Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: The First Death in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Mar 08, 2010 Literary Ames rated it did not like it

Shelves: library-books, horror, urban-fantasy, graphic-novels-comics, read-in-2010, vampires, i-heart-the-cover-art

My first one-star rating of the year, sigh. Though I was very tempted to give Flirt the same treatment, it got off with 2 stars.

The is the first graphic novel I've ever read and boy was it bad. This is supposed to be a prequel to Guilty Pleasures. It includes Anita and JC's first meeting which DOES NOT match the story given in the series. JC says that he fell in love with Anita at first sound, saw her gun and knew she could defend herself and wouldn't wait around to be rescued - only the meeting My first one-star rating of the year, sigh. Though I was very tempted to give Flirt the same treatment, it got off with 2 stars.

The is the first graphic novel I've ever read and boy was it bad. This is supposed to be a prequel to Guilty Pleasures. It includes Anita and JC's first meeting which DOES NOT match the story given in the series. JC says that he fell in love with Anita at first sound, saw her gun and knew she could defend herself and wouldn't wait around to be rescued - only the meeting in The First Death doesn't live up to this description. She doesn't burst in guns blazing, she's actually quite timid for her. She also hunts with Edward for the first time though this is not their first meeting. This is when Anita is given the cross burn by human servants and Manny is retired by his wife after being tortured.

The First Death is not a work of art lovingly created. There is nothing new here, just a story cobbled together from the bits and pieces the author managed to remember.

However, the story is only half of the book. The second half is The Guilty Pleasures Handbook, basically a character and species index. I haven't read it, I just looked at the pictures, which brings me to the character representations. Poor JC, he doesn't look right. In a few of the illustrations he's like an Anita double just taller. He's too feminine, I imagined his hair to have a little less curl than Anita's and a little shorter because he doesn't start growing it out until he realises Anita likes long hair. There are two representations of Bert, one in the story and the other in the Handbook - the story one is better, the Handbook one makes him look ancient but very well dressed - mutton dressed as lamb. Other characters also seemed flawed in appearance like Nikolaos, she appears older than the child she's meant to be.

Overall, this is not a good book. Be smart, do not waste money on this. If you have to read it, borrow it, it will save you the hassle of trying to get rid of the thing on eBay. ...more

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