Some thoughts on Laurell K. Hamilton's novels

I really enjoyed Hamilton's character Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter in the early novels. In the beginning the writing and the plots were good enough to draw me in and keep my interest. Anita was an admirably strong female character, tough, brave, intelligent, and skilled - perhaps a grown up, hard-boiled, Buffy the Vampire Slayer squared.  I didn't mind some of the graphic sex scenes as long as they were integral to the larger plots, weren't in every other chapter, and didn't seem to be the raison d'etre for the books. It was intriguing when Anita first started developing some extra talents in addition to her abilities as a necromancer and vampire hunter.  I also enjoyed the tension between Anita's two suitors: Jean-Claude the Master Vampire of the city of St. Louis, and Richard Zeeman the Ulfric (leader) of the local Werewolf pack. (And no, Stephanie Meyer, author of the saccharine sweet, insipid, teeny Twilight series most definitely did not invent the Vampire vs. Werewolf competition over the female love-interest!)

However, I was very disappointed when Hamilton began to cross the line between what was believable and interesting to what was eye-rollingly unbelievable and even boring. Anita began to develop just far too many supernatural and cross-species qualities for me to take them seriously anymore. It's one thing to "push the envelope". It's another thing to stuff the envelope so full that the envelope explodes and everything that was once thrilling, risque and exotic becomes commonplace.

I'm not against polyamory (or anything else as long as it's safe, sane, consensual and between adults), but I think that there have to be some limits somewhere, and Anita's endlessly proliferating octo-entourage of were-animal and vampire boy-toys eventually became, well, just plain old multiple partner, cross species, boundary-less pornography. (Actually her only boundaries seem to be that she stays Heterosexual and Christian -- two boundaries which make absolutely no sense to me whatsoever). The later novels began to make me think of a three ring circus of interspecies sex. Anything else outside of sex which might have held the plots together has long since been lost. Speaking of circuses, it just might have been around Circus of the Damned and after, that the novels began to deteriorate.

Finally, the novels became shorter and shorter, the writing and plots of poorer quality, and much less satisfying to read. Perhaps Hamilton was put under too much financial pressure to quickly produce mass quantity instead of quality. Whatever the reason, it's a terrible shame, and I'm very sorry to say that I stopped buying Laurell K. Hamilton's novels (both her Anita Blake vampire hunter novels and her Meredith Gentry fae novels) just over half way through the series. I've been so disappointed by the loss of quality that I can't be bothered to even take the newest ones out of the library anymore. I truly mourn the devolution of what started out to be a very entertaining, exciting and promising novel series.

Still, if you are interested, it wouldn't hurt to try out the first few novels before the writing quality began to take such a steep nose dive.

Here is a link to her website: http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/