Laurell K. Hamilton Books

For quite awhile I have been wanting to write something about Laurell K. Hamilton, whom I discovered about a year or so ago. She is the creator of two ambitious series in the fantasy-horror genre, which is something I never imagined would appeal to me.

The first series I discovered was the Merry Gentry series. The center character is Meredith NicEssus, Princess of the Sidhe courts. Already, I can hear the "What?" in reply. She is a princess of a Fey (i.e. Fairy) court, whose father was asassinated. Her sadistic aunt and ruler, Queen Andais, decides that Merry will compete with her son, Cel, for her throne. Cel is bad guy--that is the simplest way to put it. The first person to produce an heir gets the throne. To help Merry, who lives in L.A. and works as a paranormal investigator, Andais gives her the services of her Raven Guard, who are men with various powers who have been forced to remain celibate while serving the queen.

The potential kingdom is known as the Sidhe, or, Unseelie Court. The opposing court is known as the Seelie Court and they think themselves better and more wholesome, positive if you will, than the Unseelies. They may have a point. The Unseelies are a pretty bloodthirsty and savage group. There is never any real discussion of an alliance between the two courts.

Merry and her guards are soon drawn into a series of conflicts and asassination attempts, as well as a more frenzied attempt to conceive an heir. Merry's powers also derive from the earth and sex, so by the third book she is pretty well obligated to spend much of the time in bed with someone: if not one of her men, another ruler she needs a treaty with or someone who needs healing. It does take some practice to keep the male characters straight.

The main male character is called the Queen's Darkness, Doyle. He is usually silent and, always, well, dark. Rhys- with one eye and a weakness for old noir movies, Frost- former god of death- silver and white, Galen are three of the main back up men. Galen is light green with long dark green hair, who also has earth powers and was Merry's teenage crush. Although she loves him deeply, all agree that he would not make a strong enough king. There is Kitto, who is a combination of human and a troll-like species. He needs a lot of attention due to his rough upbringing. One of the most distinctive men- Mistral, former god of thunder- appears to assist Merry but he is only in one of the books.

Merry has some intense powers, which begin to develop as the series the progresses. One of them is called "the Hand of Blood," and the other is called "the Hand of Flesh." From the description, they sound pretty unpleasant to witness. When the "hand of flesh" is used against an enemy, they ultimately dissolve into a sentient pile of flesh, which is then fairly difficult to kill. But the enemy has been nullified and anyone who hears about it would certainly be deterred, or one would think so.

The most recent entry in the series, "A Lick of Frost," brought things to a new level- one of the main characters is lost to Merry and she discovers she is pregnant. Since this is an unreal world and Merry has unusual powers, she realizes that there is more than one father of the baby or babies she is carrying. I can easily see the series going six more books before she gives birth, so there is plenty of time to speculate as to what will happen next.

The flip side of Laurell K. Hamilton is the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series. Given my intense loyalty to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, I was reluctant to switch sides and try this series. However, Buffy is a pretty carefree person compared to Anita Blake. There is no likelihood of one being compared for too long to the other.

The title character is a single woman, Anita Blake, working in St. Louis as an animator. She raises the dead for a living, usually so that wills can be verified, last questions asked, that type of thing. She also assists on a police task force for paranormal crimes, which was set up after the Supreme Court granted the undead equal rights. (side comment: obviously a work of fiction since history seems to be going toward granting fewer people fewer rights at this point...) Unlike the Merry Gentry series, we hear very little about Anita's parentage or growing up years. She is who she is now, and that is someone who has a lot of weaponry.

In the first novel, Guilty Pleasures, the stage is set for everything else that follows, mainly, we meet Jean-Claude, Master Vampire. He runs various businesses and is the head vampire for the area. He also quite a thing for Anita. She is strangely drawn to him as well. That is one of the few Buffy echoes- drawn to that which you slay. However, Anita is known as "the Executioner" because she generally has state death warrants for the vamps she kills, rather than a "vampires are just plain evil" philosophy. Various problems are dealt with in Guilty Pleasures, and we also meet Anita's quasi- counterpart, Edward. He is the silent/deadly type. There is an unspoken rule that one may kill the other at some point just to see if they can.

The following books introduce other complications and characters: Asher, who was involved with Jean-Claude in a love triangle that went really wrong; Richard, crabby high school teacher who is not comfortable with his other identity as a wolf when the moon is full; Nathaniel, former male prostitute who still has emotional scars from his time on the streets. There are plenty of others, especially when the Anita/Jean-Claude/Richard triumvirate gets going. As Anita becomes closer to the vampire world she is vulnerable to something called "the ardeur." Because of the way her powers work and having hooked up with Jean-Claude's, she must "feed" the ardeur. In a nutshell, she has to have lots of sex to put this magical energy into play. Or something of that nature. By the sixth book, it is a real inconvenience for her and does excessively complicate her domestic life.

As her power grows, Anita spends less time raising the dead than evading enemies who are threatened by her power. There are exciting detours into worlds outside St. Louis, such as when she goes to assist Edward when his attempt at having a ''normal' life go awry. Some of the characters actually get one one's nerves, and things are not always resolved, neatly or otherwise. The writing itself is amazing.

The amazing thing is, despite the outlandishness of some of the plots, the characters of Anita (and Merry) are so vivid and so real that you really feel as if you know them, and you want to find out what happened next. You cannot wait to find out. To me, finding an author who could give me that feeling is a huge gift.