Rating: 
Summary: Anita's First Outing
Review: In this book Hamilton introduces Anita Blake, who already has quite a detailed and personal history which is entertwined with the plot in such a way that you really get to know Anita without being bogged down with chapters about her childhood.Comments made in passing, reflections about herself, and the occasional anecdote are the mediums Hamilton chooses to acquaint us with Ms. Blake, emphasis on the Ms. Before the book even begins Anita is the Executioner but still seems rather new to the scene. Guys like Edward show up that she knows quite well and yet the reader has never met them before. A really good first book, compelling and fun.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book-Series you can't put down
Review: Anita Blake is a kick [rear] female for today. She not only keeps a job she works with the police and occasionally slays vampires, ghouls, wereanimals, you know all in a days work. In Guilty Pleasures Anita gets lured into working for Nikolaos, a vampire, who tries to make her a vamp or human servant, all while she is trying to kill Anita. Anita has to find out who is killing vamps around town or be killed herself. Add this to a growing attraction to a vamp named Jean-Claude, and presure, the torture kind, from Edward ( a "friend"), to give up Nikolaos's day resting place, Anita may have more than she can handle.
Rating: 
Summary: One of MY guilty pleasures
Review: Laurell Hamilton has done something other authors have done before her - created a series of books that combine the basic elements of mysteries and horror novels. But where most efforts at this combination have fallen flat on their collective face, Hamilton's first novel shows a great deal of promise. Don't get me wrong here - the writing and the plot are very simplistic and Hamilton uses a lot of standard mystery and horror plot devices. But there's something about this first in the "Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter" series that just takes you up and pulls you in. If the rest of the series is like this first book then I have a lot more "guilty pleasures" to read through.
Rating:
Summary: Good Junk Food Read!
Review: I'm just starting the series, and I'll be reviewing them as you would read them: one at a time without knowing what comes later. I don't usually read either horror or mysteries, but this was great fun, like a ride through a really good haunted house. In this first installment, we meet Anita, who is not just starting out in this business. She already has a lot of backstory and history that adds a feeling of depth to the world and character. People come out of the past, rather than all being invented new. I loved the character (nah, looking like her and sharing her violent attitude in life couldn't influence that) and enjoyed being her for the length of the book. Twenty-four seems a little young sometimes for who she has been and how she comes across, but one can say it's the mileage from her chosen activities. While most reviewers concentrate on the continuing characters, I can't understand how they can review without noticing the chance Philip gives for Anita to be thoroughly human, and Edward for her to be properly scared of the thoroughly human. Philip won me over as grudgingly as he does Anita, and I'm looking forward to seeing Edward again. Note these things about Anita's moral stance as you go. When the Pope made animating a mortal sin, she left Catholicism and became Episcopalian rather than give up raising the dead. She herself says that if she examined her stance on killing vampires, she could not do her work, indicating she is already aware her current principles are not well-founded. If there were writing flaws, the narrative drive, action, and character carried me right past them. I'm easily turned off by poor writing, so I have to call this good. It's scary where it needs to be, gruesome where it ought to be, and sometimes tender when you don't expect it. My only tech complaint is that the fight with the were-rat seemed a bit contrived. That, and Nikolaos is a male Greek name. A girl would be Nikolao. Now, for the minor down side. When I read a book, if I really like it I normally reread it immediately to catch all the nuances I didn't the first time and watch the structure of the plot and the characters build up. I read this and put it aside. It's not deep. You can get everything on the first run-through, and frankly there are some things I'm trying mightily *not* to think about because it will break down the believability of the story-world for me. I want to enjoy it while it lasts. So this book is like a bag of potato chips, not a full meal. I'll read the series now, and probably again in a few years, for light entertainment. I don't know if it will hold up for a third re-read. The basis of how vampires would intersect with the legal system if they were "legalized" (they aren't illegal now, I'll have you know), while supposedly the core of the books, is actually very shaky. In most ways, this is a gread lead character moving in a world where supernatural creatures are viewed as newly natural but doing the usual lone wolf adventures while avoiding official help. It's a good adventure, but the speculation does not quite mesh. I leave you with one final question: why is the drool-object male vampire always French? It's getting to be so cliche.
Rating:
Summary: Bite me! Bite me!!
Review: This was a fabulous opener for the Anita Blake series. Here is this petite young woman who is known as the Executioner among the vampires. She is fiesty and loves to kick [rear]. She gets to use her talent when she is "recruited" by a few vampires to figure out what or who is killing them. But while doing so, she runs into a hornets nest that is owned by the Master Vamp of the city. Problems happen, friends get hurt and worse but Anita hangs on to her ideals. Its nice to see that when temptation stands staring at her in the face she can stare back...
Rating:
Summary: Good book, kept my interest
Review: I read this book in two days. I loved the melding of fantasy and the real world. I wanted to know what would happen and stayed up way to late to find out. This is a good book, not for those with weak stomaches though :)
Rating:
Summary: Buffy with bite
Review: Unwillingly coerced by the master vampire Jean-Claude, Anita must seek out the loathesome individual who is killing vampires in the city, a task which stretches the reader's imagination as well as the wits of our heroine. Let's face it, this is not the stuff a Booker Prize is made of, but one does not live on creme brulee all the time, nor struggle over Proust. Still, with summer coming, there is nothing I could think better than to sit by the pool with a gin and tonic and an Anita Blake novel. Graphic but not excessively so, sensual but not pornographic, I wouldn't have angina if I found one of my adolescents reading it. Read it in an afternoon while you get a tan.
Rating: 
Summary: I liked it, but....
Review: After reviewing Kelley Armstrong's BITTEN, I saw that Amazon had listed the Anita Blake series on my recommend list. I don't normally read "romance" or "horror" genres, but I liked BITTEN enough to want to try this first in the Anita Blake series.
While I did enjoy GUILTY PLEASURES, I have to agree with reviewer ASTROTHENA, though. For a first book, I felt as if I had walked into the middle of the series, and more than a little confused as I continued reading. Laurell K. Hamilton and Anita Blake however, were just intriguing enough to make me want to continuing reading what seems to be a fun series. If you liked this book, definitely try BITTEN.
Rating:
Summary: A 19 year-old's opinion
Review: Overall, this book was good. However, I doubt I will buy another from the series. The Good:
*Entertaining. I got the book sometime in the morning before class and finished it the same day after dinner. Not a big feat (the book is not all that long), but still something.
*The occasional good character. Phillip especially. Kinda over the top with how insecure he was (the whole helpless little boy shtick), but I still liked him. The Bad:
*Too "safe". I felt Anita was relatively emotionally pure. She had horrible scars and talked of horrible atacks by horrible monster, bla bla bla. Yet she didn't have any strong negative emotions to back that up. Explanation, yes, but no hate or fear (the kind arachnaphobics get from giant tarantulas, or rape victims for their atacker).
*Too much talk. Anita would say what she was, but wouldn't actually act the way she said she was. err, not exactly. You have to read the book to see what I mean. There was just a sort of incongruence.
*Too little facts. Like Zachary, I really didn't understand the whole metaphysics of Anita's world, but would have liked to. How are there vampires (Richard Matheson's "I am Legend" gives a plausible possibility, but not Laurell Hamilton), werewolves, zombies, and so on. In myths, it would make sense that they were psychological archtypes and wouldn't need much of an explanation. But in "Guilty Pleasures" an explanation was needed. I bought this book for a quick thrill, a little time off from my boring world of academics and menial work, and I got that. That is why I gave it four stars. But, I would have liked more.
Rating:
Summary: stranger things have happened...
Review: one of the stronger books that lkh had produced. granted, i only got to know about her not even a week ago... but so far i've read 4 (all in order up to the lunatic cafe) of the anita blake series and also 'a kiss of shadows'... honestly, i really like anita in this particular book although she does come out as someone who's not exactly liberal and quite set in her ways and beliefs. i think this is set up rather nicely since she grew up as the series continue. however, i find that jean-claude and to a certain extend, edward, as the real reason why i kept reading this series... to me their characters and the mystique surrounding them are even more intriguing than (gasp!) anita herself [although i'm sure that a whole army of anita fans will gladly strangle me for saying so!]. well.. it's obvious that i like my men mysterious, and i sense that jean-claude is not really who he say he is... he is mysterious without even sweating over it... and you *just* know that there's too many things that he keeps to himself...
hmm... i'm piqued! as for edward.. well, what can i say? he's so damn incorrigible! and i guess he worked hard at keeping secrets to himself that one can't help wandering who the heck he is... as for anita... i feel that the first person narrative is a bit constraining at times and she can get downright irritating... but she *is* one of the most fleshed out characters i've come across. she's funny, her humor's caustic, intelligent and temperamental as hell and damn honest... if only there's more characters like her around... and i loooooove philip. he's very interesting.. there's so many things about him that's left unanswered... and i wonder... was there anything between him and anita? a question that's been hanging in my head... sigh as far as the plot goes... it's straight forward enough... although the writing is erratic. long winded at the beginning, bloody rushed at the end... it could have been better if the book is longer so that the beginning matches the end... like, proportionate. as it is, the set up of the series is great, but the ending was a rushed affair. vampires - check
ghouls - check
wererat - check
anita blake - check here we go... enjoy the ride!!!
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