Laurell K. Hamilton could possibly be in a league of her own. With her bestselling Anita Blake Series and her bestselling Meredith Gentry Series, Ms. Hamilton has created a genre beyond science fiction/fantasy, horror and romance. She has a knack for blending genres, to be exact, and the results turn out to be mind-blowing with backgrounds and characters that are overwhelming to the senses. She is so good, publishers have dubbed her style of romance, which is called paranormal romance, “Hamilton-esque.” According to Wikipedia, it is something that she has lamented in the hardcover re-issue of her book, The Laughing Corpse, which can be found in the Anita Blake Series. I can go on all day about her work, but what about the authoress herself?
Laurell Kaye Hamilton was born on February 19, 1963 in Heber Springs, Arkansas. Her mother died when she was six and was raised by her grandmother, Laura Gentry. Her character, Anita Blake, also has a mother that died when she was a little girl and both Anita and Laurell’s other character, Meredith Gentry (the last name as an for Laurell’s grandmother), have close relationships with their grandmothers. The Anita Blake series was her only series until she branched out in 2000 and created the Meredith Gentry Series. She now lives in St. Louis, Missouri, which is the principal backdrop for the Anita Blake Series.
If you go to Laurell’s official site; you will see that she has displayed at least one or two chapters from her books, starting from her first Anita Blake book, Guilty Pleasures, which she wrote in 1993. Needless to say, she has also written other books like a Star Trek authorized novel called Nightshade and a standalone book called Nightseer. She also posts a blog every once in awhile and talks about what is happening in her life, as well as the lives of her characters. Her forums are also exploding with different, interesting topics about her characters and what people want to happen in the books. Lately, she has come under scrutiny that her books has too much sex in them. As a reader of her books, I personally do not mind, but not everyone is like me. It is safe to say that the Anita Blake books published before the tenth book, Narcissus in Chains, do not have that much sexual content in them and are pretty safe to read. I was brought into the series later and have gotten used to all of the sexual content. To me, sex is just as common in ther series as Anita walking around with guns are.
To point out the negative readers and kindly advise them not to read her books, which I think is quite ballsy; she wrote a blog in December of 2006 stating so. She also stated that these negative readers are also a vast minority and that her book sales will not be impacted if they did stop reading. On her forum (or message board), she has a vast majority of positive readers backing her up and supporting her. For their (our) appreciation, she gave them (us) a taste of her new book in the Anita Blake series, The Harlequin. She also gave the readers a choice of the next male character that Meredith should sleep with in her next Meredith Gentry novel, A Lick of Frost, which she has just started working on. The poll that was posted on her forums was flooded almost immediately.
Since I continue to talk about the women of Laurell’s Meredith Gentry series and Anita Blake series; let me delve into a little bit of information about them.
At the end of the last Anita Blake book, Danse Macabre; Anita was 27 years old, living with two men and thought that she was pregnant. But, that doesn’t even go into an ounce of her history. Anita is a federal marshal, a vampire hunter in which they call The Executioner, and a necromancer, which means that she can raise the dead and control them to a degree. She has her insecurities with being small, pale and big breasted, which has possibly stemmed from her father and his new family being tall and blonde, and making her feel out of place. She lives in St. Louis, as I stated before, but this is a very different world than the one that we all live in. The St. Louis that Anita lives in is full of vampires, shapeshifters and other things that go bump in the night. She is of Mexican and Anglo descent and her middle name is Katerine. She is also the human servant of the Vampire Master of the City, Jean Claude, whom has also become her lover along with at least six other men. Throughout the series; she gains power from Jean Claude, continues an on and off relationship with Richard Zeeman, who is a self-destructive werewolf, and becomes the leader of a wereleopard pack, though she is mostly human. I could get into more details about Anita, but I would give away the allure of the books.
Meredith Gentry is a runaway faerie princess, just for the record. After her sadistic aunt attempted to kill her for the umpteenth time; she ran away to Los Angeles and became a private investigator under the alias Meredith Gentry. Originally, she was born Meredith NicEssus, the first Sidhe (pronouced shee) faerie princess born on American soil. In Meredith’s world; there are only two kinds of Sidhe, Seelie and Unseelie. The Seelie Sidhe are the perfect, good faeries and the Unseelie are the imperfect, mixed blood faeries. Meredith (also known as Merry) is the princess of the Unseelie, although her mother is Seelie. Her father, Essus, was the prince and he was marveled by many. Unfortunately, he was brutally murdered when she was 18. Her aunt, Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, has made many attempts on her life and her son, Cel, is just as sadistic as she is.
Merry had been in Los Angeles for about three years when her cousin used a human named Alistair Norton to lure her out of hiding by covering her with an oil used to drive a faerie mad with lust called Branwyn’s Tears. After Alistair’s murder; she is outed at Princess Merry and is brought back home. Upon being brought home; she learns that her aunt is barren and is offered the chance to become the queen. The only condition is that she has to produce a child first. For that to happen, Andais gives Meredith four of her own guards, which are called the Queen’s Ravens and lifts the celibacy rule for them to produce an heir with Meredith. Along the way; Merry is revealed to have the hand of flesh and blood, which means that she can manipulate the blood and flesh in other people or countless things after her. Merry’s guards-slash-lovers all have their own special abilities. Among them is Rhys, who was once a death deity named Cromm Cruach. He is the shortest of the full blooded Sidhe and has one eye after being raped by a goblin. There is a conflict of interest between Rhys and Merry because she has agreed to bring a half-goblin, half- Sidhe named Kitto into his Sidhe power for an alliance with the Goblin King in return. Rhys, otherwise, is a light hearted person who has his own house outside of the faerie mound, with electricity and everything. He also has an affinity for film noir and it is written that he almost went too far with Merry when she was a teenager, but she stopped it before it could happen.
Laurell K. Hamilton has created two very different, very amazing worlds in which sex and violence, and detective work reign supreme. For all of those negative readers; maybe you should re-evaluate Ms. Hamilton’s books and read them again. For all of the positive readers, myself included, it possibly can’t get much better than this. For all of those readers who haven’t gotten around to reading Ms. Hamilton’s works, I may recommend her latest book of short stories called Strange Candy. Then, read the first book in the Meredith Gentry series, A Kiss of Shadows. If you really want to become a number one fan; read the first book in the Anita Blake series, Guilty Pleasures. These books will become a guilty pleasure of yours, I promise.
