Vampires, Fairies, and Succubi: Inside the Shapeshifting Mind of Laurell K. Hamilton

A A A Comments (11) By Carol Cooper Tuesday, Apr 6 2010

Laurell K. Hamilton writes supernatural mysteries—overtly erotic and political thrillers that sell millions of copies around the world. Sometimes her protagonists are actual detectives or police surrogates; other times they're vampires, fairies, succubi, or necromancers. Bizarre though such casting may seem, during the early '90s Hamilton began proving the viability of blending gothic romance, horror, Celtic mythology, and the police procedural. Her books now top the New York Times bestseller list with surprising regularity, and her international fandom is almost as avid and well-organized as Neil Gaiman's.

Details

Ardeur: 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series
Edited by Laurell K. Hamilton
Smart Pop, 224 pp., $14.95

More About

Despite comparisons to the currentlyhigher-profile Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse properties, those multimedia franchises appear little better than updated rewrites of Dracula compared to the complex story arcs Hamilton crafts—for a moody necromancer named Anita and a fairy princess called Merry. Moreover, Hamilton's witchy, combat-ready heroines intentionally evoke tragic tribal avengers like Britain's warrior-queen Boudicca more than Joss Whedon's Buffy—with all the depth and sociological resonance such a distinction implies.

That's why the critical essays in Ardeur: 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series couldn't arrive at a better time. After more than eight years of authorial blogging and online fannish debate, the many controversies raised by the characters and content of 18 Anita Blake novels get formally addressed, not only by fellow novelists like Lilith Saintcrow and Vera Nazarian, but by "role-play" game writers, professional academics, and the author herself.

The pieces explore Hamilton's signature innovation of juxtaposing zombies (the ugly living dead) and vampires (the pretty living dead) against shape-shifters (viral, hyperabundant life) in interpersonal situations where body image, body strength, and bodily urges all loom equally large in determining character motivation. They discuss the symbolic meaning of unrepentant female violence in a series about female empowerment. And they examine the pivotal moment in book six when Hamilton transformed her quasi-virginal, sexually repressed vampire executioner into a sex-positive, polyamorous maverick.

Hamilton confesses the autobiographical nature of her process. Plotting by subconscious impulse, she playfully indulges then explodes the rules and tropes of classic horror fiction. Some essayists have a better grasp of exactly how and why she does this than others. But all the contributors agree that, despite the fact that Hamilton habitually defies conventional pacing and audience expectations, her stylistic transgressions function to liberate not only Anita Blake, but the narrative potential of horror fiction itself.

Check out this week's featured ad for News

Computer Overhauls

View Ad View Website

More Ads >>

Email
to Friend

Write to
Editor

Print
Article

Kris 03/30/2011 7:04:00 AM

I read the essays and I thought the introductions written by Hamilton were in several places, nothing more than off-topic rants that had little to do with the actual essays. She was confrontational, aggressive, and in some places downright rude. Take at specific look at say, the introduction written to Saintcrow's essay. The essay was respectful, well balanced, and critical in a constructive way. The introduction written by Hamilton was anything but respectful to her fellow author. Then in several other intros, she goes on rants about her childhood and how her grandmother did not raise her to be feminine. What in the world does her rough childhood have to do with introducing a literary critical analysis?
Diane 04/15/2010 1:25:00 AM

When I wrote my previous comment, I was fully aware that your review was for a book of essays rather than any of Hamilton's novels. I was responding to the parts of your review in which you commented upon the author and her Anita Blake series. The statements seemed to be your actual opinion, not part of what the authors of the essays wrote. That is what led me to question whether you had read any of the last 10 or so Anita Blake books. BTW, Hamilton's best-seller status seems to be dropping off, not growing, based on the ranking of her last few books within the NY Times Top 10--they didn't reach #1 and fell right out of the Top 10 after their first week of appearance. As evidenced in the Amazon reviews and elsewhere, many of her long-term, die-hard fans are ready to abandon her because of their displeasure with the two most recent books, Divine Misdemeanors and Flirt.
Jane 04/15/2010 12:21:00 AM

I am the Jane from the first post. I agree that my criticism of your review does address LKH's books rather than the Ardeur essay book. However, I felt your review of the essay book was rooted and influenced by your obvious high regard for LKH's books, which I obviously don't agree with. You gave your opinion of the AB series itself and used that as a lead in to your review of the essays, so I don't see why my comment on the lack of complex story arcs in the series is missing the point. I have read a few of the essays and will read more when I have time, but I have to say the ardeur is really not that interesting in AB's world. It could be an interesting plot device if handled differently, which it has in at least one other series I can think of.
Carol Cooper 04/14/2010 9:03:00 PM

One minor addendum to my previous post: please note that because comments are posted with the most recent "on top", the comments I just responded to are *below*, not above my own. Sorry!
Carol Cooper 04/14/2010 8:54:00 PM

I appreciate all the comments contributed above. But all fail to notice that my review was not of any particular Hamilton novel, but of a book of essays *about* the series, which if I go by the entire content of the texts above, none of the above commentators have yet chosen to read. Perhaps it would make more sense to read the book which is the actual subject of the review, and then explain which of my statements about those specific essays you believe to be untrue? It is exciting to those of us who monitor publishing trends for a living how much passion, pro and con, Hamilton's novels generate. (Makes me wonder if the same readers are paying equal attention to what's happening in YA lit, where a lot of the issues Hamilton raises get even broader and more controversial treatment...but from a teen and tween perspective!) What also ignites formal critical interest in Hamilton's work is that she remains successful no matter how many highly vocal readers she appears to anger or alienate. Conventional wisdom suggests that genre fiction--which depends upon word-of-mouth and niche marketing--cannot survive a significant degree of negative attention. Hamilton's work has actually thrived upon it...something that mystifies many industry professionals. It is also interesting to media-watchers that opinions vacillate so wildly around Hamilton's work. Clearly she has struck more than one nerve in the public zeitgeist. This is why she demands our attention. Obviously no one individual can take credit for "inventing" any aspect of mythopoeic literature, which has been with the human race in one form or another since we learned to sit around self-made fires and tell each other stories. Writers can only expand and innovate upon ideas already within the collective unconscious. There are, have been, and will always be many writers who do this. All readers have their favorites and least favorites. The ones that attract the kind of critical essays compiled in the book I reviewed: *Ardeur*, tend to be the ones that defy the sales downturn of our current difficult publishing market, and defy conventional industry wisdom, and defy genre "thought police" and even the rigid demands of genre fans, to sell to millions of readers on its own terms despite the odds against such success.
Wilma 04/14/2010 10:25:00 AM

I have to wonder what set of books that this reviewer has been reading - if she thinks that the fictional character of "Anita Blake" is an empowered woman. The entire review reads like the semi-literate squeals of a "troo" (troo fan), and has just about as much substance. Ms. Hamilton is on record as not caring what her fans think of her writing, which would be admirable in a writer that actually has some talent. Ms. Hamilton is also on record as claiming to be the inventor of the urban fantasy genre; she isn't. Anne Rice did it 20 years before Ms. Hamilton even graduated from college, and she did a far better job of character development, plot development and storylines than Ms. Hamilton has ever managed to do. Ms. Hamilton's books, when first introduced, had an intriguing concept, that of a person who raised the dead for a living, and who was a legal vampire executioner - thus, you had, potentially, the best of two worlds, that of a police procedural and a fantasy world where magical things, for good and for evil, happened. From book to book, her main protagonist did less and less of either raising the dead or legally killing vampires, and more and more whining, angsting and whimpering about how her life was not turning out to be what she wanted it to be. Then, Ms. Hamilton introduced a truly bizare plot device,a magical STD, which is, when all is said and done, simply an excuse for the main protagonist to be the town bicycle with no consequences, and not just a whole lot of remorse for the real damage that her actions are causing the people around her. One book glorifies several mind-rapes, including the phrase "They were ours to feed on, ours to rape, and we drank them down"; one book contains a description of the rape of a 16 year old child. Even if this happened out of the direct sight of the reader, and even if the excuse given was that "Anita" was being mind-controlled, it is still glorification of rape, and saying that the child's parents were OK with this because it would "bring him into his powers" is not an acceptable reason for this particular vilenes.
kate 04/13/2010 3:38:00 AM

The only depth Hamilton's books achieve is when someone tosses them down a trash chute.
Diane 04/13/2010 1:32:00 AM

I wonder if the columnist has actually read any of Ms. Hamilton's recent books. If she has, she is much more easily pleased and impressed than most reviewers. The Anita Blake series is far from being "sex-positive" or based on female empowerment. The protagonist is afflicted with the "ardeur," the equivalent of a preternatural STD that forces her to have sex (and forces often- unwilling partners to have sex with her) and that she makes little or no effort to control. Before and after the sex, she whines and angsts at length. Where's the positivity or empowerment in this? Meanwhile, the books are riddled with inconsistencies to the point where readers have coined the term "YAABI" (Yet Another Anita Blake Inconsistency) to describe them, have become practically plot-free, overburdened with insignificant characters (the population of the beasts roiling around inside Anita must by now nearly equal that of any major metropolitan zoo), and the quality of the writing deteriorates further with each new entry in the series.
Chris 04/13/2010 12:48:00 AM

Wow, you sound like a total fangirl. Way to write a well thought out, objective, unbiased review. How about next time you just type out "SQUEE!" and save us the extra reading?
John 04/12/2010 10:45:00 PM

Are we talking about the same author? Your entry reads like you cut and pasted from Wikipedia. Hamilton has never done anything revolutionary in the field; she found a niche and popularized it- much like Kenny G in jazz. And her MarySue-ism is legendary, going so far as to state that she can't write a protagonist that doesn't resemble her. Opinions are like rear ends- everyone has one, and these Op Ed pieces are no more valid than one I'd write. The real 'value' in this would be in Hamilton's introductions for each piece- the same fluff and posturing you find on her blogs- rendering the whole thing useless.
Jane 04/12/2010 9:45:00 PM

Everyone has a right to their opinion and that includes columnists reviewing books. However, I do have to question just how familiar the writer of this column is with urban fantasy. The fact that the columnist didn't go further than Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse, leads me to believe that is the extent of their knowledge of the genre. There is nothing complex about Hamilton's story arcs, not even her earlier books, which were the best she has ever done. Jim Butcher and Kim Harrison write books with much more complex story arcs. They are not the only ones, but arguably the best of the genre if you want plot, surprises, imaginative characters and characters who are developing and have layers. Ms. Hamilton has said many times she will not kill off her "friends" in her series. That alone takes the suspense out of her stories, but it also contributes to lack of complexity of her story arcs.