Rockhurst Sentinel

Issue date: 11/10/06 Section: Entertainment

Halloween is fast approaching and it's that time of the year when a scary movie, or even better, a scary novel provides a quiet break from textbooks (if you bought and opened them). For that quiet interlude, or if you are suffering from Buffy or Angel withdrawal, I have the perfect remedy, the novel Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton. I believe this novel offers an excellent introduction to another genre in fantasy literature, modern urban horror.

Guilty Pleasures is the first novel in a series that features Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. It is also the first series to re-establish the rules and conventions regarding the classic creatures and monsters of horror, vampires, werewolves, and witches. Anne Rice and Stephen King re-vamped the vampire in modern fiction, but Hamilton developed and enhanced the world in which they flourish.

Hamilton establishes the basic rules of the world Anita and her supporting cast of characters inhabit on the third page of Guilty Pleasures. She writes: "It had only been two years since Addison vs. Clark. The court case gave us a revised version of what life was, and what death wasn't. Vampirism was legal in the good ol' U. S. of A. We were one of the few countries to acknowledge them."

Hamilton's novels are narrated in the first-person, so all the stories are told from Anita's point of view. I like this because it reminds me of the great detectives of literature like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Travis McGee. Here's an example of Anita's musings. "All sorts of questions were being fought out in court. Did heirs have to give back their inheritance? Were you widowed if your spouse became undead? Was it murder to slay a vampire? There was even a movement to give them the vote. Times were a-changing."

Guilty Pleasures introduces readers to Animators, Inc., the firm where Anita works as an "animator." Basically, this means she raises the dead for a living-we're talking about zombies from the grave here. This seems like a bizarre talent, but it has its uses. Sometimes Anita is hired to raise the victims of violent crimes in order to hear their testimonies, or parties contest a will and Anita raises the deceased to clarify issues. There are consequences to using this talent; however, the older the corpse, the less reliable the information because of natural decay. In essence there's less brain to deal with. Also, the older the corpse, the larger the blood sacrifice needs to be. You soon run out of chickens.

Continued...

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