In Review: Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

Released: 1993                 272 pages

Publisher: New English Library

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 978-0450595608

The first in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series is Guilty Pleasures, which is also the name of Jean Claude’s club.

This first story works well building Anita’s world where vampires live side by side with the living. Anita Blake is a strong and sassy character, a small woman in a large man’s world. She’s a professional animator, a necromancer, and a licensed vampire executioner. They call her the Executioner.

The vampires are beautiful and enthralling, but they’re also very deadly, living by their own code, and barely in line with the law. Anita views them as monsters, even if the law protects them to an extent. And these beautiful monsters seek out her help when there own are murdered, and when the Master of the city, Nikolaos, demands your help, you help her even if she looks like a prepubescent child because she’s scary powerful.

Jean-Claude is taunts and teases Anita, even as she spurns his attentions, even though she is attracted to him. As Anita tries to solve the case she gets sucked further and further into league with the monsters, and finds herself at odds with human hitman Edward. Along the way there are not only vampires, but also wererats, ghouls, other animators, and fellow humans.

The plot holds up well under the constant action, never really losing momentum until the story is complete. The entire story is fast paced and intriguing a really good first for the series.