Anita Blake

I really enjoyed reading both of the Anita Blake volumes. They were both really edgy and I thought it was funny to see the sexual tension in the animations rather than just reading about them. I found it to be a rather quick read, maybe a bit too quick for my liking. Besides the confusion I felt at times from not knowing how the dialogue went from one scene to the next and from the contradictions between the scenes and the dialogue, I found it to be neutral. Unlike Fledgling and Twilight I didn’t know where I sat with it. I definitely liked Fledging, and I knew after reading Twilight that I didn’t think very highly of it, but after reading Anita Blake I felt that I might as well have not read it. I usually like it or hate it but I didn’t feel anything towards Anita Blake.

I liked that the book was done as a graphic novel because I don’t think that the sexual tension would have been as evident otherwise. I don’t know if my next point helps or hinders my view on Anita Blake but, I haven’t read a comic book in quite a while. The last time that I was really into reading comics was when I was just a kid. At times I felt almost nostalgic reading in this comic book style. That is until I came across a shower scene or a half naked man. I can’t say that any of the homoerotic nature of some of the scenes made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t see how it bettered the story at all. It reminded me of the scene in Fledgling when Shori’s soon to be new symbiont mentioned that he didn’t want a man as his Ina because the feeding was to sexual. It was just a small connection that stuck out to me.

I tried to do the reading without the scenes for a couple pages and then went back to read them over with the scenes on the page versus the ones that I had made in my head. Most of the dialogue was straight forward but Anita would be talking a big game and I would expect to see some kind of sinister smile but when I saw the scenes it was her with a scared look on her face. I found a lot of the scenes to be contradictory to the dialogue. If you just read the dialogue you would think that Anita is a tough, kick ass, hard core vampire killing woman, but the scenes say otherwise.

Anita has a tough exterior throughout the whole book, but I do like that you get these little insights into her fears and thoughts. Whenever she’s with one of the older vampires she is afraid of she talks to herself saying that she’s never been so scared in her life. She gets in these 500 year old vampires faces she doesn’t know why she made that decision as she’s doing it. Anita is also afraid of the other vampire bounty hunter that she has to do business with. Anita says all the time that if it comes down to it she knows that he would be able to kill her. The fact that she does give you this inside information into her life makes her more human. You see that she is a bad ass but you know that she has fears as anyone should when dealing with vampires.