My current book is kind of vampire porn. Less self-absorbed than an Anne Rice offering, less explicit than Vampire Vixens, the first Anita Blake novel is of the approximate quality of a decent Buffy novelization but rated PG-13 for adult themes. (So, a lot like Season 6, except for the part where Buffy novelizations are, as a rule, trashy.) The thing is, I heard that it turns into a real train wreck somewhere down the line, plus I have a soft spot for the undead as entertainment. So, here I am.
In an alternate 1990s where our hero raises zombies for a living, vampires are lobbying for the right to vote, and bachelorette parties can be held at the vampire strip club Guilty Pleasures, it’s easy to be jaded. But even an ex- vampire hunter can be caught by surprise when the police and the city’s master bloodsucker both want her to find a criminal who has been murdering very powerful vampires.
Will vampires be slain? Will there be existential angst? Will there be a variety of possible love interests? Will our heroine have skills that are incongruous with her appearance, thus causing people to constantly underestimate her? All this, and a promise of more zombies to come in future books. So that’s alright, then.
The first few are fun reads. The later ones go all porn-ified and Mary-Sue-like.
I agree with the previous commenter. The first half-dozen or so (at a guess, I can’t be bothered to go across the room and look at them) are fantastic romps of various sorts of undead and otherwise extra-normal groups and Anita’s angsty dealings with them.
After that, well, “train wreck” is a pretty valid description. One might also say that it goes from “vampire porn” to “bad porn that also happens to have some vampires and were-creatures and other weird things in it and by the way the heroine hates herself every time she has sex because she was raised to be a good christian girl and only do that sort of thing under certain circumstances”. Ahem. Or something like that.