The other day, I was in the mood for some mindless reading material, the book version of popcorn. I dug through my sizable library, finally encountering Blue Moon by Laurell K. Hamilton. Hey, that’ll do, I thought. Mindless reading, plus a little smut. That’s like popcorn with M&Ms mixed in.
     Blue Moon is #8 in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, and in all honesty, that’s about as far back as I can stand to go. Not because the early books were bad, mind you, but because I can’t stand to reread those first few books, realize how tremendously fucking cool Anita used to be, and then go on to anything after Obsidian Butterfly (the last book worth an actual shit in the series). Blue Moon is a pretty fair story. It does feature Richard, but this is Richard just as he was about to begin his screaming, headlong slide into complete douchebaggery, back when we all still thought there might be some chance of redemption or salvation for the poor bastard. This book also features what I consider the (intentionally) funniest scene in the series thus far: the gay villain hitting on the homophobic Richard, instead of the villain hitting on Anita, for a change. (The unintentionally funniest scene was at the end of Harlequin, wherein Hamilton treated us to the visual of Richard in a goddam black leather gimp mask, I shit you not. I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I damn near peed myself laughing when I read that one.) The scene is largely funny because of the deft way Hamilton handled it. Anita’s not there to see Richard getting groped by the gay villain, so everything, up to and including the villain’s homosexuality, is inferred by everyone’s reaction and a brief bit of editorializing on Anita’s part. It’s well done, and quite amusing.
     But anyway, this isn’t really a review of Blue Moon. It’s just that, after I read Blue Moon, and realized that Obsidian Butterfly was next, I thought to myself, Okay, Obsidian Butterfly came next, that was the one in Arizona or wherever with Edward and Olaf . . . after that was . . . um . . . And, crap. I couldn’t remember. I had to look it up, and discovered it was Narcissus in Chains, featuring the introduction of Micah, who isn’t a bad character for being a pussy-whipped little bitch boy, and the ardeur, and also the brief appearance of a villain who should have been kept around for a bit longer, Chimera, the “panwere”. (He was the evil lycanthrope who could shift into more than one kind of critter, and had a multiple personality to fit each. C’mon. That is totally a villain who should have been kept around.)
     So, lacking better things to waste my time on, I reread that, too, since I couldn’t remember much of it. And then the next couple, Cerulean Sins, forgettable at best, and I can prove it, because I just read the damn thing and can’t remember what it was about, and Incubus Dreams, the last book in the series to feature an actual plot. I didn’t care to go any further with the series after that, because after Incubus Dreams, Richard turns up being a total whining dickhole on a regular basis, and I just wasn’t in the mood for that sort of thing. But, I was still in the mood for popcorn and M&Ms, so I turned to Hamilton’s other series, the one about Meredith Gentry.
     Oddly enough, despite the fact that the Merry Gentry books are almost exclusively erotica, with little plot other than drug-out Seelie/Unseelie politics, it is, in my opinion, the better series. I think the main reason I like the Merry Gentry books better is because I wasn’t sold a bait-and-switch on these books.
     Initially, Anita Blake was all about this bad-ass vampire hunter, and there was buckets of gore and bloodshed interspersed with occasional bits of romance and/or sex. Mostly, though, it was a gritty, violent, hard-edged series involving real plot and real mysteries and lots and lots of fucking bullets, with a flame thrower tossed in once and awhile for color. I bought Anita Blake for the ass-whuppins. And then, for no apparent discernible reason, somewhere around book 11, it all turned into BDSM threesomes with exceptionally pretty, sexually ambiguous boytoys who all magically know exactly where Anita’s g-spot is. (Hell, by now, I think I know where Anita’s g-spot is. Hamilton’s done all but draw us a goddamn map.) Oh, and the amazing whine-ass douchebag, Richard, who also knows where Anita’s g-spot is. Thanks for letting us know, Laurell.
     Whereas, with the Merry Gentry books, Hamilton let us know right up front that this whole series was going to be strictly about the sexing. Right out of the gates in the first book, A Kiss of Shadows, Hamilton lays the main plot out for us. The Queen of the Unseelie court is stepping down, and the race is on to proclaim her heir. It’s a competition between the Queen’s son and niece. Each have a harem, and the first one to get knocked up wins. There’s some shooting and politicking in between, but Hamilton doesn’t slow down much for that piddly shit, because these books are about the sex. After getting a raw deal on the Blake books, the honesty was refreshing in Merry.
     That’s not the only reason I like Merry better than Anita these days, though. There’s also the fact that the Merry Gentry stories are just more well-written. Or, I should say, the characters are more well-written. For example, at this point in the Vampire Hunter series, Anita is pretty much nailing anything that looks at her, generally followed by a bunch of vague whining about how she feels slutty for banging six guys at once, but, despite feeling slutty and guilty, she goes ahead and bangs six more and couple of horses for good measure in the next chapter, and then, to make herself feel better about it, sabotages her love life the chapter after that. And then angsts for awhile about it. Then, somewhere near the end, she shoots a few people and feels better about herself. In between, Richard shows up, all but rapes her, whines about it, holds the story up for his pity party, and then wanders uselessly off. And that’s pretty much an Anita Blake story in a nutshell, these days.
     Whereas, by comparison, Merry Gentry lets you know right up front that she likes the sexing pretty much anyway she can get it, and she’s none too picky about the amount and/or gender, and/or race or humanity or any other particular involved, and she’s not ashamed of it either, so feel free to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut if you don’t approve. She’s a screaming nympho, and not just proud of it, but completely comfortable with it. Bravo, madam! The average Merry story involves a couple of chapters setting up the wafer-thin plot and the current politicking, followed by ten or fifteen chapters of vigorous sexing, sex magic, and occasional shreds of politics, followed by a quick wrap-up where someone gets shot and/or tortured, the wafer-thin plot is resolved thanks to some banal plot device or another, and bang, we’re done. Merry or one of her boytoys occasionally angsts for a moment or two about some triviality or another, but that’s kept mercifully brief.
     Now, understandably, there should be more angsting involved with Anita and her sexual olympics than with Merry, because Anita starts out as a chaste, Puritanical vampire killer. She should whine more about her fall from grace, as it were, and she should ruminate more about it. It’s important to the character development, and I get that. But really, after the third or fourth time in the same book that you end up having an accidental threesome in front of a live audience in public during political negotiations with powerful, evil vampires, you probably really should just accept the fact that you’re a slut, and move the hell on already. The angsting has been handled. I don’t want to hear it anymore.
     Looking further into the books, we have to take up the subject of the secondary characters. In the Blake books, the only secondary character being handled with any grace at all is that of Edward, the sociopath monster hunter (with Olaf, his serial killer back-up coming in a close second). By way of example, Micah, pussy-whipped bitch boy, Jean-Claude, the oh-so-perfect lover who comes off as getting by strictly on luck and charm, Nathaniel and Damien, Anita’s second triumvirate, card-board cut-outs (Does Damien ever actually do anything except almost die once in awhile when Anita forgets to feed the ardeur on time?), Richard, and don’t get me started, and on, and on, and on. Blake’s characters are all abysmally one-dimensional. Every once in awhile, we’re treated to a quick peek at something vaguely resembling personality, motive, humanity, back-story, or something, for one of these characters, but even then, it’s quick, glossed-over, and never mentioned again. Either that, or it turns out to be something so trite and predictable that it’s hard to take serious. Micah’s insecure because some high school girlfriend said his dick was too big. No, I’m not making that up, seriously. Multiple male characters were raped, sexually abused, prostituted, et cetera, all in early the same manner. (Richard, Jean-Claude, Nathaniel, Damien, and on, and on. Oh, and Asher. And — well, you get the picture.) And this sex abuse is used as actual back-story. These are all the same men, just with different faces and powers.
     Compare that to Merry’s menfolk. We’ve got Doyle, 1,000+ year-old Unseelie shapeshifter, warrior, guardsman to the queen, et cetera. Frost, formerly known as Jack Frost, also 1,000+ years old, but now full Fae. Galen, a baby at 100, and pretty much your happy-go-lucky human-acting guy. Rhys, former god of death, now into film noir. These are actual characters, with real personalities and differences and arguments and motivations. These are people. Blake’s harem are all wind-up sex toys.
     And not to mention the handling of Frost, versus Richard. In the Merry books, Frost serves as our insecure, angsty whiner. About once per book, Frost will drag things down with a pouting fit of melodrama, and that’s fucking annoying. Then, a chapter or so later, he busts out with some incredible bit of back-story, such as the bit about his first wife, who was human, whom he lived with and loved and finally watched age and die, loving her all the while, and still carries this sweet little torch for, a thousand fucking years later. What’s Richard got to compete with for this? Well, he once banged a girl too hard and almost hurt her.
     Right. You see where I’m having a problem here, don’t you?
     In conclusion, not because I couldn’t rant about this for ten more paragraphs, but because it’s getting late, and I need to go to bed, between the two, Merry Gentry and her cadre of menfolk are, by far, the better-written characters, with the better plot driving the stories. Fresh, hot popcorn, with perfectly melty M&Ms mixed in. Anita Blake? Predictable, one-dimensional characters driven by motivations which are jokes, at best, laced with plots that remain largely forgotten and ignored for the duration of the book, until Anita shoots someone. Stale theater popcorn and those rock-hard wanna-be M&Ms you get in the bulk foods aisle, that they used to call “Jots”.

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