Hamilton, Laurell K. Obsidian Butterfly: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel
This was my first experience reading one of Hamilton’s Anita Blake series and I could not put it down. I have since found the first two of this series of novels and find that reading them in order fills in the gaps that are apparent in Obsidian Butterfly. In Obsidian Butterfly, Anita makes continual references to two of Hamilton’s re-occurring main characters: Jean-Claude and Richard. Since these two characters are a great cause of anxiety and tension for Anita Blake, I’d recommend finding these first paperback editions and eating them up like I did. The sexual tension is delicious.
If you like the kind of horror that Anne Rice writes, then you’ll probably enjoy Hamilton. Anita Blake is a vampire hunter (actually known as the Executioner), but these novels take place in a United States where vampirism is legal and lycanthropy, a misunderstood disease like AIDS. She is also an animator and necromancer who raises the dead (zombies) for a fee and runs across a variety of creatures of the night that will scare you silly.
Hamilton is grittier than Rice, but the sensual elements that appeal to the romanticism of Rice’s fans oozes from Hamilton’s pages. Her characters are compelling and often complex. Although, her language is at times repetitive and hackneyed, she clearly produces characters (dead or alive) that you hope to see over and over again. The violence is graphic: the sexuality searing.
Obsidian Butterfly revolves around Anita’s arrival in Santa Fe, New Mexico to help her eerie and cold-blooded friend Edward look for a monster of a mass murderer. She finds him engaged to a woman with children and cannot reconcile the “ice-in-his veins” Edward she knows with the man that she sees with them and has some huge ethical reservations on his playing this kind of a role this well. Anita and Edward share a mutual respect for one another because both trust each other enough to know that they are both quite capable of killing the other. The other members of Edward’s team bring more conflict to the book as Anita has to watch her back everywhere.
In all of the books in this series, it seems that the main plot is entertainingly hindered and postponed by a variety of subplots that down-right tire the reader out as it must Hamilton’s heroine. If she’s not fighting off the Master of the City’s intentions to make her his human servant or a jealous co-worker’s attempts at rape, she’s being pursued by gruesome zombies sent by a jealous voodoo practitioner or avoiding other vampires who are trying to attack her because of her reputation.
If you are looking for a read that captivates you completely–an escape from our real world, then any of the Anita Blake books are for you. Anita has a droll and dry sense of humor, and her side comments to herself are usually sarcastic and witty.
If you start with Obsidian Butterfly, you’ll be okay because Hamilton certainly gives the reader what s/he needs to enjoy the plot and characters and the book easily stands alone as a horror/thriller. But I guarantee that you’ll be looking for the others just to find out why Anita is avoiding Jean-Claude and Richard and why Edward and she has the history that they do.
The others in the series are in order: Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse, Circus of the Damned, Lunatic Cafe, Bloody Bones, Killing Dance, Burnt Offerings, Blue Moon, Obsidian Butterfly, Narcissus in Chains, Cerulean Sins, Incubus Dreams, Micah, Danse Macabre, The Harlequin, and Blood Noir.

Originally written by Leane M. Ellis, May 1, 2000.
Revises September 30, 2008; lme

Categories: Book Buzz, Book Reviews, Fantasy, Horror