Anita Blake

[Guest Corvis]

Oh! I was hoping someone had started a topic on this, but for some reason I can't see the previous posts.

Anyway, I'm only on Cerulean Sins right now, and I just wanted to see what others thought about the books. I'm loving them.

[Guest Chaotic Angel]

I read the Anita Blake books too, I'm completely up to date, now I'm just almost obsessively counting the days till the new one comes out in June. I love them too though they're getting weirder and weirder. I have friends who have stopped reading them cause they've gotten a little much. I still love them though. Do you read the Merry Gentry seris too?

[Nanaea]

I've read them up through Burnt Offerings and I absolutely love them so far. I plan on reading the Merry Gentry series when I'm done.

[Guest Corvis]

I just got done plowing through up until Micah, which I just finsihed this morning. There's a book signing for the new one like 30 minutes from my house so I'm going to go to that.

I just started the Merry Gentry books, I'm liking them so far. I also read Nightseer a while back and liked it a lot.

A friend warned me that they get a little wierd, but I just can't stop reading them. I don't mind the different direction she's gone, because there's still the detective stuff along with it. The rest is just added bonus.

Ugh, ff.net doesn't allow AB fictions. I did not know that...

[Guest theladybailey]

*flails* I am an avid Anita Blake fan girl, and any of my friend's can contest the fact that I may or may not have a shrine to Jean Claude in my closet. There is no proof! I'll be the first to admit the writing can be shaky at times (first person can be limited), and sometimes the plots are a little weak.

But damn, I'm addicted. Should Asher be needing another human servant anytime soon, I'm so signing up for that job.

Just wondering, as it's nice to find fellow AB fans, what are you guy's thoughts on Richard? I thought he was charming in the beginning, and I must admit I squee'ed like a thirteen year old at a Backstreet Boy's concernt when he would appear shirtless, or in jeans, or...okay, whenever that hunk of werewolf man-flesh appeared.

The way he's acted in the later books, though, I'm pretty turned off by him. I do believe by OB I was threatening to stick a knife in his eye. Maybe earlier then that. Thoughts, my friends?

[Guest Chaotic Angel]

theladybailey,

I'm totally with you on Richard, I adored him at first and now I just want him to go away and never return, honestly I just want him to die. He's become such an asshole. He totally pisses me off!! (*sigh* sorry I promised people I'd stop with the Richard's a DICK rant) I'm a total fangirl for Jean-Claude but I worship at the feet of my precious Nathaniel, I just want to snuggle him (and then do several obscene acts with him) I'm also mostly in love with Jason. So has anyone read the preview for Danse Macabre yet?

PS. Hey Corvis AB fanfiction is not easy to come by. Laurell K. Hamilton theatened to sue ffnazi.net so they took down all the stories that were there. I do have one good place where I go that has pretty decent stuff though they have mostly Anita/Edward which is a pairing I just can't see. Here it isPomme De Sang I swear AB is the only fandom where I'm a canon pairing girl all the way without Richard of course. If your into slash and don't mind Richard there's Cipher: Wasteland of the Real There's a lot of Richard/Jean-Claude stuff there.

[Guest theladybailey]

Bitch about Richard and all his man pussy ways to your hearts content, Chaotic, I will rant right along with you. And as for Nathaniel; sweet mother, that boy needs to give me a lap dance. And Jason. Okay, let me say this: all of Anita's men are lust bunnies, except for Richard, as he should fall off the face of earth and be a smudge on the highway of the universe.

*flails frantically* The expert from Danse Macabre has not only been read by me, it has been very nearly mauled. It's a cruel teaser. So what do you think: is she, or isn't she?

(She is. She so is. SHE HAS TO BE.)

[Guest Chaotic Angel]

Yay!!! Another Richard hater with which I can rant. All right!! I'd love to stick a knife in his eye, but I'd perfer to twist his dick off really ever since NIC.

I hope she is as long as it's not Richard's then I'll just want to curl up and die. I hope it's Nathaniel's, hope, hope, hope. but wow Ronnie is such a total bitch, she so needs to get over herself. I mean jelous much?

[Guest Corvis]

I couldn't beleive Ronnie in the teaser! Ugh, if I was Anita and I had a gun..... Oopsies...

Ugh, and Richard?! I really didn't like him much from the beginning. All his tragic hero shit got old quick. And now he's just on this self destructive pissing contest with the world. Argh.

*sighs* Asher...*melts*

I was sort of surprised at Nathaniel in the preview! He so changed, but in a good way. I think living with Anita has rubbed off on him. A lot.

Oh! Thanks for posting the link to Pomme de Sang! A few people recommended me to it, but stupid lame ff.net jerks don't let the link through their messages. I'm so through with that site..

I'm running there right now.. Heheh.

[Guest Chaotic Angel]

Okay just wanted to drop this off here for ya'll to see, Their making an Anita comic book and I saw this pic and had to share, I don't know about anyone else but this is totally what Anita looks like in my head.

She looks so totally badass I can't wait to see what the guys look like

[Guest Corvis]

I saw that pic! It does look like what I imagined her as also. I can't wait to see the rest of it. I ordered my copies, and I'm just waiting for the call. Ugh.. I so hate waiting...

[Guest Serenanna]

::whimpers:: I have a love/hate relationship with Anita Blake. After Obsidian Butterfly, I wanted to throw the next book across the room as soon as Miach showed up. While I love it for giving me hope of getting published myself one day, I, I . . . I can't friggen stand it! Sex is good, but where's the friggen plot?!?! The sexual tension!?! The sense of normalcy!?! Character developement?! World development that follows her own rules?! Gahhhhh! ::tears at her hair::

::pants::

::weezes::

::pants more::

. . .

Ok, I think I'm better. I think I stopped liking Anita Blake because I realized I could out write Hamilton with meaningful porn. And I plan to. Richard's character assassination didn't help. Admittedly, I still read Merry Gentry, but . . . that is also losing promise unless the plot kicks in soon. I was also let down by Doyle in Caress of Twilight when he finally had his night. All the nice tension of him abstaining went poof. A man that looks like an all black drow deserved a better sex scene. ::grumbles something about a drow fetish::

Serenanna, yes! I have a drow fetish!

[Guest Corvis]

I just finished reading Danse Macabre a few nights ago, and seriously. I was sort of disappointed.

No Edward. No Dolph. No Zebrowski. Damian? Larry? ANYONE?

Basically it was a three day span of smut. Which I can deal with. I mean, I was cheering when she broached the topic of slash, hehe. But there was something missing from this one.

I'll still read her, I mean, I dunno.

I just started Merry Gentry, and after a slow start, I'm liking it so far.

[Guest Vamp468]

I haven't read Danse Macabre yet and I'm not hurrying out to buy it either. I love the earlier Anita Blake stuff, but after that it seems like Hamilton just threw away plot and character develpoment and tried to replace it all with written porn. In my opinion, it's not working.

On the characters, I love Nathaniel and Asher above all the others. They're just... ::melts:: However, I'm not really a big Richard fan.

I enjoy the Merry Gentry series as great deal though.

[Guest Corvis]

Yeah, I agree. I may go back and reread some of the older stuff, hot Guilty Pleasures again, but I dunno. Everything that I loved has just started lacking.

omg, Asher and Damian.....*drools*

[Iggy_lovechild]

Gah, Hamilton's concepts of sex have become disturbing. Like the physics is all off or something. I actually haven't read all of "Danse Macabre" yet. Still waiting for some idiot to return it to the local library already (I don't really want to buy it...), but I skimmed the first big slashy sex scene at a Barnes and Noble. I was floored by the fact that she had the gall to put Anita on the bottom under two grown men who are fucking. And she expected us to believe this? I mean, Anita is not a big girl and I don't care if she's super-human, it had to have been uncomfortable. I was also slightly irked that jean-Claude used Anita's wetness as lube. As if he doesn't have a tube of astroglide lying around.

[The Thundercloud]

I think that the AB books have lost quality. If you ask me the explict sex in the later book is not the problem really. Rather it is that later AB books carry every mark of being "filler episodes". There are many anime series were you encounter that anime has overrun the manga and they start making filler episodes to keep doing something even while they can't advance the meta plot.

The latest AB book I read, Micah, is from my view point only the lastest in a series of "filler episode" books. Things lacking are murder cases that are more complicated than trivial, enemies that can challenge Anita and advancement of the meta plot.

The basic problem here is that I can't understand why Hamilton is doing this, there are no manga that she needs to wait for. Not advancing the meta plot and having problem finding suitable opponents is perhaps understandable...but why no murder cases or problematic political situations?

[WotanAnubis]

You know, I vaguely remember reading the first books and in those, Anita seemed very concerned about staying somewhat chaste.

And now here, I read about all the group sex she's continuously having.

Did something change somewhere down the road?

[Iggy_lovechild]

I think the basic concept going is that the ardeur is bigger and beyond all her former...boundries for lack of a better word. Honestly it's ridiculous though. Why this all means she has to have sex with virtual strangers is quite beyond me. She has Jean-Claude, Jason,Nathanial, Micah, and Damian, all willing to feed her needs. You can't tell me that no one is available when the urges hit, so to speak. And what ever happened to Anita getting in control of the ardeur, like she was trying to back in "Cerulean Sins" ?(the last passably good Anita Blake novel, imho)

[Guest Corvis]

Yeah, it is the last one where she even thought of getting control of it. I don't get it either.

I suppose you're right, like not advancing the plot, but what's her reason? Writer's block? I was kinda like that when I started writing sex scenes. I had to write it, and didn't really know how to back away at first. It's sort of awkward, but then you get your footing. I dunno if that made any sense.

But I just sort of hope the next one has SOMETHING other than just sex. And I totally agree woith Anita being bottom of Auggie and JC. Pfft, she so wouldn't go for it.

Anyway. Has anyone read Strange Candy? I haven't bought it yet, it's a trip to get to the nearest book store that'll order it for me.

[Guest Gaara]

I think somewhere along the way Laurell K. got her Merry Gentry and Anita Blake mixed up. Anita went from having morals to screwing anything in site. I don't even know if I'll read the next book myself. But Anita's hottest guy is hands down Nathaniel. I like Edward to but you really can't consider him "Anita's." The Frilly Frippified French Frog (Jeane-Claude) can go jump off a cliff and so can the Drama Queen Richard. I followed the whole series from book one up to Danse Macabre and more than disappointed with the latest book.

[Keith Inc.]

Okay.

I like Richard. He's almost a Marvel Comic Book Hero.

He didn't want to be a were, didn't want to be leader of the pack, most of his actions he takes to protect others. He tries to turn his powers into something positive, to bring the pack into the 20th century, to tame the monster.

Even his attempt to be the dick he thought Anita wanted was part of an attempt to maintain control so he could civilize his pack.

Unfortunately, there are two problems for him.

Deep down, he's not the realist Anita is. She has realized that we cannot change our nature. She's only beginning to really understand what her nature is, but she's facing it a lot more straightforward that Richard has since he became a were.

Also Richard has not given up his childhood goals, morals or ideas of what a proper wife should be. Anita has recognized that the morals she was raised with don't quite apply to a necromancer succubus with more than honorary membership in four or five shapechanger clubs despite not changing. Richard is still hopinghe can get on top of this whole werewolf thing and 'back to his life.' Anita sees her former self as a former, not a goal.

---------

Aside from that, I hated Obsidian Butterfly. At the start, Anita paired with Edward, over the horizon and far from the two causingmost of her angst, confusion and heartache? It should have rocked. Death and the Executioner vs....well, vs. anything would have been a novel that would have been the first one made into a movie.

Blood, death, explosions, mission-oriented conversations, undeath, final death, permanent death, ancient gods whimpering for their ancient mommies, Beowulf killing Grendel coming to look like kindergarten wrestling...

But she brought her angst with her and found more. Bleah. Found the human side of Edward. Sheesh. That's one character i didn't want to see develop. Well, maybe a weapon upgrade...

[Guest Gaara]

Okay you can say whatever you want. Richard is a pussy and should die. End of story. Please don't even put him into the same category as a Marvel Hero. Richard tried to make his pack into a democracy for crying out loud! There is only so much 'civilization' you can give to a pack of lycanthropes, especially wolves. Richard was not forced into becoming Ulfric so that whole pity-me-the-little-boy-who-didn't-want-to-be-here isn't going to cut it. And another point is Richard will never be human and therefore never have his dream of an ideal wife. The whole issue of Anita and her morals changing isn't really the point. The bottom line is the series is losing the plot that originally attracted so many readers. It's more than clear that when books that used to contain a good storyline as well as a well-written sex scene here and there contains nothing other than illogical sex scenes that the series is going down hill.

[Guest Gaara]

Yeah its definately a shame that Laurell K. decided to quit writing quality books. I'm sorry to say that I read Danse Macabre. *Shudders* don't read it. It only proves that Anita is even more of a whore and confirms that Anita finds another way to get off watching Jeane-Claude with a guy. I don't like the fact that Edward hasn't been in any of the recent books. Maybe Laurell K. could save the series if she put him back in. Never mind though, that would make sense and Laurell K. hasn't made sense in her books for a while. *Sigh* it's a sad day when one of your favorite authors disappoints you. Oh well, maybe Sherrilyn Kenyon will remain the shining beacon of hope, for me anyway.

[Guest Serenanna]

If anyone is to blame, it's the blind sheep readers that keep buying the books even if they are crap. I stopped after Narcissus in Chains and haven't looked back with regret once.

If the editors and publishers are to be blamed, it's for not putting their feet down to tell her she's been spiraling out of control.

If Laurell herself is to be blamed, then it's for her growing self-obsession in thinking she's perfect and not realizing what she's doing as an author. Maybe it's just me, but if I was burnt out, I wouldn't be churning out porn after porn, just alot of plot holes to fall through. No matter what anyone says, porn takes alot of work, even bad porn.

But that's just my two cents.

I can still out-write her.

Sere