Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures (aka my new book series obsession) by Laurell K. Hamilton is the first in a series of 17 introducing Anita Blake to the world.

Anita Blake is a very busy 24 year old! Besides holding a regular job as an Animator (a Necromancer) she's also a consultant for the St. Louis PD's RPIT departmant, or Regional Preternatural Investgation Team, and a vampire hunter. In a day and age where vampires, weres and other mythical beings are given rights are treated as every other human being Anita lives in quite a progressive time. Similar to True Blood (I haven't read that series yet, just watched the show) vampires are split between those who wish to go 'mainstream' and those who just want to do what they want to.

There's no explanation why Anita has such a dislike for vampires or why she went into the vampire hunting business to begin with. Quite like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she's not just knowledgeable about vampires, but also ghouls and the were-people, but unlike Buffy she admits her fears, she's not always tough. She has emotion that you never saw with Buffy. Yet still, it is much darker than Buffy. I found myself jumping at random sounds around the house while reading this book in broad daylight!

All in all, throughout this first book Anita is a likeable, quite human, superheroine. We'll see if the series holds up, but I don't have many doubts about that!