Anita Blake novels

[rakkoon]

I love the early books. I'm reading the first eight books for the third time now. The power games, sexual tension, cool characters and strong dialogues make an excellent read. Then, around book ten I believe it turns to vampire erotica. This is not my thing. Since there are now 21 books available I would like to know whether the series ever comes back to the level of the earlier books. Does anyone here know?

[Metahuman1]

There are a couple of books that manage to start to briefly swing back toward it, one were she's spending a good chunk of it out of town helping Jason deal with a family issue and another were she get's kidnapped for a few hours by some werelions.


But none of them ever really get completely back on the less sex more action track sadly, least from we're I'm sitting. (If anything, the downward spiral keeps going most of the time and Anita turns more and more into an obvious author power fantasy and little else.)

[Cheesegear]

Does anyone here know?

I have read the first 10 or so, and then I gave up.
A (female, if that matters) friend of mine is still reading them, and she says that no, it doesn't get better.

[comicshorse]

I quit around the eighth book for the reasons provided above. Then a friend lent me the 12 th which just confirmed everything I always feared about the way the books were going ( and annoyingly finished with a nail biting SWAT assault on a Vampire nest showing the author could write better she just prefers not to).
All that said I'd still recommend reading the 9th Book (a birthday gift as I'd stopped buying them myself at this point), Obsidian Butterfly, as being one for the best of the series (IMHO). However as Metahuman points out this is because in it Anita gets out of town, doesn't talk to any of her 'harem' and doesn't sleep with anybody in the entire book ! ( It also heavily involves Edward who was always one of my favourite characters)

The character change of Anita is quite remarkable. A friend commented that if Anita from the first book meet her later self, she'd probably shoot her in the face

[rakkoon]

So she goes from one kiss in 6 books to Slutty mcSlutslut and stays there...quite a shame

Thanks for the info!

[Magentawolf]

So she goes from one kiss in 6 books to Slutty mcSlutslut and stays there...quite a shame

Thanks for the info!

Sadly, yes, that about covers it. :(

I tried reading her other novels, involving the fey, and again while promising at first, it simply turned into another series of erotica. Still better than what poor Anita got, though.

[digiman619]

As bad as Anita Blake got, at least it wasn't her Meredith Gentry series. I remember exactly where I gave up on that series: our heroes, having just found incontrovertible evidence that the King of the Seelie Court has been unjustly held on to the throne for multiple reasons, set forth to accuse him. The entirety of the next book is them ****ing about (both figuratively and literally!) in a time dilation effect (think Rip Van Winkle), and NOTHING HAPPENS!

[GAZ]

I gave up on the Anita Blake books when they turned into bad fan-fiction of themselves. Glad to see I made the right decision there.

[Mordar]

Echoing the Meredith Gentry sadness...such a great opportunity wasted. Nice world building, nice characters, nice lots of stuff...and then porn.

She did a really nice Ravenloft book once upon a time...

[digiman619]

She also wrote a Star Trek: The Next Generation book, too. Weird, ain't it?

[Giggling Ghast]

Spoilers for the later books: Anita does the dirty deed a lot. She then gets her gutters cleaned. After that, she goes for a roll in the hay, and follows up by getting it on and doing the nasty. She also gets boned, pounded, humped, nailed, shagged, screwed and finally laid. :p

[digiman619]

Spoilers for the later books: Anita does the dirty deed a lot. She then gets her gutters cleaned. After that, she goes for a roll in the hay, and follows up by getting it on and doing the nasty. She also gets boned, pounded, humped, nailed, shagged, screwed and finally laid. :p She also has sex. ^_~

[Metahuman1]

One of the worst parts is that every once in awhile, they do still throw a potentially interesting character or a potentially interesting idea out there. Then they totally fail to follow up on it.

Examples: At one point, they decide that like Jean Claud, she can draw metaphysical power form lust and sex. Later, she breaks into an ability to draw it from rage and anger and to a lesser extent violence instead. They COULD have used that to justify having her have a lot less sex. Or developing a more unique power set. But they didn't.


There is also a character, who's one of the few who seldom (I can't say never because they later end up in contrived situations were they need all the lust magic they can get so orgiy at the circus of the damned.) get's involved in the sex side of things named Claudia. She's a Wererat, and it's strongly indicated prior to becoming a Lycanthrope she was a Special Forces Spook. She's described as the largest woman Anita has ever scene, standing six and a half feet tall and build like a very serious weight lifter, and has it mentioned that she tends to use very large caliber hand guns.


Unfortunately, even though you've got the potential to have a much needed complete badass here, we mostly use her to get her ass kicked so that Anita looks more awesome saving the day.

[Starwulf]

Roughly half of every book past the..12th or so I think, is dedicated to sex scenes. Pretty much not an exaggeration either. Still, the other half is usually fairly interesting, I enjoy the weird twists on Anita's metaphysical powers. I own all but the last 2 or 3 books I believe(the book titled "Jason" and on from that I don't have).

[blacklight101]

I gotta say, I left the series after Butterfly for the same reasons as most of the rest of you. I started reading them after my wife had read and talked some about the first four. I agree that her book one character would shoot her book 8/9+ character right in the face.

Got pretty tired of the author avatar/everything pretty much always goes right for me/specialest snowflake in the history of ever schtick. Two triumvirates and a panwere? And all the other mary sue crap? Too much for me. My wife read maybe three or four after where I had stopped, it got too wierd for her too. She described some of it, I agreed completely with where I stopped.


Edit

Dont get me started on the sex bits. I dont consider myself a prude but damn girl, you need to chill. Maybe take a cold shower. Repeatedly.

[Foeofthelance]

I've stuck through them, mostly because I find it damned near impossible not to finish a series once started. At this point, the books sort of zig-zag in plot. One book will be a fairly solid bug-hunt with one or two relatively brief sex scenes (or at least brief as far as the series goes) so that it can instead focus on things like Otto being a creepy bastard or the fallout of taking someone who is mostly sex-food and shoving them into combat with zompires. The next book is then inevitably relationship drama with five consecutive chapters running for more than 70 pages of people getting frisky.