Sookie Stackhouse vs. Anita Blake
Over the weekend, I started reading the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries by Charlaine Harris. (These are the books upon which the HBO TV show True Blood is based, but I think the books are better than the show — different, but in a good way.)
I won’t do an in-depth book review on the series right now, as I’m still in the midst of reading it. However, this series really has me thinking about one thing writing-wise, and I wanted to get some thoughts about that down while they are still fresh.
Reading this series, really got me thinking about what makes a good character.
It’s fairly inevitable that the Sookie Stackhouse series would get compared to the Anita Blake series written by Laurel K. Hamilton. They are both urban fantasy. Both include significant vampire and werewolf/shape shipfter action. Both involve vampires “coming out” as legal citizens of the United States. Both have strong female protagonists with supernatural abilities of their own, and both women have significant romantic relationships with other supernaturals over the course of the series.
Despite all these similarities, I find myself heartily preferring the Sookie Stackhouse books to the Anita Blake books — both the books themselves and the heroine. I started asking myself why this was, and when it gets down to it, it’s all about the main character. (There will be some points in this post that would be considered spoilerish if you have not read the series, but I’ll try not to get too specific.)
I read a lot of the Anita Blake books when I first discovered the series, and I really enjoyed it at first. However, as the series continued, my enjoyment in it began to wane. The focus of the series seemed to me to shift in a direction that just wasn’t to my personal taste. Even if you have not read the Anita Blake series, you may have heard it described as “erotic” or “sexy.” At the beginning, though there was a lot of sexual tension and romance, it wasn’t the focus — the focus was more on the plots and mysteries, as well as on Anita’s life. But, by the point where I finally gave up the series, it felt to me like the plot in the books was merely an excuse to allow Anita to have crazy supernatural sex with a huge harem of guys — the love triangle beween Anita, vampire Jean-Claude, and werewolfe Richard widened to include more vampires, more shifters (especially the werepanthers), and others.
My other problem came with Anita herself. Over the course of the novels (I gave up the series after reading Narcissus in Chains), she became more and more powerful — to, what seemed to me, an absurd degree. In the beginning, Anita was a normal woman who just happened to be an necromancer. She also had trained herself physically to be a vampire hunter. As the series went on, she gathered more and more powers and titles to add to her burgeoning collection — lupa of the werewolf pack, part of a triumverate of power with Jean Claude and Richard, alpha of the werepanther pack, etc., etc. And then she suddenly developed Jean Claude’s talent of drawing energy from sex (and getting weaker if she didn’t get said sex), which made things even crazier for her personally and for her huge amount of powers.
I liked Anita when she was a normal person with one significant power and some skills that she’d trained into herself by working hard. I didn’t like it when suddenly she was all-powerful.
Sookie Stackhouse starts out her series similar to Anita (I’m currently in the middle of Definitely Dead). She’s a normal girl, a barmaid in a restaurant, but she has one supernatural power to deal with. She’s a telepath. Then she meets Bill the vampire and discovers that she can’t read vampire minds — she is immediately intrigued because it is restful for her to be around Bill — she doesn’t constantly have to fight against being bombarded by stray thoughts.
Through her association with Bill, Sookie is introduced to the supernatural world (both the world of the recently legalized vampires and still underground supernatural creatures, like Weres, shifters, and fairies), and becomes embroiled in supernatural affairs.
Like Anita, Sookie is given some enhanced powers — the difference is, they don’t last. In Sookie’s world, humans gain power from drinking vampire blood — it enhances their strength and speed, their looks, and other abilities. However, the effect is temporary, based on how much she’s had and how old the vampire in question was. So, she has these abilities, but only for a while. Other than that, she never adds to her supernatural skills, though, over time, she does learn how to control her telepathy better and use it in new (and believable) ways, such as projecting thoughts to other telepaths (but not to regular Joes).
Also like Anita, Sookie becomes greatly in demand in the supernatural world. However, unlike Anita, the supernatural world doesn’t fall at Sookie’s feet. She’s dragged into it (or sometimes rushes into it head first), but she has to work for the acceptance that she gets there (and she is not always accepted).
For example, Sookie meets a werewolf named Alcide and they are attracted to each other. However, (1) they do not hop immediately into bed together and (2) Sookie does not gain any type of leadership position in his pack. She is named a “friend of the pack,” but that is because she alerts them to a problem in their territory and helps out a pack member who gets hit by a car. In fact, despite dancing around the issue for a couple of books, Sookie and Alcide never actually have a relationship. They are interested in each other, but each has a load of personal baggage (in the form of exes and other issues) that gets in the way, and the relationship is never even consumated.
Sookie does have a relationship with vampire Bill, and a couple of other supernatural guys are interested in her, but the interest is believable. I never wonder why all the guys are so taken with Sookie (like I did with Anita), and there are plenty of guys in the series who aren’t actually taken with her. Also, every supernatural guy Sookie meets does not automatically become her bedmate.
The difference between Antia and Sookie, I’ve decided, is the Mary Sue phenomenon. If you haven’t heard of a Mary Sue, this is a term that came from fanfiction writers. A Mary Sue is a character written into a story about an existing universe (Buffy the Vampire Slayer was always my fanfiction neighborhood of choice) who basically represents the author’s wish fullfillment. This character is instantly loved and embraced by the main characters of the existing universe — all the guys fall for her and all the girls want to be her best friend. Everything a Mary Sue does comes easy for him/her, and she gets everything that she wants in the end. And any “weakness” a Mary Sue has is usually a strength in disguise and never gives her much trouble.
As the series progressed, Anita felt more and more to me like a Mary Sue. Everything came too easily for her, too many guys liked her (without enough reason) and liked her so much that she was able to treat them like crap and they would still give her whatever she wanted. Her powers got exponentially stronger to an insane degree, and even her weaknesses just don’t seem that bad.
Sookie, however, doesn’t feel like a Mary Sue to me. She feels like a real, vibrant character of her own accord. She’s strong, but she has real weaknesses. She might have a selection of cute guys to be interested in, but she doesn’t get to have all of them. And the relationshpis she does have include real life issues and don’t always work out. She also has issues in her life that don’t magically get solved — like money problems, problems with her brother, and problems with the law. Sometimes she will find ways around them — like earning a significant sum of money using her house as a hide-out for a vampire on the run — but inevitably something will happen to set things back again — like a house fire resulting in a huge expenditure setting her finances back to ground zero.
The writing lesson I’m taking away from all this debate is a reminder of just how important characters are to a story. Without characters the reader can really invest in, they are more likely to stop reading (like I did with Anita Blake, whom I could no longer relate to). But a character a reader really likes becomes an old friend that they want to visit in every subsequent novel (like Sookie is for me — at least so far, I’ve got a few more books left to read).
Part of making characters that readers will like and identify with, in my opinion, is being willing to be hard on them. They need real obstacles to overcome. You can’t be too easy on your characters or there is no real struggle for them to go through and suddenly your character is a Mary Sue.
When I first started writing, I was way too nice to my characters, and the stories suffered for it. I still struggle with that, but I’m becoming much less benevolent to my characters as I mature as a writer.
If you enjoy urban fantasy and murder mysteries, I would definitely give the Sookie Stackhouse novels a chance. And if you like True Blood, I think that you’ll enjoy the books, as well.
Happy reading, watching, and writing, y’all!
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That’s sad you stopped with Anita at Narcissus in Chains. Yeah, LKH introduces the ardeur in that novel, but she fleshes it out with NiC, Cerulean Sins and Incubus Dreams and then it gets back to normal. Not to say the sex stuff isn’t there, but it’s not as important.
I’m always terrified of accidentally created a Mary Sue (or is it Larry Stu?) and not realizing it.
Alex — I always heard Harry Stu for boys.
Jackie — Maybe I’ll give Anita another try someday. It just got to the point where I was skimming over more pages looking for the next plot point than actually reading and enjoying. Anita rocked back in the first two or three novels of the series.
I’m checking out the book, and the series. Thanks for the suggestion.
I think you’ll really like it, VA! At some point, you would be welcome to borrow my copies (they are on semi-permanent loan from my friend in California), but I just loaned them to my mom. I’ll let you know when I have them back, though.
Good posts, I read all the Sookie Stackhouse Collection right after the Twilight Series. I am waiting for my next Sookie fix in the mail “Dead and Gone” the 9th book…these books are awesome! I finished up the Rachel Morgan Series by Kim Harrison…highly recommend them so well written and great characters! Now I am desperate for a new series so I have started Anitia Blake - Laurel K Hamilton. Any recommendations?
Shelley — I’ll have to check out the Rachel Morgan series. Sounds good!
Good luck with Anita Blake. I really enjoyed the first few books, but it became too much for me after a while.
If you enjoyed Twilight and would be interested in some other Y/A vampire books, I really enjoyed the House of Night series by P.C. Cast and the Vampire Academy books by Richelle Mead. I think I wrote a blog post here about them somewhere…
Also, I really love the Women of Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong. There are eight or so in the adult series, and she just wrote the first two in a Y/A series set in the same ‘verse. They have vampires, werewolves, witches, half-demons, necromancers, ghosts, and more. It’s a really compelling world with a lot of depth. My favorite character is Elena — the only female werewolf. She rocks!
I spent about 5 weeks reading all of the anita blake and Merry Gentry books of Laurell K Hamilton and now started reading the sookie stackhouse series. I havent seen true blood though but for reading the anita blake books first, i cant help but be prejudiced about the sookie stackhouse books…
The world they live in is too similar and it’s inevitable for me to start comparing. I do agree with you that exactly right in Narcissus in chains I wanted to stop reading the books. I didn’t though and after some 3 books of *ahem* sexcapades, the Harlequin and Blood Noir is really a great improvment! It was such a relief when Ms Hamilton decided to skip the sex sessions by just making anita lose memory so she wont get too detailed.
Anyway, I just finished Dead before Dawn but I have to say, compared to Guilty pleasures, the latter is more favorable to me! You were right, I liked anita when she was more uncomplicated and with no ardeur. Less sex and more plot but I just cant get over the fact that those two authors have the same line of imagination to think up a very similar story in an almost similar world with the same first person point of view.
By the way, i tried to read LA Bank’s book, MInion. It’s about a vampire huntress too but I havent got the chance to get past 10 chapters then I switched to sookie. Is the books worth it to finish? It was kinda slow for me…
Nice to meet you hatersol. Thanks for the comment.
I’ve yet to read any L.A. Banks, but I’ve always been interested to. If you pick the book up again and decide if it’s worth reading, you’ll have to let me know!
I do enjoy a lot of the fast-paced Y/A vampire fiction. The Twilight series, of course, but even more so, I like the Vampire Academy series and the House of Night series. You have to put up with a little (or a lot, LOL, especially in the case of Twilight) teen angst, but I enjoyed them.
It is interesting how similar the worlds are in the Sookie and Anita books. They each have their own point of view and feel unique when you get into them, but on the surface, they seem the same. Maybe they were both conceived during the first flush of popularity for urban fantasy?
I love both series of books for different reasons.I started skipping threw the Anita Blake books at times in mid series due to the sex dependency issues of Anita in them.Still I’ve read them all.But I can not help and wonder were the story and charters are going to or what the writer has in store for them ect ect..So far I’m over halfway threw the newest book and Anita has not had sex yet so it reads like the first few books of the series.
I agree that the Sookie series is better than the Anita Blake series.
Even though I know better, I keep reading LKH’s series. In LKH’s other series, following Merry Gentry, the result is the same: solve the world’s problems with sex. I’m not shy about reading sexual scenes, but how many times can she rewrite the same stuff? It becomes boring and redundant after awhile. What happened to the plot?
However, I also agree that LKH’s writing found its original flavor in her latest book, but it still wasn’t enough to justify reading it… (and this isn’t even touching on her editor’s poor skills.)
Sookie’s stories are very easy, funny reads. Although I didn’t enjoy the “extra-special” bodyguard characters added at the vampire conference (you know who), I find the rest of the characters likable. I suppose we go through all of this because it’s difficult to find a sophisticated yet enticingly fun novel on the supernatural.
I love both the Sookie Stackhouse and Anita Blake Series. I got into Anita Blake about 4 years ago, and also got disinterested when trying to get through incubus dreams. I read the Twilight series about three times when someone suggested the Sookie Stackhouse series, which I fell in love with! After reading the whole series and back into the vampire novels, I started reading Anita Blake where I left off years ago. Her recent novels are really great, but I do prefer Sookie Stackhouse over Anita anyday!
Thanks everyone for all the great suggestions, I’m gonna check out some of these other vampire novels!
I agree with you on some points regarding the “Mary Sue” of Anita Blake. However, I do like that she’s edgier, has more self confidence and plays far less into the “woman’s role” that Sookie endures in the South. (And living in the South, I know that is still very much part of the small-town culture.)
I also feel that for the first few pages of every book, Sookie/Charlaine is re-explaining all the issues that she has, which is necessary to a point, but that Sookie hasn’t grown as a person - it’s always the same issues.
Anywho…
For another YA Vampire series, The Vampire Diaries, by LJ Smith, are pretty good. I’ve heard they’re turning the series into a show on the CW this Fall. She’s also written some other book series: The Secret Circle (about a young coven of witches), The Forbidden Game (runes), Dark Visions (psychics). I read all of them in high school and enjoyed each for what they were.
James — I’m glad to hear the the Anita books are getting better again!
Ed — I’m with you on those body guard characters. They were quite strange and seemed too different from the more “normal” supernaturals the rest of her world is populated by. I hope we don’t see them again too soon — or, if we do, I hope she finds some way to mesh them in better.
Katie — Cool! I hope you enjoy those books!
Darcey — That’s an interesting point about Sookie and the woman’s role. I did like the take-charge attitude that Anita had at the beginning of the series. It was like Buffy in BtVS — empowering. I loved all those LJ Smith books when I was a teenager. Dark Visions was my favorite! I’m exited about the new series this fall — I’m thinking of pulling out my old copies of the Vampire Diaries and rereading them before it starts to refresh my memory.
I just stumbled upon this to see if anyone made a comparison between these two series, and you have voiced exactly what I have been thinking. I’m glad I am not alone. Anita does not have enough flaws for me, she is definitely a “Mary Sue.” I also only just started the Anita Blake series, and maybe since I’m not that far into it I can’t say much, but I don’t like her as much as Sookie already.
I know a lot of people who posted before said they like her strong attitude, but seriously? She is too reckless and doesn’t think before doing anything, and I feel as if the author is tryin too hard to make her into a strong woman-type character. She’s starting to wise up as the book goes on, but she really needs to watch what she says–vampires are much darker creatures in this book than Sookie Stackhouse vampires.
Also, do you know which series came first? I was wondering if one somehow got the idea of vampires “coming out of the coffin” from the other.
I love Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse… I am very happy where both books are going!
*for those who are wondering Anita Blake series came out in the early 90’s around 92 or 94. and Sookie stackhouse came out in the early 2000’s