anita blake returns in laurel k hamilton's bullet; the original & the best urban fantasy

Finally, another book in my favourite urban fantasy series, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter by Laurell K Hamilton. 

Bullet is the nineteenth in the series and continues the complicated, twisted story of a girl who started out raising zombies, became the lover of a Master Vampire, then the lover of a werewolf, has numerous strands of were-blood in her veins and now, as the first true necromancer in centuries, has inherited the powers of both the vampires and the were-folk.
When Hamilton began the series in 1993, no one could have predicted its success and longevity. Unfortunately, despite being so much better written, more creative, more adult, darker and sexier, it's tripe like the Twilight series that's become a world phenomenon.
Even the Sookie Stackhouse books of Charlaine Harris have been turned into a TV show and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles have become movies.
While I'll give Harris and Rice props for their quality work, as a connoisseur of urban fantasy I'm endlessly frustrated that pap like Twilight has invaded the brains of a generation, while Hamilton's work remains, partly, a cult phenomenon.
Still, the good thing about this is that no big studio attempting to make Miley Cyrus interesting has bought up the rights and totally destroyed the best urban fantasy series ever written – so I must be grateful for small mercies.
The Anita Blake series began with Anita working as an Animator – raising zombies for families and lawyers after missing information – and side-lining in Vampire Hunting.
The early books – especially Guilty Pleasures (1993), The Laughing Corpse (1994), Circus of the Damned (1995), The Lunatic Cafe (1996), Bloody Bones (1996), The Killing Dance (1997) and Burnt Offerings (1998) – focused mainly on Anita's work, with the action coming from her various jobs.
Later books, generally starting from Narcissus in Chains (2001) and including the novella Micah (2006), put the focus clearly on Anita's romantic entanglements and particularly her multiple sexual partners as she become overwhelmed by her powers as an incubus. Although Anita is still, mostly, human, her animating powers combined with the various magics of vampires and were-animals have seen her changing into something not quite human.
During this period Hamilton came under some criticism for her over-emphasis on the sexual side of things – sure there was still a fair bit of action and gore, but Anita began to solve her problems via sex rather than pulling out the big guns (literally) and blasting away. Not something that appealed to all of her fans.
But the author must have been listening to her fans, for with Bullet and the previous book Flirt, Hamilton has returned to form. Anita is still dealing with having to choose a 'mate' among the werelions, but at least she's also back at work.
And while the sex is still there, the manipulation of emotions and anger continues, Anita and her brood of vampires and were-animals have to deal with a deadly enemy, one they thought had been destroyed.
The Mother of All Darkness is still around, she's not been completely destroyed, and even Anita's nemesis and Jean-Claude's former Mistress, Belle Morte (Beautiful Death) is scared.
As with all the Anita Blake books, Hamilton's ability to add humanity to the non-human, emotions and petty human foibles to the supernatural and the exasperation of a frustrated woman in a man's world, endears Bullet, and Anita, to the reader.
Anita Blake is a modern, urban fantasy heroine; someone we'd all like to think we'd be if faced with supernatural powers, the roaming dead, preternaturally beautiful men and a nasty, evil bitch who wants to take over our body – we'd strap on the knives and jump feet first, all guns blazing.

Bullet by Laurell K Hamilton is published by Headline, an Hachette company, and is available from good book stores and online.

unholy ghosts by stacia kane is fresh urban fantasy with a gritty, sideways feel

I loved, loved, loved this book. Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane is one of the few new urban fantasy novels I've read in a while. There's not a single vampire or werewolf to be seen and the characters are as conflicted, unfulfilled and damaged as any normal person.

Well, perhaps not exactly 'normal', but they're certainly not the 'holier-than-thou', angst-ridden teens or hormonally challenged desperately single women to be found in most of this genre's current crop of new authors.
In Kane's world, ghosts are real; and they're not very friendly. In fact, they're downright nasty. A couple of decades previously the dead had risen and only one organisation – the Church of the Real Truth – had managed to keep society together. Now America is a land where everyone knows what happens after you're dead, you turn into a spirit and go to the underworld, which isn't Hell and Jesus can't save you.
Instead you get people like Chess Putnam; she's a witch and she works for the Church. Yep, a complete reversal.
Since ghosts are real and can cause real damage, the Church will pay you a lot of money if a true haunting can be proven to have happened. It's Chess' job to sort the real from the fake and then banish the real ghost back to where they belong.
So far, so urban fantasy. But what makes Unholy Ghosts more interesting is that Chess isn't some boring, sweet, lovelorn sexy girl; she's a tattooed rocker with a taste for gangsters and a massive debt to her dealer hanging over her head.
Bump, the local gang leader, needs Chess to sort out a haunting of sorts. Work out if it's ghosts or the opposition, and Chess will clear her debt and be kept happy, so to speak.
Unfortunately Chess doesn't have a choice but to help out – she hasn't got the cash and the Church doesn't know about her personal vice. Before she knows it, Chess is caught up in nasty blood rituals, gang rivalries and an dangerous attraction to two, opposing gangsters.
Unholy Ghosts is the first in Kane's The Downside Ghosts series, which is great. I can't wait to read more of this gritty, sideways world that she's created. The character of Chess is reminiscent of Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, in that she's more 'real' than the usual fantasy female.
Chess isn't perfect, she carries her own demons, she's attracted to the wrong men and she's not averse to bending the rules – all things that make her a much more interesting character to read about.
Another of my favourite authors – also a pioneer in this genre like Hamilton – Charlaine Harris, has a quote on Kane's book: 'Gripping... Vivid characters and wonderful sense of pace'. And it's true.
Chess spins from one disaster to another, barely managing to keep it together, but somehow not giving up, nor becoming irritating. She's strong without being unapproachable and yet, still human in her reactions to the people around her.
Kane is a genuine find in the over-populated urban fantasy genre – she can only get better on presumes; thankfully there are more books written and more to come.

Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane is published by Harper Voyager and is available from good books stores and online.

better than the tv show: the latest sookie stackhouse vampire novel, dead in the family by charlaine harris

Yes, lovers of vampires and werewolves, and especially lovers of Sookie Stackhouse, her various vampy and hairy boyfriends, her fairy great grandfather and her brother Jason, the non-shirt wearing hottie, Charlaine Harris is back.

 Dead in the Family is the tenth Sookie Stackhouse 'Southern Vampire Mysteries' series – although just about everyone will know them better as the 'True Blood' books from the extremely popular HBO series of the same name.
For those who haven't read the books, and have only seen the couple of seasons on HBO in Singapore; don't read on, this is full of spoilers as the books are up to number 10, while the TV show has barely even started.
For fans who started with the books, and not the TV show, Dead in the Family is fantastic; the characters continue to develop, the plots twist back over the whole series and Sookie is still stuck in her weird love/hate relationship with Eric.
Yes, Eric. I know, I know; if you've only watched the HBO series, you'll still think she's got a thing for Bill the Vampire; or, if you've seen the beginning of the latest season in the US, then you'll be wondering about the werewolf Alcide.
Sorry; Dead in the Family is way past all those relationships. Not only has Sookie moved on, so has her brother Jason, Bill (kind of) and Sam the shapechanger. There are also impossibly beauty Faeries as distant relatives – which kind of explains why so many women want to sleep with Jason and why the vampires adore the taste of Sookie – as well as all sorts of other supernatural creatures.
Sookie is still recovering from her injuries from the 'Faery War' that occurred in the previous book, Dead and Gone, as well as the deaths of a number of people she loved.
On top of all this; Bill is fading away having been damaged by silver and now Eric's maker (his real maker not the fake one in the TV show) has turned up with a rather insane child vamp who may, or may not be a member of royalty.
As usual, Harris manages to keep all the various plots in place, make her supernatuals seem as understandable as her humans and adds a nice bit of love, romance and sex to spice it up. There is also the prerequisite blood and violence; but not at the expense of a good story.
I started with the books years ago, and while I find the HBO show fun to watch, there's no way it can encompass the nuances of Harris' text; the humour and the psychology of both humans and supernatural creatures.
So, if you've only seen the TV show; make the effort to get hold of all ten books, I promise you won't be dissapointed.

Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris is published by Gollancz and is available from good book stores and online

vampires, fairies, finding the dead

Niki Bruce reviews two books from supernatural thriller author Charlaine Harris.


THE edgy, punchy, sexy series that is True Blood on HBO may have finished its second season in Singapore, but if you're still after tales of vampires, werewolves and fairies you can get stuck into Charlaine Harris' collected short stories about Sookie Stackhouse with A Touch of Dead.

A Touch of Dead has five stories based on the world of Sookie Stackhouse, the human who can read minds, dates vampires and whose brother is a were-panther. The original Sookie stories are now being translated in to an award-winning series on HBO and stars Anna Paquin as Sookie.

As Harris says in her introduction to the collection, Sookie's world is a complex and complicated one and the author was concerned about attempting to condense it into the short story format. She even admits that some of her efforts were more successful than others but, also says that she enjoyed the exercise:

"It's been hard to fit the stories into Sookie's larger history without leaving seams. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes not. In this edition, I've tried to smooth out the edges of the story that was the most fun to write but wouldn't fit in its chronological hole no matter how I pounded (Dracula Night)."

Dracula Night sees the local vampire bar, Fangtasia, celebrating Prince Dracula's birthday – kind of like the vampire version of Christmas. The twist is that their hero may actually attend the event. Eric Northman, Sookie's sometime lover in the later books of the series but still an unknown enemy in the TV version, is particularly enamoured of the idea of a visit from Prince Dracula. Needless to say, Sookie manages to get an invite and happens to be in the right place at the right time once again.

What is interesting reading these stories is that the characters now take on the visual images of the actors who portray them on TV. Sometimes this works, Paquin is a good choice for Sookie; sometimes it doesn't. Still, it can be a little off-putting.

But the generally light-hearted stories in A Touch of Dead are a great antidote to the heavily detailed and often emotionally tortured stories of Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books. There's a bit of death in Fairy Dust – when fairy siblings who work at a strip joint (don't ask) go after a murderer – there's some magic in Lucky – when a local witch tries to do the right thing and ends up doing the opposite and some raunchy sex in Gift Wrap – which is just that, a gift wrapped in some sexy packaging.

If you love the Sookie Stackhouse series then it's worth getting your hands on A Touch of Dead to have the whole set and to while away the time until Harris produces the next novel in the series.

A busy author, Harris has also just released the latest book in her other supernatural series about Harper Connelly, Grave Secret.

Harper, like Sookie, is human but she's been touched by the supernatural; Harper can feel the dead. It doesn't matter how old they are, Harper can find sense their graves and, in doing so, find out how they died.

Needless to say, she's useful if you're a police officer but not if you're a murderer, so she's generally getting into trouble, one way or another.

Harper travels with her 'brother' Tolliver, who is also her lover. But before it gets too icky; they're not actually related to each other, being step-siblings from an unholy union of two drug addicts, they have looked after each other all their lives.

Grave Secrets sees the pair return to their hometown for the first time in years in an attempt to trace their missing older sister, Cameron. Picking up some work at the same time, Harper discovers that a very rich man may have had an illegitimate child – that may also have been murdered.

Tolliver's former drug addict, ex-prisoner father is also back on the scene and as family complications ensue, the pair get shot at, chased and learn the terrible truth about what may have happened to their sister.

Harris' skill at making her characters and their stories approachable and 'real' is what makes her supernatural-themed stories more substantial than the usual 'sexy vampire' pap that seems everywhere these days.

Sookie is a real person; she's insecure, funny, caring and looking for love. Harper is just as real; she's in love, damaged by her past and coming to terms with her future.

The fact that both women have special 'talents' doesn't make them any less real for the reader who likes to dream that there's a wider world of wonder out there.

Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris is published by Gollancz and is available from good book stores and online. A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris is also published by Gollancz and available from good book stores and online.

First published on The Straits Times blogs on November 12, 2009