Ardeur, (edited) by Laurell K Hamilton
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
Another of the Benbella Smart Pop books, Ardeur is a collection of essays about the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels by Laurell K Hamilton. The coup for this particular book is that they have scored the author herself as “editor” of the essays, a role she shares with the more discreetly credited Leah Wilson. Hamilton contributes an ‘introduction’ to each of the essays, though they are really more personal reactions and in some cases justifications for the themes raised by the essayists. I felt the formatting let Hamilton down a little here, as her pieces often don’t make sense unless you’ve read the essay, or at least looked at the title and beginning - they would have been better off to put her pieces on the left facing page, or indeed after each essay instead of before.
I did like comparing Hamilton’s reactions to the essays, though, the funniest being the one paired with the “Dating the Monsters” essay where the writer attempts to place Anita Blake in the context of the romance genre, and Hamilton undercuts this by discussing how she naturally fails at writing romance, because she’s completely uneducated in the tropes and traditions of that genre. Once again, the essayist might have had more of a chance to get her point across if the Hamilton introduction came after rather than contradicting her before she got started!
I enjoyed the collection, as a whole, especially for the perspective it brought not only to the Anita Blake novels as a body of work, but also to the urban fantasy genre, which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I enjoyed the Nick Mamatas essay which lays out what Hamilton has achieved in her career - it was a good introduction into the book, though it’s an interesting choice as it means the collection begins by addressing the cultural cringe many have about Hamilton’s books. Surely the main audience for Ardeur would be fans of Anita Blake, rather than the more jaded readers who roll their eyes at all the vampire stripping and group smut?
Sex, understandably, is a major theme in this book, and I was surprised that none of the essays dealing with this made my inner feminist cranky and irritable. Heather Swain’s “Girls Gone Wild” is particularly good, with its comparisons to Bertha from Jane Eyre, and the discussion of the hypocrisy that often comes with the portrayal of women who enjoy sex. Hamilton’s own revelations on the topic build up a chronology of Anita’s sexual journey which is kind of integral to understanding the story told by the books.
Other favourite essays of mine were Melissa L Tatum’s “Trying the System” which discusses the complex legal situation of the society Blake lives in and the ethical ramifications of allowing vampires to have citizenship. Vera Nazarian’s “Death’s Got Your Back” dealt with Anita’s relationship with Edward, the character I’ve always been most interested in, as well as Olaf, the character who squicks me the most. Natasha Fondren’s “The Domestication of a Vampire Executioner” was perhaps the most insightful of the essays, dealing with Anita’s harem of male characters who could easily be ignored in favour of the two “rock star” lovers of Jean-Claude and Richard, who get most of the attention across the essays.
The only essay in fact which I actively disliked was about humour in the books - I found “Mom! There’s Something Dead Sucking on my Neck” by Cathy Clamp to be deeply annoying and kind of pointless. I’m sure there’s a great essay topic in the way that Hamilton uses snarky, morbid and indeed “cop” humour to undercut horror and violence, but this definitely wasn’t it.
What I did like about this book, apart from the general readability of the individual essays, is that it forms a cohesive whole. Most of the interesting facets of the Anita Blake story are covered and overlap each other from essay to essay - all of the characters get a certain amount of attention, and the different “eras” and most significant events and milestones of the series all seem to be dealt with. Whether Hamilton herself was actively involved in the editing or not, Ardeur ties together very tidily as an examination of the history of the Anita Blake novels, their place in the story of the urban fantasy genre, and why indeed they continue to be so popular. Anyone interested in the way ongoing series are sustained or expanded by their authors should find something of interest here.