When a Series Goes In a Different Direction #LongandShortReviews #BlogChallenge

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

This week's topic: Reason Why I Stopped Reading a Series I Loved

There's one series that pops into my brain when I read this week's topic.

The Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton

I started reading this series in August 2001. I was working at Waldenbooks and we got a sampler of her newest novel, I think it was Obsidian Butterfly. It looked good, but I knew that this wasn't the first in the series and I like to begin at the beginning.

So, I bought Guilty Pleasures to give it a try.

I was so hooked. It was deliciously dark. Anita was a heroine with issues, but brave, strong and with a good heart. And she raised the dead for the living. How neat is that? She also assisted the police with their preternatural crimes division during the more nastier investigations dealing with supernatural monsters. Oh, did I mention she was also a vampire executioner?

Then there were characters like Jean-Claude, the vampire, and Richard, the science teacher werewolf. Not only were they possible love interests, but there was a mystery to solve with them, too.

This series had everything I could ask for, romance, horror, mystery, suspense. It was seriously page-turning and I was addicted.

That year, I took a road trip with a bunch of my friends from Pennsylvania to New Orleans. Of course, I bring books with me no matter where I go. I bought all of her available books to bring with me to read along the way.

And I read them back to back, down to New Orleans and back. Which is something I don't normally do. I was in reader heaven.

And then something strange happened around book #10-ish. 

The romantic horror series suddenly shifted to erotic horror. That alone didn't bother me. In fact, I might have enjoyed it. But suddenly Anita was sleeping with all these guys, sometimes all at the same time. And it was always for some mystical reason, not that she really wanted to (at the beginning of this change). Anita wasn't exactly forced, but she wasn't given many options not to...for reasons. 

It felt more like the author didn't wish to admit that she wanted her character to sleep with so many people and made it seem like Anita had to for her own good.

It was a dilemma that Anita had to face. If it would have been one book, or two, I wouldn't have minded... but every single book after? She's dealing with all these relationships with these many men and the drama and whining about who gets her attention and blah, blah, blah. They are a whiny bunch. I'm not sure how she can stand them all. Then again, she started getting whiny, too.

I just want her to go back to killing monsters and raising the dead. You know? The simple life.

I guess now as I look back, this might have been my introduction to reverse harem. This would be something I normally don't mind. I've read reverse harem romances and enjoyed them, but I didn't start reading this series expecting the horror novels to turn in the direction of erotic novels and then on to the drama of a soap opera.

And Anita has a lot of sex in the newer books. A lot. In my opinion, the sex scenes don't always move the plot forward. You can skip those scenes and it won't matter much for the rest of the book. To me, that feels unnecessary.

I stopped reading this series for a while. But because I still remember my love for these characters, I try reading another every so often. I still have hope that the old type of story-telling that I loved might show itself in some way. 

Frankly, I miss the characters and the simple love triangle between Anita, Richard and Jean-Claude. I was excited to see who she would choose and what monster-of-the-week she had to fight. I didn't expect her to fall into bed with Micah, Nathanial, Asher, Damian, Jason, among others (is she sleeping with Edward, yet? Because then, I'm absolutely done!) and suddenly the monster-of-the-week wasn't really so dangerous, life-threatening or important.

Even though I'm personally disappointed with the direction the author took these books, I still recommend this series to others. These books are absolutely amazing up until about 10, if you like horror mixed with romance and mystery. If you like reverse harem romances mixed with a bit of horror and mystery with a side of relationship issues between the characters, then you'll love book 11 and onward. 

Readers might be interested in these books for different reasons, and I hope you enjoy them.

Be sure to check out the other blogger's suggestions at ...

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