Guilty Pleasures

Rating:
Summary: Jeans and sneakers are not inspiring as ceremonial garb!
Review: The Executioner has arrived. In this well-penned tale, we are introduced to a character who has become one of my all time favorites. Vampire hunter and animator, Anita Blake is dead set in her ways and views of the preternatural world as a whole. Vampires aren't things you date, they're things you kill. But little does she know all of that could change with one encounter with the enigmatic Jean-Claude, a vampire who's powerful in his own right. This is gripping tale that you won't want to put down!

Rating:
Summary: Compelling reading, horrible writing
Review: The problem with this book, and others in the series, is that Hamilton has absolutely no skill at writing dialogue, little skill at developing plausible characters, and the vocabulary of a high school drop out. Her books are rife with cliches and poor diction, and the heroine herself is so utterly unbelieveable AND unlikeable, it's hard to imagine anyone getting through the first paragraph...

That being said, Hamilton redeems herself to some extent with her knack at writing formula in an engaging way, and an imagination that leaves many authors in this genre in the dust. The story lines and characters (other than the deficient and unappealingly hostile heroine) are so compelling, and sexy... and dangerous... and well, you never know what's going to happen next. I think as readers, we're just dying for Anita Blake to give up her mortality. But then, we have to wait for the next book to see if that's actually going to happen, and it never does, so we keep reading.

One book mutates into another, with slight twists and turns along the way. There is no point in reviewing more than one, as they all kind of congeal into an amorphous blob that oddly enough keeps the brain-dead (like me right before bed) intermittently amused.

Would I recommend this book, or others in the series? Certainly, if you just want a little bit fluffy, kinda scintillating, kinda nasty read but don't want to think about it.

Rating:
Summary: It gets you moist for the series.
Review: Well, I give this book, 3 stars, it starts off kind of slow, and I'm not a fan of the character Anita Blake whatsoever. And for me, it was hard to read a first person view of accounts that take place from a clueless, selfish, hypocritical character, and I found myself wanted to read the book to learn more about the side characters. Jean-Claude, is NO DOUBT on of the sexiest vampires ever created, he could give Anne Rice's "Lestat" a run for his money. The interesting thing about this series, is the numerous plot twists, and villains are always a surprise, and it's fun to try to solve the "who done it" before the book is over, and still be shocked. I totally recommend this series. It gets WAY better in the following novels.