Unauthorized Essays

[naeko.livejournal.com]

Ardeur: Unauthorized Essays on Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake
-SciFiGuy

Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series is a literary sensation, thanks to its strong female hero, well-fleshed (both literally and literarily) characters and unabashed attitude toward sex. The world Hamilton has created is powerfully compelling and stunningly complex—and it gets deeper and richer, and more perilous, with every book.

Straddling the series’ dominant themes of sex and power, Ardeur gives Anita fans a deeper look into the dynamics, both personal political, that have kept readers fascinated throughout the run of the series. Why is the ardeur the very best thing that could have happened to Anita, personally (aside from all the sex it requires her to have with hot men)? How is Anita’s alternate United States a logical legal extension of our own? And as the series continues, what other bargains might Anita have to make with herself and others in order to keep the people she loves safe from harm?

The site states that the book will be coming out 1 December, 2009. I'm sad to see that this is clearly written by a fan who will talk about how deep and meaningful the relationships in the Anitaverse are, instead of seeing the truth. The book could be interesting, pointing out the horrors that Anita commits in every book. It could point out how illogical Anita is, and how ridiculous her world is. I also wonder if something like that would have been able to be published; this says it's unauthorized, but I bet if we tried to put out a book of well-written essays about everything we see wrong with the way Hamilton writes her characters, we would be shut down.

I don't see myself buying this, but I may peruse it in the bookstore, if I see it.

ETA: The Amazon page for this already has a slew of unflattering tags associated with it: rape, poorly written, homophobia, mary sue, porn without plot, bad porn. I am amused!