I may have to check out the McKinley one. I'm getting to that point where I need to become involved in a new series.
My problem with Laurell K. Hamilton these days isn't that she is too graphic. I spent about 8 months in a snit over the child molestation stuff in "Obsidian Butterfly" but eventually found myself too desperate to know what happened with Richard and Jean-Claude to stick to my vow of never buying her stuff again. Instead, my problem with her, these days, is that the books have all degenerated into soft-core porn.
Now, as a rule I have no problems with porn, soft-core or otherwise. But AB:VH started out as a more plot-driven series. The series was about her work as a vampire hunter/animator. Not so much anymore. These days it's all about her sex life. "Incubus Dreams" should have come with an advisory label that read "plot sold separately" for all the actual story there was that didn't involve propelling Anita from one bed to another.
Hamilton isn't bad if you start out expecting the series to be porn without plot, as with the Merry Gentry series. But that wasn't the case with the Anita Blake books and I am starting to feel the absence of the plot.
Something that the Anita Blake books might have helped launch is the fact that BDSM is coming out of the closet in literature, which is a rather interesting trend. Last year I stumbled upon Jacqueline Carey's "Kushiel's Legacy" trilogy, which is a wonderfully written series incorporating a combination of Judeo-Christian mythology, early European history, and flat-out fantasy, featuring a protagonist who is a sort of divine masochist. I liked it so well I made a point of picking up the first book of Carey's new series, "Banewreaker" and am eagerly awaiting the second installment, "Godslayer." I decided to hold off finishing the first book until the second came out, since it's only a two-parter and I might as well read it all at once. But from what I understood as far as I did get into it before I decided to wait, it's a little like "Lord of the Rings"...if Sauron wasn't such as bad guy and the protagonist was the Witch King of Angmar. Definitely an interesting twist.
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My problem with Laurell K. Hamilton these days isn't that she is too graphic. I spent about 8 months in a snit over the child molestation stuff in "Obsidian Butterfly" but eventually found myself too desperate to know what happened with Richard and Jean-Claude to stick to my vow of never buying her stuff again. Instead, my problem with her, these days, is that the books have all degenerated into soft-core porn.
Now, as a rule I have no problems with porn, soft-core or otherwise. But AB:VH started out as a more plot-driven series. The series was about her work as a vampire hunter/animator. Not so much anymore. These days it's all about her sex life. "Incubus Dreams" should have come with an advisory label that read "plot sold separately" for all the actual story there was that didn't involve propelling Anita from one bed to another.
Hamilton isn't bad if you start out expecting the series to be porn without plot, as with the Merry Gentry series. But that wasn't the case with the Anita Blake books and I am starting to feel the absence of the plot.
Something that the Anita Blake books might have helped launch is the fact that BDSM is coming out of the closet in literature, which is a rather interesting trend. Last year I stumbled upon Jacqueline Carey's "Kushiel's Legacy" trilogy, which is a wonderfully written series incorporating a combination of Judeo-Christian mythology, early European history, and flat-out fantasy, featuring a protagonist who is a sort of divine masochist. I liked it so well I made a point of picking up the first book of Carey's new series, "Banewreaker" and am eagerly awaiting the second installment, "Godslayer." I decided to hold off finishing the first book until the second came out, since it's only a two-parter and I might as well read it all at once. But from what I understood as far as I did get into it before I decided to wait, it's a little like "Lord of the Rings"...if Sauron wasn't such as bad guy and the protagonist was the Witch King of Angmar. Definitely an interesting twist.