Anita Blake, Vampire Boinker

Our friend Saveau introduced us to the world of Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter back in 2002. Until then, with the exception of Buffy, most vampire hunters in popular media were old men who carried leather satchels filled with wooden stakes. Laurell K. Hamilton's heroine was a natural-born necromancer with flowing, raven hair, a penchant for penguins, and the kind of acerbic wit that could strip the paint from a Sherman tank.

After only a few pages into "Guilty Pleasures" (1994), I was hooked. Anita Blake was tough, funny, and real. Well, as real as a necromancer / vampire hunter could be.

Book by book, I devoured the prose... but with each one I became a little more disturbed. The books I had admired for their unique take on the genre had turned into not much more than ultra-violent porn with a paper-thin plot. After "Narcissus in Chains" I just couldn't take it any more. Even though I continued to recommend the first few books to friends and co-workers, in 2004 I stopped reading the Anita Blake series altogether.

Until the fall of 2006.

By chance I learned that Laurell K. Hamilton was doing a book signing at The Source, our favorite nerd store in the Twin Cities. I wasn't sure I was that interested in going. Yes, I had loved her early books. Yes, Anita had even been an inspiration for my own character of Cassie Banning in our own low-budget movies with Stone Soup Films. After a little back-and-forth, we decided that Avindair could personally hand over a copy of our latest effort, Pray for Daylight to Laurell K. herself. What the hell.

I brought my very first copy of "Guilty Pleasures" for Laurell to sign. Thought we would be in and out of there. "Hey, Laurell! I liked Anita before she became Anita Blake, Monster Fucker. Thanks for signing the book. Here's out movie. Bye!" Nice and straight forward.

I just didn't expect that she and her husband, Gary, would be so... well.. nice!

So... I bought another book. For the record, I made a mistake. I thought I owned "Cerulean Sins", but hadn't yet read it, so I purchased "Incubus Dreams". As it turned out, I was wrong, but buoyed by listening to Laurell K. speak, I decided to give it a go.

Bad call, Ripley. Bad call.

I really wanted to like this book. I really, really wanted to like it. I liked Laurell K. -- very nice lady, very entertaining to listen to. I liked her husband. He and I chatted about Spiderman and Venom and being geeks.

Sadly, it was not meant to be, Cheri.

It isn't just that Anita's life has become a tangled metaphysical web, though that's ridiculously bad all by itself. The original novels gave us an Anita who was kick-ass and no-nonsense with a dash of humor thrown in. The story was the focus and the romance was secondary to the main plot. "Incubus Dreams", by contrast, was 20 pages of plot, followed by 600 pages of heavy breathing. When I finally made it back to the original plot, I'd forgotten what the freaking story was about. All I knew is that Anita had sex approximately 5000 times in 3 days, had spilled 1/2 of the blood in her veins, and could still walk upright enough to execute a few vampires.

Okay. Maybe she didn't have sex 5000 times, but if I read the word ardeur again I was going to be metaphysically ill. And remember, Anita only had sex with all of these vampires and wereanimals because she had to. If she didn't, the world (or at least St Louis) would be overrun with EVIL.

That's right, folks, Anita was, in fact, boinking to save lives.

How do I know she was saving lives? Because we were reminded each and every time with exchanges that usually went something like this:

Jean-Claude
Ma petite, you must feed the ardeur or all is lost.

Anita
No, Jean-Claude. I'm not going to have sex with any of these incredibly hot male-stripper vampires and wereleopards, and werewolves, and werebunnies with ripped muscles, enormous schlongs, and luxuriously long hair that they all grow down to their ankles. It's just wrong!

Jean-Claude
I understand, ma petite, but if you do not, Damien will die. And Nathaniel will die. And Micah will die. And Richard will die. And I will die. And no one will be here to protect people, or the good vampires, or the wereanimals, and... and... there will be chocolate in the peanut butter and peanut butter in the chocolate... and...

Anita
No.

Jean-Claude
Please?

Anita
I said no.

Jean-Claude
Pretty please?

Anita
Oh, okay.

I think what this book lacked was a really good round of editing. There are many, many... ugh... many passages in "Incubus Dreams" that could have been cut altogether. Characters have conversations in which they go over the same point with only slightly different wording, several times. Anita's exposition needlessly over-explains many scenes, new characters are laboriously introduced but never actually used or developed, other critical characters pop up out of the blue. The Anita Blake series, as a whole, is suffering from its success. It's the best-selling, 800-lb gorilla of the vampire action / romance sub-genre. "Incubus Dreams" is so over-written,I wouldn't be surprised if it only went through spellchecker before it went out to the printer.

Why, oh why, did I finish "Incubus Dreams" if I disliked it so much? Why did I spend precious hours of my life reading this thinly veiled romance novel? To paraphrase Khan, "It tasks me. It tasks me and I shall have it!"

Only pick up "Incubus Dreams" if you're a fan of vampire / wereanimal porn. For those who are still interested I won't ruin the ending for you. Not that you have much to worry about there. Believe me, there's not much of an ending to ruin.

Okay, If you'd like a clue as to how it all resolves, three words should do it:

"Wheel of Time".

Everyone else? Avoid it completely and go back to read the first three or four books of the series.

Incubus Dreams

* out of *****

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novels:

Guilty Pleasures 1994
Laughing Corpse 1994
Circus of the Damned 1995
The Lunatic Cafe 1995
Bloody Bones 1996
Killing Dance 1997
Burnt Offerings 1998
Blue Moon 1998
Obsidian Butterfly 2000
Narcissus in Chains 2001
Cerulean Sins 2003
Incubus Dreams 2004
Micah 2006
Danse Macabre 2006
The Harlequin 2007