|
If Vampires were real ...
Out of the Closet
Adapted and expanded from an article first published in Vampire Books
and Authors at Suite101.com January 16, 2005
To read the original article http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/10636/113391
- Laurell K. Hamilton
- Charlaine Harris
- Kim Harrison
- Jim Butcher
Anita Blake
If you ask me who my favorite big name Vampire author is, you might be surprised to learn that it isn’t Anne Rice, but Laurell K. Hamilton.
Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series started out as an Alternate History fantasy. What is an Alternate History? The concept is that at some point in history, something turned out differently than we know it. For example, Hitler won the war. Or Jesus Christ was never crucified. The world continued to develop, just differently. In the case of Anita Blake’s world, the vampires came out of the closet. They stepped out into the open and said we are real. In Anita Blake’s world, vampires are considered citizens of the United States, with all the rights and responsibilities that means including paying taxes.
The undead become the next big fad. There are vampire bars full of tourists. Even a vampire church that promises you eternal life.
Besides the fascination, there is prejudice. Fear. Hatred.
Not only do the humans have problems of acceptance and adjustment, so do the vampires. After centuries of a secret existence, of ruling themselves, they now must fit into a world where their old ways just don’t work.
Also inherent in Anita Blake’s world is the concept that if one supernatural creature exists then why not all. So the world is populated by were creatures; wolves, rats, leopards, swans. All the creatures from ancient legends exist as well. Voodoo priestesses and witches. Ghosts. Zombies. In each new book, Anita is confronted by a new monster or magical creature.
Anita Blake is herself a necromancer, who can raise the dead, zombies. That is what she does for a living. It has become quite big business to raise the dead. A problem with an inheritance, raise the guy and ask him what he meant. Really dig into your family tree. Want to find a buried treasure, just ask the man who hid it. Never got to tell the guy when he was alive what a jerk he was, just raise him and get it all off your chest. As you can imagine Halloween is the busiest season.
One of the reasons I like the Anita Blake series is at its core it is a mystery series. Anita works with the police in dealing with the problems generated by having to deal with creatures that are often stronger and more deadly than us mere humans. Anita Blake is an official vampire slayer and now a U.S. Marshall. Besides a consultant to the police on all things supernatural, it is her job to stake the dead victims so they don’t rise as vampires and to execute rogue vampires.
Anita Blake classifies as a romantic mystery. In the tradition of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series,
in the early Anita Blake books, the dynamic sexual tension is high between the heroine and two
men, Richard, the alpha werewolf, and Jean Claude, the vampire master of the city. But over the course of the series that has changed as Anita’s romantic entanglements have broaden and become way more complicated. Also the level of writing has taken on more and more the nature of erotica. Her latest book, INCUBUS DREAMS, definitely falls in the classification of erotica. Exceptional well written erotica, but erotica never the less. Not that erotica and vampires don’t go together, because ever since Bram Stoker wrote DRACULA, vampire stories have always had a strong element of
sensuality. This turn to erotica has lost Laurell K. Hamilton some fans,
but gained others.
The Anita Blake series, which started in 1994, with GUILTY PLEASURES, now has 12 books in the series.
- GUILTY PLEASURES
- LAUGHING CORPSE
- CIRCUS OF THE DAMNED
- LUNATIC CAFÉ
- BLOODY BONES
- KILLING DANCE
- BURNT OFFERINGS
- BLUE MOON
- OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY
- NARCISSUS IN CHAINS
- CERULEAN SINS
- INCUBUS DREAMS
- The next book in the series, as yet unnamed, is due out November 2005.
Meredith Gentry
The Merry Gentry series is Laurell K. Hamilton's exploration into the
world of the Fae, fairies, or as it now popularly spelled faerie. Merry
Gentry is a faerie princess, a member of the Unseelie court, in a world
where the faerie have immigrated to the U.S. and live in Illinois. It is
supposedly the same world that Anita Blake inhabits, U.S. where all the
supernatural creatures exist and are recognized politically, but so far
there has been no directly link between the two worlds.
If you thought U.S. politics were dirty and full of conspiracies,
that is nothing to the politics going on between the two faerie courts.
In the first book, A KISS OF SHADOWS, Merry, who is living and working
as a PI in Los Angeles, manages to survive a variety of attempts on her
life, best her cousin, and end up in a race to assume the throne of the
Unseelie court. The winner, the one who has a child first. To help with
the process, the Queen decrees that Merry shall have her choice of the
handsomest and most sex starved of the royal guard. It is their job to
protect Merry and get her pregnant.
Needless to say, this series is highly erotic from the very
beginning. A lot of the time and attention are devoted to the developing
relationship between Merry and her growing harem. But there is also
assassination attempts, political maneuverings, and a murder or two to
solve.
Sookie Stackhouse,
Southern Vampire Mystery
Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mystery Series is another series based on the premise that vampires are real and are now legal citizens of the United States. In this case, they came out of the closet after a synthetic blood product was created in Japan, which means they no longer have to feed off humans. Of course they still do. There are lots of “fang
bangers”, willing groupies that like to get bit.
In an interesting twist, it turns out that vampire blood becomes the next addictive drug of choice. Ingest vampire blood and temporarily you heal quicker, are stronger, your senses more acute, and you are more attractive. There is quite a blackmarket in vampire blood. The hunters have become the hunted.
Like the Anita Blake series, if vampires are real, then all the other creatures are too and we are treated to a new monster or creature in each book, although sometimes the monsters are just plain old humans.
Charlaine Harris’ heroine is Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in a small Louisiana town. Sookie has what she refers to as her disability, she is telepathic, able to read minds. It made it hard for her to concentrate in school, so she is basically self-educated. Dating is almost impossible, since knowing every little thought flitting through a guy’s head is a real romantic turn off. When she meets her first vampire, she finds the fact that she can’t read his mind totally refreshing and she soon becomes involved with Vampire Bill. Bill is trying to mainstream, live among humans, and has returned to the old homestead that he was forced to leave after the Civil War.
Through Bill, Sookie becomes more and more involved in the world of the supes, vampires, weres, shapeshifters, witches, etc.. Bill’s boss, Eric, a.k.a. the Sheriff of Sector Five, makes use of Sookie’s ability to solve problems, like finding out who is embezzling from his night club and finding missing vampires.
Like Laurell K. Hamilton’s books, the series has at its core a mystery. Also like Laurell K. Hamilton’s books, the personal relationships, the romantic entanglements between the heroine and the creatures just keeps getting more and more complicated, threatening to overshadow the mystery.
Stookie Stackhouse is lighter, not as graphic, but still the romantic complications keep unfolding. In her latest book, her first true love is now her ex-boyfriend, although we still hope they may get back together. But in addition to Bill, she is now admired and courted by Eric and several
shapeshifters.
Charlaine Harris is well known for her Aurora Teagarden mysteries about a librarian whose life never goes quite as she expected and Lily Bard “Shakespeare” mysteries set in the town of Shakespeare, Arkansas. She began her Southern Vampire series in 2001 with DEAD UNTIL DARK.
Rachel Morgan
Rachel Morgan, the heroine of Kim Harrison's series, is a
witch, a sort of police officer working for the I.S., the force made up
of witches, vampires, shapeshifters, pixies, fairies. She’s tired of
being given all the shitty jobs and decides to quit. But no one quits
I.S.. She might have gotten away with it, but Ivy, one of the I.S. top
operators, decides to join her and quits too. Deren, Rachel’s boss,
wants to get even and puts out a contract on Rachel’s life. Suddenly
assassins are coming out of the woodwork, fairies, Were, even a demon.
The only way Rachel can save her life, is if she manages to make a big
arrest and earn enough money to buy them off. Her target is Councilman
Trent, whom she believes is selling the illegal chemical Brimstone. She
sets out to prove him guilty and gets in lots and lots of trouble.
Kim Harrison has created an absolutely fascinating world where humans
are scared to death of the tomato. It seems that the bio-engineering
trend managed to cause a mutation which hid in a tomato and killed more
than half of humanity. The only ones immune were the Inlanders, the fae
creatures. Suddenly they almost out number the humans and so decide to
come out of the closet, changing the whole world. Now some 50 years
later, the world has become a very interesting place, with humanity not
quite second class citizens and still a lot of prejudice against the
creatures, tomatoes, and bio-engineered drugs.
There is the touch of
humor in the first person narration that is reminiscent of Stephanie
Plum, there is the bravery and wild magic of Anita Blake, and there are
some very interesting characters, like Jenk, the pixie, Ivy, the
non-practicing vampire, Nick, the human who spent 3 months as a rat, and
Trent, who is, well, we don’t know what, but he is so good looking and
so evil.
So far it lacks the romance and erotica of an Anita Blake,
which will be just fine with many of the former fans of Anita Blake, who
haven’t enjoyed the direction the series has taken lately.
Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden
Harry
Dresden is a wizard, a finder of lost objects, a sorcerer for hire, in
the tradition of the good old fashioned gumshoe. A slightly shabby white
knight. A private eye with a magic wand (actually a staff). He reminds
me of what Harry Potter might be all grown up. Jim Butcher's Dresden
Files fits into the "out of the closet". In Harry Dresden's
world, we have just begun to accept that there are other things out
there in the dark, although I get the feeling that most of humanity is
still in denial. There are fairies and demons and vampires. Unlike the
other series mentioned so far, the vampires aren't particularly good
guys and beneath their glamour they definitely aren't pretty or sexy. The
series promises to be a good one if you enjoy the genre of the private
eye, you will no doubt like this one.
|
