Hamilton, Laurell K.
About the Author:
Laurell K. Hamilton lives in Arnold, Missouri, USA with her husband and daughter.
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
3 out of 5
(2 books)
TOP PICK:
Guilty Pleasures
Guilty Pleasures
The first Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel. The story involves the aforementioned Anita Blake, a woman of unique abilities who assists the Police in supernatural cases following the legal declaration of rights for the undead.
This book, and indeed the series, is bound to have to face comparison with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Well, here that comparison is; where Buffy and her friends are all witty remarks, chirpy friendliness and general family-entertainment type characters, Anita Blake is a rather cynical individual living in a much darker and more gothic world than Sunnydale's High School. In almost every way imaginable (except perhaps pop-culture references) Hamilton's creation outstrips Joss Whedon's.
However, despite the overall quality of the characters and setting, the actual story told here is fairly mundane and serves mostly to introduce the setup for the series in general. Because of that failing in actual story quality, I can't give this book the score it would otherwise deserve.
3 out of 5
The Laughing Corpse
Book two of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. Anita finds herself with powerful enemies when she refuses to raise a zombie for a cruel millionaire and then angers the dangerous voodoo queen Dominga Salvador, but she is preoccupied with helping the police hunt down an undead monster which is brutally slaughtering families.
I did not enjoy the vast majority of this book. Hamilton's prose felt stunted and obvious and Anita was too much of a Mary Sue to be credible. Sure, the author does allow Anita to be fallible, scared and physically unimposing, but despite all that she's also immensely magically powerful, a gun-toting badass and happens to have the most powerful vampire in the city in love with her. It's all just too much.
All that said, I have to give credit to the author for how she pulled the disparate story threads together in the last third, or so, of the book. The final confrontation, involving dark magic in a benighted graveyard, was very atmospheric and paid off the various plot elements very nicely. If the whole book had been written with the same sense of drama, then I would've rated it much higher.
3 out of 5
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