Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 24

Danse Macabre--chapter 3

Anita makes it to the Circus of the Damned without having to pull over for sex.

We've managed to mature this character back to Basic Human. This is actually a positive, because fuck the sex chapters are annoying.

 ...LKH needs to sort out what crosses do in the presence of vampires. Whenever they work onscreen, they make a big purdy lightshow that hurts vampires and vampires only. HOWEVER, Anita is leaving her cross in the car because she doesn't want another cross-shaped burn scar. Also, what the fuck does this mean:

 I’d left my cross in the glove compartment, because the chances of no one “accidentally” using vamp powers on me tonight were between zero and nothing.

Forget about double negatives. This is like a negative squared. Seriously. Is she saying that nobody's going to use vamp powers, or that everybody is using vamp powers?

Nathanial's ankle length hair will never stop being funny. Nor will his perfect pony princess lavender eyes.

Depending on how the light hit the shirt it brought out either the green or the yellow of his eyes, so that the color of his eyes changed with almost every breath. It was a nice effect.

It's a shirt. Anita, it's a motherfucking shirt. You are not fucking Saruman, you cannot wear all the colors, and even if you were, the rainbow robe thing never works out.

Also: I'm picturing homemade cheap porn costumes. Simplicity, Pirate Garb. You know the type.

Four-inch spikes, with open heels, and laces that wrapped around my ankles. When Jean-Claude couldn’t persuade me into a skimpier outfit for the night, we’d compromised with the totally impractical shoes.

Your fuck-me shoes are going to get you killed, Anita. I do not care how good you are at walking in them, all you need to do is torque your ankle once during a fight scene and there you go. The best thing you could do is order from the same catalogue as nurses and food service workers. (They have some really nice flats that do the dressy thing very well.)

I had a key to the new back door of the Circus of the Damned.

You know, I actually liked the hyper-paranoid system JC had. It made for good worldbuilding and it kept the people inside of it alive. OF COURSE we're getting rid of it. Anita's life trumps everyone else's safety concerns.

A werewolf answers the door because we need to introduce yet another new character .This is Grahame, a werewolf, and because I have no fucking idea if I've seen him before he is now Grahame Coats. In ferret form.

You're welcome.

Also?

His perfectly straight black hair managed to fall decoratively over his brown eyes, and still be very, very short on the bottom, so the strong line of his neck was left bare and strangely tempting. His eyes tilted up at the edges, and I now knew that he had his Japanese mother’s eyes and hair, but the rest of him seemed to have been copied from his ex-navy and very Nordic-looking father.

That's not Nordic. Unless you're talking about noses or something. Which you don't actually mention, so WTF Anita?

It turns into a pissing contest. Of course it does. We Literally cannot walk through a motherfucking door that Anita has gone through TEN MILLION times without it being a goddamn pissing contest between her and another character. GOD FORBID anything be normal, non-confrontational and routine.

Micah tries to bully his way past, and Anita reminds Grahame that she's got power in the pack and can tell him to fuck off if she wants to. Because Richard hasn't found a new Lupa yet.

There were so many reasons Graham had not made the leap from bodyguard to breakfast snack for me.

This is the creepiest line I've found so far. We're in rapy territory and we're only in chapter three. Great job, Anita. PEOPLE ARE NOT BREAKFAST SNACKS WHY DO YOU THINK THIS WAY.

Once Nathaniel moved from pomme de sang to my animal to call,

WHEN THE FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN?!? I've been READING these books. Admittedly I took a big-ass break from them, but the animal-to-call shit was something I was waiting for. Did I miss it? Did I go blind? DID LKH REALLY JUST DEVELOP SOMETHING MASSIVELY IMPORTANT TO THE SERIES OFFSCREEN?!?

WHAT THE BLEEDING FUCK ANITA.

....it was when you did that tri-whatever thing with Damian and Nathanial. Okay. Not quite offscreen. It's just defined offscreen. Oh, and having Random Ass MotC explain this OFFSCREEN isn't helping. I'm still pissed. And the reason why Anita has to "feed" (aka fuck) so often is apparently none of her current guys "count" as a full meal because they're all tied to her magically. So she needs to screw outside all her important relationships so the important relationships have lots of fuel. Got it?

Anita makes Grahame get on his knees and beg her not to kill him. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen. She's literally kicking the dog. Okay, werewolf, but still. THIS IS HOW YOU DEVELOP A VILLIAN (lazily). WTH is this doing in a HEROIC character's development? I'd understand if we wanted Anita to be an antihero, but her holier-than-thou attitude makes that impossible. WHAT ARE WE DOING. BOOK SHOULD NOT WORK THIS WAY.

The "begging" turns out to be licking Anita's mouth. I am not making this up. It's explained as wolf behavior, but I'm pretty sure wolf behavior wouldn't be that sexualized.

Also, I've just realized how much of the non-con bullshit is covered under Anita HAVING to stand up for herself. Grahame is submissive to her, so she can't "back down" from this sexualized encounter, which Grahame knows and is taking full advantage of. A LOT of the rapy shit happens because Anita actually standing up for herself and demanding, you know, consent and that her bounderies be respected and the like, would be interpreted as weakness. She has to let these people do these terrible things to her. If she doesn't ,she'd be seen as weak.

Anita. You're packing serious heat. They'd protest once. If they survive, they'd never do it again.

The sexy lick goes on for a few pages.

HELP. ME.

Anita walks off and Grahame follows, demanding sex, and asking why Anita is always mad at him. Uh, maybe it's because she's made it very fucking clear she does not want to fuck you, and you just used wolf-pack business as an excuse to cop a feel. She's got no obligation to sleep with you, dipshit. She's pissed because you won't GO AWAY.

Richard is now forbidding his wolves from carrying guns. Great.

So Grahame informs Anita that there was an emergency in the Circus that made Asher cry out for Jean Claude. He's got no idea what this is, but is worried that JC isn't upstairs yet. The book is much more focused on the who's-fucking-who politics of the (sigh) vampire kiss. Apparently there was an influx of powerful vamps, one of them's pissed, and Grahame is stuck in the middle because fuck if I know.

Anita then acknowledges that it isn't fair for her to keep her men monogamous when she isn't, but fuck if she's going to change.

End of chapter.

Danse Macabre--chapter 2

This chapter is fucking ugly. 

It starts with Nate and Micah freaking out--a little--over the idea that Anita might be preggers. I think I have used more words on their freak out than the book actually does. This segues very quickly into Anita and Nate making out in front of Ronnie to rub her nose in her oncoming monogamy, which turns into a very, very, very ugly exchange of words between Nate and Ronnie. Ronnie, it seems, has been verbally sexually harassing Nate because, you know, hot stripper. This is the first Anita's heard of it, but Ronnie admits to it.

Then things go off the deep end.

He said again, “I know why you don’t want to commit to Louie.”
 She said in a small, weak voice, “Why?”
 “Because it torments you to know that you will never know how I am in bed.”
 “Oh,” she said in a voice that was almost her own, “so I’m not wanting Louie because you’re such a stud?” 

“Not me, Ronnie, but the next me. The next guy you get obsessed about. Not love obsessed, but I-wonder-what-he’d-be-like-in-bed obsessed. And you’ve always been beautiful enough, hot enough, to get anyone you’ve ever wanted, right?”

This is the moment that, in reality, would end a friendship. Whose, IDK, but that's a very, very, very ugly paragraph.

It also creates a catch 22 for Ronnie that she can't get out of. She doesn't want to commit because she doesn't want to be chained down to good sex, and she's jealous of Anita's harem, who are the best sex in the universe which she can never have because they're loyal to Anita. It's this simultaneous condemnation of monogamy and promescuity that leaves no outlet whatsoever. Anita gets to sleep around because her love is true, but everyone else is a slut.

Right.

It gets worse.

Nathaniel ignored him. “You need to find out what you’re running from, Ronnie, before it ruins the best thing you’ve ever found.”
 She spoke in a harsh whisper, “You mean Louie.” 

He nodded. “Yeah, I mean Louie. He loves you. He really, truly loves you, not just for a night, or a month, but for years. Part of you wants that or you wouldn’t still be with him.”

Why is Louie good for Ronnie? It's not because of the sex, or because of anything he helps her do, or how she feels about him. Nope. It's that LOUIE loves RONNIE. And Ronnie needs to get her act together and love him back because his love for her makes everything alright.

Nevermind that she's obviously uncertain. Nope. Her feelings don't matter at all. She needs to make herself love Louie or else she's gonna lose him forever.

This is repellant.

And then Nate gives Ronnie the address for his therapist, because obviously that's what you do when you verbally castigate them in public.

WHY WOULD YOU WRITE SOMETHING LIKE THIS.

 When they're discussing Anita's pregnancy (she isn't) Nate brings up that he went through this once already. With the woman (established as a prostitute) who took his virginity. Apparently she found out he was a virgin and "fixed" it for him.

...when Nathanial was thirteen.

And the fact that she became preggers soon after is more important than this casual mention of statutiory rape, which is treated as a rite of passage and not, you know, a terrible crime committed against a minor by an adult (or at least significantly older teen) who should fucking know better.

Also: Nate? You're talking about all this like it's normal and not abuse. Get a better therapist.

 He tells us how the woman aborted the baby and then got murdered by a John, and then firmly establishes that he wants the (non) baby. Micah and Nate then go way way way out of their way to state that it's her body and her choice, kind of the way that people talk about how they can't be racist, they've got black friends.

They plan out buying the pregnancy test. The chapter closes with this:

Positive. It seemed like such the wrong word. If I was pregnant it was definitely a negative. A really big, scary negative.

Great. You don't want kids. Go fix the (non-existent) problem. Anita's not unsure here. She very, very firmly does not want a baby. This should be a non-issue.

Danse Macabre--chapter 1

So I am completely blown right now, guys. We did a really cool thing at work, but getting to the really cool thing meant putting in three twelve hour days, and I am tired.

But we have book so let's crack this baby open and...

...oh fuck, this is the pregnancy scare book.

Bad choice of words. And we get our fail started in the very first chapter.

It was the middle of November. I was supposed to be out jogging, but instead I was sitting at my breakfast table talking about men, sex, werewolves, vampires, and that thing that most unmarried but sexually active women fear most of all— a missed period.

On the one hand, I'm not going to go on a "that's what happens when you don't use contraceptives" trip because I'm a pill baby. I'm living proof that it doesn't always work. THAT SAID, let's go down the fail list, mkay?

Let's go with the very obvious here: Not all single women want to get married, and not all single-by-choice women are anti-baby. I am sure that a single, sexually active woman would be more worried about an STD, cancer or, you know, the whole werewolves and vampires than she would a missed period. An unplanned pregancy isn't all sunshine and roses and sometimes the best choice is the one that results in no baby, but there's a difference between "whoopsie daisy, there's a baby" and "MY LIFE IS FUCKING OVER" level fear.

Second...and having never read this book...I don't understand why LKH would introduce this plot line when it changes nothing. LKH never changes anything, but this is a pretty big deal.

Of course, any arguement that a kid could change the book for the better ("Better" in this case isn't "morally outstanding". "Better" is "Shit will fucking happen that doesn't involve fucking." I hate baby plots, but a baby plot would be, you know, a plot.) has to first completely ignore the fact that Anita Blake is the last person on earth who should raise a fucking kid.

And of course, Anita is freaking out because she's two months late. And Ronnie's there. Double yay. And she says that everything's probably alright, it's just stress and ...wait. WAIT ONE FUCKING MINUTE:

“That last serial killer case was only about two weeks ago.”

...No. No. I am not going to try to untangle the timeline. Whatever. Cerulean Sins happened two weeks ago, and Micah was some kind of dream...thing.

Why do the books have to run so close together? We should get like, at least a month before Anita is in the shit again.

We get a quick low-down about how Ronnie is dating Louie, who is a were-rat, and how she's moving in (nice to see that plot line got resolved offscreen) and how if Louie weren't hiding his were-whatever status, they'd be going to the ballet.

...LKH is going to be doing a ballet story.

Yeah. I took ballet for most of my childhood. I quit when I understood that I didn't have the body type or the discipline to make it work. But it's one of the things that goes really, really deep with me. Ballet is fucking hard, it's demanding, it utterly destroys every person who participates in it in every way you can imagine--for example, when you do pointe work you learn how to wrap your feet so that when you damage your toes you don't bleed through the shoes--and it's one of the most gorgeous fucking things on the planet. I am now officially not looking forward to this.

Anita also has to show up for a big political party involving two visiting Masters of the City who snuck in without anybody knowing. They're into ballet too. Anita has to be there. Why, IDK. If I were Jean Claude I'd rupture something trying to keep her from going. (and probably pull Ronnie in Anita's place, because anybody who can stay Anita's friend can probably pull the political game just fine) but Master/Servant...yeah.

Anita is apparently on the pill. Only this was never mentioned once, in three books where we get descriptions of her goosebumps, toothbrush and toenail clippers. Sure.

“I could ask ‘Who’s the father?’ but that’s just creepy. If you are pregnant then it’s this little tiny, microscopic lump of cells. It’s not a baby. It’s not a person, not yet.” 

I shook my head. “We’ll agree to disagree on that one.”

Oh my fucking God. Please. Please oh please oh fucking please tell me we are not going to have an anti-abortion arguement. Please tell me that LKH isn't going to try to do pro-life. Please.

Fuck. Well, maybe that's the last we'd hear of it.

This also sets up the very disturbing idea that Anita would actually have the baby and keep the baby. I'd do a baby plot because babies change things. They create chaos. Interrupt sleep patterns. Make you deal with poopy diapers every day.

I do not think that would happen in this series. And reviewing every scene with the idea that a child would be raised around that--do not argue that Anita could mantain safe boundaries with the kid. She had sex in her office when clients were waiting outside--makes me want to hurl.

She was shaking her head so hard that her hair fell around her face, covered the upper half of it. She ran her hands through it sharply, like she was pulling on it. “I’ve tried to understand that you’re happy living with not one but two men. I’ve tried to understand that you love that vampire son of a bitch, somehow. I’ve tried, but if you actually breed … actually have a baby, I just don’t get that. I won’t be able to understand that.”

...this is going to be awful, isn't it? That is a shitty thing to say, espeically when it's obvious that this is just the author pontificating. This is the literary equivialnt of a political cartoon.

HELP. ME.

They debate who the father could be. They cross off all the vampires and Micah, and talk about how horrible it would be to have a twenty-year-old stripper for a father. And this goes round and round until Ronnie, in this order, calls Anita a whore, breaks down into tears, and admits she's jealous of all the men Anita gets, all in the space of about three paragraphs.

I got nothin.

“All the damned men. I’m about to give up everybody. Everybody but Louie, and he’s great, but dammit, I’ve had lovers. I hit triple digits.”

And this is how we know that Laurel isn't exactly swinging from the neighbor's chandelier. The average human has about six to seven sex partners in their life. That's it. AND WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU COUNT THAT. I mean, after twenty wouldn't it just get monotonous? Is Ronnie keeping a Banger Sisters style rock cock collection?

And Ronnie is upset that she's giving it all up just for one man. Well, yeah, but maybe you can teach this one how to give you a really good time.

And then they bring up Richard.

Because, you know, we can't not bring up Richard. And it's like this big shocking shame that Anita is sleeping with Richard. Because it's not like Richard would have any reason to resent Anita for anything.

Of all the men in my life, the worst possible choice to be the father would be Richard, because he of all of them would try for the white picket fence and a normal life.

No, Anita, because kids need normal. And what you're confusing for conservative white America here is what everyone else calls "Safe, Sane and Consensual." You know. Things like respecting boundaries. Accepting No. Not killing people because they annoy you. Holding life as something more valuable than your next political move. Richard isn't perfect, but out of all the fuck-toys in this series he's the only one I'd trust to raise a kid well enough. Not well. The kid would have issues. But well enough that the kid could address said issues and maybe manage not to be a total fucking sociopath. Maybe even be happy.

...please stop calling your boyfriends "Sweeties". It makes me think of "The Sweetie Man is Coming" and I don't want to get Anita's general ick in District 9. 

 *sigh*

He’d affected me this way almost from the moment we had seen each other. Lust at first sight.

Right. I'm going to go look at Narcissus in Chains for a review.

I scrambled out from between them. My left arm protested the use, but it didn’t hurt enough to outweigh my embarrassment. It wasn’t a graceful exit, but at least I was standing at the foot of the bed staring down at the two men instead of sandwiched between them. Screw graceful, I wanted some clothes.

This is Anita's first reaction to seeing Micah--to waking up underneath him, actually. Running the fuck away. And as for the infamous shower scene?

“Micah, stop, please stop.”

Yeah. I'm not remembering this wrong. Sorry, Laurel, the ret-con won't stand.

Nate and Ronnie exchange nasty little jabs at each other and then Ronnie drops the B-word:

Ronnie’s voice came harsh, ugly, like she was choking on her anger. “And when the baby comes, are you going to fuck in front of it, too?”

That's a legitimate question. You cannot do that shit around a kid.

And of course the guys are like "Baby?" and that's the end of the chapter.

This.

Is going.

To suck.

Micah Chapter 12

Anita wakes up in the hospital.

Salvia the child murderer-assisting lawyer asshole who tried to kill Anita? He's dead. Killed offscreen by the zombie Anita raised.

The killer zombie? Oh, Larry Kirkland--you know, the dude whose wife is in the hospital with premature labor? yeah. That guy. He flew down and put the zombie back in the ground. And the text seems to imply that he came with Tammy. I cannot get concrete confirmation on this, but that would mean that they put a woman with a history of premature labor on an airplane.

I can excuse a lot of bullshit, but for fuck's sake, Laurel travels. FREQUENTLY. HOW CAN YOU STUFF SO MUCH FAIL INTO SOMETHING YOU DO MULTIPLE TIMES A YEAR AS PART OF YOUR JOB. I have traveled on an airplane eight times. Counting the round trips. I knew exactly what I could take on a plane before I got on for the first time (Mostly because I wanted to make sure you could take spindles--yes--and knitting needles--not the metal kind, which is what I used at the time. :(--on a plane.

Oh, and it turns out that Micah moving Anita into a fancier hotel saved her life, because the salesman who checked into that hotel room that night got killed very very dead. So it looks like Salvia framed the soon-to-be-zombie for a child molestation and murder that one of his boss's sons did, and the zombie died because of the trauma and he blamed his murderer and Salvia was worried that the zombie would testify about the molestation (and not nine million other mob related things) so he decided to assassinate the animator who would raise the zombie and when Micah changed Anita's room it kind of killed that plan and Salvia had to go to a really shitty plan B that got shot in the ass when Killer Zombie blamed him for his murder and I AM SO GLAD WE FOCUSED ON ANITA HAVING SEX IN A FUCKING HOTEL ROOM AND NOT ON THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME PLOT AREN'T YOU.

SERIOUSLY. THE CHAPTER ENDS WITH THE NURSES GIGGLING OVER ANITA CANOODLING WITH MICAH AND NATHANIAL--BECAUSE THE SMARTEST THING TO DO WHEN THE MOTHERFUCKING MOB IS TRYING TO KILL YOU IS FLY YOUR (ACCORDING TO THE TEXT) HELPLESS SUBMISSIVE LOVER IN TO CANOODLE AT YOUR HOSPITAL BEDSIDE--AND THIS IS THE END OF THE STORY. 

THIS BOOK. IS SERIOUSLY. ALL. ABOUT. SEX. 

They wake up in bed. They fly to philly. They check into a hotel room and fuck. THAT IS  LITERALLY FIFTY TWO PERCENT OF THIS BOOK. Kindle provides you with a percent-of-book thingy at the bottom. I CHECKED.

WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK. 

I kind of breezed by the truely, revoltingly awful things in this book because A. I've already touched on the anatomical stupidity, the awful sex, the bad characterization and the abso-fucking-lutely-senseless character assassination of everybody that isn't a sex partner for Anita Blake (and some that are) because silly me, I thought there'd be more of a book. In terms of awful content this is actually pretty damn mild compared to using molestation victims to give your main character somebody to comfort, or wearing a mini-skirt, thong and stilettos to an active crime scene, but THIS IS ALL WE GET. 

AND THE PLOT IS ENTIRELY RESOLVED OFFSCREEN WHILE THE MAIN CHARACTER IS UNCONSCIOUS. 

I do not pirate the books I review on this blog, kiddies. I pay for the privelage of ripping this shit to shreds. This book cost six dollars. I WILL NOT GET THIS MONEY BACK.


WHY DOES THIS BOOK EXIST.

 In short, I have only one response to this.

I am probably going to take tomorrow off (because the next two days are busy at work and I need to get paid before I give Laurel K. Hamilton any more of my money) but I will continue on this sausage train because THAT WAS NOT ENOUGH SUCK.

Good night.

Micah chapter 11 + book update...things

Okay, it's time for an update on the book:

It's coming. It's in better shape than it was last week. I found a couple of very major plot flaws that had to be fixed and reorganized and that's what's thrown me off my game (that and the whole money thing). I lost most of this weekend to being sick and to computer issues (grumble grumble fucking corrupted photoshop file) but I feel safe in stating that we are in the home stretch. So the last installment of Dragon Breath will be done fairly soon.

Ish.

Barring a total disaster.

In a not-entirely unrelated note, I discovered that you are supposed to dust the inside of your computer. I did not know this. My computer is officially a fucking saint.

 *sigh* back to Micah.

Micah is calm.

This requires several paragraphs.

Then somehow Anita and Micah manage to make the itty bitty cut she made for her ritual start gushing like a fatal hemmorage, but only when they're touching. Because sexual arousal does that. The court reporter starts vomiting in a corner.

Anita walks her entire protective circle completely fucking distracted by random chipmunks.

I might be wrong here, but I do not think this protective circle should be a functioning entity.  It's a nit-picky little thing, but I'm fairly confident that not focusing on you magical ritual means your ritual should fail. The text even acknowledges this...and then goes on ahead and does the circle anyway, because apparently Micah's blood is all it takes. Micah is literally magic, ya'll.

Micah and Anita start screaming when the power hits. I am horrible and imagining them both having a full blown orgasm in front of an entire out-of-state court of law. Anita is so overwhelmed by her power that she says "fuck the legal system" and raises her target just like that. No pause to discuss things with the judge and the rest of the gang. Nope. Just random zombie!

We waste several paragraphs on Anita pawing through the dirt. We find out she has never done this before.

And then the zombie sees Salvia and the shit hits the fan.

See, zombies are easy to raise unless they've been murdered. Then they turn into a starving pitbull and their murderer is the t-bone stake dangling in front of them. They will go through everything until they get their hands on the percieved murderer--not the actual one, just the one they think killed them--and then get to be laid to rest.

And this zombie thinks that Salvia murdered him--despite being dead of natural causes--because Salvia stuck the molested body of a child in his car.

The body of a kid murdered by the son of a mob boss.

So let me lay this out for ya'll, just so that you're really clear: A man is framed for pedophilia by the mob so that they can 1. get rid of a witness and 2. take care of their own, and he dies before he can testify. He thinks that the guys who framed him murdered him, something that Anita doesn't know when she raises him. It's been pounded into our heads over and over and over again that you DO NOT RAISE MURDER VICTIMS EVER, so this is about as big an OH SHIT moment as this series has ever had...

AND WE ARE GOING TO IGNORE ALL OF IT.

He keeps beating against the protective circle and Anita feels it give. Well, you probably should have spent more time on your ritual and less time following chipmunks.

 Anita is expending all her energy to keep the murderous zombie in her circle and away from Salvia when Salvia's goon shoots her in the arm from somewhere across the graveyard. Her sheild pops like a soap bubble, and when she jumps the zombie he throws her against a gravestone.

End of chapter.

Guys, there is one chapter left in this book. The famous "I can't be arsed to plot out all the lose ends" summery chapter LKH is so good at.

This book didn't even last a WEEK.

HELP. ME.

Micah--chapter 10

One of the things in the gym bag that Micah was holding was a machete longer than my forearm. Even with a badge I might have had trouble getting it on the plane, except for the magical artifact law. Magical practitioners who earned their living from their magical talent could not be denied access to their magical tools.

...Really. Your magical training requires you to use a machete longer than your arm. Kind of like how it requires you to kill a chicken, use special ointment, and go through nine million forms of mumbo-jumbo you discarded several books ago because you found out you didn't need it. You can't, like, buy one once you get to Philly either, can you? St. Louis is the only place you can buy a machete from.

And by the way? You can bring machetes, swords, knives, clubs, baseball AND cricket bats on a plane as long as it's checked luggage. So sorry, Anita. You're not special. You just actually obeyed the fucking law for once and put the edged weapon in the cargo hold, rather than trying to bring it into the cabin.

  We were introduced to everyone. I gave a special nod to the court reporter, the only other woman there. I spent a lot of time being the only woman everywhere I went. I’d begun to like having other women around. It made me feel less like a freak. The only girl in the all-boys club had begun to get a little lonely of late.

Which is why you act like other women are shit every time you have to deal with one. I can count on one hand the number of positive female characters in this series, and ALL OF THEM are either Anita's teacher, or Anita's student.

...and that is extraordinarily troubling. FYI a huge red flag for a dangerous sociopath is a lack of peer-to-peer relationships. Sociopaths cannot have platonic relationships with peers. If they are a sex the sociopath is attracted to, they will either enter a romantic relationship or utterly demonize the person (or do both). If the peer is the non-attractive sex, then the sociopath will attempt to be either the teacher or the student. If they fail to acheive either role, they will demonize the peer and demand that others do the same. Sociopaths have teachers, students and sex partners in their lives. They do not allow themselves to have platonic equals. You can manipulate teachers and students and sex partners. It is much, much more difficult to manipulate a platonic equal--and having an equal will allow your students and sex partners to have someone to vent to, who could provide much needed ground control. Anita has her Wiccan teacher, there's that Marshal that gets scratched a few books ahead, the were-rat who takes care of her, and her leopards. In each case Anita is either in a superior or subordinate role. The people that she called her peers early in the series--like Ronnie and Tammy--she's pushed away and demonized.

I'd say "Good on LKH for characterization" but I really don't think this is intentional. It doesn't make enough sense in the context of the story.

The defense hates Anita because she's going to resurrect a prime witness. We get that. They immediately start rehashing the "inadmissible evidence" arguement that probably got squashed long before anybody called St. Louis. The loudest of them is Salvia, an Italian lawyer that sounds vaguely familar to Anita. So this *coughMOBcough* lawyer starts screaming that any evidence delivered by the zombie will be tainted, and decides the best way to prove this is have Anita walk him through every step of her zombie-raising process.

Rather than just bloody doing it, Anita balks at explaining why a circle of protection might be necessary.

This is like a surgeon refusing to explain why disinfecting the table and tools might be a good idea. Not only is it kind of self-explianatory once the basic concept (germs and/or magical contamination) is grasped, it's kind of magic/medicine 101 and not explaining it just makes you look dumb.

Of course, Anita refusing to explain how zombie-raising works to the court system drags this scene out for several pages, which was probably the general idea.

Eventually--and you have no idea how long it takes to get to this point--it boils down to Salvia wanting to question her methods the way he would a DNA expert, and all of a sudden Anita really knows crime scene protocol (which is why she wore a miniskirt, skimpy blouse, heels, a thong and nothing else to a crime scene last book. Because making a statement of girl power is more important than keeping a crime scene secure and avoiding hepatitis, AIDS and tetanus.) and can bat with the big boys. She says that her methods are not open to interpretation because unlike DNA and fingerprints, where fucking up could alter the results (and thus fuck up a case) she either will raise a zombie or she won't, and that's it. No more questions.

Salvia is not happy about this, but the judge just wants to go home, so he lets it fly. Salvia goes back to questioning her about why she needs a protective circle. Anita, meanwhile, is having so much trouble with her superpowers that she has to snuggle with Micah in public.

And then Salvia says that since the dead guy was a good Christian, painting him up with blood should be bad. And Anita's reply is kind of priceless:

“Besides, Mr. Salvia, are you implying that you can’t be a good Christian if you sacrifice a few chickens and raise a few zombies?”

Yeah, because it's not like Laurel K. Hamilton didn't spend the last two books shitting all over Christianity in general and Tammy and Franklin AKA the declared Christians in particular. If you want Christianity to be the big bad awful religion of the masses that's fine. Go right on ahead. But don't make your mouthpiece character one of them. It makes them look like a hypocrite and you look like a fucking idiot. It's one thing when you're trying to show the difference between awful, abusive organized religion (which exists) and the individual follower (Mercedes Lackley did this beautifully in one of the Bedlam Bard books) but this reads less as "SOME Christians are good!" and more like "OH FUCK I FORGOT, ONE OF HER DEFINING TRAITS IS THAT SHE'S EPISCOPALIAN."

The judge starts asking Anita if she wants to be held in contempt. Probably because she's doing this:

I grabbed on to him and pressed as much of him against me as I could, so that we were plastered against each other, as close as we could get with clothes on. I buried my face against the side of his neck, drawing in the warm, sweet scent of his skin. Soap, the slight sweetness of his cologne, and underneath that the scent of his skin. The scent of Micah. And underneath that, that faint, neck-ruffling scent of leopard. The moment I smelled it, I felt better. That musky, almost-sharp scent of leopard helped chase back the almost-voices of the dead.

Anita. You're in public. This is not a rave. This is not a dance. This is not a romantic night out. This is business. Knock it off. 

  Finally, Micah asks the judge if Anita can put up her sheild for her own protection, because her magic is haywire and she's losing control. Salvia objects, but that's pretty much his entire defining character trait.

Micah, however, figures that he's stalling for a reason, and that right there has "assassination attempt" written all over it, but Anita is all "Gee, I wonder what he could be waiting for?" and she insists on going ahead with things.

They spend several pages taking off Micah's jacket and clearing up the legal red tape that apparently is needed before Anita can cut into Micah...and the chapter closes with her doing just that.


Seventy percent of this novel is gone. HELP.

Micah--chapter 9

Guys, I just realized something terrible: We're halfway through this book.

We are halfway through this fucking book. HOW IS THIS FUCKING POSSIBLE. THERE HAS BEEN NO PLOT. NO PLOT WHATSOEVER. I don't. I just. I can't.

I should also point out that I'm loopy on cold medicine ATM so I make no promises about coherancy. (valuable lesson: Cons=colds)

The first paragraph is kind of a thing of beauty:

Philly was a pretty city, what little I’d seen of it. The visit so far had consisted of the airport and the hotel room and some amazing sex. We could have been anywhere. The cemetery reminded me that the city was in one of the thirteen original colonies. It was old, that cemetery. It breathed its age and the age of its dead. Breathed it along my skin the moment we stepped out of Fox’s car. Once, a cemetery this old would have been peaceful for me. Too old to have ghosts, maybe a few shivery spots if you walked directly over a grave, but mostly the dead here would be inert, earth to earth, dust to dust, and all that. But now the dead called to me, even through my shielding.

One of the comp rules I'm bad about remembering is that paragraphs ought to be about one thing. Sentences are one to two thoughts per, paragraphs get to rock a central theme like cookies or alligators. This is a loose rule, but it's one that should be observed once in a while. So here we have "Philly is pretty". Okay. "I've been screwing too much to pay attention." Well, that's alright...but is it just me, or do we not exactly segue into "this is an old fucking cematary" as much as we do plow into it face first with no warning beforehand?

(I'm also mean enough to think that the only parts of Philly we see are a hotel room, an airport, this cemetary and a hospital are because LKH had never been there and didn't want to blow money on a guide book. But that's just me)

"Breathed" is the wrong word choice IMHO. I'd also really like an explination on why the cemetary is too old to have ghosts, which is something we never get.

Anita plays with the tombstones for a minute, then stops suddenly. Franklin walks into her and freaks out, revealing that he's got some kind of power. This will never become important for this book. I know, because I just read the whole damn thing. Fox asks her what's wrong and she lies so that Frank doesn't get uncovered as psychic or whatever.

Great.

She continues playing with the graves on a psychic level until Franklin almost loses it, and then Micah points out that she's losing control of her power tonight. Am I the only person who misses the days when Antia had her shit together? Because she was really cool back then. Micah also points out that 1. she should not add death magic to her power tonight, so no killing chickens and 2. she probably shouldn't use her blood at all, so he'll volunteer. Otherwise she might wind up raising the entire graveyard. Anita agrees with all of this, and wanders off after Fox and Franklin. And that's the end of the chapter.

I'd do more, but in all honesty I don't want to kill this book any sooner than I'd need to.

Micah--chapter 7-

Chapter seven opens by addressing one of the great mysteries of all time: How Anita Blake is getting out of her panties. Apparently the thing we needed to know is that Anita likes having sex with her garter belt and hose on. Yeah, Jean Claude taught her to put her panties on on top of the garter belt.

All I can think are "Rippling Runs, Batman!" and how uncomfortable the marks must be in the morning.

I stood there until his eyes filled with that darkness that men’s eyes fill with in the moment they realize you won’t say no.

That sentence is constructed horribly and oh my fucking GOD could you be more rapy?

...actually yes. Yes you can. Let's not go there.

Micah spends several minutes posing Anita like a rag doll. Okay, I have to give it to her: this sex scene is better written than the scenes in Cerulean Sins or Incubus Dreams. It's in an appropriate place, everybody's behaving with relative amounts of sanity, and Antia doesn't have go anywhere for the next several hours. We have finally figured out how to fuck like a regular human. LKH deserves a cookie.

Now if Micah could manage to find the plot while he's prospecting up Anita's va-jay-jay, we'd be all set.

All that said, I did not wake up today going "I want to read a play by play description of oral sex." Fuck, if I wanted to read para-oral I'd just dig the Stardoc books out again (Good premise, the books near the end are the best, and holy blue fuck it is possible to out-annoy Sookie Stackhouse amd trust me you do not want to know what "more annoying than Sookie Stackhouse" looks like. Cherijo is fucking stupid. And not in a human stupid way, in a "We forgot how to balance normal human reactions with an actual plot so we're going to go the cardboard cut-out-of-crazy route, but just to prove that the writer can do a human we're going to turn her into a lovable psychotic for a few books, and then destroy all your attachment to this character .Got it? thanks." Also: Oral. More than once.) (I can't recommend the series. It was the first end-of-series book I wanted to burn.)

...Anita Blake is fucking with her heels on until Micah tells her to take them off. I needed to know this. Also: Her feet must get sore eventually.

Chapter seven ends without actual intercourse. On to chapter eight, because fuck if I'm going to spend more than one fucking post on these characters fucking.

“So wet, but so tight. You’re always so tight after I do you by mouth.” He was kneeling between my legs, his body so hard, so ripe, so ready. I said the only thing I was thinking. “Fuck me, Micah, fuck me.” “You’re tight, Anita, really tight.” I raised up on my elbows. “But wet. I’m so wet. You’ve made me so wet.”

I'm beginning to think that LKH writes sex scenes by throwing darts at a board, only the only things on it are "wet" "tight" and "cervix punch"

Also, if Micah is Superpenis, and Anita is the only woman who has ever accomodated him appropretely, how the fuck is she that tight?

Anita is curling into the fetal position during penetration.

I have no point of reference, but I do not think this should work that way. Also, LKH needs to start researching endearments because "fuck me, fuck me, fuck me" isn't priming my pump, so to speak.

Is there a plot in there, guys? No? You're sure?

...apparently orgasms turn you into a glitching video game character. Good to know.

In the aftermath, we discover that Anita has clawed his back raw (again) and that Micah tore her in his, um, enthusiasm.

These people were made for each other.

He looked down at the bedspread, which was a little worse for wear. “I better get up off this before we get more blood on it.”

You know, Mike Rowe pointed out that hotel rooms don't actually wash those things unless there's evidence that something got spilled on it, so I'd be more worried about getting tetanus from the bedspread.

He leaned against the door for a moment, then looked at me. “You make everything all right for me, Anita. You make me feel like a human being instead of a monster.” 

“And you love all of me, Micah, every last hard-boiled, ruthless bit of me. You make it okay that sometimes I am the monster. You know what I do, and you still love me.”

You know, you keep saying this, but I don't think any of us are buying. Which sucks because the dynamic in these two paragraphs is something I really would like to read, and it's why I keep coming back to these shit-fest books. It's not because I think it's great. It's because every book promises exactly that: Monsterously hot boys, and a woman who does not take any shit.

Anita has an emotional collapse every time another woman breathes on her.

There is still no plot. Send help and booze.

Micah--chapter 6

So today my internet was shot. I waited three hours to get to post this. That's why the formatting is funky. I had to do it all in word.

Without further ado...


Anita and Micah ordered room service. However, before Micah opens the door, he takes a couple seconds to check out the dude and grab his scent, on the off-chance somebody with a gun might be hiding in the room service cart.Anita realizes that she unsnapped her gun and had it ready to draw only after Micah opens the door.I actually love every part of this. This shows—without telling us—that Anita’s life is insane and dangerous. She’s on a romantic vacation with her boyfriend and they both go paranoid freakout over room service that they themselves ordered. This does everything the last several chapters failed to do. It establishes them as tough, as people who need to be tough, and as people who are wound so tight they’re about to snap. This is how you do character development. 
This is also why this series is so fucking infuriating. WHY DID WE HAVE TO READ THROUGH PAGES OF SUCK TO GET ONE GOOD PIECE OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT? 
Fuck it. 
Micah ordered a salad and chicken breast. Anita says she’d better not be getting the salad and he confirms that the chicken is hers, the salad is his, and he would have ordered heavier but they’re about to have marathon sex and the steaks Anita wanted would have made them both upchuck.I am so glad we needed to know all of this.

"I blushed, because the memory of just how much we’d been drawn together from the moment we’d met always made me a little embarrassed. All right, more than a little."

That’s the time that he RAPED YOU in the shower, right Anita? You know, I’d even buy this relationship (a little bit. VERY little.) if this were ever acknowledged and delt with. But the fact that it was clearly rape and this is clearly ignored makes every single thing that Micah does very very squicky.

"He looked at me for a moment, then gave a small nod. But his face was back to being careful. His neutral, pleasant I’m managing her moods face. I hated that face because it meant I was being difficult, but I didn’t know how to stop being difficult. I was tripping over issues I’d thought I’d worked out months ago. What the hell was the matter with me?"

You’re being written by LKH?
I’m going to make a confession here, folks. There are relatively few paranormal romance writers I actually like. I enjoy Patricia Briggs (mostly. I still hate Frost Burned on the re-read) and P.N. Elrod. I’ve never read Butcher and I don’t intend to (it’s completely irrational; I’ve got nothing against the author, and I’m sure he’s really good, but I’ve never been in a mood to crack his pages. I had the same thing against watching Avatar, which I finally did watch and now actively hate. HOW DO YOU MAKE BODY HOPPING ALIENS DULL? Apparently let James Cameron direct it). Kim Harrison is good, but I kind of lost interest halfway through the second book and I have no idea why. Charlene Harris is probably the nicest human being you’ll ever meet, but Sookie Stackhouse needs to go die in a fire. The reason that I keep on going back to LKH over and over and over again is I actively liked her books and I’ve yet to find a replacement that holds my interest the way she did. (Though Briggs and Elrod come kind of close). 
But for all those other writers, nobody decayed the way LKH did. We went from having an active protagonist who resolves plots decisivelyto one that constantly retreds the same old tired ground. We resolved this, Anita. EVEN YOU ARE POINTING OUT THAT  WE HAVE RESOLVED THIS. WHY ARE WE NOT MOVING ON?

“I have no idea why you are this”— he made a waffling motion with his hand—“ but we’ll play it your way.

I’d say “Fuck you too, Micah” but I think I ought to have concerns about his schlong.
So they decide to discuss each other’s scars because that is what’s at issue here, and Anita just rehashes stuff that’s been covered in the introductions of every single book of this series. The cross shaped scar. The nastiness on her neck. The bites on her collarbone. 
Micah tells his story: He was out hunting and got mauled by a were-leopard. LKH uses this story to maul every. Single. Little. Detail she possibly can, and Anita starts apologizing for not liking the room because it made Micah’s PTSD worse. 
You know, most authors would find giving their protagonist’s central relationship unintentional overtones of abuse to be a bad thing. (Intentional, it’s another story.)
And then we find out that he lost his first love because his penis is too large.

I thought about having all that shoved inside for the first time, maybe without enough foreplay.

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. YOU ALSO DID NOT GIVE CONSENT.
Oh, hey, let’s address the other rape in this series:

He laughed. “I didn’t ask Richard. I asked around and found out he thought you were too bloodthirsty, and he didn’t like the police work. None of that bothered me.”\

ANITA RAPED RICHARD AND THAT IS WHY HE BROKE IT OFF. THAT IS NOT ME. THAT IS THE FUCKING TEXT. JESUS. EFFING. CHRIST.
And on that note, they run off to bed. End of chapter.

Micah--chapter 5

For the first paragraph of chapter five, LKH forgets how to make compound sentences.

The hotel was nice. Very nice. Too nice. There were people in uniforms all over the place. Not police— hotel employees. They sprang forward to get doors. To try to help with luggage. Micah actually let a bellman take our bags. I protested that we could carry them. He’d smiled and said to just enjoy it. I hadn’t enjoyed it. I had leaned against the mirrored wall of the elevator and tried not to get angry.

I'm torn. On the one hand this is almost a good representation of social anxiety. On the other hand holy bleeding fuck is that annoying. After the first paragraph we get about one comma per sentence but it doesn't get much better.

And the whole point of it is that Anita gets nervy around high social people and refined places.

Here's the thing, guys: A girl who really does not give a fuck the way LKH wants Anita to? She would not care about the five star hotel with silver service and white gloved turn-downs. She's still gonna put her boots on the table, polish her guns on the sideboard, and go to the aforementioned silver service restaurant with more than one gun because she cannot be bothered to give a fuck. I have met these women. They would not fall all to pieces because their boyfriends booked them into a five star instead of a motel six. Though they might get kind of pissed if they aren't allowed to smoke.

He hadn’t done anything wrong, except make me even more nervous about what he expected from me on this trip.

Micah probably expects what he was getting in St. Louis. Lots and lots and lots of sex. Given that he RAPED YOU the first night you met, he's probably not looking for emotional intimacy.

  And if he is, damn he's a sick fuck.

Micah was putting his wallet back in that little pocket that good suit jackets have for wallets, if your wallet is long enough and slender enough not to break the line of the suit.

Thank you for trying to make up for the machine-gun sentences at the start of the chapter. This is not an improvement.

Anita asks him how much the room costs. He tells her its rude to ask, which means it costs too fucking much.

 ...and seriously? You expect me to believe that Anita is having an emotional breakdown over a hotel room when she's been dating Jean fucking "I raid Jareth the Goblin King's Wardrobe every evening" Claude for multiple years? The guy who taught her which fork to use because he regularly dines with vampires who are old enough to be that kind of bastard over a meal they can't possibly participate in? The man whose bedroom, as of the last two books, is a fucking gold-and-silver lame' sex pen? Fuck me, if I've got the timeline right JC was French contemporary to at least one King Louis, if not more than one, and the French court made cultural obtuse into a freaking art form AND JC insists on throwing his refinement all over every surface like it's lacy projectile vomit. WHY IS ANITA FREAKING OUT OVER A FUCKING FOUR SEASONS SUITE?

And then we have a big long conversation about flowers, and how Micah won't give her flowers because Jean Claude gives her flowers--a dozen white roses and three red ones, one for him, one for Asher and one for--fucking hell--Richard--and Micah feels like he'd be redundant, and can't Anita just accept a nice gift for once (at this point he's being the douche-canoe now) and IT'S A HOTEL ROOM. A HOTEL ROOM. THERE IS NO MURDER CASE THERE IS NO MYSTERY WE'RE JUST HAVING A MOTHERFUCKING MELTDOWN OVER A HOTEL ROOM FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

(For the record I, too, have a hotel room scene in a later Casey Winter book (aka THE BOOK) in which she ping-pongs off every surface because hotel rooms are awesome. Just so you know)

Then they have a conversation that shows how little these two people actually know each other. Anita didn't ask how Micah met Fox. Micah never asked Anita about her scars.

I am actually really bad at that, so I'm not commenting further than that.

I stood there for a moment, leaning against the door. We were doing the exact thing I’d feared we’d do alone together. We were raking emotional shit.

This is what you are supposed to do in a relationship. That's why you have relationships.

 Anita starts reading about the zombie she has to raise. Fucking finally. And apparently what happened was dude was in federal custody, but died of a heart attack before he could testify. Anita starts investigating his religion because that could get in the way. Voodoo would complicate things, Wicca would complicate things, but...

Straight Christian of whatever flavor wasn’t a problem.

Yeah. Because it's not like necromancy could irritate the big man or anything...

Anita calls Fox for more information, which she doesn't get, and then she does something really out of character: she calls Larry and makes sure that Tammy and the baby are both okay. She displays caring for another human being.

Who are you and what have you done with Anita.


The chapter ends with Micah running a bath.