Guilty Pleasures: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel

4.5 stars. I enjoyed reading this book. This is not a romance book. It’s a mystery book with vampires and other beings. It can get a bit heavy with all the bad guys running the show and Anita trying to stay alive and to beat the bad guys before they kill her.Anita is a badass human who doesn’t have special abilities other than being an animator who can raise the dead I feel like there may be more to her but that’s just a guess on my part. I like it that even though she gets scared a lot, she’s so brave and compassionate for others that she will head straight into danger.This book is interesting enough that I will continue with the series and see how it turns out. Looks like the romance won’t happen until the 4th book.

If you love paranormal reads then you will love this series! It has vampires, wererats, blood and gore. Anita Blake is one @ss kicking woman, but she is all human.

Once upon a time, I bought the 4th Anita Blake book, read a little and promptly bought this one and the adventure began... Life got in the way and I have some catching up to do; maybe via Kindle. Read them slowly, but read them, read them all! One of the best series ever written.

Still a better love story than Twilight.Great first book in the Anita Blake series. No nonsense heroine with a realistic humanity in her brazen choices.

Best series I have ever read. Over and over..... I like to re-read before new books come out, or after reading a new one. I just love them

"Guilty Pleasures" is the first Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel by Laurell K. Hamilton, but when you read it you will wish that it was not. What I mean by that convoluted sentence is that Anita is well into her career as an Animator when this book opens and the more you find out about her backstory the more you want to learn. One of the most important things in this story is when the master vampire Jean-Claude puts the first two marks upon Anita, which links them psychically and makes her somewhat immune to the mental powers of the vampires. Obviously this will have long term repercussions in the series, but it is not as momentous a change since this is the first novel in the series; when it happens Anita has talked about killing vampires, but we have yet to see her ply her trade. If there had been a prequel to this story, in which Anita earned her reputation as "The Executioner" and we learned the rules of the game in terms of vampires and this brave new world they inhabit, then her transformation in "Guilty Pleasures" would have the weight it deserves. Similarly, the idea that the thousand-year-old Master Vampire of St. Louis wants to hire Anita to solve the sudden rash of vampire murders also has less impact than it would if this story was told further down the line. Hamilton comes up with some excellent ideas in this novel, but you can imagine how much more of an impact they would have if this was the third or fourth Anita Blake novel instead of the first. However, Hamilton gets high marks for giving us the feel that we have stepped into an ongoing story, always a laudable goal. You have to be quite optimistic about her ability to up the ante as the series continues.The world of Anita Blake is one in which the Supreme Court has granted the undead equal rights, so that you cannot kill a vampire without a warrant and you can just imagine the legal morass involving zombies, ghouls and were-beasts. Hamilton has created a world in which the undead are still creatures of the night but have become a part of society, which runs the spectrum from vampire strip clubs such as the Guilty Pleasures of the title to the Church of Eternal Life where becoming a vampire can help you achieve that particular goal. This is a thoughtful look at the "realities" of such a world and although you will recognize elements from Stoker and Rice in this world, Hamilton has constructed one that stands on its own. As for our heroine, she is also extremely realistic: Anita Blake has horrible scars on her body from her battles against the undead, her dreams are tormented by what she has seen and done, she is terrified by her current situation and does not know who she can trust or turn to for help. The fact that she feels fear, cries, gets sick to her stomach, add to her heroism because despite all these obstacles, she gets the job done. There is a much harder edge here than what you find with other vampire slayers. Anita Blake is not a two-dimension character, which is why once you read "Guilty Pleasures" you have to move on to the next novel in the series. All in all, this is an excellent start.

This book is now a bit dated, with answering machines and pagers and people scrambling for change to use pay phones. And it is not among the best constructed, most well written, or even most entertaining works of paranormal fiction I have read. What it is, is revolutionary, and I recommend it as much for its place in the history of vampire novels as I for its own merits.Hamilton adds a postscript to the end of this edition (from the hardcover edition) which talks about how a publisher rejected Guilty Pleasures because the vampire novel was dead. I have heard this myself in reference to a vampire novel that I am working on and scoffed derisively. You can’t kill vampire novels (even with a wooden stake and silver bullets).What Hamilton did was take the (previously resurrected at least once) genre and move it away from both the horror and romance poles, doing something completely different with it. She made vampires ubiquitous and used mystery and a sleuth as the plot driver. She went further, creating a central character who is connected to a completely different branch of paranormal lore (zombies) and throwing in werewolves and others for good measure.There may be older examples of this treatment of vampires as object rather than subject (I am not pretending to be a historian on the subject) but this is a well known, successful exemplar.As a novel, what Guilty Pleasures does well is develop the lead character. Anita Blake is a great character. Part sleuth, part reluctant vampire slayer, all cranky, under-slept and slightly (just slightly) over her head, she is tough, smart and funny. It is a compelling character that I would want to follow in other novels.The supporting characters are developed with different degrees of success. There are slightly too many transient secondary characters, which distracts a bit from the narrative and leads to a bit of confusion. Some of the vampires are strong, compelling characters, others are a bit exaggerated, but some not inappropriately so. It is largely in the human characters that I feel improvement could take place. Some are characters that are important for the plot (Catherine, for instance) but are not developed, rather, used as plot objects.Plot development resembles traditional sleuths, hunting for clues, hitting dead ends, death treats... the difference is the death threats are coming from the undead. The plot is peppered with occasional paranormal-relevant asides which adds to ambiance. Without spoiling, I will say that the plot could be stronger.Description and ambiance is very good, particularly for the paranormal sections. St. Louis is an unexpected setting for a vampire novel. However, except for the stifling summer heat, Hamilton does not spend much ink describing the city itself, and the novel could have taken place elsewhere.As far as internal coherence is concerned, I am on the fence a bit. There is an enormous challenge that Hamilton has to overcome, somehow normalising vampires, zombies, and weres, and making them part of society, while still keeping them frightening. This leads to some contradictions and logical traps which the book is too short to be expected to deal with. Maybe in a sequel.All-in-all this is an entertaining read and certainly one that has a certain historical importance in the genre.

I've read the first 4 books in this series and I'm now stopping, like I had to with the Merry Gentry series. I like Anita Blake just fine - she is suitably tough and skilled, although this is the 3rd series I've read where the MC is "tiny like a doll", but at least the author has her working out and practicing martial arts to be somewhat believable when she goes up against the bad guys. The storyline is fine, too, though it does feel a bit dated with the pagers and such. But the men. Ech. All of them are weak and effeminate, and dress like they're from a 70s disco. They're often rather soft and childlike. Edward, the cold-blooded assassin - yeah, right. Anita has to save him. Twice. And he screamed like a baby. Puh-leeze. He later comes through with a flamethrower in a following book, but he's still nothing special or scary like the author keeps saying (show, don't tell) - she just doesn't do a good job with male characters. I think the author has a thing for dominant women and submissive men, which is fine, if you're into that sort of thing. And, ALL of the female supernatural characters are bad. C'mon, just one decent interesting supernatural woman would add interest and depth. Maybe that comes later in the series, but I'm not sticking around for it.

Loved this series of books I have in paperback now digital and have read more than once they are so good you can read A lot also the covers of the paperbacks is what drew me in they are so good and I'm glad they did you don't get much better vampire , were animal books than these , great characters , great storyline and plenty of action also laugh out loud moments they give so much I can't recommend enough !!!

I was continually being recommended this series by amazon as I am a fan of Patricia Briggs and Faith Hunter, both brilliant writers in the genre.So I took the plunge only to be wholeheartedly disappointed. Nowhere were the rich characters and plot lines I'd hoped for, just wooden stereotypical ones. Anita is the executioner, but scared of everything? The male characters are ridiculously cliched and macho. Yup, I won't be reading any more.

Guilty Pleasures is the first of a 20 book series at last count.Anita Blake is a hardboiled aninimator, which means she has the ability to raise the dead, her other talents include being a sanctioned vampire killer and working for the St Louis police force as a prenatural specialist on retainer basis.She's sarcastic, loyal & protective of her friends she can also kick butt, protect herself & kill to survive ask questions later.The book begins with the supernatural not long out of the closet, there is politics & subterfuge & the vamps are very protective over their public persona.Anita is blackmailed by Nikalos, a master vampire into investigating very nasty vampire mutilations, she's very powerful & very scary - Anita has no choice in the matter.Jean Claude is introduced who has an unhealthy interest in Anita, he's very manipulative, strategic & seductive, you appreciate how much at the end of the book.I need to mention Edward, I love this character, a cold sociapath who has got Anitas back, well she hopes so anyway, your never quite sure. They join forces when matters turn particulary nasty, Edward is a supernatural assassin with 'cold dead eyes'.I really do not want to give any more of the plot away, but the novel blasts others of this genre out of the water.Read by Kimberly Alexis aka Laurell K Hamilton, I was impressed, there's nothing twangy about her accent which sometimes put me off with American accents, only because I am not used to the way of speech & in the past it has totally put me off listening to the rest of an audio book.But like I said no twang here. Her intonation is clear, different character voices are individual (Jean Claude has a sexy french lilt.)& she tells the story only like an author can because it's her creation, she tells the tale with expression & verve.There's also atmospheric music in pertinant parts which some other audio books do not have.& this only adds to the experiance.The only negative I can say is that the box the discs come is not very strong & could be damaged easily if not handled with care. Gripe over.One of my favourite books out there I had already read the book twice, but still managed to pick up different points of view from listening to the CD's.Superb.... Buy it you won't be disappointed.

A friend recommended this series and despite my initial doubts I bought Guilty Pleasures. That was 5 days ago, I'm now on the fourth book, closing in fast on the fifth of the series.Anita Blake has become one of the best heroines (debatable use of language) I've had the pleasure to encounter. She is realistic, down to earth and complex. If theres one thing I hate in a novel its a woman with no real character or who clings stubbornly to stereotypes. Anita, despite her profession in the books and her dealings with the supernatural feels real, she has fears, doubts, prejudice and she walks the line between good and bad - I'm still having trouble deciding if its morally correct to call her the good guy in the stories, sure, she has a reason for everything she does and compared to many of the other character she's as sweet as pie, but objectively its really hard to decide.As for the story itself, in this particular book we get the full introduction to both the characters and the world they live in, but its not a dump of information, its spread throughout the book and fits in perfectly with the goings on. There was, for me, not a single dull moment in reading this.My only regret is that it ends before I want it too - both a compliment and a curse really. I so far love this book and the series and if you're into supernatural stories you'll want to give this a try, its like a loving cross between supernatural, horror and thriller genre's.