This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Anita Blake mythology article was blanked on 2024-01-01 and that title now redirects to Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. The contents of the former article are available in the redirect's history; for the discussion at that location, see the redirect's talk page. |
The Jean-Claude (character) article was blanked on 2024-01-02 and that title now redirects to Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. The contents of the former article are available in the redirect's history; for the discussion at that location, see the redirect's talk page. |
Perhaps someone could include commentary on the significant decline of quality of these books over the course of the series?
Yes, in fact I would hugely disagree. I would say that if anything, the books have gotten better. Xinoph 17:16, September 4, 2005 (UTC)
Yea Gods.
Please, please do not say "if you don't like it, don't read it". It's not the attitude that any of us.. "critics" lets say, agree with. Most of us absolutely love the first few books. However, we think there is definitely a decline in the plot/characterisation as the series moves on. We KNOW that LKH can write better, and we simply don't understand why she doesn't (there's also miscellaneous stuff about her blog, but I digress). If not a section on the "quality decline" perhaps a section on the development of fan views.
It occurred to me that a wiki page about a very popular series of novels should probably have more than a bare description of characters and the books in it. For instance, a description of conflicts or themes in the books might be in order. However, that seems like something that should come from reference to literary criticism. E.g. One might reference a critique of the novels' attempt to explore the issue of what makes someone human (the later repeated notion that Anita is no longer sure what is human or not). Or also, some description as to why (presumably from critics) the series is popular.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any easily (any google searches seem to only turn up review pages on commercial sites). Is someone else perhaps better at this kind of search? If I was near a university, I would do a lit search, although the odds seem slim that the books have been reviewed in anything but things like the nytimes or such. Most everything I can find (such as the "editorial reviews" on amazon) are pretty much very shallow or just fawning ("best blake yet!" type comments)
R343L 14:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
If you use Copernic Agent Professional, like I have on my home computer, it actually shows a lot of results that aren't found using only one search engine. As for the indepth summaries of the books, why not start working on it with me? I was thinking that the entry was about the bare minimum as far as Anita's series goes. I myself am quite happy with the series, and recommend it to all who I believe will enjoy it. While the online reviews are shallow, I believe that one who has read the series more than once will be able to write a better revies that some one who has only read it once, and is not such a fan.
R343L, you do have a point on the "fawning" issue. They do seem to fawn over it a bit too much, ja? I only wish that we could have the same fan-base attempts at the Meredith Gentry series...--
Aeris of Iniquity 01:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
It takes about 10 minutes on Google to find several different review sites that all tell more or less the same story: The series starts strong, but bogs down in its latter third due to a decrease in characterization in favor of sex, gore, sex, wish fulfillment, sex, sex, angsty whining, and sex. It is not difficult at all to find a review of say, Narcissus in Chains, in which the critic pleads for a return to the charm and wit of the earlier books and wonders why it all went so very, very wrong. Of course opinions do differ, and these views shouldn't be presented as fact, but they are not by any stretch of the imagination an insignificant part of the way the series has come to be viewed by much of the fanbase of particular niche of fiction. I think it is a perfectly appropriate addition to this page to state that many fans (and I include myself in this group) were disappointed by direction the books took around book 8 and 9, and state the perceived faults of the later installments. That wouldn't be the article itself making a value judgment, it would just be noting that many people did.
Ross Taben 04:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
(these : : : spaces are getting a little absurd, so I'm just going to reset the clock, so to speak)
In a nutshell, aesthetic absolutism is the belief that works of art, such as literature, can be judged objectively. While opinion will always have an important place in the appreciation of the arts, there are certain objective measures by which these things can be judged to be better or worse in several ways. One of the classic examples to illustrate this is a person’s preference for olives. Let’s say you like black olives the best. Well, that’s fine, and there is no disputing that such a thing may be true, and it can’t really be said that the taste of a black olive is better or worse than a green olive, because that is a subjective judgment. However, the nutritional qualities of black olives and green olives are different from each other, and those can be measured objectively, so it is quite possible to say that this kind or that kind is better for you, and you would be better off if you learned to enjoy it over the other kind because of those health benefits.
The same is true of literature. Nobody can deny the enjoyment you get out of reading an Anita Blake book from the later half of the series (this would be the "taste"), but there are objective measures by which is just doesn’t stack up to well against other books, even other ones from earlier in the same series (and this is the "nutrition").
This concept is important in the arts, because without it, nobody can make any claim of quality whatsoever. If everything is just opinion, then nothing can be good, and nothing can be bad, and suddenly the world is a very boring and intellectually desolate place. Any book, written by anybody, is just as good as the next one. And any song is just as good as any other. Essentially, since everybody’s opinion not only can’t be wrong, they can’t be right either because they have no connection to reality and are in fact meaningless babble. Clearly this is a horrifying idea for literature majors like myself.
However, that’s all sort of beside the point because nobody that I can find has ever really done a serious intellectual study of the Anita Blake series, and I’d be surprised if anyone ever did, so we won’t be able to cite some Stanford paper about which part of the series is better to back up a judgment that we might put in this page. Because of that, I don’t suggest we actually say “the last 4 books are crap”, but rather “there is a significant number of people who used to like this series that think the last 4 books are crap, though this is by no means a universal opinion” or something to that effect. Ross Taben 09:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Just to add my tuppence, I have read the entire series up to Jason, including Strange Candy and the three smaller pieces (Beauty, Dancing, Shutdown); and the worst of all IS Danse Macabre. As long as enough Crime Noir is involved, I'm just fine with the changes Ms. Hamilton has made so far. -- 92.226.149.31 ( talk) 12:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that as a member of her forum, the rights have been optioned by Mr. Alexander's company, but there has been no plans to put it into production. The series is NOT in production and Ms. Hamilton has not been asked to write a script: the script writing is merely wishful thinking on her part at the moment.
— unsigned post from 142.157.198.240 at 22:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Er, vampires and supernatural beings exist. Ok. Now, let's get an overall view of what happens in the series. Unless these books are less developed than Goosebumps, a single paragraph should not be the only main-page content on the plot. 69.175.87.236 02:37, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Would it make sense to move the "Sex and Change in the Anita Blake Series" section from the Laurell K. Hamilton entry to this page, perhaps as part of a discussion of plots? JenKilmer 19:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Is this a series of books? As in, a continuous story where I need to read the books in order to understand things or is each book a seperate story in the Anita Blake universe? 132.203.54.180 21:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
If you want published criticism, it's easy enough to find if you have a college that allows access to Galileo. For example, here's a quote from Magil Book Reviews on Cerulean Sins, reviewer named Kelly Rothenberg:
"The majority of Cerulean Sins is about Blake dealing with this lust, which makes Hamilton's novel come across more as erotica than anything else (in earlier books, Blake's jobs as a zombie animator and police assistant were the primary focus). The serial killings, supposedly the most graphic crime scenes Blake has ever encountered, are detailed as a secondary subplot that is quickly resolved at the end [...] Hamilton's Anita Blake stories are frequently suspenseful and fun to read. Cerulean Sins, though, is not one of her better novels."
Image:AnitaGP 01 cvrB.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot ( talk) 18:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Noticed there wasn't yet an article for Affliction, so I went ahead and wrote one. Inviting anybody who watches this page to help expand it; it needs a cover image and possibly a few more references. PaintedCarpet ( talk) 15:50, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
For The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, there is a table of the books where it says when each book was published as hardcover and when as paperback and gives the respective ISBN-13. I would like to suggest such a table for the Anita Blake series as well.-- 92.226.149.31 ( talk) 12:18, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 18 January 2022).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 10:05, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Types of mythological or fantastic beings in contemporary fiction is a page of, well, fantasy works (movie, TV, written, whatever) and the assorted mythological and/or fantastic critters they contain. This series would qualify. Anyone care to add it? Tamtrible ( talk) 18:19, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Anita Blake mythology article was blanked on 2024-01-01 and that title now redirects to Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. The contents of the former article are available in the redirect's history; for the discussion at that location, see the redirect's talk page. |
The Jean-Claude (character) article was blanked on 2024-01-02 and that title now redirects to Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. The contents of the former article are available in the redirect's history; for the discussion at that location, see the redirect's talk page. |
Perhaps someone could include commentary on the significant decline of quality of these books over the course of the series?
Yes, in fact I would hugely disagree. I would say that if anything, the books have gotten better. Xinoph 17:16, September 4, 2005 (UTC)
Yea Gods.
Please, please do not say "if you don't like it, don't read it". It's not the attitude that any of us.. "critics" lets say, agree with. Most of us absolutely love the first few books. However, we think there is definitely a decline in the plot/characterisation as the series moves on. We KNOW that LKH can write better, and we simply don't understand why she doesn't (there's also miscellaneous stuff about her blog, but I digress). If not a section on the "quality decline" perhaps a section on the development of fan views.
It occurred to me that a wiki page about a very popular series of novels should probably have more than a bare description of characters and the books in it. For instance, a description of conflicts or themes in the books might be in order. However, that seems like something that should come from reference to literary criticism. E.g. One might reference a critique of the novels' attempt to explore the issue of what makes someone human (the later repeated notion that Anita is no longer sure what is human or not). Or also, some description as to why (presumably from critics) the series is popular.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any easily (any google searches seem to only turn up review pages on commercial sites). Is someone else perhaps better at this kind of search? If I was near a university, I would do a lit search, although the odds seem slim that the books have been reviewed in anything but things like the nytimes or such. Most everything I can find (such as the "editorial reviews" on amazon) are pretty much very shallow or just fawning ("best blake yet!" type comments)
R343L 14:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
If you use Copernic Agent Professional, like I have on my home computer, it actually shows a lot of results that aren't found using only one search engine. As for the indepth summaries of the books, why not start working on it with me? I was thinking that the entry was about the bare minimum as far as Anita's series goes. I myself am quite happy with the series, and recommend it to all who I believe will enjoy it. While the online reviews are shallow, I believe that one who has read the series more than once will be able to write a better revies that some one who has only read it once, and is not such a fan.
R343L, you do have a point on the "fawning" issue. They do seem to fawn over it a bit too much, ja? I only wish that we could have the same fan-base attempts at the Meredith Gentry series...--
Aeris of Iniquity 01:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
It takes about 10 minutes on Google to find several different review sites that all tell more or less the same story: The series starts strong, but bogs down in its latter third due to a decrease in characterization in favor of sex, gore, sex, wish fulfillment, sex, sex, angsty whining, and sex. It is not difficult at all to find a review of say, Narcissus in Chains, in which the critic pleads for a return to the charm and wit of the earlier books and wonders why it all went so very, very wrong. Of course opinions do differ, and these views shouldn't be presented as fact, but they are not by any stretch of the imagination an insignificant part of the way the series has come to be viewed by much of the fanbase of particular niche of fiction. I think it is a perfectly appropriate addition to this page to state that many fans (and I include myself in this group) were disappointed by direction the books took around book 8 and 9, and state the perceived faults of the later installments. That wouldn't be the article itself making a value judgment, it would just be noting that many people did.
Ross Taben 04:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
(these : : : spaces are getting a little absurd, so I'm just going to reset the clock, so to speak)
In a nutshell, aesthetic absolutism is the belief that works of art, such as literature, can be judged objectively. While opinion will always have an important place in the appreciation of the arts, there are certain objective measures by which these things can be judged to be better or worse in several ways. One of the classic examples to illustrate this is a person’s preference for olives. Let’s say you like black olives the best. Well, that’s fine, and there is no disputing that such a thing may be true, and it can’t really be said that the taste of a black olive is better or worse than a green olive, because that is a subjective judgment. However, the nutritional qualities of black olives and green olives are different from each other, and those can be measured objectively, so it is quite possible to say that this kind or that kind is better for you, and you would be better off if you learned to enjoy it over the other kind because of those health benefits.
The same is true of literature. Nobody can deny the enjoyment you get out of reading an Anita Blake book from the later half of the series (this would be the "taste"), but there are objective measures by which is just doesn’t stack up to well against other books, even other ones from earlier in the same series (and this is the "nutrition").
This concept is important in the arts, because without it, nobody can make any claim of quality whatsoever. If everything is just opinion, then nothing can be good, and nothing can be bad, and suddenly the world is a very boring and intellectually desolate place. Any book, written by anybody, is just as good as the next one. And any song is just as good as any other. Essentially, since everybody’s opinion not only can’t be wrong, they can’t be right either because they have no connection to reality and are in fact meaningless babble. Clearly this is a horrifying idea for literature majors like myself.
However, that’s all sort of beside the point because nobody that I can find has ever really done a serious intellectual study of the Anita Blake series, and I’d be surprised if anyone ever did, so we won’t be able to cite some Stanford paper about which part of the series is better to back up a judgment that we might put in this page. Because of that, I don’t suggest we actually say “the last 4 books are crap”, but rather “there is a significant number of people who used to like this series that think the last 4 books are crap, though this is by no means a universal opinion” or something to that effect. Ross Taben 09:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
Just to add my tuppence, I have read the entire series up to Jason, including Strange Candy and the three smaller pieces (Beauty, Dancing, Shutdown); and the worst of all IS Danse Macabre. As long as enough Crime Noir is involved, I'm just fine with the changes Ms. Hamilton has made so far. -- 92.226.149.31 ( talk) 12:12, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
I'd like to point out that as a member of her forum, the rights have been optioned by Mr. Alexander's company, but there has been no plans to put it into production. The series is NOT in production and Ms. Hamilton has not been asked to write a script: the script writing is merely wishful thinking on her part at the moment.
— unsigned post from 142.157.198.240 at 22:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Er, vampires and supernatural beings exist. Ok. Now, let's get an overall view of what happens in the series. Unless these books are less developed than Goosebumps, a single paragraph should not be the only main-page content on the plot. 69.175.87.236 02:37, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Would it make sense to move the "Sex and Change in the Anita Blake Series" section from the Laurell K. Hamilton entry to this page, perhaps as part of a discussion of plots? JenKilmer 19:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Is this a series of books? As in, a continuous story where I need to read the books in order to understand things or is each book a seperate story in the Anita Blake universe? 132.203.54.180 21:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
If you want published criticism, it's easy enough to find if you have a college that allows access to Galileo. For example, here's a quote from Magil Book Reviews on Cerulean Sins, reviewer named Kelly Rothenberg:
"The majority of Cerulean Sins is about Blake dealing with this lust, which makes Hamilton's novel come across more as erotica than anything else (in earlier books, Blake's jobs as a zombie animator and police assistant were the primary focus). The serial killings, supposedly the most graphic crime scenes Blake has ever encountered, are detailed as a secondary subplot that is quickly resolved at the end [...] Hamilton's Anita Blake stories are frequently suspenseful and fun to read. Cerulean Sins, though, is not one of her better novels."
Image:AnitaGP 01 cvrB.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot ( talk) 18:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Noticed there wasn't yet an article for Affliction, so I went ahead and wrote one. Inviting anybody who watches this page to help expand it; it needs a cover image and possibly a few more references. PaintedCarpet ( talk) 15:50, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
For The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, there is a table of the books where it says when each book was published as hardcover and when as paperback and gives the respective ISBN-13. I would like to suggest such a table for the Anita Blake series as well.-- 92.226.149.31 ( talk) 12:18, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 18 January 2022).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 10:05, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Types of mythological or fantastic beings in contemporary fiction is a page of, well, fantasy works (movie, TV, written, whatever) and the assorted mythological and/or fantastic critters they contain. This series would qualify. Anyone care to add it? Tamtrible ( talk) 18:19, 9 September 2017 (UTC)