Customer Reviews

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures - Volume 2 (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (Marvel Hardcover))

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I enjoyed the graphic novel art work, I had read the paper back book many years ago, so this was a nice change. I was surprised at how close the pictures resembled the pictures I had of everyone in my mind while I read the book. I hope they keep putting out more graphics with these artists

I loved Guilty Pleasures, the novel. Until Laurel K. Hamilton went nuts with her character and turned her into a porn queen, the series was fun and sexy and exciting. I loved seeing the drawings along with the story in this GN. Anita Blake fans should enjoy this.

I've never read the Anita Blake series before so this was new to me. I do have to admit I don't really like adaptations of books into graphic novels. I just think it loses a lot of its value and doesn't translate well into this type of format. That's just me though. This is the second collected volume in the series, collecting issues #7-#12.

The story line moves along quickly enough and you can pick up most of whats going on easily enough, even without reading the first collected volume. However, there really isn't a lot of depth to the story. Its mostly action just lots of action with vampires constantly being killed or Anita having her life threatened. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that its an adaptation of a full length novel. 368 pages of pure text are reduced to a mix of images and words. One nice thing is that they include a "previously" at the front of the book. So if you haven't read the series before (or forgot what happened) it gives a nice little recap for you. The artwork is decent enough, although it has a very muted color scheme. Whether this is to fit in with the tone of the story or if its the printing I'm not really sure. One big complaint out of me is that all of the characters have the same exact body build, perfect. All the males look like Greek Adonis's without an ounce of body fat and the females look like super models that can kick your butt. Not a fat vampire in the bunch. Frankly it just makes everyone look nonlife like, they lack that air of vitality and reality that makes a comic come alive. One small saving point for the unrealistic style is that even though the killings are rather bloody, they won't cause nightmares for being too graphic.

I had been looking for this comic for ages! Item came in great condition, however it did take awhile to reach me, which is reasonable considering the holidays. Thank you for the prompt shipping and the great quality. I'll use this seller again. :)

Like a summary/excerpt from the books but with great images. I was expecting it to be a little different than the books, but liked it anyways.

The plot thickens. Anita and Phillip, boy toy from the vampire club, Guilty Pleasures, are at a freak party, where people imitate vampires. But her investigation may be found out. And an almost failed zombie raising has Anita asking a lot of questions.
This novel was a good improvement over the last volume, Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures, Vol. 1 . The art is much better: Anita's hair doesn't threaten to dominate her features, the pouty, doe-eyed looked is much diminished and the thunder-thigh syndrome is gone (mostly). The artwork is definitely NOT as distracting and noticeable in a bad way as it was last time.
Also, graphic novel wise, the blocks of "Anita text" is drastically cut back, thanks probably to Jess Ruffner-Booth, who does a MUCH better job of adapting. She does include "Anita text" (aka Anita's thoughts, in rectangular blocks), but she lets the art and the dialogue do more of the telling--something that was sorely lacking in Volume 1.
I also found myself more interested in the characters. Anita is shown doing a zombie raising, which was really neat. I also liked how she teamed up with Edward and Ronnie. In fact, Ronnie was a pretty darn cool character that I look forward to seeing more of.
As for the story...I still found it nearly incomprehensible. I don't quite understand the whole point of the freak party, especially since Anita was willing to leave in a heartbeat (weren't you supposed to be investigating?). Also, she just happens to stumble upon a zombie raising? Whose zombie? Why? Why did someone try to kill her at the church? Why did Nikolaos beat up Phillip? I have so many questions about what happened in the book and how Anita discovered the vampire murderer, it almost negates the cool aspects (the art, Anita kicking @ss, etc.). Perhaps this was because it was a graphic novel, but still, it ought to have been a little more clear to the reader.
After Volume 1, I was half tempted to not even bother reading the novel, Guilty Pleasures. While Volume 2 is hardly much better (other than art and adaptation), I did get a new interest in the novel and perhaps [some] of the series. Plus, I really want to understand what the whole point was. If you've read 1, 2 is definitely necessary.

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I still have high hopes for this GN. I never read the original series of novels but I think that the graphic novel has a potential for greatness however I have found the dialog to be horribly lacking!!! Most of the time its hard to follow as it is completely uninteresting and there appears to be no solid story, maybe I should have read the novels, I don't know but if so then maybe they should list that on the cover as a recommended prerequisite :p..

The second half of "Anita Blake Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures" is where Laurell K. Hamilton stops trying to have the plot make sense.

While there are some interesting revelations, the fragmented story develops holes you could drive a SUV through, on the few occasions when it's not boring us silly with dysfunctional romance and vampire antics. Worst of all, the supposedly tough and knowledgeable Anita Blake becomes denser and more offensively obnoxious as the plot winds on... even to the point of forgetting who the murderer of master vampires is.

Angry with Phillip, Anita stomps out of the house -- and promptly bumps into a gang of Nikolaos' vampires overseeing a zombie-raising. Anita gives her help to the failing animator Zachary -- only to discover who is killing master vampires.

Now forget about that plot development, because Anita does.

In fact, she immediately starts investigating other options, such as the Humans Against Vampires movement. One big option is the Church of the Eternal Life which is run by the"Billy Graham of vampires," a stalwartly calm vampire whom she bombards with false accusations, wildly illogical speculation, and a bit of illegal gun-waving. All of this is based on the tiniest shred of evidence, based on several incorrect assumptions.

But then Nikolaos starts getting impatient, and uses the tortured Phillip to lure Anita to her -- right before making a shocking revelation about what Jean-Claude has done to her. To fight Nikolaos, Anita will team up with the ultimate supernatural assassin and a gang of underground weres. But of course the murderer is still out, about and beheading vampires -- and since Anita clearly isn't bright enough to solve the murders herself, he calls her out...

By this point in the story, it's painfully obvious that Laurell K. Hamilton is treading water, and has no idea how to structure a mystery story. It's hard to take a mystery novel seriously if the hero forgets who the villain is, and can't figure out what's going on unless the Evil Vampire Killer inexplicably unmasks himself. Mystery is not Laurell K. Hamilton's forte -- she apparently has to resort to this absurd twist because otherwise her dense, whiny heroine will never solve anything.

Along the way, Hamilton tries to pad the story by having Anita run around blaming people at random. So she splatters torture, shootouts, some nude showering, tepidly erotic zombie-raising, and a big leather Queen Galaxina dress throughout the story. Unfortunately this doesn't disguise the fact that her plot is just sort of oozing along, with plot developments and fights thrown in at random.

To make matters worse, Hamilton's dialogue has the razor wit of kindergarten trash talk ("Thus he must die." "No!" "Oh, but yes!"). And by the end, the plot has completely unravelled -- the nadir is a truly hysterical conversation about zombie sexual abuse.

But Anita herself is the weakest part of the plot -- abrasive, smug, brittle and rather weak. Hamilton pretty clearly considers her a hardcore tough-grrl, but smirking, cowering and giving in to the bad guys does not make you tough. Even worse, she has the tiny immovable mind of the very stupid and stubborn -- when she decides someone is guilty, they must be guilty.

And Hamilton stretches the story to the breaking point to avoid harming her heroine. The villain do random and inexplicable things -- such as standing still so Anita can stab then with her tiny cheese knife -- so that Anita will always win.

The second half of "Anita Blake Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures" is actually drastically worse than the first -- a meandering plot full of holes, and a heroine so dumb she forgets who the enemy is.

I'm not usually a Graphic Novel reader, but picked up volume 1 for my husband, and had to read it....and then had to get the conclusion here in volume 2!

A great comix translation of Ms Hamilton's 1st Anita Blake novel..Done in the classic marvel style...