve this one.  With all the missing shapeshifters and the different patterns, Anita realizes she may have more trouble than she thought tracking them all down. When the clues finally fall into place, it is too late. Anita and her friends are captured and Anita is locked in a cage with a brand new werewolf - on the night of the full moon.

Book blurb Bloody Bones: Anita Blake has been called to Branson, Missouri to raise a family graveyard. There is a land dispute between two families and she must raise the corpses to find out who owns the land before a planned resort can be built. It all seems routine at first.
Then Anita is called to a murder in a nearby Missouri. Her zombie raising has been put on hold, because three teenage boys have been killed by preternatural means. Anita discovers that the land in question is being closely guarded for a reason. It had been holding a powerful creature at bay for centuries - and now that creature has been released and the slaughter has begun.

Book Blurb The Killing Dance: Bounty hunter and assassin, Edward, calls Anita with bad news. He has been offered a contract on Anita's life. Someone wants her dead and no price is too high. While Edward stalls with his answer, local muscle has been hired to take care of the problem. With two attempts on her life, Anita goes into hiding and Edward comes in as backup. Sabin, a master vampire and friend of Master of the City, Jean-Claude has come to ask Anita for her help. Years ago, his mate asked him to stop drinking human blood, and in doing so it has rotted his mind and his body. Anita agrees to help restore him, but when she is not fast enough, Jean-Claude and werewolf pack leader, Richard, are taken to serve as sacrifice for Sabin. Will Anita be able to save them before it is too late?

Long before I fell in love with Urban Fantasy as a genre, I had heard about Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series.  And I mean that in the most disparaging sense possible.   Every time I read something about the series it was sex, sex, and more sex. The word pornography was thrown around very casually.  And as I hate it when the plot of a book serves merely as a pretense for endless sex scenes that add nothing to the story/characters, I avoided this series much in the same way that I avoid blow drying my hair in the shower. 

That is, until I read an interview given by Laurell K. Hamilton in Writer's Digest  that asked her to respond to the too much sex criticism and her response changed my mind:

WD: YOU'VE BEEN CRITICIZED FOR HAVING TOO MUCH SEX IN THE ANITA BLAKE SERIES. HOW MUCH ATTENTION DO YOU PAY TO CRITICISM? DOES IT IN ANY WAY AFFECT HOW YOU WRITE THE NEXT BOOK?

LKH: It's funny. I've never had an American tell me they were bothered by the violence in my books. In Europe they're bothered by the violence and in America they're bothered by the sex. The only downside to the sexual content is losing younger readers. Sex isn't bad; it's a deity-given gift. But I initially never wanted to put sex on paper. There isn't a real sex scene until book five. At book six I finally realized my main character was going to have sex with the man she was dating. I initially wanted to take the 1940s pan to the sky, but the camera hadn't flinched in five books. I didn't want to do it, but I thought, what does this say about me? I don't mind writing violence but flinch at writing sex.  (Click here to read the interview in its entirety).

What?  Not a single sex scene in the first five books?  This was not the Anita Blake I had heard about.   And even then its hardly the ‘sleep with anything that moves’ reputation I’d been hearing about,  so I decided to pick up the first three books in the omnibus Club Vampyre  (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Omnibus: Guilty Pleasures,The Laughing Corpse and Circus of the Damned) and guess what? No sex. There is romance of course, but primarily these are UF mysteries (think hard-boiled), and fun ones at that.  Anita is tough with as-yet unrealized potential, Jean-Claude is alpha, the world is well imagined and realistic in a paranormal sort of way, and there appears to be juicy meta-narrative arc waiting to be told in subsequent books.  Add a touch of romance and its everything I love about urban fantasies. I am prepared to jettison this series if and when they begin to live up to (or should I say down to) their bad press, but in the meantime, Go Anita!

Book Blurb for 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.

Book Blurb for The Laughing Corpse: Millionaire Harold Gaynor wants to hire Anita Blake to raise a 283 year old corpse. Of course this kind or animation would require a white goat - a human sacrifice. Anita doesn't do human sacrifice, but Harold does not want to take no for an answer. If that wasn't bad enough Dominga Salvador wants Anita to partner with her in the zombie business, but it involves keeping the human soul trapped inside the dead body. Anita wants nothing to do with Dominga or her work, but when the voodoo queen sends something foul and rotting in her window, it is all Anita can do to survive.

Book Blurb for Circus of The Damned: A group of vampires are murdering humans. That's nothing unusual, but they are killing them with multiple bites and draining them of blood. They will rise as vampires, but they will rise as beasts - animalistic vampires that will slaughter everything in their path.
As if that wasn't enough trouble, a master vampire has come to town and wants to make Anita his human servant. New Master of the City, Jean-Claude, wants to mark Anita to keep her safe, but Anita would rather die than become a slave to any vampire. With two master vamps fighting for Anita's soul, an undead war has begun.