"Micah" & Anita Blake

[cobalt99 (deleted)]

Any Anita Blake fans out there? I just picked up "Micah", but haven't found the time to read it yet. Wondering when Hollywood will realize what a great movie franchise Anita's world would be, and who they'd cast to play her (kinda partial to Christina Ricci as Anita, myself).

[slytherinpinup (deleted)]

I'm a HUGE Blake fan myself! But to be real about it, to REALLY make the books into movies, they would have to be rated XX. Not that I would mind in the least, Hot supernatural S-- is just fine in my estimation.

I didnt realise there was a new book out , this means I have GOT to head to Barnes and Nobel and snag a copy .

[tstone (deleted)]

I'm new to this world myself. I'll let you all know my impressions as I forge ahead.

[fayjprufrock]

Oh lord, she's brought another one out? With a title like 'Micah', I guess it's not quite one of the Anita Blake books, though - is it Micah's backstory? Because all the Anitacentric ones have titles like 'The Laughing Corpse' and 'Obsidian Butterfly' and so forth.

...I have a sort of love/hate relationship with these books, to be honest - they exert a kind of carcrash fascination on me, but I can't help reading them. The first book in the series is pretty good, I think - pretty hardboiled detective stuff, with a clean, uncluttered prose style and an interesting 'What If' type of universe. I loved Anita's day job, and I really liked the array of secondary characters. There was a plot. Stuff happened.

Over the course of the series, Laurell K Hamilton seems to have been working through a whole host of her issues. To start with Anita was all Middle America Goody TwoShoes, and now she's this Uber---- from hell. We went from plot-barely-a-frisson-of-sexual-tension to plot-with-a-lot-of-sexual-tension to plot-with-sex to plot-with-a-lot-of-sex and now it's mostly sexsexsexsexsex. And I've got nothing against ----, but when I've been lured into the series by PLOT it's distinctly frustrating. The last couple of books have just been a string of S-- scenes with barely the slenderest attempt at pretending there's a plot to hang them together. It's increasingly difficult for me to like Anita, because she reads more and more as Laurell K Hamilton's own personal Mary Sue: gorgeous, kickass, more superpowers than all the Justice League put together and a total (and effortless) sexbomb whom EVERYONE wants to shag. Everyone. It has all these qualities of bad fanfic which just make me wince.

Again, not to sound puritanical about this, because that's not where I'm coming from. But man, 'Obsidian Butterfly', which is only a couple of books ago, was SO much better than the books she'd written just before and afterwards. Way more interesting - precisely because it was all plot and action and character development, rather than another installment of The Astonishing Adventures of Anita, The Wonder C*nt.

...and yet I do keep reading them. At this stage SPOILER I'm largely waiting to see how long it will take LKH to write the following 3 things: (1) when Anita will finally ---- another girl (because Laurell K Hamilton always does have Anita describe the other female characters' physical assets in terms that do not bespeak heterosexuality - don't tell me LKH hasn't thought about this); (2) when any of the boys will finally be allowed to get it on WITHOUT Anita in the middle of the sandwich; and, if you'll pardon the vulgarity of the expression, (3) when Anita is going to let one of her myriad men take her up the ass. 'Cause LKH is merrily writing Anita into all manner of orgies in which Anita is the only girl, and there's this whole logical Fit-Tab-A-into-Slot-B thing that really ought to have happened by this point. And nearly has a couple of times.

...oh, okay. And I'm also still reading because I fancy Nathaniel. And I'm a sucker for Cheesy Vampire ----, I guess. No pun intended.

I'd totally recommend Tanya Huff's vampire books, though, if you're fond of this kind of thing. Much more grown up fare, imho - not so much with the Mary Sue stuff, and more interesting supernatural characters. imho. ymmv. (Mind you, there's also the astonishing white trash of Charlaine Harris's vampire books, which exerts a different kind of carcrash fascination on me. It's like a Jerry Springer episode waiting to happen.)

[tstone (deleted)]

Don't forget Nancy Collin's "Sonya Blue" books. And for a male character, PN Elrod's "The Vampire Diaries".

[fayjprufrock]

Oooh!

I don't know these at all! Will look them up next time I'm back in Blighty. Although I could probably order them from the bookshop here, actually, unless the front covers look especially ----alicious - in which case there may be trouble importing them. Cheers!

[tstone (deleted)]

Ah, the covers of either ain't "----" related, not that I have a problem with that AT ALL.

The "Vampire Files" (not Diaries) are done in the form of a hard boiled detective story, more noir.

The Sonya Blue stories? Action oriented, think a female version of Blade.

[slytherinpinup (deleted)]

The first one I read was "Blue Moon", the hubby picked it up because he thought I might like it. Neither of us were prepared for what it turned out to be!

WHOAH!

OK so I will freely admit, I'm hooked and I like the over the top ----, Vampires and werewolves and strippers.,OH MY!

[fayjprufrock]

Ah - well, fair enough, if 'Blue Moon' was your first book then it does set the tone for the subsequent ones. I'd probably have a different feeling about the series if I'd read them that way.

Mind you, I still don't really have much patience with the way that everyone looks and dresses like they stepped out of a Halloween episode of Dynasty. Joss Whedon's aesthetic is more to my taste.

(...if Vampire ---- is your thing, though, there's a lot of very good Buffy & Angel fanfic out there on the internet. A lot of utterly s--- fanfic also, but the good writing is way better than LKH, imho, both in terms of hotness and good writing. ijs. ymmv.)

...I can't believe I just wrote that. Er.



Those aren't the droids you're looking for! Move along!

[shadownymph_PREV (deleted)]

I started reading Anita when Bones came out. I miss the stories. I don't mind the sex, but I really miss the stories.

I finished "Danse Macbre" last weekend. It's good and Laurell has gotten better at mixing the S-- with a story, but I still miss the stories.

Other good supernatural books and series:
MaryJanice Davidson's Undead saga. Fluff but good fluff. The main character is named "Betsy" and she LOVES designer shoes. The first book is "Undead and Unappreciated."

Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries. Follow the life of telepath Sookie Stackhouse. The first book is "Dead to the World." Ms. Harris also has another series that started with "Grave Sight". It's good and worth the read.

++Personal favorite++
Kim Harrison's The Hollows series. It starts with "Dead witch walking" and the latest book is "Fistful of Charms". Fantastic reading.

Carrie Vaughn has two books out where the main character is a werewolf. They are "Kitty and the midnight hour" and "Kitty goes to Washington." I like these a lot. A really good read and a really good werewolf story.

Kelly Armstron has a "Women of the Otherworld" series. The first two books are "Bitten" and "Stolen". Those are werewolf stories, then she goes to another character who is a witch. Very good reading. The latest book is "Broken" and you can find a lot of short stories on her website:
(removed)

Robin McKinley wrote a fantastic novel called "Sunshine". It is a vampire/witch story and is a wonderful read.

Patricia Briggs has a novel titles "Moon Called". It is a werewolf story, but told by a shifter. Yes, there is a differance.

I'll stop there, otherwise this list will be very long indeed.

I'm always on the lookout for a new author to read so feel free to e-mail me here with suggestions.

[lorienravenclaw (deleted)]

I finished reading "Michah" about an hour ago. There are huge gaps in my Anita Blake reading, though, so I'm sort of wondering how she ended up with two boyfriends.

I read "Guilty Pleasures," "Circus of the Damned," and "Blue Moon" several years ago. I've had "Narcissus in Chains" kicking around for a few years now, but can't currently locate it.

In poking around the Web, I found that LKH has another series out. And on some site, I did see that they were "shopping around" for movie rights to her Anita novels...but this was in 1999. I haven't seen anything more recent.