Yes, Anita is the UberMarySue.

Not only is she so beautiful that men can't help but lust after her (this is before she gest the sex powers), but she has a tragic past. Her mother was killed. When her father found out, he fell apart and she had to comfort him as he had emotionally abandoned her.

Her mother was Mexican (I think), and her father was WASP who married an icy blonde, and her step mother was always ashamed of Anita and so Anita barely knew love. And grew up feeling unloved. She got engaged at one point, to a nice WASPy boy, who only let her meet his family once (or maybe not at all), but he freaked out over her necromancer skills (at the time all she had) and her being not WASP and dumped her.

Tragic, tragic past.

It's funny because the supernatural aspects of the series sound pretty cool.

I may be making the books sound worse than they are.

I'm not sure that's possible.

I haven't read the past couple of books, because the Powers of the Month Club got so lame.

Has she slept with Edward the Hitman yet? Or is theirs still a Our Love of Killing Monsters is So Pure thing?

I'd suggest reading the first several books. Those are okay. I wouldn't read any further than 5 or 6.

Although Obsidian Butterfly is interesting because it focuses more on the secondary character Edward.

But I wouldn't suggest reading anything after that. Unless you fortify yourself with Fernet.

Oh, I have no interest in actually reading them. I'm sure there are better ways to spend my time.

One of the things I thought was interesting about the books was the issue of faith.

In the books if you don't have faith in a religious symbol, ritual or prayer it won't help you against a demon or a vampire.

She has to have sex every few hours or sex overwhelms her and she dies.

That's -- that way lies a great deal of soreness, and possibly a nice ice pack and motivation to learn some version of "spiritual" (no-touch) orgasm, you know? God, way to make sex boring.

In the books if you don't have faith in a religious symbol, ritual or prayer it won't help you against a demon or a vampire.

That's cool. I always wondered about the whole cross thing. It seemed meaningless if it didn't mean anything, you know?

In the books if you don't have faith in a religious symbol, ritual or prayer it won't help you against a demon or a vampire.

There's actually a pretty cool scene in one book of her needing backup from a crowd of people, and all sorts of prayers and chants broke out from several different religions. The Jewish hunters have symbols of Torahs they use to repel vampires.

So many good ideas, so much bad execution.

I just want to point out that connie, of this very thread, wrote the most screamingly funny (and yet dead-on portrayal of the Anita Blake-verse vampires) crossover between Buffy and the Anita Blake-verse.

Do you have a link, connie?