Gee, this cover made highschool fun.

Earlier today, a friend of mine posted a link to this webpage that has reviews of several of Laurell K. Hamilton’s books; namely her Anita Blake series. It was nice to know that I wasn’t alone in my opinions of the series, but it was definitely a depressing reminder.

I remember I discovered the series by accident and also accidentally ended up purchasing and reading the fourth book first. (I’m always on the lookout for a good supernatural read, and the back copy caught my interest.) Even without all of the background on the characters I probably should have had, I devoured the book in one evening. I immediately went back for more and worked my way up to book eight.

The descent into the sickness of the author seemed sudden, but when I really took a look back, I realized that it had always been slowly edging that way. The first couple of books were pretty chaste, the following ones added a little sex as the character’s relationships evolved and grew, then a little more and then BAM, the bus dropped us off at Sex Ville. The character I had started to respect as a strong, uncompromising female was suddenly the sex-toy of every supernatural critter she came across.

There have been eight more books since I halted my reading (I stopped after Narcissus in Chains), and from everything I’ve read they only get more screwed up. I honestly should have stopped at Obsidian Butterfly, which was an altogether disgusting novel.

A couple of years ago I actually went to a Comic Con panel featuring Laurell K. Hamilton. Her reasoning for this change in tone across the series is that when she began it she was going through a tough relationship break. When she found someone new and was apparently having fantastic sex (too much information), the tone shifted. I can understand that, but I still don’t see exactly how awesome sex translates to her character banging everything she comes across. If anything, I think it would have meant a shift towards her character being in one really fantastic relationship instead of becoming the whore of the underworld.

Beyond becoming simply too disgusting for me to want to read, there’s the issue of her Anita Blake character becoming ridiculously overpowered. Seriously. Check the Wikipedia article and read just what powers this woman now has. I’m all for unique characters with interesting abilities, but there comes a point where they are no longer interesting or even relatable. It also seemed that at last glance she had all the best parts of the powers and very little of the downsides and consequences. She’s supposedly infected with at least half a dozen lycanthropic strains at this point, yet she shifts into none of them. Give me a break.

Every character I’d cared about has been pretty mucked up beyond recognition by this stage of the series. If I wanted to read smut, I’d buy smut, which brings me to my final point. I don’t know who made the decision to change the book covers, but whoever you are, you suck. I started reading the series around mid-highschool, and at the time the covers were pretty innocuous. Shortly after that I ended up with half-naked women on the front which resulted in strange looks from classmates and teachers. I was left to defend myself and assure everyone I wasn’t reading porn, but I’m not sure if anyone believed me. It was bad enough that the title of the first book was Guilt Pleasures without having a naked, purple-lit torso with rose petals gracing the front.