Vampire Hunts Diversity

Welcome Diversity Week!!  So, I am not quite the voracious reader that some of our bloggers are, but in preparing for this week’s blog I looked through the list of 75 books I have read in the last 3 years and could not find a single one where the couple was inter-racial.  Not that every couple in every book is a postcard of Lovey and Thurston Howell, III, but for most of the authors I have read, ethnic diversity must be boring and so common place that they have moved on to species diversity.  So I will focus my blogging on that topic.

When you talk about romance among species, one femme fatale stands out-  Anita Blake.  Anita Blake is the main character of a wonderful series written by Laurell K. Hamilton.  Most of the Guilty Indulgence Book Clubbers are completely hooked, some have finished the series which currently stands at seventeen books and counting, and some, like me, have passed third base at book thirteen and  are sliding into home. 

Some of the  underlying themes include acceptance of who you are, the good, the bad and the ugly-whether vampire, necromancer, zombie, were, witch, or mere human, and secondly, there is much to be gained by working together in friendship and love with others who may look different and have different powers or strengths than you.  It is not only the right thing to do; it lets you kick bad guy butt!  

In the series, Anita Blake is an animator by day which is someone who can raise the dead, and by night she is a vampire executioner helping the St. Louis police department solve bloody murders and mishaps.  Out of her work for the police and her crazy personal life among the preternatural, she ends up creating a veritable menagerie by helping every wayward were or supernatural creature that gets in the cross hairs of a bad guy.  By the thirteenth book, she has wererats, werewolves, werehyenas, wereleopards, wereswans, and a werefox all looking to her for protection and leadership and all willing to sacrifice themselves for her.  Add to that a few Master Vampires at her beck and call and she has quiet the entourage.  She goes from being rather prudish and human-centric to having lustful encounters with werewolves, wereleopards and vampires,  sometimes all at the same time.  The books are full of diverse characters both good guys and bad guys as Anita travels outside St. Louis for work and the author shows you other venues and cultures both through current activities and flashbacks. 

If you want to spice up your life and become enmeshed in a very diverse world, pick up the first Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series book, Guilty Pleasures, you won’t regret it. Without hesitation, I give Guilty Pleasures 5 chocolate dipped strawberries.

Reviewed by Cat Devon