Frankly, whether it's worth reading any of them depends on your stomach for (a) gore and (b) sex (and of course whether you actually like the style in the first place: the author's website does appear to offer free downloads of the first chapter of each of the books as a taster).
So far as (a) goes, the violence quotient is high: this stuff predates the teen vampire craze and the creatures of Anita's world are fairly monstrous. Some of the humans aren't too wonderful either (and over the course of the series the heroine too becomes more and more hardened: in the first book we are presented with the character Edward as a self-evident sociopath, but by the ninth Anita Blake is arguably more damaged herself than he is).
So far as (b) goes, it starts off with innuendo and eventually escalates to full-blown embarrassing -- some of this stuff you really don't want anyone reading over your shoulder. Fans who can't take it seem to fall between the group who reckon the author betrayed the character when things get explicit after book 5 ("Bloody Bones") and those who can't stand anything after book 9 ("Obsidian Butterfly"). There evidently are people who went on buying the next eight or so books after that (apparently the author claims to have the highest young male readership in the vampire genre... I suspect one can guess why...) but apparently they are not quite so vocal about it!
I'm not particularly comfortable about a good deal of the more titillating material -- the idea that the lycanthropes go in for touchy-feely contact and sleeping together naked because they are more in touch with their animal side, for instance -- but I can live with that because the narrator is presented as not being comfortable with it either (and because, however much it may be intended to titillate, within the context of the setting it is presented as essentially non-sexual behaviour). And as long as Anita keeps batting back -- not-so-subtly -- the advances of the ever-growing stud of long-haired supernaturally attractive males(!) who populate her environment, I can put up with that, although I don't find it terribly plausible.
The only area in which the porn works for me is in the clichéd reserve marked "sex-within-a-loving-relationship" (yes, I'm intensely conservative), and in that camp I fall into the Book 9 category: I feel, uncharacteristically, that the high sex quotient does actually serve a function as a release in the context of what has by that point become a very emotionally charged situation -- the main trouble is that once she has eventually Done It with both characters there isn't really anywhere else for that particular plotline to go, while the author (and her readership) have by that point become somewhat addicted to it. It's a question of beware what you ask for: books 10 and onwards rapidly degenerate into sexual self-parody.
* * *
Basically, this is horror fiction with a hard-boiled detective spin (we won't even consider the half of the series that is apparently heavy porn with a horror spin...) plus an increasing helping of soap opera. Conflicts of loyalty is my thing, so I find the angst effective: otherwise you might want to stick to the early ones, which feature more humour and less heart-searching. And if you don't care for horror, you won't like this -- bits of it are very gruesome and/or violent.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-10-11 12:28 am (UTC)So far as (a) goes, the violence quotient is high: this stuff predates the teen vampire craze and the creatures of Anita's world are fairly monstrous. Some of the humans aren't too wonderful either (and over the course of the series the heroine too becomes more and more hardened: in the first book we are presented with the character Edward as a self-evident sociopath, but by the ninth Anita Blake is arguably more damaged herself than he is).
So far as (b) goes, it starts off with innuendo and eventually escalates to full-blown embarrassing -- some of this stuff you really don't want anyone reading over your shoulder. Fans who can't take it seem to fall between the group who reckon the author betrayed the character when things get explicit after book 5 ("Bloody Bones") and those who can't stand anything after book 9 ("Obsidian Butterfly"). There evidently are people who went on buying the next eight or so books after that (apparently the author claims to have the highest young male readership in the vampire genre... I suspect one can guess why...) but apparently they are not quite so vocal about it!
I'm not particularly comfortable about a good deal of the more titillating material -- the idea that the lycanthropes go in for touchy-feely contact and sleeping together naked because they are more in touch with their animal side, for instance -- but I can live with that because the narrator is presented as not being comfortable with it either (and because, however much it may be intended to titillate, within the context of the setting it is presented as essentially non-sexual behaviour). And as long as Anita keeps batting back -- not-so-subtly -- the advances of the ever-growing stud of long-haired supernaturally attractive males(!) who populate her environment, I can put up with that, although I don't find it terribly plausible.
The only area in which the porn works for me is in the clichéd reserve marked "sex-within-a-loving-relationship" (yes, I'm intensely conservative), and in that camp I fall into the Book 9 category: I feel, uncharacteristically, that the high sex quotient does actually serve a function as a release in the context of what has by that point become a very emotionally charged situation -- the main trouble is that once she has eventually Done It with both characters there isn't really anywhere else for that particular plotline to go, while the author (and her readership) have by that point become somewhat addicted to it. It's a question of beware what you ask for: books 10 and onwards rapidly degenerate into sexual self-parody.
* * *
Basically, this is horror fiction with a hard-boiled detective spin (we won't even consider the half of the series that is apparently heavy porn with a horror spin...) plus an increasing helping of soap opera. Conflicts of loyalty is my thing, so I find the angst effective: otherwise you might want to stick to the early ones, which feature more humour and less heart-searching. And if you don't care for horror, you won't like this -- bits of it are very gruesome and/or violent.