This past week and a half also let me tackle books 22 and 23 in the 50 Book Challenge: Guilty Pleasures and The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton. These are books 1 and 2 of the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series of books, of which I've actually read the first six some seven or eight years ago and am re-reading now (as I think I have books 1-9 on my shelf. I get so many books that wait forever for me to read them) and were originally introduced to me by Chris' sister, J.
Like how Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a tv show pretty much defies being categorized in just one genre, the same goes for these books (I call them "hormancedy" myself) as they have a healthy dose of action, supernatural and natural horror, drama, and comedy. As for the quality of the writing, to bring in some more Buffy comparisons, they're about as good as an episode of Buffy: not a Joss or DrewG episode, but somewhere a little under, but still good, like say a Noxon scripted episode of Buffy.
Our protagonist is a supernaturally powered slayer of vampires with a wee girl's body. Language aside, there are themes and places that these books are able to go that Buffy couldn't, which makes the characters a little more human (and the main characters running through both of the first two books are better fleshed out in them than the main characters in Harry Potter were in seven books).
I recall reading somewhere that Hamilton also writes some porntastic supernatural romance novels, but I don't recollect the books in this series going to that extreme. If you're looking for a bit of light escapism with well-defined characters and plots, and think you can dig a good hormancedy, then you oughtta give these a try.
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