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WENDY'S UNIVERSE - Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter

GENERAL OVERVIEW

Anita Blake is my all-time favorite fictional heroine. She is the best! Anita Blake is a necromancer (a human with power over all sorts of dead). And that's pretty cool in itself... but Anita also has a day job, well, actually, sort of a night job, as an animator. That basically means she raises the dead for a living, and is also a licensed vampire hunter.

You see, in the Anitaverse, vampires are legal, lycanthropy (the werewolf disease) runs rampant and witches are a well respected and sometimes feared minority in America. And with all these monsters crawling out of the woodwork, things are getting a little hectic. Throughout the series, Anita's life goes from quiet animator raising zombies for lawyers with unsigned wills to really, really weird.

She gets involved with a Master Vampire and an Ulfric (werewolf king), manages to seriously tick off some very powerful, and really nasty people and just generally gets pulled into a life very different from her soft, Catholic upbringing.

At any rate, no matter how strange her life gets, Anita is always entertaining. Laurell K. Hamilton, the author of the series, is a very talented writer, with a seemingly endless amount of imagination. And the Anita Blake series will always hold a very special place on my bookshelf.

BOOK SUMMARIES

That said, the rest of the page is a quick summary of each of the Anita Blake novels to date (the italic parts are the official teasers on the published books).

You can jump down, or scroll down to any of the books below. The green arrow will take you back up to the very top of the page, the brown - back to this table.

Guilty Pleasures	The Laughing Corpse	Circus of the Damned
The Lunatic Cafe	Bloody Bones	The Killing Dance
Burnt Offerings	Blue Moon	Obsidian Butterfly
Narcissus in Chains	Cerulean Sins	Incubus Dreams

Guilty Pleasures

"I don't date vampires. I kill them."

My name is Anita Blake. Vampires call me The Executioner. What I call them isn't repeatable. Ever since the Supreme Court granted the undead equal rights, most people think vampires are just ordinary folks with fangs. I know better. I've seen their victims. I carry the scars... But now a serial killer is murdering vampires-and the most powerful bloodsucker in town wants me to find the killer.

Guilty Pleasures was the very first in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. It sets the scene in St. Louis and tells us of the equal rights for vampires deal.

We first find Anita in her office at Animators, Inc. across from Willie McCoy. Willie's the type of guy who reminds you "of a bit player in a gangster movie, the kind that sells information, runs errands, and is expendable." Of course, since Willie became a vampire, he'd gotten a little higher on the food chain. He'd come to Anita with a job offer; there's a murderer on the streets going after vampires, ripping out their hearts and cutting off their heads, if you'd care to know... Willie, of course, is only the messenger here, the real bad guy is Nikolaus, a creepy little seemingly young girl who happens to be the Master of the City (read the Master of every Vampire in St. Louis).

Anita is no fan of the vampire community and has no intention of taking the case, that is until Jean-Claude (the I-know-I-shouldn't-but-gosh-he's-sexy love interest of the series) finds Anita's soft spot--her best friend, Catherine Maison...

The Laughing Corpse

"The older the zombie, the bigger the death needed to raise it."

After a few centuries, the only death "big enough" is a human sacrifice. I know, because I'm an animator. My name is Anita Blake. Working for Animators, Inc., is just a job--like selling insurance. But all the money in the world wasn't enough for me to take on the particular job Harold Gaynor was offering. Somebody else did, though--a rogue animator. Now he's not just raising the dead... he's raising Hell. And it's up to me to stop it...

Bert Vaughn is Anita's boss at Animators, Inc. and he is a greedy little man. He will do almost anything for the right amount of money, but even Bert has his limits, and when you finally find something he won't do no matter what, you can be assured it's something pretty bad. What Harold asked Anita... that crossed Bert's line, so, of course, Anita refused. But Harold Gaynor is a very rich man, used to getting his way, and he won't take no for an answer.

Circus of the Damned

"Most women complain that there are no single, straight men left. I'd just like to meet one that's human."

I'm Anita Blake, expert on creatures of the night. I've dined with shapeshifters, danced with werewolves, and been wooed--but not won--by Jean-Claude, the Master Vampire of the City. And now a darkly dangerous vampire named Alejandro has hit town. He too wants me for his human servant. A war of the undead has begun. Over me. I would be flattered. If my life weren't at stake.

I think this is one of my favorite Anita Blake books because, though it still has a strong storyline (a millenia old vampire from the Vamp High Council comes to St. Louis to cause some serious damage), Circus focuses more on the relationships of the characters and Anita's yearning for some sort of normal life and a good man.

The Lunatic Cafe

"You don't volunteer for slugfests with vampires. It shortens your life expectancy."

And you don't fall in love with a werewolf. It interferes with your work. Especially when you're a preternatural expert, like me. My business brings me up close and personal with all shapes and sizes of monsters. And not all of them want to kill me. Take, for instance, the local pack of lycanthropes--that's werewolves to you. A number of them are missing, and they've come to me for help. Maybe because I'm dating the leader of the pack. I've survived a lot--from jealous vampires to killer zombies--but this love thing may kill me yet...

Ooh... now this one's a bit of a who-done-it. Werewolves are going missing (as noted above), but not just missing. They are eventually found... just not usually in one piece, if you catch my meaning. Anita must figure out what's going on before the bad guys get around to removing her from the case... permanently.

Bloody Bones

"When the monsters are involved, it's never just one dead body. One way or another the dead multiply."

First, there were the dead in the graveyard, two-hundred years dead. I'd been hired to raise them to settle a dispute over who owned the land they were buried in. Then there were the three dead teenagers in the woods, slaughtered in a way I had never seen before. And then they found the dead girl, drained of blood and left in her bed. I knew what that meant, all right. It didn't take a degree in preternatural studies to figure out that something was very wrong in and around Branson, Missouri. And I was right in the middle of it. My name is Anita Blake. Welcome to my life...

This was actually the very first Anita Blake book I read. Some people like to start at the beginning of a series but me, personally, I just started with the best cover. At any rate, Bloody Bones is the book where Jean-Claude finally starts to get under Anita's skin. It is also where Anita gets closest to the danger. That is... very close.

The Killing Dance

"These days my life is a cross between preternatural soap opera and an action-adventure movie. Sort of As the Casket Turns meets Rambo."

The first hit man came after me at home, which should be against the rules. Then there was a second, and a third. Eventually, I found out that the word on the street was that Anita Blake, preternatural expert and vampire killer extraordinaire, was worth half a million dollars. Dead, not alive. So, what's a girl to do but turn to the men in her life for help? Which in my case, means an alpha werewolf and a master vampire. With professional killers on your trail, it's not a bad idea to have as much protection as possible, human or otherwise. But I'm beginning to wonder if two monsters are better than one...

Enter Edward! Yeah!!! Anita's assassin friend comes to the rescue, tipping her off to the contract before someone else has a chance to take her out. But though Edward is really great at killing things, he lacks a certain efficiancy when it comes to keeping them alive. So Anita turns to her boyfriend, the local werewolf pack leader, for help (I won't give the name, it'll spoil the surprise). But even he doesn't have the necessary tools to keep her safe, so... Jean-Claude steps in. And boy, that makes for a very interesting plot twist later.

Burnt Offerings

WARNING: This particular summary contains one or two teeny, weeny little spoilers... Read on at your own risk.

"You can't trust anyone who sleeps with the monsters."

That's what I've always said. That's what I've always believed. But now I'm the one sharing a bed with the Master Vampire of the City. Me, Anita Blake. The woman the vampires call the Executioner. From part of the solution, I've become part of the problem. So it hits close to home when an arsonist begins to target vampire-owned businesses all over town--an arsonist who seems to want to destroy more than just property. It's the monsters who are in danger now. And it's up to the Executioner to save them from the inferno...

Yes, you've got it. She slept with Jean-Claude. Bad??? Good??? Who knows. But anyway... the Council (Vamp Council) is in town. They've come for Jean-Claude. You see, he (and Anita, though the Council doesn't recognize her as anything but an extension of Jean-Claude) did something they really shouldn't have back in a previous storyline (Circus of the Damned) and now they must pay the price.

Blue Moon

WARNING: This particular summary contains one or two teeny, weeny little spoilers... Read on at your own risk.

"Richard was an alpha werewolf. It was his only serious flaw. We'd broken up after I'd seen him eat somebody."

Still, you never forget your ex-fiancé. And when the call came at three in the morning, I thought for a moment it was him. It wasn't. It was his brother. And it wasn't good news. Apparantly, the former love of my life had gotten himself thrown in jail for assaulting a woman. Since I make my living as a preternatural expert, I tend to believe almost anything's possible. But though he may be one of the monsters, Richard would never harm a woman. So here I am in the wilds of Tennessee, Anita to the rescue. I've got just a few days to spring Richard and find out who framed him--and why. There's a full moon coming, and if my werewolf love is still behind bars when it rises, he'll be facing a lot worse than an assault charge...

The only thing in this story that I really didn't like was that Anita got back together (for a short time at least) with Richard. I am not a Richard fan, I am all for Jean-Claude and if you want to be a part of the Anitaverse... you'll choose, too. Trust me, it just happens. Other than that, this was a pretty excellent book. For a long while, the Anita Blake readers had been sort of complaining that Anita may have been getting too powerful, and at the end of Blue Moon, Anita was said to be taking a break from her hectic, monster-filled world in order to get her head back on straight.

Obsidian Butterfly

"Edward was a hit man. He specialized in monsters. Vampires, shape-shifters, anything and everything. There were people like me who did it legal, but Edward didn't sweat the legalities or, hell, the ethics. He was an equal opportunity killer. I may be one of the few friends that Edward has, but it's like being friends with a tame leopard. It may curl on the foot of your bed and let you pet its head, but it can still eat your throat out..."

Whenever the phone rings before dawn something big is probably up, and the fact that Anita Blake has been up all night dealing with zombies doesn't make this call an exception. "Ted Forrester needs backup from Anita Blake, vampire executioner," Edward tells her, using the pseudonym he keeps for those rare times when he needs a legal identity. And she owes him a favor.

So by noon she's on a plane to Santa Fe, sun-drenched town of wealthy retirees, where in the last two weeks twelve people have been murdered. The dead ones had it easy; other victims have been completely flayed, but kept horribly alive by magic. Seeing them in the hospital, Anita feels uncharacteristically shaken.

Edward's "Ted Forrester" identity has her nearly as spooked as the crimes: He's working with the local police, courting a likable widow with two kids, and generally making like a good ol' boy. Anita knows the real nature he's hiding beneath his mask of normality-and she finds "Ted" perhaps more frightening than Edward.

But she must put aside her fear to help Edward hunt down the greatest evil she has ever encountered. It's ancient and devious-and, in the end, she will have to face it alone.

This summary is by far the longest, most likely because it is the only one from a hard-cover (MY FIRST!). But I liked this OB, except for one thing... there was like, NO, Jean-Claude! In the whole thing! *sniff, sniff* no Jean-Claude...

Narcissus in Chains

"The last thing on God's green earth that I needed was another man in my life...

"I didn't have a clue what to do with the two I had already. The fact that they were, respectively, a Master Vampire and an Ulfric, werewolf king, was only part of the problem....They both had my libido, but I was trying to decide who had my heart..."

Laurell's tenth book in the series and I must admit, it wasn't the best... *sigh* you have no idea how much it hurts to have to confess that... It was a rush job, as Laurell freely admits in her Acknowledgments section and there were a number of typos (which are my personal pet peeve) and too much repetition for my taste. I have heard some who read this book say they got lost at points because they hadn't read previous books in the series and were lacking information, but then, by the tenth book in a series, it is my personal opinion that you probably SHOULDN'T just be jumping in. Laurell re-explains much of the story from previous books, and personally, as one who has read the rest of the series, that was irksome. That said, if you are a fan of the series already this book does offer some VERY good qualities, namely that Anita finally comes to grips with who she's become (or pretty much) and the whole Richard/Jean-Claude thing actually has some sort of resolution (I won't tell you who wins out, but I TOTALLY agreed). Plus, we get a chance to see Anita's soft underbelly for a change and that was kind of cool. All in all, I am certainly glad I bought the book. Now for the next!

Cerulean Sins

When Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, is asked to reanimate the body of a long-dead corpse it seems like just another average case. But the corpse may hold the secret to an ancient crime that not everyone wants to be remembered...

Now an unknown and terrifying menace moves to stop her investigation. Anita must employ all her deadly skill if she is to find the answers she needs and strike her enemies down.

But first, she must survive...

This is the eleventh book in the series and I bought it as soon as it came out! YEAH ME! Anita gets hot and heavy in this latest addition to the Vampire Hunter series. Surrounded by studly men and ridden by the ardour, Anita is hard-pressed to say no to the numerous advances coming at her from every side (and she doesn't do much of saying no in this novel).

Unfortunately for Anita, handsome, irresistable hunks threatening her pristine sense of morality are not her only worry. Belle Morte sends her entourage in Cerulean Sins, and they are not happy with the level of power Jean-Claude has accrued for himself... And as if that weren't enough, an ancient power is waking - the mother of all vampires, who stalks the dark and whispers in dreams - and she has developed an interest in Anita - and the mother's curiousity is likely to do more than just kill the cat.

Incubus Dreams

"In Incubus Dreams, Anita's life is more complicated than ever, caught as she is between her obligations to the living - and the undead."

"As consultant to the Regional Preternatural Crime Investigation Unit, Anita's called in on what appears to be a case involving a serial killer - a vampire serial killer - who may be preying on strippers."

"She's sure that none of the local vamps are resonsible - but her judgment may be clouded by a conflict of interest. For she is, after all, the consort of Jean-Claude, the ever-intoxicating Master Vampire of the City - something that both her human friends and her ex, the alpha werewolf Richard, are quick to point out.

Surrounded by suspicion, overwhelmed by her attempts to control the primal lusts that continue to wrack her as a result of her passionate contacts with vampire, werewolf, and the shapeshifter Micah, Anita is pushed to her limits - and beyond...

Dreams is Laurell's twelfth book in the series and it has both some major weak points and some really great points. First of all, all that bluff up above about a vampire serial killer... Well, it's true, it is in the book, BUT, it is such a weak plot and influences so little of what happens in the novel, that it is really more of a subplot - a very weak SUBplot.

However, the rest of the book is chock-full of some really interesting bits. Though there isn't much of a story, and there is a LOT more sex than is seriously called for in any novel - I don't care if it's an 'adult' book or not - there is also a lot of new information about the major players in the series. We learn about Jason's soft "I-just-want-to-be-loved" side, and Richard starts to get his s**t together a bit, and Damian and Anita come to terms with each other, and .... well, you get the idea.

Although Incubus Dreams has got to be the worst book in the series in terms of plot and way-too-much graphic sex (unless you like that sort of thing), it is STILL one of the best in terms of character development and the in-depth relationship building stuff. All in all, I'm glad I bought the book, and what with all the new character development out of the way, am thinking that the thirteenth installment is like to be one of the best Anita Blake books yet. I am eagerly awaiting the next read.