1155 ( )

I enjoyed the comic book half of it quite a bit, and the cliff notes side is useful if you're new to anita blake's 'verse. It's also incredibly, terribly, horribly repetitive and clearly no substitute for the book. It is not entirely necessary to revisit the plot of guilty pleasures from the perspective of every single character mentioned in the book. In fact, it's mind numbing and off-putting. ( )

I love the Guilty Pleasures Handbook included at the end of this prequel. It does a great job as a short world-building book. ( )

Written as a graphic novel this episode of the Anita Blake series is well drawn and starts out fairly exciting. Anita is called by the police to the scene of a young boy's death. It appears he has been killed by a vampire but the attack was so vicious that Anita feels it might have been a shapeshifter or a particularly evil vampire who tried to cover up his own work. She is assisted by her friend Manny as they search for the culprit among the apparently large vampire population in St. Louis. Unfortunately the story has no ending. I'm not sure if that is to make you want to read more of Ms. Hamilton's books but I was disappointed. If you are an Anita Blake fan there is an exhaustive recap of the author's books, characters and locations at the end of the book. I do believe this will be my first and last. ( )

My first one-star rating of the year, sigh. Though I was very tempted to give [b:Flirt|6726595|Flirt (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #18)|Laurell K. Hamilton|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tVY4qqRnL._SL75_.jpg|6922779] the same treatment, it got off with 2 stars.

The is the first graphic novel I've ever read and boy was it bad. This is supposed to be a prequel to [b:Guilty Pleasures|30281|Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #1)|Laurell K. Hamilton|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266454864s/30281.jpg|3349934]. It includes Anita and JC's first meeting which DOES NOT match the story given in the series. JC says that he fell in love with Anita at first sound, saw her gun and knew she could defend herself and wouldn't wait around to be rescued - only the meeting in The First Death doesn't live up to this description. She doesn't burst in guns blazing, she's actually quite timid for her. She also hunts with Edward for the first time though this is not their first meeting. This is when Anita is given the cross burn by human servants and Manny is retired by his wife after being tortured.

The First Death is not a work of art lovingly created. There is nothing new here, just a story cobbled together from the bits and pieces the author managed to remember.

However, the story is only half of the book. The second half is The Guilty Pleasures Handbook, basically a character and species index. I haven't read it, I just looked at the pictures, which brings me to the character representations. Poor JC, he doesn't look right. In a few of the illustrations he's like an Anita double just taller. He's too feminine, I imagined his hair to have a little less curl than Anita's and a little shorter because he doesn't start growing it out until he realises Anita likes long hair. There are two representations of Bert, one in the story and the other in the Handbook - the story one is better, the Handbook one makes him look ancient but very well dressed - mutton dressed as lamb. Other characters also seemed flawed in appearance like Nikolaos, she appears older than the child she's meant to be.

Overall, this is not a good book. Be smart, do not waste money on this. If you have to read it, borrow it, it will save you the hassle of trying to get rid of the thing on eBay. ( )