Cerulean Sins
But don't let's talk about it. Anyway, this is book eleven out of nineteen in the series. The books have--like all novel series--gotten worse and worse as the series wears on. They've become increasingly melodramatic and sexually gratuitous and repetitive, but I can't quite give them up. I think it's because Anita Blake, the vampire hunting heroine of the novels, is such a fantastic character.
Now, you all know that I love me a good vampire series, and I don't mind their conventionality: the main character is almost always a woman who is somehow embroiled in vampire culture. She's always both afraid of and attracted to the vampires, and she always becomes involved with at least one Vampire Boyfriend who's usually very old and seductive and dangerous and really good looking. And usually he has really long hair.
Gary Oldman as Dracula from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Brad Pitt from Interview with a Vampire.
Jean-Claude, Anita's long-haired Vampire Boyfriend.
The Anita Blake series follows this pattern just like the Twilight books and the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood novels. But the difference between Anita and characters like Bella Swan (Twilight) and Sookie is vast. Typically, the "heroine" of a vampire novel is a victim, an innocent who stands in for the reader. She's constantly put into great danger by the vampires, but she is also is seduced and loved by them. She survives in the vampire world largely by luck and the protection of others, not because of her own abilities.
But Anita is no victim. She's known as "The Executioner" because she's an officially licensed vampire hunter. She takes care of her own bad guys and doesn't fall to bits every time someone tries to take a bite out of her. Bella and Sookie are both protected by their Vampire Boyfriends, but Anita spends more time taking care of her friends and lovers than they take care of her. Both Sookie and Bella spend their novels crying and running away and huddling in a corner while the big, tough male vampires do all the talking, but Anita assumes that it's up to her to save the day. And if a vampire tries to eat her, she just shoots him. Her self-reliance makes for a refreshing change of pace.
She's part detective, part necromancer, and part assassin, but there's nothing victim-like about her. In fact, thought the novels, she doesn't worry about getting killed so much as she worries about losing her faith and innocence. She worries about becoming a hardened sociopath too ready to take a life, and this internal conflict is far more interesting than the ones in other vampire novels.
To be honest, the Anita Blake series has jumped the shark so many times that, every time I read one of the novels, I find myself thinking, "Well, this is going to be it: no more for me!" And then the book always ends with Anita being a total badass and raising a hundred bloodthirsty zombies or staking some big scary vampire or shooting her way out of trouble, and I just can't stop myself from going back to the library for just one more: it's a pleasure to read about a female character who is tough, capable, funny, and complex. Besides, let's be honest, who doesn't love a good zombie massacre?
Anita killing some zombies.
2 comments:
And I hate vampire books. They are sooooo not me! I read the "Twilight" series only because my students insisted and brought me the first three. And now I'm reading another series with demons, vampires, etc. I haven't read these--but I might have to give them a try!
You know, I read quite a few of these books and I thought they were excellent. After a few though, it was pretty much all sex. Now, I'm not one to complain about sex scenes, I love them, but it just got to be too much. I agree with what you said about her innocence and not becoming a sociopath, but as I read more of the series, I realized that it doesn't really become much of an issue anymore because even though she knows what she's doing is wrong, she does it anyways. It's been a while since I've read these books, but I remember a scene where she was caught by a vampire, I believe and as an afterthought she said "Hmm... maybe I should've used my cross, so much for my religion"... in so many words. Lol But still, even though she said she would stay in touch with it, I never saw it happening. So, to me, Anita Blake became some sort of sex-crazed sociopath.
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