Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 33

Incubus Dreams--chapter 34-35

So in Anita Blake world, there are a lot of these college kids all standing around somebody much taller than them. This is Primo, apparently, and he's smacking them around because it makes sense in Anita Blake world, apparently. Buzz tries to defuse the situation by telling Primo to grow the fuck up, but he's apparently having too much fun throwing civilians around to bother.

This is officially the Worst Bodyguard Ever.

Anita pulls her gun because that's what badass people do, nevermind that she could go to jail if she shot someone, and nevermind that there are loads of people at the club stronger than she is. Primo continues to throw people around, and the chapter ends with Anita screaming "No" at Primo.

Well, that was a short one.

Next chapter: Anita makes Primo's arm explode using the powers of her mind.

I've read that paragraph multiple times, looking for what it really says, and I'm pretty confident THAT'S WHAT IT SAYS: Anita Blake explodes a vampire's arm using nothing but her mind.

Because she can do that now, apparently.

Isn't there supposed to be a murder plot eventually? Are we going to get to that soon?

A few paragraphs later it becomes clear she's not exploding his arm, she's cutting it. With the power of her mind. Apparently she's somehow gotten this power through Jean Claude's experimentation? And it works like stickerburs catching on an aura?

Anita continues to flay the skin off of Primo to get him to drop the man he's holding. The guy is dying from something and Anita needs to save him.

Seriously, several people have been beaten up by a vampire and one of them now requires mouth to mouth, and I'm not getting a single "This is a social and political disaster" vibe from any of the participants. Primo is damaging people. 

 Finally they get the dude away from Primo, after Anita has literally cut open every inch of Primo's skin, and the guy starts breathing again. And then Jean Claude says this:

Jean-Claude’s voice whispered in my ear, “If someone dies, I will have much more difficulty convincing them all that nothing bad happened here.”

Yeah, he's going to roll the entire club. That is not a solution. That's bad.

Primo rushes them again, starting with rage, which Anita drinks up somehow, because she has "bottomless rage" of her own. Then he rushes Nate, and Anita gets in the way, and there's a memory sequence, and then when it's over Primo is kneeling before Anita and calling her Master. Because this totally makes sense.

Anita takes a moment to wonder what all this work with the Marks is doing to Richard.

And then Anita realizes that Jean Claude has not fed his ardeur today and he needs to feed if he's going to take care of Primo.

They have a sexy kiss, and then Jean Claude rolls the club, and then mind controls Primo to show the club that everything is alright and okay and nobody was hurt, and that brunette from the alleyway that was jealous of Nathanial? Yeah, the chapter closes with a mind-controlled Primo being forced by Jean Claude to feel her up. Because this is all perfectly alright.

Fuck. This. Book.

Incubus Dreams--chapter 32-33

So I discovered this really nifty dragon breeding game, that totally woke up my formerly buried Pern nesting instincts. In other news, I got fuck-all done today, but I have a really awesome set of dragons.

So how's Anita Blake doing?

Let's see, Nate's still in the office. She's doing that tell-the-truth-so-they'll-assume-you've-lied thing ("He's here in case I need to have sex") and her pride smarts a bit for having sex in the office.

I bet it does.

She leaves to take Nate to Guilty Pleasures, and Nate reminds her to eat because just like the ardeur needs sex, the inner beast needs meat and the inner vampire needs blood, Anita's inner human needs to be taken care of too. That means a burger, or fries, or something that resembles real food.

“It would be interesting if you kept a food diary to see if there was a correlation between starving your human body and the other hungers rising.”

Let me get this straight. Laurel K. Hamilton is writing a story where balance between needs is absolutely key to her main character's well being, and she is going to ignore this in favor of having sex.

Will, in fact, later demonize this idea--that feeding her human body will sate the supernatural stuff too--because it's not hard core enough.

Laurel K. Hamilton has spent the last twenty years writing a novel series about the downward spiral of addiction, and everybody knows it but her.

Nate gives her a very stern talking to and they head off to get a burger for Anita and a salad for Nate. Nate talks about how burgers make him bloat.

And then we take a detour right into psychological fuckery that must be read to be believed.

“Richard always talked about his beast like it was all his baser impulses, you know, lust, sloth, the traditional sins, but to sin implies a knowledge of good and evil. There was no good or evil, there was nothing like normal thought. I hadn’t really understood how all my thoughts are based on things. I’m always thinking about how one thing affects another. The consequences of your actions.”

Okay. The problem with the bolded part is that in this universe, a lycanthrope is not an animal. Being shoved into a situation where your self-control is challengened in no way shape or form removes your responsability to remain in control. A murder committed drunk is the same, morally, as a murder committed sober.Being human usually means you have awareness of your actions and their consequences. This is not something that you can abdicate. You CAN abdicate the reaction to said consequences--ie feeling guilty you killed someone--but you become an utter waste of eggs and sperm in the process.

Richard is a highly moral person, and he is aware that it is much easier for him to cross the line as a wolf than it is as a man. And unlike a drug user, Richard does not get a choice. He has a biological imperitive to place himself in a place that is not safe for himself or the people around him, once a month, every month.

“I stopped thinking about the Browns’ grief, their dead son. It wasn’t that I chose to ignore it. I wasn’t being callous, it just never entered my mind. It was just that they hurt me, and I got mad, but mad translated directly to food. If I killed them and ate them, then they couldn’t hurt me anymore, and I was hungry.”

And then you acted on that feeling by handling Mrs. Brown with unnecessary force, and by turning her son's death into your personal pissing contest. The fact that you lost control, Anita, does not justify the behavior you inflicted on the people around you.

She asks Nate how he avoids ripping into people, and he tells her to channel the animal feelings into sex, which is what they did in her office.

I get the feeling this is like getting heroin addicts onto methadone. It's less harmful but it's a lateral move, and that "less harmful" part is debatable.

Anita and Nate feel each other up while they wait for their salad and hamburger.

Thrilling action, ya'll. Just thrilling.

However, in the next chapter we get this absolutely breathtaking bit of description.

The alley was an alley,

YOU DON'T SAY.

Okay, the sentence goes on to say "cramped, smelly" and other things that are generally back-bar alley-ish, but seriously. This alley, guys, it's an alley. You might have missed all the nuances, so let me say it again. This alley is an alley.

And it is full of Nate's screaming fans. They're shouting his stage name of Brandon, but yeah, Nathanial has screaming fans. Because Anita must have the very best stripper leopard for her harem, ya know? OOOh, and of Nate's fans TWO of them are blondes and one has black hair, but it so obviously came out of a bottle.

The fan-girls get wary of Anita until both Nate and Anita say that she's security. One of them keeps pushing until a security vampire (...okay, that is for-reals, one of the coolest things I've typed all night) makes the girls go away. Anita says that one girl, a brunette, is taking things way too personally.

Then Anita finds out that the guy who should have kept the girls away from the stage door is also taking money to let in undesirables.

The undesirables being, you know, men. Yeah, men are strongly discouraged from going into Guilty Pleasures.

Doesn't that violate more than a couple laws?

Anita and Security Vamp AKA Buzz discuss how Bad Security Vamp Primo is fucking everyone over, and then some of those nasty unwanted men start heckling a dancer and a vamp comes to get Buzz to fix things, because it is "getting ugly". Anita goes along for shits and giggles and the chapter ends.

This book is going NOWHERE, isn't it?

Incubus Dreams--chapter 30-31

Have I established yet how very very much I loathe weekends? I have? Good. Just wanted to make sure.

So let's move into this nonsense while the night is young, shall we?

I was conflicted last post. The fact that the book turned entertaining for a few paragraphs threw my game. I mean, my policy is to be honest. I like something, I'm gonna say it. And at this point saying that a paragraph doesn't make me want to kill myself is a positive point. Mostly.

Fortunately I do not think I will have that problem with these chapters.

I fought that panic, fought not to struggle, not to fight Nathaniel. I could get away. I knew it, and that other mind knew it. We could get away. We could be safe. But that small part that was still human knew that Nathaniel wouldn’t hurt us. We had to let him pin us, had to, because I knew I could escape. What I didn’t know was what would happen if I got away. What would happen if Nathaniel couldn’t pin me and hold me down until I could think like a person again? I didn’t want to find out, because it would be something bad, something I wouldn’t want to live with afterward.

She wants to run away and she doesn't. Right.

The first time I ever read the "Her mouth says no but her eyes say yes" phrase was in a play script called M. Butterfly. Can I recommend it? Yes and no. It was interesting. Anyhoo, that is the exact vibe I get from this. "Oh, I need to have sex now, but good girls don't have sex, so if I resist and play at not wanting it I can have my sex and keep the moral high ground".

Except that makes you look like a moron, not moral.

Seriously, for all her "OOOH MORALS AND INHIBITIONS ARE BAD" LKH spends a lot of time making sure that Anita has the high ground in her harem. Oh, she didn't want Micah of the ultra-long schlong. No, he forced himself on her. (Which he actually did, and I'm not migitating that. Having your main character be raped so that she can fall in love with her rapist and so that you, the author, don't have to traverse the icky emotional minefield of the "It's not me, it's you" speech is disgusting on every level of human consciousness.) She didn't want Nathanial, but he insisted. Oh, she didn't want Harem Member X, but there was this magical storm and she kind of accidentally reformatted his brain, so he's hers now. It's not her fault, but hey, free hot sex without any moral questions!

Except for the whole "I fell in love with my rapist" thing. And the whole "I raped my then-fiancee" thing. And the whole "I've erased the will of at least two different men because I pointed my vagina at them" thing. I will buy that accidental lover shit when Anita rolls somebody physically disgusting. Seriously. The only way the Ardeur could truely be an accidental thing is if she had a severe allergy to supermodels.

Moving on.

This sex scene reads as a rape, only there's a lot of "let" involved. As in "I let him pin me down," ect, ect. Because we have to make consent clear here. Only part of Anita is scared out of her mind. The rest of her wants this. So no more accusations of the sexy men raping the main character, okay?

Yeah. Not getting a pass, thanks. Mostly because this is freaking spelled out in the text: 

Nathaniel won’t hurt me. Nathaniel won’t hurt me. I kept repeating that over and over and over, as he settled his body tighter against mine. The part that was beast knew he could break our spines from this position. The part that was me felt like it was a prelim to rape.

 And this is the point where the sane person says "Stop" or "Red" or "Foxtrot" or whatever the safeword is, because unless the point is to feel this exact thing, this is not okay. And it's incredibly clear that the point is not to feel this exact thing, because Anita keeps trying to calm herself down. IDK about you, but repeating "It's not really rape" to myself probably wouldn't make me feel any safer. But hey, at least it's going to be really hard to top--

 I knew that Nathaniel wouldn’t do that, and I also knew that truthfully if you’re intent on rape you want some clothes off before you get here. Because once you’ve pinned someone like this, your hands are busy, and men’s pants don’t unzip themselves.

That's actually the rest of that paragraph, folks. Yeah, rape is only rape if the dude takes time to unzip his pants before he pins your hands down.




So Anita panics and fights Nate until he's hard against her desk, and then he bites her and everything goes from "This could be rape" level panic to sunshine and roses, and Anita relaxes. You know, because now that we've gotten the fight and the protests out of the way, we can have guilt free sex.

I'm gonna need a shower after this shit.

...and apparently I spoke too soon. Anita decides that she doesn't want to have sex in her office with her workmates right outside the door--and she's been flat-out screaming this whole time--and then Nate rolls her over onto all fours, Anita decides that being butt-naked on all fours at her workplace is a little undignified--NO REALLY YOU THINK?--and Nathanial acheives the goal he's been begging for ever since this book started.

This is the first time I can remember seeing "tight" employed in this fashion. There are probably others, but given that "tight" and it's best friend "wet" are pretty much the only discriptive terms sex with Anita ever gets, I felt it worth noting that I finally found at least half of LKH's favorite pairing in the text.

...and Anita starts screaming again. WHILE. AT. WORK. HER BOSS. IS SITTING. OUTSIDE. HER DOOR.

...okay, maybe some of the sex scene is a little interesting. If vague and under-described. It's the first time something specific has been described that I know of, though. Also, I think In-and-Out burger will probably sue.

And then we blow all of that by finding out that Nate didn't actually get an orgasm out of all this because he can only come when called, basically.

As in Anita has to give him permission. The word "headspace" is used, and I have no idea if that's a common term or if it's something invented for this scene. Given that it's too good a word for LKH to invent, I'm gonna guess somebody other than her uses it. So yeah. Nathanial has to be told he can orgasm before he can orgasm, and this should be a positive because he's "So well trained".

 So Anita notices that there's a...spot. On her carpet. And she goes for babywipes to clean up. And then...

She and Nate have the "rainmaker" conversation. About how exceptional and rare it is that Anita could make a wet spot on the carpet...and apparently soak her own skin to the knees.

IS THERE A REASON WHY WE NEEDED TO KNOW THIS? SERIOUSLY. THERE IS A REASON MOST ROMANCE NOVELS SKIP THE POST-SEX CLEAN UP. IT IS GROSS AND BORING AND IT KIND OF RUINS THE MOOD.

...wait. Anita just spent a couple paragraphs--most of the "rainmaker" conversation--trying to find her underwear. Which she puts on...and then she gets out a spare set of hose. I made the mistake of assuming that these are panty-hose, simply because the one and only time I ever wore the thigh-high kind I realized why pantyhose was invented in the first place. So for a minute there I was like "Why would she have to look for her panties?"

Anita and Nate have a conversation that amounts to "Why wouldn't you come?" "Because I want it to be important when I do" "But I'm only using you." "Yeah, but I want it, so there." and that's the end of the chapter.

Start of next chapter: Anita complains that her boss will probably try to use her having loud, screaming sex in her office at her workplace against her.

You know what? There's an easy way to fix this: don't have sex at the office.

 We get a play by play on how Anita puts on lipstick.

Then we get what could have been a really good scene where the secretary, Mary, cleans up Nate, and says she doesn't give a fuck about Nate being a lycanthrope/therianthrope because she can't catch it from his human form, and people who are paranoid about that are just silly.

Then there's stuff about how badly the clients abused Anita, and how Barbera Brown, the mother, has probably thrown a punch multiple times before.

...and then we find out that Burt, her boss, is an absolute piece of shit because he took their money in exchange for not calling the cops on them for assaulting Anita.

Everybody in this book is terrible. Everybody.

Burt and the Browns talk Anita into being on retainer for their son's murder case, and Anita manhandles Burt into promising to give them back the money if she can't actually help the case. She decides to bring in a man who once tried to amputate his own hands so he would stop having psychic visions, which puts her on Burt's level of shitty behavior. They discuss this for a while, and then the chapter ends.

I hate. This book. Forever.






 

Incubus Dreams--chapter 27-29

So something really weird happens when Ronnie shows up: The book stops sucking.

Oh, it's still bad. But it loses whatever it is that makes it terrible. It stops being boring. Anita stops being an utter waste of skin. Nathanial becomes interesting.

Ronnie comes into the apartment and she and Anita immediately start talking about men. I know talking about men is kind of cliche for female characters, but FYI most of the conversations the girls have at work wouldn't pass the Bechdel test either. Whatever. Anita and Ronnie talk about Nate being domestic for a while. Okay.

Ronnie then starts talking about Louie and how her problem is that she just doesn't get any space around him, and this is something I can completely relate to.

She shook her head. “No, but I want my apartment back, the way it was. I don’t like coming home and finding that he’s rearranged everything in my cabinets so it’s easier to find. If I want to dig through every cabinet to find tomato paste, then it was my choice. He didn’t even ask, I just came home one night, and he’d organized everything in the kitchen. I couldn’t find anything.” She must have sounded pouty even to herself, because she jerked off the glasses and gave the full force of those pain-filled gray eyes. “You think I’m being silly, don’t you?”

See, I get that LKH is going for the "How ungreatful this woman is" Line, but I have had this exact problem before and I am going "yep. Yep. Preach it, sister" as Ronnie goes on about the tomato paste.

Then they start talking about how their parents respectively fucked them up, and I dig this too. My favorite poem is "This be the verse" and I can quote it from memory at the drop of a hat. The first line is They fuck you up, your Mom and Dad. I read this over lunch and I was all like...this is entertaining. This is not greatly or wonderfully entertaining and I would much rather be reading ANYTHING ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE...but I am interested enough to read the next paragraph without dying.

And then Ronnie says the real issue, and this goes from being a shitty talk to something that is actually valid:

“But if I don’t agree to something, he’ll leave. We either move forward, or he’s gone. That’s him trying to force me to marry him.”

Because hey, this is a human emotional state that I can relate to on every level, and as yet I can detect no sense of being condemned for not playing the game or anything.

Of course it quickly peters out into a "Look at how happy Anita is with all this domestic stuff" and I start rolling my eyes and skimming again. But hey, for just one second there was a real-ish issue on the table!

Yeah, three pages later we're all "Don't take your issues out on my relationships" while Ronnie is trying to understand how Antia can have two boyfriends. Given that Louie is probably not poly, this is a worthless point of conversation.

So they keep talking and it's kind of like "Hey, is that the real Anita? ...kinda. But this is definately mostly her. And hey, that part was actively funny" and then Nate shows up.

In full stripper gear.

Because it has all these straps and two of them are busted and he needs a hole punch, and the whole point is, of course, to trail Nate around in front of Ronnie so that one fictional character can see the fictional character that another fictional character is fucking...and it's actually kind of funny in an "OH GOD I SHOULD FIND THIS DEHUMANIZING AND HUMILIATING BUT IT IS ENTERTAINING" kind of way.

The better issue, though, is that the writing is competent. There are no "He was sexy the way chocolate was sexy, in a dark chocolate way" sort of description. Nothing is implied. Nate just wanders around the room looking for his leather punch and Anita keeps looking over at Ronnie, who keeps turning various shades of red and pale while Nate walks around in the male version of that duct tape costume from Fifth Element. You know exactly how hot Nate is, exactly how Ronnie feels, and exactly how amused Anita is watching this, all without anybody having to repeat things sixteen zillion times. It's not PC or healthy by any means, but it's also not hair that is red the way rubies were red if you spun them out and made them into red hair. And part of what makes it so interesting is that the whole time Nate and Anita are having this non-chalant conversation about how the idiot who lost the leather punch is no longer allowed to touch Nate's things.

And then Nate demos how double jointed he is, and it goes back into sucking.

And then Ronnie and Anita talk about how sex isn't a sin, and it stops sucking because this is an issue relivant to the book, and it's the first time anyone even THOUGHT about addressing issues relivant to the book.

Look. I'm grasping at straws here. I'm trying to explain why the last twenty odd chapters weren't even remotely entertaining and this one vaguely is.

Anyway, they keep talking, and while nothing is resolved I actually enjoyed watching two people and talk about relationships without having it turn into a "My schlong is bigger" contest.

Next chapter: Anita has to go to work. Apparently she and all the other animators told their boss to fuck off at one point, and rather than being fired their boss treated them like "partners in a law firm" which makes little sense, but it DOES allow Anita to go to work in a black mini skirt that is THE bone of contention between them for most of this chapter.

Also, Anita is wearing a necklace that Jean Claude and Asher once gave Juliana. I did not know that I had a list of "Instant cause for dumping" items, but "Gift of dead girlfriend's jewelry" is apparently item number one. Seriously. HOW ARE YOU NOT CREEPED OUT BY THIS ANITA.

 They move off the skirt and then discuss how Anita now has to have Nathanial sitting out in the waiting room. Because the Ardeur might rise. And she might have to have sex right fucking now. 

...And she actually has to explain this to her boss in antagonistic detail. 

Trust Bert to find just the right thing to say. “Yes, Bert, that’s it, I’ve become a nymphomaniac. I need sex so often that I have to take a lover with me wherever I go now.”

I read this part with my mouth open. Really, how can you tell your boss "I have to have a lover here for sex at all times. Suck it."and think you can do anything other than get fired.

Also: Has he already danced at Guilty Pleasures? Is he about to? Is it too much to ask for a FUCKING TIME LINE at this point?

So then Bert gets down to business...and again, the book stops sucking.

Apparently a young man was murdered, and his parents want Anita to raise him so they can find out who killed him and his girlfriend.

And they will pay Anita oodles and oodles of money to do this.

The problem is that a murder victim will immediately try to kill whoever murdered them--also munching through anybody standing between them and their killer--and Anita would be responsible for each and every death her zombie caused. So the short answer is no. The long answer is "oh HELL no" but the family is willing to pay fifteen thousand dollars for the privelage of being told no in person.

Anita agrees to tell them no in person. She agrees because it's a chance to talk them out of it, and there are plenty of magical types who would go "Sure, give me your money" and then either not deliver, or let Junior go eat his way through most of St. Louis.

I already know this won't amount to shit in this book, but it's a good delimma. THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE START OF THIS BOOK PEOPLE.

 Chapter 29: The suck returns gradually, but when it hits it comes on HARD. Mom shows Anita pictures of Junior AKA Stevie, and by "pictures" I mean all of them. Every picture ever taken of Stevie that Mom thinks might sway the mean old animator into giving her son life for a few more hours.

Anita says no, I can't do it. Mom brings out his prom and science fair photos and starts talking about how sweet he was.

They keep talking, and Mom keeps getting more upset, and finally Burt comes in and says that it is time for everyone to leave...and that's when Mom attacks Anita.

Anita goes batshit insane on Mom, getting her into an arm lock and twisting until she almost breaks Mom's arm.

Mom is an upset woman who lost her son. Anita Blake is a trained martial artist and a no-holds-barred killer. Please keep that in mind for the next part:

I didn’t have as good a hold on her as I should have, I was still trying to be nice to the poor bereaved crazy woman. She twisted in my grip and dug her nails across my hand. I tucked my elbow tight across her throat and pulled up sharp on her arm behind her back. She cried out, but it stopped abruptly because I was applying pressure to her neck. I knew how to do a choke hold so that all it did was make you pass out. I knew not to crush the Adam’s apple or anything stupid. And I admit I was pissed by this point, but Mr. Brown shouldn’t have done what he did.

AWW ANITA DOES NO PERMANENT DAMAGE TO MOM AND THAT SHOULD JUSTIFY HER USING A FUCKING CHOKE HOLD ON A SEVERELY DEPRESSED WOMAN.

 So Dad punches Anita in the face, and while violence against women is never ever ever ever EVER okay, after three books of this stupidity I have to admit the image of Anita Blake being cold-cocked by a random dude is absolutely fucking beautiful. 

Again: THE HEROINE OF THIS NOVEL SERIES IS USING COMPLETELY UNWARRENTED VIOLENCE AGAINST ANOTHER WOMAN, AND WE ARE SUPPOSED TO SYMPATHIZE WITH HER WHEN THE HUSBAND PUNCHES HER IN THE FACE.

...and then being punched brings up the ardeur. Because the most perfectly natural reaction to being punched in the face by a dude is the urge to have both sex and blood play at the same time.


Nate manages to get everybody out of the office before Anita kills and/or rapes someone, and the chapter ends with her begging him for help.

I think the biggest issue I have with Anita at this point is what this chapter highlights perfectly: Anita gets to do whatever Anita wants to do and there are no consequences. Anita just physically damaged an already damaged person. DO NOT TELL ME THAT MOM COULD NOT HAVE BEEN BROUGHT BACK UNDER CONTROL WITH SOMETHING LESS THAN A FUCKING CHOKE HOLD. Anita did that because Anita didn't like dealing with Mom's greif, and Dad objected by punching Antia (Again, it's not okay...but somebody just punched Anita. Guys I am so fucking torn in how I ought to react to this). And Anita is now freaking out because Magic trumps Dead Children? And now Nate is there to fix things, and of course it will be all "Poor Anita how much she suffers" and no one will dare say "So, uh, do you think maybe you ought to have deescilated that situation before Mom imploded?"

A good heroine would have been able to get that situation back under control, either by using her own know-how or by bringing someone with that know-how into the room. Giving another woman a choke-hold--especially a woman who probably isn't trained in martial arts--is not a sign of how bad ass you are. It is a sign of how fucking out of control you are.

It is really amazing how these last few chapters had everything that was ever wrong with this series, as well as little hints of how good it was when things went right.

Oh, and I hate this book.

Incubus Dreams--chapter 25-26

First up...book news. Good news and bad news, alright my lovelies?

The bad news: I'm pushing the dragon book back to August 5th or 6th.

The good news: I'm doing that so I can hire an editor and have them polish the book. It's gonna be hella expensive, and it's going to make negotiating releases really REALLY difficult, and I have absolutely no idea if my finances or scheduling can do it, but you guys are right. It's a part of the job, and it's one that I've flown without long enough.

The meh news: it's not going to be the good, deep line edits I probably need. Just polishing. If I fuck up bad she won't help me. But I'm doing that. And eventually I might be able to afford that other thing too.

This is not something I'd recommend self publishers do BTW. I'm doing it because it's summer, I'm making enough money right now to justify spending it on an editor...but from a human, financial, business standpoint I'd be equally served by taking this cash and lighting it on fire. This is not an investment in my future. It is a very, very, incredibly monstrously STUPID thing for me to do, and I'm doing it because I want to do a good job on the books. I will never see this money again. If shit goes wrong this winter I will be very, very, VERY screwed.

This is the second thing I've done as a self-publisher that actively scares me. The first thing was hitting publish in the first place.

So if you're one of my book readers and you like my books? Please support the next one. Please. I am terrified of this next move.

Right. Shitty book.

Anita is hiding in the bedroom, and Micah tries to lure her out with breakfast.

At this point I have no idea what day it is, what time of day it is, if it is the same day as the Damian incident, if it is the same day as the wedding, I don't know! I know there was a murder, I know there was a wedding, I know that there was a lot of sex with burn victim vampires, but the timeline here is so completely screwed...I just don't get it. How hard is it to have one of those "In the past twenty four hours all this shit has happened, in the past thirty six hours all this other shit has happened, AND I STILL HAVE NOT HAD MY (insert commonly beloved habit like coffee, showers or sleep here)" moments? The only time Anita talks about time is when the ardeur has gone unfed for a while.

We get several pages of cuddling. Anita talks about how she likes her booty. Then about how Monogamy means you Love Only One Person forever...and then she bites Micah on the neck because Jean Claude is involved somehow.

How about we settle for Anita having sex without somebody else in her head. That'd be nice.

We get sexist psychic images of Juliana, the woman who facilitated Jean Claude and Asher's not-gay relationship. The one that makes me grit my teeth is the "needlework by the fire" bit. In that era needle work was not a nice womanly hobby unless you were really rich, and even if you were really rich it was more a cost-cutting measure than it was a time-waster. Needlework produced crafts that either brought in good money or saved the household money. Knowing how to spin, knit, and embroider were all skills as necessary to a surviving household as knowing how to plant, plow, cook, harvest, make horseshoes or build a cabinet. Spinning and knitting kept clothes on your back, and needlework made those clothes pretty, which gave the people that wore them a measure of dignity.

And before you laugh think about every t-shirt you own that has something on it, and imagine how much those mass-produced images would have cost you if you or another person had to do them all by hand. Now make them 100% more complicated, throw in lots of tiny knots and things with pointy ends, and take electricity out of the equation completely. Modern tech has utterly devalued a lot of handicraft skills, but just because our perspective is skewed doesn't mean we should dismiss our great-great grandma's spinning wheel or embroidery hoop as worthless.

Anyway, Micah gets a bloody hicky from Anita and says "Nathanial is going to be jealous." which is actually the entire point of this scene, as the next chapter reveals. Micah and Anita are in the kitchen eating biscuts and Nate is throwing things around because Micah got marked and he didn't. That's bad form on Anita for doing that, bad form on Micah for flaunting it, and bad form on Nate for throwing a hissy fit instead of calmly and collectively renting his own apartment and moving out (punching one or both of them is entirely optional, and probably not his best move)

 And then Ronnie calls. You know, Anita's best friend. From the wedding. Who hasn't been in this series for about two books.

Yeah, Anita needs to shit on her for a while because she decided not to marry her boyfriend.

 Ronnie decides that she's coming over for girl talk. Okay. Anita hangs up and then tries to talk Nate down. Nate does this:

“I can’t live like this. You give me an inch, and then you take it away. Orgasm today, but only because of some metaphysical shit. You’ll find an excuse not to do it again. You always do. He gets intercourse and orgasm, and I get nothing. But you marked me, me. Not him, me!” He was still staring at the cabinet, while he ranted louder and louder. “It was all I had. All I had!” He had to pause to take a breath, and I rushed into that small silence.

I think we can all agree that LKH needs to never write dialogue again, but other than that, it's pretty good. Somebody's calling Anita on her shit. Admittedly this will all get erased soon and there's a lot of creepy dripping off this thing, but somebody is calling Anita on her shit. Let's celebrate what we can, mkay?

So Anita apologizes for hurting Nate, which isn't the same as apologizing for treating him like a third-class citizen in his own house, and promises to mark him after he gets back from stripping at Guilty Pleasures. Gregory makes pointed remarks that are both out of character and unwarrented. None of it is interesting.

He tries to get her to come see the act. She says she has to work.

The chapter ends with Nate wandering off.

 And because none of that was funny at all, I had a conversation with one of ya'll the other day (Tiger Gray) in which I said that LKH should let Phantom Menace era George Lucas direct an Anita Blake movie. Just for this scene: 


Anita: I held him. I held him the way a mother heron holds a poor abused baby frog that she wants to comfort, knowing that she could eat him in one gulp, his slimy body going down her gullet like the warm caramel sauce in a cup of perfect coffee, but she won't because she loves him. I loved him that way. I loved this alien being from the stars like I loved caramel filling. The warmth in him was like the warmth in me and we were all together.

Jar Jar Binks: Mesa abused as child. Mesa never know warmth or comfort. Mesa very lonely.

(And it WOULD happen, because they'd both bring the script's first drafts INTO THE STUDIO).

Incubus Dreams--chapter 22-23

Oh god guys.

Oh god. I read ahead during lunch. I had my kindle with me and it was there and OH MY FREAKING GOD I almost snorted lunch up my nose.

So Nate makes coffee and this brings Anita into the kitchen, where Dr. Lillian is working on Richard, and Clair the new girlfriend is sitting at the table.

WHY. IS SHE. HERE.

Clair contributes nothing to this story at all, except to highlight Richard's desperation at not having an Anita anymore. But accepting her presence requires us to accept that ANY SANE HUMAN would bring their new lover to their ex lover's house to...whatever. WHY IS HE HERE? WHY IS SHE HERE? Okay, that first one gets answered, but there is no reason for Clair to be here other than "Awkward".

Dr. Lilian looks at Anita. Lillian has a bodyguard named Fredo, which is one mistake away from being Frodo, and I think the idea of a hobbit body-guard is freaking awesome. Fredo is not nearly that interesting. He's generic bad guy with too many knives. Lillian realizes that seeing Richard is causing Anita distress and she throws everybody out of the kitchen so that she and Anita can go onto the main deck.

It's possible that she just makes them all go stand near a kitchen wall for a minute, but either way that "Go away so us women can leave" bit is kinda "HUH?"

Dr. Lillian gives us a speedy "as you know Bob" recap of everything we just read, and then kisses Anita's ass ("OH NO ONE ELSE COULD SURVIVE THIS SHIT EXCEPT YOU") until they decide to go back inside.

Anita goes to cuddle with Damian for a while, and this is where I completely lost it. See, Damian looks up at Anita...and he's pretty. 

I was suddenly struck by the sheer beauty of him. It was almost a physical force. As if beauty were a hammer and I’d taken a hit directly between the eyes.

Question one: how does a writer re-read that during polishing edits--which are the only kind of edits Laurel gets--and NOT go "OH HEY, I USED ONE SENTENCE WHERE I NEEDED TWO. LET ME FIX THAT BY HIGHLIGHTING A FEW WORDS AND HITTING BACKSPACE." And dear fucking GOD does the woman love filters. "His beauty hit me like a hammer between the eyes." It says the same damn thing and it's more immediate.

Suddenly is evil. Almost is even more evil, and "had taken" is nearly as contaminated as "was doing". Revise accordingly.

 Question two: WHAT THE FUCK AM I READING?

Apparently having sex and/or being tied to Anita makes vampires more pretty. Because it's one of Belle Morte's powers and somehow Anita has all those now. She calls Jean Claude to confirm this and he's all like "Uh...what?" which is great because the audience feels the same way.

HAVING SEX WITH ANITA MAKES HER VAMPIRES MORE PRETTY. 

 They spend pages talking about this. Pages. Dedicated to finding out why having sex with Anita made a vampire more pretty.

Isn't there a serial killer murdering as we speak? Didn't Damian flip the everloving fuck out a couple chapters ago? WHY ARE WE FOCUSING ON MAKING VAMPIRES PRETTY.

Oh, hey, Anita needs to go work soon. Because if she doesn't raise zombies on purpose she starts doing it by accident. I do not remember this being mentioned in the series but I will assume it has.

or I start getting followed around by ghosts, or the spirits of the newly dead. I hate that last one, they always want me to take messages to their nearest and dearest, and it’s always stupid messages. I’m fine, I’m happy, don’t worry about me. What kind of message is that to knock on someone’s door with? I’m this complete stranger, but your dead son told me to hunt you down and say he’s fine. Nothing else, nothing urgent, just, I’m fine, don’t worry.”

...that would be the most awesome plot in the universe. Wouldn't it be awesome if the parent was like a mafia boss or a really scary shapeshifter leader and the haunted person had to choose between being kidnapped by weresnakes or having The Ghost Of Jimmy Brown sing "I am Henry the Eighth I am" at the top of his lungs for the rest of their lives.

WHY HAS THIS NOT BEEN WRITTEN YET?

...because the alternative is reading about sex making vampires pretty.

Laurel, just make them fucking sparkle and get it over with.

End chapter.

Next chapter, Gregory is still a leopard-man, so it's Nate's turn to dance at Guilty Pleasures. Clair is...I can't decide if that's an attempt to mimic human emotion or if LKH intentionally gave Richard a girlfriend made of animated cardboard. Either way, we're moving on.

Richard, meanwhile, has severely damaged his arm. He has to keep it immobile. If he were human he'd risk losing the arm. As it is, he risks losing his job because fast healing factors are a red flag for therianthropy.

...and that's all we get of THAT plot thread. Let's all discuss Richard's stupidity at taking a three month old werewolf--aka the new girlfriend--outside of a safehouse a week before the full moon. Because, you know, that's stupid and we can smash him on that. Except it's so far out of character that no, we can't.

And now we find out why Richard is sitting in Anita's house!

“Gregory couldn’t get anyone here to pick him up. He got worried. On his way over, his car broke down. I was next on the list at the coalition help line.”

 I hadn’t actually known Richard was helping staff the emergency calls. “Why didn’t he call AAA?” 

“He was more worried about why no one was answering your phone than his car.”

One: It's Triple-A, not AAA. Nobody says "Aye-Aye-Aye" unless they're two.

Two: So is there a reason why Richard couldn't have gone to rescue the wolf at the bar? Seriously. It's his wolf. I had assumed that Richard wasn't on the call list because We Hate Richard. But if he was on that list and he is trying to help other shifters, then logically he would be the person a wolf would call when they were in trouble. Which means that Micah should have been at home with Anita and none of the last several chapters should have happened at all. Richard wouldn't even have had to have picked up Gregory because Micah would have gotten everybody into bed and Damian wouldn't have had his little freak out.

But we're not addressing that. No. We are addressing Richard's assumption that Anita has been sleeping with everything with a penis, but especially Nate. Who is sad because Anita won't let him have sex with her at all.

I think my favorite thing in this book is how Sex ONLY equals intercourse and this somehow means you're a prude. Folks, I grew up fundamentalist Christian. KISSING counted as sex. I do not understand this at all.

Richard continues to freak out about how many men are living with Anita.

He has a girlfriend now. This is none of his business, and he should not be here because HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND NOW.

And then LKH loses the narrative for a minute:

Nathaniel was very carefully not looking at me, or anyone, but especially not me. I don’t know how I knew that he wasn’t just busy getting real cream out of the fridge to pour into an honest-to-God cream pitcher. The little pitcher was blue, and the sugar bowl was green, so the mugs matched everything. I knew his favorite color was purple, and had asked him why blue and green, and not purple? His reply was that blue was my favorite color, and green was Micah’s favorite color. The answer seemed to make sense to him. It didn’t really make sense to me, but I was beginning to learn that things didn’t have to make sense to me if it made the people around me happy, and the new dishes seemed to make Nathaniel very happy.

The place where the paragraph starts is not the same place where the paragraph ends. We start at Family Therapy and end at Bed Bath and Beyond's dishware section. Anybody else have whiplash?

And then we get a rapsody on a theme of "Nathanial is my wife". Anita begins considering giving Nate a lacy apron and a set of pearls.

Somebody told me she actually does this. PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME SHE DOES NOT ACTUALLY DO THIS.

Richard wants to discuss how Anita can be so soft around Nate, and not be fucking him. Nate decides that now is the perfect time to make waffles biscuits.

Anita finally asks Richard what his problem is AND we enter retcon-from-hell territory.

Again: We spent a large number of books watching Anita attempt to balance Jean Claude and Richard as boyfriends. Anita wanted Richard. The ONLY reason she was with Jean Claude was because Jean Claude would kill Richard if she cut JC off. Then Richard accepted his beast, scared Anita, and sent her running off to Jean Claude's bathtub for a comfort blowjob. Richard broke up with Anita because she had promised him she would support him in that acceptance, and that she would not do exactly that. They got back together after three painful books, and it looked like we were going to have a happy threesome right up until Narcissus in Chains and the whole "Raping Richard" thing.

Please keep that firmly in mind, kay?

Richard tells her that he assumed she had the same open relationship with Micah that the wolves last alpha had with his girl Rania, whose spirit possesses a time-share on Anita's soul. Anita tells him that Rania wouldn't understand monogamy if it ate her panties, and Richard tells her that she's one to talk, basically.

Anita flies off the handle and points out that (off camera) Richard is screwing every female he can find.

There is no way to verify this other than Clair.

Richard says "At least I waited until we stopped dating to screw around." Which is REALLY uncomfortable given that he's talking about the shower scene AKA the time that Micah raped Anita.

He tells her that he thought she was sleeping with Nate before she broke up with him.

She says "YOU broke up with ME because I liked the monsters better than you do"

I'm quoting the next part to prove it exists:

He actually looked embarrassed. “That was really unfair of me, and I’m sorry.”

That was really unfair of me, and I’m sorry

That was really unfair of me, and I’m sorry

That was really unfair of me, and I’m sorry

  That was really unfair of me, and I’m sorry

  Richard has just apologized for breaking up with Anita because she raped him.

Tell me there is another way to interpret that. Please.

And of COURSE Richard then goes on and on AND ON about how PERFECT Anita and Nate are together and how they should be sleeping together already and just gag me with a fork and get it over with.

We then get a description of Nate laying down plates...and I gotta admit, I like the paragraph. Oh, sure, you could argue that it's unnecessary detail, but it's kind of a void--we've got all this emotional tension, and they're left alone and instead of acting on it Nate does the domestics. When you're in a fucked up relationship, or just in a good one that's only fucked up momentarily, it's these little moments that kind of define it.

If it were a good book, this would be good.

Anyway, they have a touching moment that ends with "I still want intercourse" And then Micah shows up. And Anita gets light headed because...fuck if I know, and Micah comes to her rescue. She says she's about to faint. Micah counters this with the dumbest line in the entire series: 

 “You’re not going to faint. You never faint.”

That line exists in this book. I swear to God. I am not making this up. I really have nothing to say that the Macros didn't already say a thousand times better.

LKH wants us to believe that ANITA doesn't faint.

 Anita then watches Clair butter Richard's biscuits. She then re-imagines Nate in a lacy apron and pearls, starts laughing, runs out of the room, starts crying instead, and sits there until Micah shows up.

This book sucks.

Incubus Dreams--chapter 21-22

I love watching people. They don't need to be doing anything in particular. It's just facinating to watch large groups of them do things.

Over the last three years I've watched the "magic hour" of our restaurant travel up and down the clock. The "magic hour" is better known as a rush. If we're gonna get people, it's gonna be then. The good news is, if our day sucks, everybody else's day sucked too. Today did not exactly suck (Let's just say I made enough to justify buying a six pack on my way home) but it was not nearly as good as it was last week. It's a trend I've noticed thanks to several years of doing this: If we are INCREDIBLY BUSY one weekend, that Tuesday and Wednesday, life at the restaurant sucks eggs. It's like everybody needs a recharge--or more likely, their next paycheck--before they start drinking and stuffing themselves again. The same is ESPECIALLY true for Sunday mornings. If it is a busy Saturday night, it will not be an equally busy Sunday morning...and if it is, it'll be at noon, when the hangover has worn off enough for the customers to go seeking breakfast and a hair of the dog--we are not the ONLY place in town that offers alcohol as early as legally possible, but I think we're the only one open before eleven. (Yes. People start asking for booze before eleven. People start asking for booze before nine. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE.)

We talk a lot about "trending" and things, but it is AMAZING how all of a sudden people go "OH WE WANT TO EAT HERE." We will be deader than Jimmy Hoffa's toenails at 6:58, and at 7:00 we will have three six tops and a nice smattering of twos, only half of whom will have bothered to call first. My only explanation is a nascent group mind. It's bizzare.

...oh, and I was so bored I spent the entire evening charting out the next six months re: book drops when I wasn't taking out salads. I kind of want to curl into a small ball and whimper loudly for a while.

Right. Shitty book.

So, my loyal blog-readers, in what universe is this: 

I SCREAMED, AND Richard’s mouth was suddenly on mine. He kissed me, a gentle press of lips. Fear thrilled through me, all the way to my fingertips, as if terror were an electric current. I shoved him away from me.

romantic? Because I never ever ever want to go there.

 LKH then goes on a long skreed about how "panic gets you killed" and then she adds THIS:

Panic that freezes your body, numbs your mind, makes you forget everything you’ve ever learned about how to make your body a weapon, and all that is left is a small screaming voice inside your head that makes you a victim.

Okay, I went off on this with somebody else the other day, and now it's finally topical.

Human beings have three settings in a panic situation: Fight, Flight, or Submit. Our first choice is always to run. If factors remove flight as an option, however, we go into fight. HOWEVER, our bodies are also really good at admitting when fight becomes dangerous, and it goes into stage three: submit. Bow your head, endure, and wait for the situation to end.

Yes. I got this from John Ringo. Yes. He's incredibly fucked up. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. 

This is not just a momentary impulse, either. I firmly believe that abuse victims remain in an abusive situation because their abuser has convinced them psychologically that it is more dangerous for them to run or fight than it is for them to remain in the situation. AND THIS INSTINCT IS OFTEN PROVEN RIGHT. There are so many true-crime murder stories that start with some form of "She/he left their abuser" or "she/he fought back". We, as a society, DO NOT PROVIDE VICTIMS with the support system and the legal options to make running from abuse a safe and life giving choice. The most dangerous time for a victim of abuse is when they decide to leave or fight. This is why we should never wonder "Why didn't she/he leave or call the police?". Because they knew on an instinctive, gut level that if they tried they would die. Okay? Okay. 

LKH just made that gut instinct into a sign of weakness. Something just tripped Anita Blake's "OH SHIT I AM GOING TO DIE IF I MOVE" switch and rather than having the focus be on how evil the aggressor is for doing this to her, the focus is on Anita's weakness in being that afraid.

The acceptance of momentary abuse rather than die is not weakness. It's survival. It's basic human code. It's written into the ones and zeroes of our DNA. If your body screams "I AM GOING TO DIE IF YOU KEEP DOING THIS" it is NOT weak to stop doing whatever it is, even if that is fighting for your life against another person. Deciding that you would rather be a victim than be dead is not a weak choice, any more than deciding to breathe is a weak choice. THIS IS HOW YOUR BODY IS HARDWIRED. It's a shitty god awful choice that you never should have had to make, but your survival is more important than your street cred, and if you had to make that choice once, or twice, or a hundred times so that you could sit there and read this? You are strong, and good, and wonderful, and the world would be uglier without you. You are not weak. You survived. You are alive, and that means you won and they lost, and fuck anybody who thinks you should have done anything different. They weren't there.

This is the second fucking paragraph.

Meanwhile ,Richard is enjoying the scent of Anita's fear like it's FLOWERS.

He pulls her away from Damian and he and Anita and Jean Claude start throwing Moroven back with the POWER OF LOVE.

Moroven flees, and Anita collapses because she just sensed that Richard is a closeted sadist who hates everything that he is.

Nice ret-con of ten fucking books, but let's pretend for even ONE SECOND that it fits, okay? Okay.

So is getting off on hurting people okay if you have the moral structure to avoid doing it? I don't know. I just know if Mark Harmon (Ghost, AKA why John Ringo is a truely fucked up soul) is a reprehensible character for being what he is, Richard just joined him in the "Waste of fucking skin and hair" second of the library.

Anita then decides that Richard "loved his shame more" than he loved her. He hated her because she could accept his beast.

Apparently "Acceptance" looks like "Running the fuck away when he shapeshifts on top of me and eats his rival, and then giving his romantic rival a comfort blowjob."

Because that's what Anita did the first time he shape-shifted in front of her. Or, rather, right on top of her.

Everybody goes to the were-rat doctor AKA Dr. Lillian to get stitched up, and Anita rambles about love until the end of the chapter.

Anita then decides to get dressed, when it's like almost nighttime or something (SERIOUSLY. WHAT TIME IS IT NOW?) ...in black combat gear, complete with a gun in the shoulder holster.

I live in Texas. I have relatives who collect some pretty scary weaponry. NONE of them are as batshit about guns as Anita.

There are descriptions of men and guns and clothes and apparently Richard is still in the house.

Everybody tells her she doesn't have to go into the kitchen and talk to him. For pages. And pages. AND PAGES.

 Finally Nate says "I'm going to go make coffee in the coffee machine YOU HATE" and the chapter ends with an argument about it.

We've gone from rape paranoia to irrational hate of French Press coffeemakers.

I now have tonal whiplash.

WIP screenshot

I just felt like posting a screenshot of how I work.

The dragon is a mean, nasty cuss. Solid black. Do you know how hard solid black scales are to paint? It's all about light and values and it is FUCKING HARD.

That blobby thing in the background is my color pallate. Everything kind of has to stay in the same family. It's a really, REALLY old pallate--I think I made it WAY back in 07--but it's one that works really well. I've got a few old favorites knocking around. This one is perfect for this universe and most of these characters.

So yeah. That's my messy Photoshop workflow.

Smashwords sale!

Yeah, so Smashwords is having a store-wide promotion, and I've enrolled.

ALL of my books on Smashwords are 50% off.  All of them. So if you've been waiting to grab a copy of something for whatever reason, now would be a good time.

Here is a coupon: SSW50

Happy reading!

Incubus Dreams--chapter 19-20

So. Artwork. Artwork? Artwork:

I love Joey. She's been sitting on my harddrive for two years, patiently waiting for me to get off my ass and start getting her ready for the world. She also goes through a lot of totally unreasonable shit, but it is all fine, because when this girl hits bottom she freaking bounces. I do not believe in "My characters talk to meee!" but I have no idea where this chick came from, and I'm really excited that I get to share her with you in about a week.

Also: Scary fucking dragon.

So. Where were we?

Right. Anita went to go take a shower. Only she gets interrupted by Nate because Damian starts freaking out again and for fuck's sake, Laurel, we just did this. You want to write porn. Fine. I can't stop you. But when a plot point is resolved at least let it wash the lube off before you drag it back out for another round. There are five other men in the house. Fuck one of them for a few minutes.

Oh, and this time the emotion is fear, and it's not evil chocolate. It's wet silk, which for some reason Anita is still trying to eat. The oral fixation is getting old. And I don't think it's oral as in sex. I think it's oral as in somebody quit smoking and now has no idea what to do with their mouth.

And it's a fear-memory of Damian's involving some woman who wouldn't let anybody be prettier than she was, and there was a friend (?) with a scar that made him less pretty and...uh.

The only name I heard in my head was Perrin, but I knew that wasn’t right. That hadn’t been his name, anymore than Damian had been mine, ours, his.

Did we forget a few important words?

Nate kneels over Damian and Anita. His hair is undone. He smells like vanilla.

LKH needs a lifetime membership to Cupcakes International. Maybe if she gets free cupcakes she will stop comparing sex to food.

And then Damian throws Nate into the fear-memory of Dude-Named-Perrin (?) and Unnamed Evil Female throws Perrin the Pretty into the sunlight only he doesn't burn (??) and pronouncements are made reguarding this (????) and it's possible that vampires of Damian's lineage can day-walk? Maybe? Except they can't and they burn alive and WHY IS THIS HERE?

And Richard saves them.

I'd use a headdesk gif here, but I think I'd break it.

It turns out that Evil Female is Moroven AKA Nemhain, and what happened to Perrin was so terrible that Damian is reduced to rocking and whimpering to himself on the floor. So of course, he can be comforted by Anita...except before we get to the comfort sex part Damian's maker Nemhain shows up somehow (psychically?) and steals whatever it is that makes Damian Damian (AGAIN) so Anita now has to save him. AGAIN.

End of chapter. Next chapter. Jean Claude contacts Anita psychically again and starts to walk her through the whole "Saving Damian" thing. Again.

Gregory comments randomly that everybody smells like food.

And then the wrongest thing in the series so far shows up:

Jean-Claude’s voice swelled inside me, pushed back the fear enough so I could hear his words. “You must raise the ardeur, ma petite, you must. She does not understand a clean lust, free of pain and terror. Use our Richard, and I will be able to join my powers to yours, and we can defeat her.”

One: I know I've said it every single time Richard gets mentioned, but Anita raped Richard. Specifically while under the influience of the ardeur, when he had specifically told her she is not allowed to use him as food. This will never be okay.

Two: Richard is trying to move on with his life by aquiring a new girlfriend. WHY HE BROUGHT HER TO ANITA'S HOUSE makes no sense, but there you go.

These two points mean that Jean Claude has just ordered Anita to retraumatize her rape victim under circumstances very similar to the rape, so that we can save the life of a third-tier character whose entire contribution to the series, as far as I can remember, was being locked in a coffin for six months.


You know, Cerulean Sins was a slog through hell and back, but at least it was consistent suck. It did not waiver. It did not really bother topping itself. I am beginning to suspect that this book does not come with a bottom to hit. And as much as I enjoy mining for comedy gold, nothing about this is funny. Having to deal with your abuser? Not fun. Being told that you must have sex with your abuser to save the life of an uninvolved third party who just fucked said abuser right in front of you, while you had a presumable flashback to the time she raped you? Not only is that nowhere near sanity, I really can't understand why ANYBODY would be willing to write this.

In other words: What. The fuck. Am I reading?

Anita spends several pages trying to get out of it.

This is the first sane thing she's done in this book...

...right up until we get to the whole "Yeah, but we've just ended our relationship and I don't want to revive that shit anymore" whining. Because, you know, it's all about how Richard has ruined Anita's life.

Hey, A.B? One of you pushed the other one into a fight to the death that ended with the consumption of the loser's corpse, and then ran the fuck away. And it wasn't Richard. One of you said "Oh, yeah, I'll never violate your limits now that you've pointed them out to me in triplicate" and then broke every promise made, and it wasn't Richard.

I know I keep harping on this, but for fuck's sake, couldn't this have been resolved without forcing Richard to have sex with Anita while his new girlfriend is sitting out in the car? 

 Meanwhile, Gregory still thinks everybody smells like food. Thanks for that.

AND THEN MICAH BRINGS RICHARD'S NEW GIRLFRIEND INTO THE ROOM. 

WHAT THE FUCK, LAUREL? I MEAN, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. 

 And she's an itty bitty tiny thing who is Anita's size and who has dark burnette hair--fuck, I was sure she'd be a tall blond--and her name is Clair. And she's a new wolf. So very new that she doesn't recognize what fear is when she smells it.

And Anita and Nate and Damian are all freaking out at Gregory being mostly leopard right now, and at Clair having wolf eyes because I HAVE NO IDEA, NOTHING MAKES SENSE ANYMORE.

Oh, and Anita is no longer participating in anything. She might as well be a body pillow on the floor. She is our eyes and ears to let us know what is going on, and what is going on is Micah and Richard talking about just how good their fear smell is.

And oh, hey, I thought this couldn't get any worse. It just did:

I’d seen Richard nude enough times to lose track. The sight of him nude had excited me, made me nervous, afraid in that oh-my-god, where-am-I-going-to-put-it-all sort of way, envious when I’d lost my naked privileges, angry when he was being shitty, or trying to rub my face in the fact that I still found him handsome, but he wasn’t mine anymore. All those emotions, and lust, and love, but never fear. Never that feeling that he was physically so much larger than I was, so much stronger, so much  .  .  . he’d never hurt me physically, and I’d never been afraid of him physically, but I was now. I was afraid the way virgins are supposed to be afraid when white slavers snatch them away. Afraid of being ravished. Afraid of him using that body in mine. Afraid in a way that I’d never been afraid of anyone that I loved.

Anita is now afraid of being raped.

By Richard.

I do not know where to start with the fucked up here. This is wheels within wheels of utterly fucked all to hell. If utter human horribleness were distilled down to its basest elements it would be that paragraph right there. I mean


Richard kind of talks Anita back down, and then Damian grabs her and ramps her right back up again...and the chapter ends before we go any further.

I want to know what drugs were involved in this, so that we can get them banned on the manufacturing level. This is not darkety dark. This is just char-grilled stupid.