Review: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures - Graphic Novel by Laurell K. Hamilton

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My first impression was that the opening frame is pretty perfect, it's a pale woman with wild hair, not overly exaggerated boobs and hips but very feminine and very strong, with a gun, and a funny zombie and penguin tee-shirt. It's Anita. It was a good first impression. 

It had been so long since I read the earlier books in the series that I didn't remember the plot of this book almost at all, it was fun to go back to the beginning and revisit this early Anita and see how everything got started. And because I forgot that these graphic novel adaptations were coming out I was able to get the complete twelve-part series to read all in one very lovely hard cover edition from my library. This edition would definitely make a good gift for fans of the print books or the graphic novel series (a prequel came out already and several more books have come out since this one as well), it's quite a good adaptation of the story and the artwork overall is how I imagined things. 

As I said, overall I liked the art. Anita was pretty but not too comic-book exaggerated. It is an on-going theme in the books that she has hips and and a chest, so that needed to be represented here, but it was done in a classier way, not a hootchy sexed-up comic book way. I did like the drawing for her better in the second half of the book after the new artist took over though. In the first have there were just too many times where she looked sad and dewy-eyed, or big-eyed and innocent. I like that she had some vulnerability and and hurt feelings, and fear and worry for her friends, she shouldn't have been Anger Girl all of the time, but the big-eyed innocent looks just didn't work when she should have looked pissed, determined, angry, murderous, scared, etc. it was too cute. The faces in the second half might not have been quite as pretty overall but the expressions were better and that's more important to me. 

And both Anita and Jean-Claude's beautiful heads of hair and curls in their faces were a little overdone, especially in the first half and on the cover. It's pretty in an almost tattoo style, but too frequent and distracting. At a glance I frequently thought they had bugs crawling on their faces. And there was that one curl that's constantly between Anita's eyes, that was irritating, I'm surprised a woman didn't point that out in the read-throughs and make them change it. Any real woman would just brush it away, she'd never let her hair tickle between her eyes like that for so long, it would annoy her to feel 
more than it bugged me to see it. And Anita isn't a normal woman, visibility is important to her, she wouldn't allow hair in her face that could obscure her vision. It's a small thing, but it's in so many scenes, it almost became a joke, it was very distracting.

Most of the other characters look pretty much how I imagined them. Dolph looks younger than I imagined, but about the same. Edward was about right, maybe a little too good looking, he's supposed to be more average to blend in. But it's the comics, after all, they like people to have an edge. Ronnie, Luthor, Phillip, Malcolm. Irving, all really close to how I'd imagined them. The only surprise was Raphael, the king of the rats, who I'd imagined much older and handsome in a more debonair way, I guess; I didn't expect him to be a young hottie. I thought he'd be a slimmer, more mature man. But the batting record is pretty good, considering that these adaptations usually leave the reader pretty dissatisfied with most of the "casting." It's clear how much Hamilton was involved in making sure that the books really reflected her vision of the story and it says something about her writing that it seems to be pretty consistent with so many of the readers' visions as well, her imagery must have been pretty powerful if so many of us are in agreement about how things should look. 

As for the story, it stuck very tightly to the novel. They did a good job of adapting a long book to short episodes and still managing to convey a lot of information. It may be somewhat confusing to newbies, but if they're more used to the graphic novel format then perhaps it won't bother them. I'm still having some trouble grasping the format, although this was a pretty wordy and well-explained graphic novel, so I didn't miss much. 

It was interesting to me to contrast this book to the Wizard of Oz graphic novel I just read. There really was a clear attempt here to contrast the lovely elements with the horror, both with the text and the visuals. Hamilton really wanted to show that all that glitters is not gold, to show the hidden darkness beneath some things that present themselves as beautiful and safe. The art reflected this contrast very well. They got the idea across much more than the Oz artist did, one of my complaints about that book. And this book knew the audience it was catering to better as well. It was kind of funny that they could have vampires and gore and people killed by guns,
and stakes and lots of violence, but you can't say "shit", it's "#%@$" because it might be classified as a YA book (like the one I borrowed was) and swearing is no-no in teen graphic novels, I guess. 

So of someone asks why they should read this if they've already read Guilty Pleasures, I'd say that it's a different perspective on the story. Seeing it visually makes you notices things that can only be described in the print book. You see that Anita is shorter than the men she has to question. You see her scars, there day in and day out, whether she wants them to be seen or not. You see her femininity, easy to forget a bit when she's just a cypher on a page. And you see the penguins and the funny tee-shirts, a good contrasts with Anita's tough side. I definitely think that fans of the early Anita books will enjoy this if they get a chance to check it out.

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Review: Magic Without Mercy by Devon Monk

Magic Without Mercy by Devon Monk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The best thing about this series is that the author has a very clear plan for it. It isn't one of those series where the author just created a fun character who became popular and now she's trying to trying to milk the series for all it's worth by writing the same book over and over again or just sort of figuring it out as she goes along. Every book in this series has a very strong arc and major reveals, keeping it super exciting. But of course it also makes it sad as we get closer and closer to the end of the series, I'm really going to miss these characters when it wraps up after the next book.

This book was a wild ride, as they all are. There was a lot going on with Allie's dad, St. James, Cody, Stone, tainted magic, The Veiled, why she can use magic differently than anyone else, Isabelle and Leander, Shame and Terric, Jingo Jingo, the Hounds and lots of other stuff. There were some reveals, some hints, and some new challenges as well. I can't wait for Magic For A Price in November.



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Review: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm a little thrown by this one. It was cool in a lot of ways. There were a lot of really neat ideas that were fun to ponder. But I'm not sure if I liked it.

So, the backstory. This is a re-release of a book that was written by two Russian brothers, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, in the early 1970s. According to the really interesting afterword by Boris Strugatsky, by the time they actually got the story published in 1980, the brothers were really unhappy with the edits that were forced on them by various government officials and publishers. It's a pretty wild Soviet publishing battle tale, especially since the story in question wasn't even political. Yet the brothers prevailed and eventually a story was published, although not one that they were happy with. And yet it became very popular, in part because it became the basis of the movie Stalker. But luckily we now have the opportunity to read the book as the brothers originally intended, this version is "completely restored and returned to the author's version." So you should definitely look for the May 2012 publication of the book; in English it's the translation by Olena Bormashenko.

The book was a good choice for a re-release because it doesn't feel very outdated. There isn't a lot of technology mentioned in the book, it's really mostly just cars and trucks, so there isn't anything that jumps out and says "outdated." The tone is quite old-fashioned, but I think that was deliberate even when it was written. I has a feel of a 1950s sci-fi novel in some ways to me in the tone, something about the jaded prospector and then the really innocent kid who comes in at the end, calling him Mr. And of course everyone smokes, that wouldn't happen in a modern book. But generally it held up quite well.

OK, I think I'm pulling together my thoughts a bit. It's really a tough one. Summary: What I liked were the ideas. What I didn't like was the storytelling.

There were so many super cool ideas in this book. The basic concept of the roadside picnic and what that would do to us is brilliant. The idea of the Zones and the Stalkers. Following that through is just super interesting. I liked a lot of the ideas the scientist expressed about the aliens and what it might mean. But it also got a bit crazy. I liked all of the stuff found in the Zones. But there was no rhyme or reason to it. Which I guess was the point to some degree, it's supposed to be so weird that it obsesses people and makes them crazy. But batteries and bracelets are one thing, slimes and gravity zones are another. And then there's the corpses. And the thing that happens to emigrants. I don't know, it's just a little much. Yes, it all comes together for force Red into this desperate place. But the excuse of it not having to make sense because it's alien bugs me.

Which gets into my dislike, the storytelling. I was interested in Red, I couldn't help but like him and root for him. But the story was often confusing and wanders a lot and I didn't always get the point. Maybe it's just deep, and honestly, I'm not the type who's good at being analytical or picking up on literary stuff. But I was often left with a feeling of, "what was the point of that?" For example, I didn't understand the point of the whole section with Noonan, his character is left hanging. And the end was totally abrupt and kind of cheesy. Not that I expected answers, because I didn't, that wouldn't have worked with the premise. But I really enjoyed the last section all the way up until the very last passage. It was just so... I don't know. Ursula Le Guin did the intro to the book and she tells me I should love the end. But it didn't ring true to Red for me. Maybe part of the problem was that it was a novella and not a full novel, if it had been drawn out into a full book then maybe some of the things that bothered me could have been explored more completely. On the other hand, part of what was cool about the style was the snapshot-like views into what was happening in Red's life and the city around the Zone, so the shorter style did suit it.

So I guess my review is kind of a confusing mess, I'm sorry. I really just don't quite know what to think about this one. It was kind of fascinating and kind of confusing. I was never bored reading it but it wasn't a huge page-turner. It was interesting. It was definitely interesting. And it did get me very curious to try more of the Strugatsky brothers' work.

I received this book from NetGalley.



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