Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 18

Harlequin--chapter four and five

Oh god I so did not want to do this. I did not want to do this. But it's here, so now I have to do this.

THREE HOURS AND some change later, I knew the movie was the new version of King Kong.

LKH fucked up and gave us something we can date. Which means I now get to go dig around and try to figure out what the blazing fuck the timeline on this series is.

There are three King Kong movies: 1933, 1976 and 2005. I'm going to assume, since we've mentioned DNA and computers a few times, that LKH means the 2005 version of King Kong. A little google-fu gives us this, and whoever put that chart together deserves fucking cookies for taking that kind of hit for us. According to the chart, Harlequin takes place in December of Year Four of this series. 05 Kong was released December 14th, 2005, which means that unless Nate bribed an art house to show a popcorn movie, this book could only take place in Dec 05, sometime after the fourteenth. If I wanted to be merciful I'd throw 06 in as a possibility, but I'm not merciful so I won't.

That means that this entire series, all of it prior to this book, takes place between July of 01 and Dec of 05.

That also means that I'm now supposed to believe that Circus of the Damned took place in October of 2001. The month after 9/11. And it never got mentioned (probably because Guilty Pleasures was published in fucking 1993.) However, that also means that Bullet, Hit List, Kiss the Dead and Affliction all take place in 2008, so it's not too late for LKH to stick to some timeline realism and start working in the Great Recession there.

My point? If you want to have a vaguely now-ish setting for a long running series, great. KEEP IT VAGUE. Don't mention new releases or say something like "X happened last week" because you can really, REALLY fuck your timeline over doing that once too often. Like LKH did just now.

 The noise died away and let me know I was alone. Long damn line. I tucked and buckled everything back into place. One of the things I liked about shoulder holsters as opposed to carrying on the hip is that you don’t run the risk of dumping the gun in the toilet. Inner pants holsters that don’t go through a belt loop are some of the most precarious for bathroom use. Guns, unlike pagers, do not float.

My dad stopped using a pager in the ninties. When he got his first cell phone. Which was roughly 2000-ish.

I'm kind of in awe of this, actually. We've finally gotten something that firmly pins the date for this series down to about three or four weeks, and now we get to see just how much of everything else LKH gets wrong.

...though I totally get the gun thing. Though guns will kind of dry out and pagers/cell phones/MP3 players...erm...won't.

 Anita comes out of the girl's room and discovers a box sitting on the counter with her name on it.

Her first assumption is that Nate snuck in and gave her something. Which, admittedly, I'll give is kind of natural, but given the LARGE number of people who have tried to kill her I'd probably call my boyfriend ON MY CELL PHONE (fuck, I had a cell phone in 05) and make sure that he gave me a thing, otherwise the thing is staying on the fucking counter until the fucking bomb squad has a go.

It's a mask. It's not from Nate. Anita doesn't figure this out until she gets out of the bathroom and he tells her he didn't give her anything.

Anita calls Jean Claude, who does not mention bomb squad (2005. 2005 and it's a random ass package. WHY WOULD YOU PICK THAT UP) but does start getting spooked when she tells him it held a white mask. He says, effectively, thank God it ain't red, now get your butt back here before somebody tries to kill it.

Anita badgers Jean Claude into telling her who the mystery giver is, and it's the Harlequin. This will probably be a mistake, given how literal cloak-and-dagger the Harlequin are in later books re: people using their name.

Meanwhile, two random humans recognise Nate as his stripper persona and go over to fangirl.  And of course these two RANDOM PEOPLE were at the club the night Anita was onstage, so they fangasm over Anita too.

I am so glad we're taking an interlude from actual plot things to fangirl over how well Anita preformed at a strip club three books ago. We totally needed this.

Random Male gets pushy and wants to know when Anita will be back at the club. At this point I'd be showing off my guns and being more than a little threatening because pushy asshole needs to go away, but Nate just smiles and gives him a fake name: Nicky.

That's precious and I'm not sure why.

Chapter five, Anita and Nate have a fight over the stage name and just about everything else. Understandable. Anita was kind of bagered into going on stage in the first place and I'd be melting into the floor if the same thing happened to me. On the other hand...that's Nate's job and he doesn't get a vacation.

Nate also drops that he's being stalked by Detective Arnet.

I love how NOBODY in this series treats being stalked as a big deal.

Arnet thinks that Nate is Anita's victim because the one night Anita was on stage she chained Nate up and whipped him with a prop. Which happens all the time at GP, apparently, but Arnet didn't know that. On the one hand, it's kind of cool that SOMEBODY in this fucking series is taking the posibility of abuse seriously. On the other hand...HOW BLEEDING STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO THINK A PORN ACT IS REAL?

And then Nate tells Anita that he gave her his porn name from back when he did movies.

PLEASE don't be talking about Rania and Marcus's snuff films, because that'd be just too freaking ick for words.

They keep fighting over how embarassed Anita is over dating a stripper, and Nate demands the next time she introduces him to people, she introduce him as an erotic dancer and not just a dancer. Okay, hunky dory, can we get back to the plot now?

He’d been out of “the life” since he was sixteen. He’d done porn, and I knew that. But I didn’t dwell on it. I assumed he’d stopped doing the movies about the same time he stopped hooking, but I wasn’t sure of that.

Oh sweet bleeding Jesus, that means that Nate's porn career was from before he was sixteen. Which means the name he gave her is...yeah, my brain just broke. MOVING ON.

I still remembered the woman. She’d been slender and elegant and old enough to be Nathaniel’s mother. Thanks to Jean-Claude I knew clothes, and she’d been wearing expensive ones. The jewelry had been understated, but very nice. She was one of those women who headed charity balls and sat on committees for the art museum, and she’d been hiring male prostitutes young enough to be her son.

Also: the purer-than-thou game is freaking old. YOU ARE DATING SIX MEN, ANITA. STOP IT AND GROW UP.

And oh goody, now we're infodumping about Richard.

He’d broken up with me when he couldn’t handle that I was more comfortable with the monsters than he was.

OR, he broke up with Anita when SHE RAPED HIM.

He was shopping for a completely human woman to replace me in the part of his life where he was a mild-mannered junior high science teacher.

See, here's another special batch of judgemental bullshit. Maybe Richard is looking for a mentally healthy mate. Maybe he's trying to find somebody who won't RAPE HIM so that he can have a healthy lifestyle. Maybe he hopes that by dating a normal person he can pull back from Jean Claude's rape-a-thon lifestyle and Anita's continual abuse. But because it's not Anita, it's got to be bad bad evil evil evil. Because GOD FORBID you try to seek out a safe and healthy lifestyle when aspects of your life are nuts.

I cursed and braked too hard in the thin snow.

I've been to Missouri in December (Springfeild, not St. Louis, but still) "thin" is not the word I'd use to describe that snow. "Two Feet" is a little closer.

They're still arguing over Anita being embarissed by Nate. It continues until Nate drops an ultimatum: Tie him up and abuse him during sex, or else let him find someone else who will.

I think LKH fails to understand that BDSM sex is a game. Am I wrong in thinking that the word "abuse" should be NOWHERE NEAR the concept of consensual bondage?

And of course Anita freaks out over the idea of sharing Nate with somebody else. Because it's not like Nate and, say, Asher couldn't just book out a Thursday or anything.

The chapter ends with the dubious duo walking to the Circus, and Anita worrying about sharing Nate with another woman.

Because of course it'd be another woman.

Harlequin--chapter two-three

Anita calls Guilty Pleasures, only to find out that Jean Claude is on stage. She decides to listen in...which means we get to watch Jean Claude make out with a random customer. He compliments her on listening in on a feeding without getting Anita's own ardeur up and kicking.

The whole "Jean Claude feeds on his customers without their consent" thing still squicks me out. HE RAPES EVERYBODY WHO GOES INTO HIS CLUBS.

Anyhoo, he tells Anita he needs to feed off a few more, and then they can talk. Anita then thinks VERY HARD about the legal notice that Jean Claude has to put up outside his club, saying that basically if you set foot inside you've given him permission to do whatever to you, which is about as much informed consent as a con artist's pitch is full disclosure. It does not say "I'm going to feed on your sexual energy and leave you panting and craving my presence" and that means it's not saying enough.

You couldn’t use vamp powers to get sex.THAT IS WHAT JEAN CLAUDE DOES EVERY NIGHT.

Jean Claude finally calls her and tells her that he's aware Something is going on but he can't talk about it because it's vampire council-y...stuff. Anita realizes that Malcolm is 100 right, somebody IS framing his vamps and trying to get Anita and the other executioners to clean up so they don't have to.  Anita pushes for more info and Jean Claude tells her to butt out, pushing on the issue could get her killed.

Anita continues to push. Jean Claude tells her not to come over for a while, because she could push her way into his dreams and find out what the fuck is going on, and that would be a Very Bad Thing. Anita points out that with the warrents she's getting, she has to follow through otherwise she loses some of her privelges as a marshal. Jean Claude is basically "So what? You can usually manage to save these people" and brings up "our" Avery, which is a dude she saved a couple books ago that she refuses to sleep with because LKH can't think of a better plot than "Dude Courts Anita"

Also: It's Nate that Anita's going out with tonight, and Jean Claude wants it to go well because it's an anniversary celebration and if Anita will celebrate with Nate, that means it's open season and she has to celebrate with everybody.

“Spoken from the man who most often dresses me in fetish wear.”

I love how it's romantic that Jean Claude treats Anita like a fucking doll. End of chapter.

Next chapter: ANITA IS HAVING TROUBLE ADAPTING TO A POLY LIFESTYLE. I SAID THIS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED IT LAST BOOK.

Is there a reason female protagonists can't just be fucking happy in their relationships? You know, let the relationship be a source of fluffies and not conflict?

Nathanial wears a fedora. That's kind of priceless. Also, we get the usual "Ain't he pretty" routine, and apparently Nate can stuff his ankle length hair under his hat.

I have trouble stuffing back length hair under a hat. I call bullshit. And oh thank GOD LKH is listening to somebody about the bullshit character smells:

Sweet, clean, and underneath that the smell of vanilla. I knew now that it was only partially him, that some of that sweet scent was bath products and cologne, but the scent he wore didn’t smell so lusciously of vanilla on anyone else’s skin. One of those tricks of skin chemistry that changes the scent of the really good perfumes.

Nate smelling like vanilla has been the dumbest thing in the book, second only to his fucking hair. Now it's in the open: he's wearing vanilla-scented body spray. It's a small thing, but I'm kind of liking it. That, and the fact that we've made it through three chapters with only one make-out session, which did not involve Anita.

Anita decides her sudden attraction to Nate is somebody messing with her, so she stuffs a cross down her shirt and tells him that Unspecified Bad Guys are in town, and they need to be careful. They head off to the movie. End of chapter.

The Harlequin--chapter One

Onward ho, then.

...this intro is boring. Malcom, the pastor for the Church of Eternal Life, is in Anita's office. Big freaking whoop. She's the main squeeze for the biggest power in St. Louis. Of course he's going to start paying homage eventually.

Anita has an inoffensive coffee cup, a red sweater and a new gun. I don't know enough about guns to know what the difference between a Browning and a Sig Saur is, let alone a Hi-Power and a Dual Mode. Also, Malcom isn't all that handsome. However:

That same personality that made his Sunday morning television program such a hit.

That sentence all by its lonesome tells you Malcom is a POWER in the vamp world. How do we know this? It was a big deal that Jean Claude's folks were up and about at noon. Malcom is powerful enough to have a Sunday MORNING TV program. Vampires don't resist the pull of the sun, if I remember right. They just fucking die when the sun rises, and then wake back up whenever their powers overcome the sunlight. I got the impression that EVEN JEAN CLAUDE was having difficulty with pre-noon events until he got his power up during Danse Macabre. It takes YEARS to pull off a Sunday Morning TV slot, and the timeline on these books is really tight. A month between books, maximum. Malcom has been showing up Jean Claude in the wake-up call department for a very, VERY long time.

I've always liked Malcom as a (fucking wasted) concept. The Church that is exactly what it says on the tin: Eternal Life. As long as Earth never self-destructs and it's still legal to be a vamp and you keep your nose clean, you're alive.

That would really suck after a while. Seriously, people aren't made to live forever.

Malcom tells Anita that she's going to get a death warrent for one of his members. Anita actually has two, so she decides to play "Whose dick is bigger" with Mal for a while.

I swear to God, two pages in and it's a dick measuring contest. Anita brings up that Mal doesn't blood-oath his membership, which apparently means they can do whatever, whenever, and don't have to worry about consequences. On the other hand, it means they have free will and can tell the guy in charge to go get fucked if, for example, they order the membership to go line up for blood apple duty. Let's see, the freedom to murder everybody verses the freedom to tell somebody no, they won't fuck you today.

Don't you just love LKH's moral conundrums?

God. Please. Fucking PLEASE come up with a word other than "sweetie" for your fuck-buddies, Anita. It's cloying, old fashioned and it really doesn't fit the personality of somebody who 1. was a virgin for most of her adult life 2. has about six different guys currently on retainer and 3. Is supposed to be twenty-seven sometime in the mid-ninties (This is a guess. Please do not make me unravel the Anita Blake Timeline. I don't think it can be done).

 Their choice, if they understand that it is a choice, but no blood oath means that they are not mystically tied to anyone but the vamp that made them. You, I’m told, do the deed, most of the time.

...so Mal can order the vampires to do whatever? What's the big deal, then? I mean, you basically just said that these idiots aren't a threat to JC because they're cut off from a lot of potential power, and Malcom can order them to drop and give him twenty any time he wants. I mean, unless you're going to, IDK, forget huge chunks of your own mythology, Malcom having pet vampires who aren't oathed to Jean Claude shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Anita Blake then argues that vampires having free will is a bad thing.

This is the heroine of the novel, people. THE HEROINE OF THE NOVEL IS SAYING FREE WILL IS BAD.

 Anita then passes along that Jean Claude gave Mal and his people an ultimatum: either he blood oaths them, or Jean Claude does. Or they move and blood oath someplace else. Malcom shrugs.

Anita reminds us all that she got grandfathered into being a Federal Marshal because she killed vampires for a really long time, and she could pass a basic gun course. This alternate United States Government isn't filling me with confidence.

“You were trying to take away one of my people to be killed with no trial. You shot him to death on the church grounds.”

Mal has a good point. That's a huge civil rights issue, and of course it's a no-go because having to provide a vampire with a trial would give Anita fewer bad-ass scenes where she just whips out her fifty-cal and goes to town. Of course, the contrast between vampires and every other discriminated group ever is a really shitty one to make given that vampires feed off people like leeches or cancer and that's exactly the accusation made against most marginalized people.

“That’s true, but no human can mesmerize other humans so that they help in their own kidnappings. Humans can’t fly off with their victims in their arms.”

Stockholm syndrome. The Girl in the Box. Freaking Waco and Jonestown. YES THEY FUCKING CAN. Also, maybe we can't fly off with victims, but we can certainly stuff them in a van, which has happened, or a basement, or a plywood box. It is frighteningly easy to manipulate another human being into becoming a victim, and it is equally easy to make another human being disappear. Maybe a vampire wouldn't have to work quite so hard to get away with it, but vampires aren't alone in the "killing people" business.

Malcom tries to convince Anita that she's got the wrong vampire, and that somebody else ate the victim. Anita blows him off a few times, and then he pulls out the boogeyman card: something really big and powerful visited his church and he's got no idea what it was, but it was around the time of the murder.

I would not buy that if I were Anita, but she finally starts listening.

I thought about it. Malcolm was no Master of the City, but he was probably one of the top five most powerful vampires in town. He’d be higher, if he weren’t so terribly moral. It limited him in some ways.

It's been four books, and I still do not understand Laurell's grudge against conventional morality. I'd get it if it were because it discriminates against a lot of people, but it's not. It's like "OOOOH YOU HATE MURDER AND STEALING AND RAPE. YOU'RE A STUPID PRUDE", and that's kind of how serial killers think.

 Oh, and both the warrents of execution are on women vamps. Because we can't start that sexism early enough, I guess.

 And then we have a guessing game where Malcom tries to name Anita's date and/or sex partner tonight and Anita just says "nope" to all the names.

PLEASE tell me we're going to have more action than sex this time. Seriously, a fifty-fifty cut would be nice. Please. PLEASE.

...at least make most of the sex consensual. Or at least not life-destroying. Please.

“Very well; your sin is lust, Ms. Blake, as it is the sin of your master and all his vampires.”

BWWAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA please tell me you did not think anybody would take that line seriously. ANITA SPENT SEVENTY PERCENT OF THE LAST BOOK HAVING SEX, and I think that's a low-ball estimate. Oh, did I say sex? I'm sorry, I meant RAPING PEOPLE. Also having emotional breakdowns where she tried frantically to get away from abuse, only to be manipulated back into the five or six abusive relationships she's got running at the moment. If we narrowed the sexscapades down to consensual sex, I'd say that we spent maybe twenty percent of the last book on that.

So no. Anita's sin isn't lust. It's not wrath either. Anita doesn't spend any more time being angry than she does being lustful. If you made me pin a "sin" on her, I'd say Gluttony was her biggest issue, given that sex is her food.

“I’m Christian, too, Malcolm.” 
“Do you worry about getting into heaven, Ms. Blake?”

 It was such an odd question that I answered it. “I did, for a while, but my faith still makes my cross glow. My prayers still have the power to chase the evil things away. God hasn’t forsaken me; it’s just that all the right-wing fundamentalist Christians want to believe he has. I’ve seen evil, Malcolm, real evil, and you aren’t that.”

Yeah. The cross glowing thing bothers me. As I've established before, I believe that God mostly honors those who honor Him, and Anita doesn't do shit to maintain a "Good Christian Relationship" with her Higher Power...but she does go out of her way to criticize other people who follow the same path, mostly because Anita Has To Be The Best At Everything. I would gladly give Anita this point if the Cross glowed for everybody, because the alternative is that God is honoring the kind of faith that only goes to Him when it gets something. And God doesn't have the greatest history honoring that nonsense.

In other words, if God hasn't forsaken Anita, those Fundies, and most of the rest of the faith, should have His protection too. And sadly, that's not the case in the Anitaverse.

Malcom asks Anita if she knows any preists that would be willing to give him absolution.

“I am still a believer, Ms. Blake; being a vampire has not changed that. I wish to die absolved of my sins.”

Oh Jesus. How can an author look at that and pass it up in favor of unsexy sex scenes? THIS IS THE STORY I COME HERE TO READ, LAUREL. WRITE THIS STORY PLEASE. I would read the story of a Christian vampire desperate for forgiveness. I would read the shit out of that story.

The chapter ends with Malcom leaving the office being morose, and Anita deciding that Bad Shit is coming down the tubes.

Ten bucks says the bad shit ends in sex.

State of the CW

Got back from visiting family. Which was...interesting to say the least.

We'll be doing the Harliquen. Mostly because I'm too lazy to research another series ATM. I think, however, that'll be the last Anita book I can handle for a while.

In other news...book is going well and should be out on time. Ish. I'll get back to you on the ish part.

Take care, my lovelies, and let's all enjoy the last days of 2013

Danse Macabre chapter 54-55

Chapter fifty four opens with Anita and Asher backtracking on every single thing they said in the previous chapter.

I swear to God. I've heard people talk about books being unreadable and I've always been kinda like "HUH?" I mean, Eye of Argon, that's unreadable. I could muscle my way through all of Fifty Shades, which sadly now looks like Hunger Games plot wise. Twilight. Everybody called them "unreadable" and I was like "Well, it's bad, but you read the damn thing."

This book. This book is unreadable. Rape aside, not one thing has advanced, not one character has developed one iota. The only crisis that resolved itself is one that never existed in the first place and I swear to fucking god if there is one more sex scene after this one I'm going to go insane.


Wet and tight rears its ugly head. Given that she hasn't had a shower since the limo, apparently Asher doesn't really mind seconds. Asher demands to do Anita doggy-style. They do. And...

chapter fifty-five

Anita wakes up in the hospital. The therianthrope hospital. Dr. Lillian gave Anita a transfusion and risked giving her yet another strain of lycanthropy. Yippee.

Asher is, of course, at her bedside wringing his hands and looking worried. And now once again he's all ANGST and YOU DON'T REALLY LOVE ME and Anita gets to ANGST to his ANGST and this got old about four books ago.

He also reveals that he's got a Heyena as his Animal to Call. Cool.

Anita summarizes everything that happened in this book. Unlike the usual hand-wave of loose plot threads, this...basically just retreds the entire book. It ends with this.

I’m happy behind my black wrought-iron fence. The one with the pointy spikes on top. White never really was my color.

Wow. Aren't you edgy.

And that is the end of the book.

Alright, guys. I am open to suggestions for whatever happens next. I'm also going to go curl back up in bed with cold medicine. I am ALMOST over this shit, but now we're down to the annoying bits.

Danse Macabre--chapter 53

I WAS IN Jean-Claude’s office at Danse Macabre. It was black-and-white elegant, with framed kimonos and fans on the walls as the only color. I sat behind his elegant black desk, with a drawer open. I had an extra gun in that drawer. I’d loaded it with silver shot while we waited. Asher sat beside me, in a chair pulled up so he could be close enough to touch me.

I want to point how many times, in the early books, Anita is facing someone arrayed exactly like this. That one lone good guy against a sea of bad. Well, now Anita is standing up there as the sea of bad's right hand woman, and she doesn't seem to notice. A lot of people have pointed out that Old Anita would kill New Anita without hesitation, and I'd say that's a pretty good judgement call. And it's not the sex. Frankly, the sex scenes themselves just annoy me because where the fuck is the plot. It's the rape. And the fights that end with either death or a Fate Worse Than Death. And the rape. And probably more of the rape. Old!Anita wasn't telling the bad guys to get stuffed to prove she was the baddest cat in the house. She was telling them off because you don't do that shit to people. She supported Richard over Marcus because Marcus and Rania were making torture snuff films. She blew Rawhead and Bloody Bones away because it was killing children. She killed the blinking Aztec vampire away because Jesus fucking Christ was that fucked up. It wasn't because they were endangering her and her people. It was because what they were doing was wrong.

She raped her way through this entire book and now she's sitting next to a dude that basically rapes his entire customer base every time they set foot in his clubs.

Just thought I'd point that out.

Jean Claude is out playing with the media while Anita questions Merlin. RIGHT.

He was tall, dark, and handsome. He was not European. No, something darker, farther east, as in Middle East. There was something very Egyptian about him, or maybe Babylonian, because he was old.

HE WAS MIDDLE EASTERN. Identify the fucking race for once.

Merlin says he rolled the whole audience to...wait. If Merlin is Middle Eastern, why is he using a name from British mythology? I mean, unless Merlin is, like, the Merlin (or trying to claim that he is that Merlin) wouldn't it make more since for Merlin to use a name from his own neighborhood's mythology? It's kind of like how when you curse, you usually do so in your native tongue? If you're gonna assume a big and scary sounding name, you're gonna go for your own nightmares, not mine.

Anyhoo, Merlin rolled the whole audience, and not just the humans, because he didn't want half the audience to miss out on the show. Yeah, because Ballet is all about the slight of hand and the flashy gimmicks. That's why ballerinas learn how to keep their blisters from oozing through to the silk.

Asher then tells Merlin that's a direct challenge to every Master in the audience, and Merlin is like "So? You're only here because you sleep with the boss." and the conversation goes downhill VERY quickly after that. Anita decides she has to prove her dick is bigger than theirs and she pulls a gun on the room. Nobody's actually doing anything, but nope, we gotta pull a gun out.

Merlin and (gag) Adonis roll their eyes and go with it, probably because it's the thing standing between them and dinner.

Anita accuses Merlin of dropping his mind control act because it got the MOAD's attention and scared him shitless. (...so THAT'S what happened. Okay) and he kind of goes "Who?" and Anita describes the MOAD's bedroom because this proves something. I guess.

Anita says that the MOAD is both a shapeshifter and a vampire. Merlin says that's impossible and...holy shit.

“The strain of vampirism that we have today is destroyed by the lycanthropy virus,

Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait. I thought it worked kind of like giving somebody cowpox so they can't catch smallpox. That's not "You can't have both at once", that's THIS ONE KILLS THE OTHER ONE and that's an entirely different kettle of fish. Why aren't vampires with weres-to-call dead? Seriously. If vampirism--the thing keeping vampires alive--is destroyed by were-whatever viruses, then shouldn't vampires drop dead every time they get bitten? That's a pretty big rule-realignment to be throwing around like that.

Are we ever going to see the implications? No?

GOD I hate this book.

They debate for a minute if Belle Morte could be waking up the MOAD's pets, but Anita says no and I guess that means the answer is no. Okay.

I nodded. “Yeah, you guys filled me in on the limo ride here.

Gee, Laurel, Maybe if you'd cut one of the endless fucking rape scenes in this book we actually could have watched that!

Merlin starts testing all the other people in the room, I guess because he's really bored.

I blinked in his direction. “Are you saying you’re the Merlin, as in King Arthur and the Round Table?”

Called it.

So Merlin says that he did the power trip at the ballet to see if the MOAD were interested in anybody there, and apparently Anita's it because Mary Sue Power List Activate. They discuss the MOAD's methods for several pages, and then he makes sympathetic noises over Anita's brand new scar.  Yeah, it's already healed. Aren't we glad it happened in the first place? Didn't it impact the plot in such a beautiful way?

“I’ve come up against demons. Vampirism is a contagion, not a demonic anything. It’s a blood-borne disease. A doctor back in the 1900s sort of figured out how to cure it. You don’t cure demonic possession with a blood transfusion.” “Cured it?” Merlin said. “With a blood transfusion, truly?” “Well, yeah, but the vampirism is what keeps the dead body up and running, so you take the vampirism out of the blood, and the body dies.”

......HOW HAS THIS NOT COME UP IN THIS SERIES BEFORE?

Also: WHY DO WE STILL HAVE STAKINGS AND BEHEADINGS WHEN A BLOOD TRANSFUSION IS MUCH MORE HUMANE?

The conversation continues until Damian says he needs to feed and leaves the room. Merlin and his people follow, leaving Anita, Asher and Nate in the room.

This chapter is not ending. This chapter needs to end soon.

Anita decides she needs to feed on Asher. Asher decides he needs to whinge about how NOBODY UNDERSTANDS MEEEEEEEE because Anita is taking him for granted (She kind of is, though...) and nobody loves him right and he's so ugly and scarred...

I grinned. “Not perfect; handsome, but not perfect. Requiem’s too damn moody by half. London, I’m a little embarrassed about him.” “Why embarrassed?” “Not sure, maybe because I’m not sure I even like him, and I had sex with him.”

OR IT IS BECAUSE YOU GOT HIM READDICTED TO THE ARDEUR WHEN YOU PROMISED HIM YOU WOULD NOT. ANITA: NOT EVERYTHING. IS. ABOUT. YOU.

So then Anita and Asher start making out on the furniture because they both need to feed and NOW he's accepted that she loves him and he loves her and of course it's gonna be forgotten by the next book. Also, we're 96% done with this book and there is no climax in sight, other than Anita's. HELP.

The chapter ends with Anita demanding Asher make her "Come both ways."

...but at least it's consensual. And a little on the sexy side.

State of the CW

Yeah, so on Thursday I had a fever of 102.6 F. (39.2C). I also began coughing up chunks of stuff that didn't seem to be compatable with, you know, breathing. It is now  five days later, I have no fever, my lungs no longer crackle like a bowlful of rice chrispies and I can actually sit up long enough to type something.

I have not been this sick in years.

But the good news is today I have energy. I feel like eating is a good idea and not a chore, and that probably means I'm on the mend.

The bad news? I gave everybody else in my household the same fucking crud.

Merry fucking Christmas.

As for the book, I'm gonna see how much I can scrape out between now and the end of the year, and it should be out Januarary first, or thereabouts. Sound good? Sounds good.

I'm going to go eat an orange now.

Danse Macabre chapter 52

Sorry for the spotty updates, guys. I've been fighting some INCREDIBLY nasty crud the last couple days and have been more concerned about the things going into (and coming out of) my lungs than I have been about the blog.

I'm better today. Or at least I was before I read LKH's attempt at writing a ballet.

This is what I've been dreading this entire book. And oh my fucking GOD does it hurt.

Anita goes back to the ballet. LKH tries really hard to make us be impressed with her description of vampire ballet, but contemporary ballet is more about watching people do awesome things with their bodies while telling a provocative story and not...sigh...this shit.

The air sparkled with glitter. Out of that scintillating cloud a vampire floated. It was Adonis, the vamp who had almost rolled me with his gaze earlier. His costume had changed to a ballet version of 1700s dress, which meant: fairly accurate from the waist up, and tights from the waist down. I’d seen vampires fly before, but not like this. He hung in the air as if he could have hung there forever. Other vampires appeared out of the glitter, hanging in the air as if they’d been pinned there. Adonis hovered just outside our box, so close I could see his blond curls moving in the wind. What wind? The wind of his own magic.

That's the tamest fucking thing I've ever read about. That's the Cirque du Soleis meets David Copperfeild on a required G rating night.



That's the Rite of Spring. When it was released it caused fucking riots in the theater. In 1913. This version's been updated a little bit, but it's still disturbing as fuck. And again: That's what LKH is trying to upshow with foofy shirts and glitter. It ain't working. Now, if (gag) Adonis up there were doing arabesques or the 32 fouetee turns from swan lake...you know, this?



Yeah. We might be talking something impressive.

My point is that ballet is an incredible, physically demanding sport that utterly, totally and completely destroys everyone who participates in it. It destroys your feet, your body, and if you're female, large chunks of your soul because you'll probably walk away with some kind of eating disorder. AND YOU KNOW THIS GOING IN. I would LOVE to see a vampire version of Rite of Spring or Swan Lake or even Peter and the Wolf (...actually that would be really fucking sexy, given the context). Or even something new and even more disturbing. And again, given LKH's hard on for french terms you'd think we'd get a few of the actual movements in the text. But nope. It's non existant wind, glitter, and accurate french costuming over tights, which is something ballet threw out about the time the french disposed of its monarchy. This ought to be something violent and controversial--for fuck's sake, human ballet companies have managed to incite fucking riots--and instead we get fucking Fabio lounging on a glitter cloud.

The glitter had fallen down, so that the vampires were revealed in all their grace. They danced in the air. They held their places, and danced. Damian leaned in and whispered, “Do you have any idea how much strength it takes to do what they’re doing?”

No. No I don't have any idea how strong they have to be because I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING. This is vague to the point of pure fluff. DID YOU NOT RESEARCH ONE THING ON BALLET LAURELL? THERE ARE BOOKS. THERE ARE GLOSSERIES.

Apparently it takes a lot of energy for a vampire to resist the call of gravity. I am not impressed, given that dancing until you split your own toenails is considered a good dress rehearsal in ballet circles. Broken toes? That's opening night.

A woman stepped on stage, dressed in one of those long white gossamer dresses.

No. You don't do pointe work in fucking Ophila's dressing gown. I am sorry. NOBODY, not even a vampire, would risk stepping on the hem and taking a header into the first chair violinist during the pas de deux. You're talking about a gauze skirt that ends at the calves. I would not call that a "long white gossamer dress".

I would have said the dress floated around her as she tiptoed on stage,

tiptoed
tiptoed
tiptoed
tiptoed    



 bourree. The word you are desperately, desperately needing here is bourree. What the fucking blue motherhumping fucking FUCK are you doing describing a basic movement in pointe work as motherfucking "tiptoe". THAT IS NOT WHAT THAT IS. 

I suspect, dear readers, that not only did LKH do approximately ZERO research into ballet before writing this abortion of a dance sequence, she has never fucking SEEN a ballet before. Maybe she saw a black and white recording of somebody jumping rope while En Pointe (which would be utterly fucking stupid and incredibly dangerous) but there is no way in fuck you would describe a bourree entrance as fucking "tiptoe". 

And of course, she's playing the fucking human and of course, the pretty glittery vampires above are going to kill and eat her on stage, because it's the only way LKH can think to be fucking edgy.

She went up on her toe shoes, as the girl did.

EN POINTE. IT'S MOTHERFUCKING EN POINTE. 

Sometimes the ballet leaves me confused, but there was no confusion here.

No fucking shit. But you know what, Laurell? That's why ballet companies print the plot of the ballet in the fliers they hand out to ticket holders. So either you gate crashed whatever you went to see, or really can't stand to read anyone else's writing except your own. I could follow fucking ballet when I was ten, mostly because hello, I could fucking read. 

 Once you’ve seen someone fly, what’s a little grand jeté?

Congratulations.  You managed to find one ballet term to use in this climactic scene about ballet. Did you leave it under the couch? I bet you did.

Also, this brings up a good point: This company has an incredibly shitty choreographer. They should have saved the flying vampires for the climax, and focused on proving that the company could be fucking unsettling and scary and also GOOD in purely human limitations before they moved on to the vampire stunts. 

So the vampires chase the designated victim--who is also a vampire--around the stage for a while.

They danced, and showed that they could do traditional ballet.

Really? Cause one, I haven't seen that and two, the nearest you came to using a proper ballet term, you used it to shit on real ballet. You can't just say this shit and expect us to believe it when you have done exactly shit all to sell us on the concept. 

The saddest thing is, I can totally visualize what LKH was going for, and with the right (IE non traditional) music, the right staging, and good choreography, this would actually have been fucking chilling to watch. But between LKH's utter allergy to research (she must get need an epi pen every time she gets near an encyclopedia.) and the fact that, hello, BALLET IS NOT A WRITTEN MEDIUM, everything about this just fucking fails. The beauty of ballet is seeing a very tallented prima ballerina do an intoxicating arabesque and tracing the muscles of her inner thigh through her tights. And there's nothing sexual about that statement (Unless you're turned on by that). You will never see anatomy the way it's displayed at the ballet. And the key word here? It's seeing. Writing about ballet is like carrying water from Niagra Falls home in a bucket. It doesn't have the same impact.

They danced, and showed that they could do traditional ballet. Then the music changed. The couples gave themselves more room, and they began to do dancing that would have looked more at home on the stage at Guilty Pleasures than at the ballet. It was still beautiful, graceful, predatory, but it was also very sexual. Nothing that would get you arrested, but as they had been able to convey menace, pity, and derision, with a gesture and a look, now they conveyed sex.

She couldn't make it through an entire chapter without making it about sex. Also, I like the implication that traditional choreography can't convey sex. I mean, it's not like it's just a bunch of men and women in skintight leotards and tights rubbing bodies for hours on end.

...wait.

The vampires kill the designated victim with lots and lots of fake blood. The audience gasps. The Designated Victim's vampire lover comes on stage and sees that his love is dead, and decides to fight with the head vampire. So this is basically something between Giselle and Romeo and Juliet. Both of which are older than fuck. LKH really thinks she's describing an edgy ballet? REALLY?

...I have to say the idea of a vampire company dancing Giselle would be tight as fuck. Can you imagine what the Willis would look like? 

The ballet ends with humans "killing" the dead girl's vampire lover and taking her body off, and this is seriously so incredibly tame for ballet. I think motherfucking Coppelia has edgier moments than this, given that a central point in the plot is stealing an innocent man's soul. It ends with a standing ovation, curtain calls and this:

You don’t hear screaming much at the ballet, but you heard it now.

Oh for fuck's sake Laurell, you're going to the wrong ballets. Tame plot, bad choreography, gimmicks instead of actual dancing? PfffhhhhHAHAHAHAHA. Did ya'll note that halfway through the 32 turns video, the audience erupted into applause and screaming? Ballet fans get into their ballets.

 The chapter ends with Anita wondering how they're going to survive the after party for the cast.

...That's actually a good question, given that opening night after parties are usually booze-fueled angst fests with high strung personalities while everyone waits for the reviews to hit the morning papers. But of course it's going to be a fucking dick measuring contest because NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANITA, including the dancer's careers. 

Oh, and traditional ballet and traditional music can't convey sex? 

Danse Macabre--chapter 50-51

For somebody who claims to love sex as much as she does, LKH sure has a strong aversion to using the word penis.

HE HELD ON to the door to raise himself above me, so that only the long, hard length of him touched me at first.

That long hardness? That's probably an elbow. Maybe a knee. It's not real clear is what I'm trying to say. Also: It's a g-spot. Not just "that" spot. You're a fifty fucking year old woman, you can use the commonly accepted terms for genitalia.

In the dimness of the car I couldn’t see that he was wearing the condom that Nathaniel had given him.

Thank you. Thank you for letting me know all the things that we can't see. Also: thank you GOD for FINALLY giving Anita the same approximate wattage as a twinkle light. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME WE HAVE ESTABLISHED SAFE SEX. And for the record, I don't think Anita as a woman is stupid, because Anita is not real. Anita's character is so poorly written and her choices make so little sense that for her to be real, she'd have to have a room temperature IQ.

...guys, are simultaneous orgasms that important? Cause this chapter is making a very VERY big deal about the guys holding off until everybody involved is ready to...erm...go. It's not that big a deal in this scene, but...well...

Requiem isn't enough for Anita. So Jason and Nathanial move in. They decide the very best thing they could do to power Anita up is have one guy take her doggy-style while she gives the other man a blow-job. At first Jason is going to be the dog on the street, so to speak, but then they decide to switch so that Jason can find out how Anita gives awesome head.

...only it kind of reads like LKH forgot who was in which place between when she ended chapter 50 and started chapter 51. There's an "Oh yeah, we decided to switch because..." sentence but it's comparatively deep in the book.

To suck, lick, and writhe my mouth, my tongue, and ever so lightly my teeth, around the smooth muscled length of him.

I actually had to go look that up to make sure there are muscles in the penis. There are. However, a penis is still not the first thing I think of when I think "muscles". Though now I'm imagining a dick with really great abs...

So they go at it for a couple paragraphs and Nathanial is all like "U there yet, bro?" And Jason is all like "I will be soon" so they increase their...erm...pace and somehow Anita's orgasm, which nobody checked on, happens the same time as the guy's. And I don't get why this is a big deal, but hey, it's just me.

Also: LKH should not use "Spilled" or "Drink" when her main character is giving blow jobs.

Maybe the feeding would last longer if I fed on men who weren’t tied to us metaphysically, but I didn’t love anyone who wasn’t tied to us. So I had to feed more often, so what?

So what? SO WHAT? ANITA. A MAJOR PLOT POINT IN THE LAST BOOK WAS THAT YOU WERE KILLING YOUR MEN. YOU WERE FUCKING THEM TO DEATH. LITERALLY. THAT IS WHY EVERYONE IS SENDING YOU NEW PEOPLE. IT'S SO YOU DO NOT KILL ANY OF THE CURRENT ONES.

Jesus Christ. Most of Anita's ardeur problems can, according to these books, be solved by eating a fucking hamburger. She is electing to starve her physical body because the sex is more fun, to the point of endangering other people's lives. When your eating disorder puts somebody else's life in danger, you graduate from Anorexia and hit Drunk Driving 101. AND OUR HEROINE IS JUST LITERALLY SAYING THAT THIS DOES NOT MATTER AS LONG AS SHE LOVES THE PERSON SHE FUCKS.

"SO WHAT IF I FUCK THEM TO DEATH? I LOVE THEM." THOUGHT NO TRUELY LOVING PERSON IN EXISTANCE, EVER.

“I hate football, let’s just keep fucking,” Jason said.

Okay. That exchange legit made me giggle. Jason is cool. He and Ronnie can go run to Alaska and be cool together.

And then we go right straight back into ick territory.

“Her name is Perdita. Perdy.” He stuffed the towelettes into an empty garbage bag, apparently there for the purpose. “Jean-Claude wanted to know some of what you could expect when you fuck Sampson.”

Yeah, the "Have sex or else INCEST" people. God fucking GOD I thought we'd dropped that plot thread entirely.

So then Anita senses that trouble is brewing and they all head back into the theater. And the chapter closes on this happy moment:

Normally, I’d have tried not to hold on to too many men at once in public, but the hell with it. One, we all needed the comfort. Two, my reputation couldn’t get any more trashed than it already was.

Anita really needs to just own her fucking life and get over herself.

Danse Macabre chapter 49

And now it's time for Anita Must Feel Special.

THE FIRST THING you need to know in order to control something is how it feels to do it.
 

 How it feels to do what? Do the thing or control the thing? And I'm kind of inclined to think that by "do" Anita means fuck. Because she has literally done nothing else this entire book except have flavors of non-con.

 I was a natural psychic, which meant that my gifts weren’t something I had to strive for, they just came to me.

 Yes. Anita is just fucking special that way. Those of us who have to work for shit? Yeah, we're not naturally talented. We are SOL. I guess if you're not born with the ability to draw realistically, or do complex algebra, or play piano music from memory, you aren't actively talented.

The problem with being a natural is that sometimes things come so easily that you don’t know how, or even when, you’re doing psychic stuff. It sort of sneaks up on you. You must understand a thing to truly control it.

ONLY ANITA UNDERSTANDS PSYCHIC SHIT GUYS.

Yeah. Apparently even Laurel K. Hamilton realized she'd done enough morally ambiguous sex scenes, because Anita auto-pilots through having Rania in charge and all the healing and shit happens between chapters. THANK YOU GOD I DO NOT HAVE TO READ ANOTHER RANIA SEX SCENE.


But apparently Anita just blacked out, and Rania is still here. Fucksticks. Also:

She loved to be in on someone’s first experience, especially if she could turn pleasure to pain, joy to terror. That just flat did it for her. Not my kink, which made it easier not to do it.

NOTE WHAT ANITA'S BIG CONCERN IS. It's not that this is something horrific that I would rather bleed than allow. It's that overt torture Isn't Her Kink. YKINMK should only count when IT DOES NOT INVOLVE ACTIVELY HURTING PEOPLE. A kink is liking feet or, at the worst, inflation. TORTURE AND RAPE DO NOT GET TO COUNT.

I was suddenly drowning in the scent of wolf. The beast inside me stirred, as if Raina’s power were a spoon and I were some kind of soup. Stirring, looking for just the right tidbit.

It's official. Laurel needs to fucking eat before she starts writing. STOP WITH THE FOOD METAPHORES THEY ARE GETTING FUCKING OLD.

The skin had blistered, and hardened, and begun to slough off. Days, or weeks, of healing in minutes. I moved the hardened skin to one side. I wasn’t quite brave enough to pull at it. I moved all that truly dead skin aside until I found the palm of my hand. The skin of the palm was soft, baby soft, but there was a new cross-shaped scar in the middle of my hand. That skin was shiny and not soft, not rough, more slick. Weeks of healing.

RANIA DID NOTHING YOU INVOKED THE PSYCHOTIC GHOST OF TORTURE PAST WITHOUT USING HER AT ALL WHAT THE FUCK LAUREL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

However, Anita has not healed Requiem, so much more petting occurs. And...Anita has to invoke the ardeur because she is too weak to have it permanently damage people, and somehow this means that she is up to healing Requiem, since Rania has offically booked for the evening. And she's shut down the marks, which takes up pages because Anita has to make sure she hasn't hurt anybody, but she doesn't dare open the marks so everybody has to psychally call everybody else and it takes a while.

...I am completely lost.

Anita and Requiem position to have more sex and that is the end of the chapter.