Book Club: Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake #1)

by Laurell K. Hamilton

Genre: Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy

Setting is the silent character in the cast. In Laurell K. Hamilton's Guilty Pleasures, which is the beginning of the “Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter” series, the chosen setting is that of St. Louis, Missouri, in an alternate history where vampirism, lycanthropy, and voodoo are all real working pieces of American society, complete with court cases and bureaucracy to back it all up. However, the setting is never truly established as a character. It is never made clear why this story could have only happened in St. Louis.

     Granted, there are slight touches of description, such as the summer heat and humidity, descriptions of streets that I'm sure actually exist, an obligatory mention of the Arch, but having never visited St. Louis personally, I never really felt like I was in St. Louis.

     As Hamilton puts forth in her alternate history of the country, vampires are given civil rights due to specific court cases, as the existence of the undead brings up many legal questions pertaining to probate law, primarily. However, they are established as citizens of the United States with the ability to own property, vote, etc. Essentially, they can live wherever they can afford to. While it is understandable that vampires settle in cities (for better access to “food”), Hamilton posits that St. Louis makes an ideal location for a “mainstream” vampire community, namely one which is settled and assimilated into society. However, it is simply given as a given, there is no real justification. The question of “why do vampires prefer sweltering heat, and if they do, why wasn't this placed in Los Angeles?” is raised, and never truly answered. That Hamilton herself lives in St. Louis can be given as a reason, but if anything, it only places a greater burden on the author make the setting more believable, as well as its place in the story.

     It is also suggested in the novel that the alternate St. Louis takes a sort of pride in its vampire community, though the reasoning is never spelled out, though it is hinted that it's more of their ability to be a tourist attraction (as they all settle in a specific neighborhood referred to as “The District”, easily accessible by the public) than anything else. There's also suggestions that the vampire community is seen as less threatening to white middle-class America than communities in other cities due to their ability to assimilate and mimic mainstream cultures with churches and nightclubs and a lot of good P.R., but still, that fails to establish how St. Louis would be unique in that level of tolerance and acceptance. If mainstream mimicry was all that was needed, why not the suburbs of Philadelphia or Grosse Point outside of Detroit? If weather is an issue, why not Austin, Texas?

     While the novel is primarily character and conflict driven rather than setting driven, the setting must still be viable and real. It's the world that the characters inhabit and live in, and where they choose to live should be justified.

     Reading this novel made me realize that the setting must be well-established even in a primarily character driven story. Though my novel is not set in a specific real world location, The City is still an urban area, and it should be established that the story that is being told could only be told in an urban area, possibly through mentions of greater tolerance or simply greater indifference in an urban area to the supernatural happenings that happen in plain sight of the public.

---

Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://vaughndemont.com/2019/02/07/book-club-guilty-pleasures/

---