History Literature / AnitaBlake

** The were-hyenas are portrayed by Hamilton as having a pack structure similar to the wolves, but matriarchal in nature, with a dominant female leading a group of beta females and submissive males. That's precisely how real hyena groups work. This is the only time she perfectly matches the social structure of the lycanthrope type to the the real life animal.

* ButNotTooBlack: The most prominent African-American character, Vivian ([[SeriesContinuityError not Vanessa]]), is described to resemble "coffee with enough cream to make it almost white" with "pale, blue-grey eyes."
** Jamison Clarke, an African American animator, is described as a green-eyed redhead.
** Anita herself could qualify as a Mestizo version-though her ethnicity is continually touted throughout the books, she is paler than most Caucasoids. While it is worth noting she is only half Mexican while also half Anglo-Saxon, it's strange everyone generally makes a such fuss about her ethnicity and how she's so "exotic," when she isn't visibly Amerind and has very little cultural background. Note, however, that Latino people can be of any race.
*** Pretty much all characters who aren't white are described as being white in some shape or form. It's... noticeable.

# Crisom Death (2016)

* EverythingsBetterWithPenguins: Anita's favorite--and [[SecurityBlanket comfort]]--stuffed animal is a penguin, and her "comfort shirt" has penguins on it.

Then came the novel ''Narcissus in Chains'', which turned Anita into a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent living]] [[HornyDevils member of Belle Morte's line]]. Books after this one usually require Anita to sleep with her [[UnwantedHarem male harem]].

Anita is at her "day job" and meets up with a shady, suspicious character that she suspects is up to no good, who tries to hire her for something. Her unscrupulous, proudly [[GreyAndGrayMorality 'grey hat']] boss coerces her into taking the case, while Anita threatens him and the client with either quitting or doing them grievous bodily injury. Anita speaks with her various love interests. Anita is called to a crime scene by the RPIT squad (or other law enforcement, if she's traveling) for some gruesome crime scene that will turn out to be relevant to her own case later on. At some point, she'll need to raise a zombie for something; this may involve using her own blood as a sacrifice in replacement of her preferred (chicken). Anita tries to reconcile being a Christian with being a necromancer. The plot goes on for a while longer before Anita finds out that the person who hired her in the beginning is the real BigBad. She kills a bunch of vampires/monsters/people, overdoes her new magical ability, and wakes up in the hospital. In the later books, expect sex to be included somewhere, as Anita essentially becomes a [[HornyDevils succubus]].

* ChasteHero: Anita, until "The Killing Dance." Then after "Blue Moon" she was having sex with both Jean-Claude and Richard. After that it was [[UnwantedHarem no longer]] [[HornyDevils that way]].

* DearNegativeReader: TropeNamer.
* DepravedDwarf: Can you say 'Nicky Bako?'
* DeusSexMachina: in later books it's used and abused to no end.

* TheEighties: The earlier books are set there. As of ''Bullet'', it's modern day.
* EmotionEater: Some vampires, and Anita.

* GratuitousFrench: Jean-Claude and Asher are terribly guilty of this, as is Anita with the addition of the [[HornyDevils Ardeur]].

* HornyDevils: The ardeur forces Anita to have to feed on sex the way [[EmotionEater certain vampires do]], even though technically she isn't one.

* IKEAErotica
* [[ILoveYouBecauseICantControlYou I Love You Because I Can't Control You]]: Jean-Claude says essentially those exact words to Anita.

* [[LesbianVampire Lesbian/Bisexual Vampire]]: Belle Morte, who has lesbian vampire dream-sex with Anita. Also Mother of All Darkness.

* [[PoliticallyIncorrectHero Licensed Sexist]]: Anita

* MutilationInterrogation

* OneHourWorkWeek: After ''Narcissus in Chains'' Anita almost never goes to work at her supposed job at Animators, Inc. In the books prior to ''Narcissus in Chains'', she regularly went to work and got in fights with her mostly unethical boss Burt, but after [=NiC=], she pretty much just shows up once in a blue moon to argue with potential clients. In true form with the trope, we're told her zombie raising skills earn her bucket loads of cash so that's why she never has any money problems.

* [[HeWhoFightsMonsters She Who Fights Monsters]]: A big concern for Anita.

* {{Tsundere}}: Anita is Type A.

* TwoFaced: Asher

* VampireFiction

* WeHardlyKnewYe: [[spoiler:Phillip, Domino]]

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Despite the series' reputation for raunchiness, the vast vast majority of the sex--at least among the protagonists--is more tame than a lot of stuff you could see on the Magazine/{{Playboy}} channel. The bad guys, meanwhile, tend to have penchants for rape, snuff, pedophilia, or BDSM of a level that leaves the floor awash in blood.

* WriterOnBoard
* YouKeepUsingThatWord: 'Lycanthrope' comes from the Greek ''lykos'' for 'wolf', and ''anthropos'' for 'human'. It's a little bizarre to have it used for all manner of were-species.

* FantasticRacism: There is considerable prejudice against both vampires and weres, and in some cases between lineages of vampires and species of lyncathropes (for example, werewolves regard wererats as inferior, some weretigers aren't too fond of any other species or even [[UpToEleven those fellow weretigers who aren't a purebred color]], etc). One character develops a near murderous prejudice against vampires when his son becomes engaged to one and being infected by lycanthropy will generally get you fired if you're a teacher or in the medical profession even though it's technically illegal to.

* KnifeNut: Anita isn't exactly nutty over her knives, but she sure likes them. She usually wears two silver-and-steel-alloy knives in shoulder sheaths, even with evening gowns; in later books she adds a machete-like weapon on her back.

* RapunzelHair: Several, but most notably Nathaniel of the ankle-length hair.

* AdultFear: A number of the recurring horror themes.
** The series has an example of this in the first book, ''Guilty Pleasures''. Anita is hopping through, having a genuine WorthyOpponent moment with Jean-Claude, who can actually [[MindControl roll]] her, if briefly. Then she meets [[BigBad Nikolaos]]. Nikolaos doesn't try to convince Anita that she's seeing something she isn't. She tries to convince Anita that she ''is'' some''one'' she isn't. And Anita is conscious enough to realize what's happening, but not quite enough to stop it on her own. It's a boogeyman doing bad things, yeah...it's also someone putting you in a position where even someone who was as calm as Anita was incapable of fighting back, and has no reason to expect help. Oh, and Nikolaos looks like a child, and was springing between innocent and BMovie villain before that.
** The daughters of a family returning after dying as vampires.

* SexEqualsLove: Anita insists that she truly loves each and every man she has sex with. [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment That is all]]
** This has not been the case since Skin Trade.

The spoiler tags below are sporadic. Be warned.

As ''Literature/MerryGentry'' now has its own page, please put applicable tropes there.

* ContemptibleCover:
** The early ones, in which the books were actually about murders, necromancy, supernatural politics and so on. Later, of course, the covers became a perfectly accurate forecast of their content.
** Made worse by the most recent releases that just feature a sexy, half-naked woman staring up at the reader with no indication of supernatural anything. The former books would usually have some supernatural elements on the cover--a wolf, a creepy tree, gravestones, a full moon, etc--but those went out the window as the plot turned to focus more on sex.
** Hell, some of the latest covers imply these books are novelizations of the ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'' series.

* ThePornomancer

* BiggerIsBetterInBed: [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment Let's just say there are a lot of cases of this and leave it at that]].

** Anita can have sex with just about anyone to slake the ardeur, but none of the men can have sex with each other, only Anita. This is later changed due to Anita's [[SuddenlySexuality sudden bisexual]] feelings and she enjoys watching all the guys in her harem get it on with each other while she watches and has one of them servicing her as well.

* SuddenlySexuality:
** Richard Zeeman is straight as an arrow, to the point of borderline homophobic, and originally, it was an issue that he tried to learn to deal with as he ascended in the pack. After his CharacterDevelopment, he's open to sharing a woman (Anita, Envy, and as of Crimson Dreams, Angel) with at least Jean-Claude, and has a BDSM dynamic with Asher where his dominance is centered on how, while he'll fulfill Asher's pain needs, he won't give him sexual contact, and denying him that is a big part of the dominance. Not precisely bisexuality, but certainly a comfort level that isn't entirely straight.
** Damian gets a turned-bi plotline in ''Crimson Dreams'', although he, like Micah, seems to be more "Nathaniel is my exception" than anything.
** Sylvie dismisses the option of gaining power by dating Richard [[spoiler:rather than killing him]], because she "doesn't do men". She later refuses to get close to Anita raising her arduer, because she "doesn't do women". In between, her girlfriend is referenced.
*** This looked like a copy-edit fail: i.e., the copy-editor had not read the previous books and thus did not know that Sylvie most *definitely* does not do men, thus read the original sentence and "corrected" it to not doing "women". To the chagrin and occasionally lasting shame of many authors, copy-edit fails are not uncommon.
** And of course Anita herself [[spoiler: having sex with a woman]] in ''Bullet''. She has a few female lovers now, although given all the men she's tied to metaphysically, it's potentially justified. Each such link means you get a bit of the other person you're tied to; it's quite likely she picked up an attraction to women from one of her men - or even first female lover Jade as the bond formed.

* BiggerIsBetterInBed: [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment Let's just say there are a lot of cases of this and leave it at that]].

* SexEqualsLove: Anita insists that she truly loves each and every man she has sex with. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement That is all]]

* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: Anita is rules the vampires and all the local "were" groups, directly or indirectly. She mostly does this through terror, threatening those who get on the wrong side of her with cold-blooded murder with a sprinkling of physical fighting, rape, torture and seducing opposing leaders.

* UrbanFantasy: Laurel K. Hamilton credits herself with "inventing" the genre. While certainly one of the TropeCodifier[=s=], the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' beat her to the punch by a narrow margin (calling their modern-setting-classic-monster milleux "GothicPunk"). Arguably, so did Creator/Joss Whedon.[[labelnote:note]] The Old World of Darkness started with ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' in 1991, which included references to other creatures of the night, many of which would be fleshed out in later gamelines. ''Film/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' (the film) came out in 1992, though most of the Urban Fantasy trappings didn't arrive until the series in 1996. ''Guilty Pleasures'', the first Anita Blake novel, was published in 1993. It's pretty clear none of these creators were directly inspired by one another, rather all charting different paths to drag the classic horror monsters kicking and screaming into the new millenium.[[/labelnote]]

* UrbanFantasy: Laurel K. Hamilton credits herself with "inventing" the genre. While certainly one of the TropeCodifier[=s=], the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' beat her to the punch by a narrow margin (calling their modern-setting-classic-monster milleux "Gothic Punk"). Arguably, so did [[Film/BuffyTheVampireSlayer Joss Whedon]].[[labelnote:note]] The Old World of Darkness started with ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' in 1991, which included references to other creatures of the night, many of which would be fleshed out in later gamelines. ''Buffy: The Vampire Slayer'' (the film) came out in 1992, though most of the Urban Fantasy trappings didn't arrive until the series in 1996. ''Guilty Pleasures'', the first Anita Blake novel, was published in 1993. It's pretty clear none of these creators were directly inspired by one another, rather all charting different paths to drag the classic horror monsters kicking and screaming into the new millenium.[[/labelnote]]