Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 34

Incubus Dreams--chapter 17-18

The fourth of July Weekend is a concentrated segment of hell for retail and restaurant workers.

Next year, plan accordingly and for the love of God and food, MAKE FUCKING RESERVATIONS.

("But WHY can't you make room for my 12 top party? We've given you thirty seconds to get ready for us?"

"...because every large table is booked to the milisecond, we are down two important staff members, one due to heat stroke because it's about 102 if you include the heat index, and all of the square two-tops AKA Emergency Large Table Creation Facility are currently full of people who DID make reservations. Piss Poor Planning on your part does not equal an emergency on mine. McDonalds is that way. Have fun."

"We'll leave a bad review on the internet!"

"Yeah. Nobody gives a shit.")

Also apparently working doubles over the busiest weekend so far this year has given me temporary amnesia, because I thought Damian's freak out was a sex scene when I opened this chapter. Which makes this part:

He rushed toward me, so fast he was a blur of white and red, and his eyes like green streaks. Nathaniel ran for him. I yelled, “No, let him come!”

Freaking hilarious.

So Anita now has to fix something a little thoughtfullness for others would have avoided in the first place.

And Richard is involved.

...Booze. Booze is needed.

Damian bites down, apparently into a purple prose tumor that immediately starts leaking adverbs all over the carpeting. Greg tries to pull Damian off while in leopard form, which is dumb because Damian's latched on and pulling him off would probably rip up an artery.

Damian finally comes back to himself. Anita realizes this when his erection starts pressing against her thigh.

We went from traumatic freakout to "locked and loaded". And because she has to bind him to herself again they start having sex right in front of Richard, while repeating some metaphysical oath that starts off by quoting Genesis.

Richard reacts to this by turning very pale and backing way the fuck off. Because again, kiddies, he did not just leave Anita, he was raped by her. And now she's in full on Ardeur mode. And his fear is his fault because poo, poo, he doesn't want to have sex with the Liberated predator woman.

I try to imagine the emotional undercurrants for this, and I wind up mentally doing what Richard just did--backing out until I hit something solid.

The chapter ends with Richard realizing that Anita has never had sex with either Nate or Damian before, and Anita assuming that she now has the moral high ground for future discussions with Richard.

YOU. RAPED. RICHARD. YOU NEED HIKING GEAR TO REACH ANYTHING RESEMBLING MORAL EQUALITY, LET ALONE THE HIGH GROUND.

Oh, but it's because he assumed that Anita was screwing everything in the house. Anita has a full blown sex addiction. That's not a nice or a healthy assumption to make, but it's a reasonable one. Especially when you have been raped by said sex addict.

Chapter 18 starts with Gregory saying that it is his turn.

CAN THIS BOOK PLEASE BE ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN SEX? PLEASE? IF I WANT PLOTLESS SEXY TIMES I'LL READ MERRY GENTRY THANK YOU.

Oh for FUCK'S SAKE LAUREL.

Damian was looking down at me, and the look was not one that I’d ever seen on a man’s face just after finishing sex. He looked sad, and I remembered the burst of emotion at the end. Sorrow covering the pleasure like evil chocolate ruining your ice cream.

It's not just chocolate. No. It's evil chocolate. It does evil things. Like ruin ice cream.

I am now imagining it as Aztec Chocolate Bitters and ice cream, which is rather pointless because that combination is awesome.

Meanwhile, Nathanial still has terminal blue balls.

Micah comes home. He remarks that he didn't know Damian could be up this early. Anita says he can't.

THEN WHY THE FUCK WAS HE RUNNING AROUND THE LIVING ROOM?

This is never answered. Micah and Richard discuss the wolf that Micah spent all night baby-sitting, which somehow pales in comparison to the EARTH SHATTERING REVELATION that Anita had sex without a condom and now all of the "mess" is inside of her.

Anita. It's semen. It's supposed to go inside of you. That's how biology works. She decides to have a shower. Micah tells Richard that there's a girl sobbing in his car. Richard says she's his girlfriend.

WHY. WOULD YOU BRING. YOUR GIRLFRIEND. TO YOUR EX-GIRLFRIEND/RAPIST'S HOUSE? WHY?

This does not make sense to me.

Anita and Micah play grab-ass for a minute. Anita tells Greg that if he tries to grab her ass she'll rip him a new one. He calls her a bitch. The chapter ends.

Send booze. SEND BOOZE.

Incubus Dreams chapter 15-16

OH MY FUCKING GOD. THE SUMMER TOURISTS HAVE FINALLY ARRIVED.

I am DEAD, blog-readers, DEAD. I RESURRECTED MYSELF JUST FOR YOU. BE GRATEFUL, BLOG READERS. BE GRATEFUL.

Chapter 15 opens with...

...you know, I expect Anita to fail at a lot of things. Life. Sex. Anything that isn't directly related to raising Zombies. To try to frame this story in something resembling life, Anita is about my age by now, and she's dedicated her entire life to two persuits, as have I. Admittedly writing and waitressing are a little more socially acceptable than raising zombies and killing things, but yeah. She's an idiot about a lot of things because, past the barriers of zombies and murdery pursuits, she doesn't get out much. OF COURSE all her relationships fail. How is she going to learn how to have a good relationship? Discussing sex over a dead vampire body is the kind of thing only really bizzare sociopaths do.

THAT. SAID. I would expect the women who knows sixteen million ways to kill a vampire would be able to get her vampire lover out of sunlight.

Anita spends several pages failing to do just that. Damian runs from room to room wailing and Anita runs after him not doing fuck-all to save him. Shit, if my lover were a vamp and I were prone to black out during sex, I'd have several black-out curtains handy. This would be basic first aid. Vampires have a severe allergy to sunlight. If your lover has an allergy to peanuts do you learn how to avoid peanuts? Do you keep an eppi pen on hand just in case?

To me, this scene is a HUGE sign that Anita doesn't really have an altruistic bone in her body. Yes, she rescued Damian from The Fate Worse Than Death in Jean Claude's basement....but she doesn't have any "OH SHIT IT IS DAYLIGHT" measures in place to keep her undead friends alive. I mean, am I the only person who watched The Others? You love your vampire friends who live with you, you buy curtains, and then YOU CLOSE. THE MOTHERFUCKING. DOORS.

It is amazing how many attempts at plot are based in Anita not giving a fuck about anybody who isn't Anita.

 So the boys--Gregory and Nate, the two designated victims of the pard, have to pull Damian off Anita.

I don't know if I should criticize LKH for having her manly manly girl be rescued from a situation she fucking should not have been in, or if I should praise her for FINALLY giving Nate and Greg something resembling a spine.

I think I'll settle for a big fat "Fuck You."

AND THEN RICHARD SHOWS UP.

YES. ANITA HAD TO BE RESCUED FROM HER VAMPIRE SERVANT BY HER EX BOYFRIEND. WHO BROKE UP WITH HER BECAUSE SHE RAPED HIM.

THAT CANNOT BE REPEATED ENOUGH TIMES. 

OH, AND WHEN RICHARD AND DAMIAN CLASH THEY FALL DOWNSTAIRS TOGETHER AND THEN A WOMAN STARTS TO SCREAM.

END OF CHAPTER.

Next chapter.

Richard and Damian are fighting together in the living room. Oh, and the woman is somebody that Anita doesn't know.

Please tell me Richard did not bring his new girlfriend to Anita's house to show Anita that he can live without her. PLEASE tell me that did not just happen.

The fight continues. LKH is kind of sort of good at doing fight scenes, but not really. I don't give a fuck about anybody in this situation, so I'm skimming until the "plot" shows up again.

 And then Jean Claude wakes up.

...WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE VAMPIRES. 

The implication I got several chapters ago was that this was dawn. If it ain't dawn, that means that Anita and Damian and Nate had all passed out on their kitchen floor until the sun had swung over to the western side of the house. At which point Damian freaks out. Okay.

HOW DID NO ONE COME HOME AND PUT ANITA AND COMPANY TO BED? This is the clearing house for the pard. DO YOU REALLY WANT ME TO BELIEVE THAT EVERYBODY IN THE PARD HAVE BEEN IN AND OUT ALL DAY AND NOBODY THOUGHT "GEE, WE SHOULD GET ANITA OFF THE FLOOR?"

So Jean Claude explains to Anita that Damian has...done things? That damn him? And Anita has to put him back together?

MAKE THIS MAKE SENSE, BLOG READERS. PLEASE.

Okay, so apparently when Damian freaked out over the sunlight his fear leaked into Anita and she sheilded SPECIFICALLY against thier bond and this totally fucked Damian over, because while he and Nate were having sex they had forged a second tri-whatever like what Anita and JC and Richard have...despite the fact that this was sold as being impossible to create and impossible to reproduce once created.

And to fix it Anita has to drop her sheilds and become completely vulnurable to the rampaging vampire's fear.

Because other people's emotional breakdowns have every right to hold your own sanity and well-being hostage.

How do I feel about this?

C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Great Divorce, and it is worth reading for one scene even if you do not believe in Christianity. It's an allegory for why we should not allow someone else's misery to hold our own joy hostage. That goes triple for our basic mental health. Just because somebody else is freaking out doesn't mean you have to feel their feelings too. You have every right to say "Okay, uh-huh, yeah. Go outside, calm down, and we'll talk about it then."

Anita finds out via a sheild drop that Damian is now a revenant and the only way to save him will be erotic blood play. And then the chapter ends.

This. Shit. Sucks.

Incubus Dreams chapter 13-14

Yeah. So yesterday was great. Obviously. Because I skipped an update. I was too happy to throw Anita into the mix.

We ate with family, my brother showed up, we watched fireworks, we went home and set off illegal fireworks within the city limits. I worked my way up to the artillery shells--my first ever--and then one of the roman candle kits we bought turned out to not be roman candles, but rather exploding air bursts that were FUCKING LOUD. We decided to end on that note before a neighbor called the cops.

Also, and I did not know this when I bought them, but apparently fireworks makers have decided to give us controlled doses of thermite. We totally melted a coke can, and I now have fuel for many many many urban fantasy games in coming books. The only thing better than overpowered faeries in Texas are overpowered faeries in Texas with thermite.

...my brain is so weird.

So. Anita Blake.

I think this poor woman has Fifty First Dates disease. She forgets everything that happens between books. Every book has Anita "embracing the ardeur" only to discover that she didn't really do it last time, but she is doing it this time, because repeating the same phases over and over totally equals character development. 

And the big issue here, as it has been for the last several chapters, is that Anita lusts after Nate, and Nate loves Anita, and it's wrong to take advantage of him...but she's not going to break up with him because the sex is good she needs to feed, and he's like, there.

Anita has the emotional maturity of a tomato.

So Nate gets naked, something that Anita says she never allowed, even though last book she says that she let all the leopards sleep with her naked. And he's pretty. And compared to food because Fuck If I Know.

Oh, and "ripeness" is no longer a word.

*Sporfle* and we now have a new record for WORST PENIS METAPHORE EVER:

I started to reach for him, but Damian chose that moment to brush the head of his own ripeness against the back of my body.

Apparently Damian has wheat for a penis. This is immediately followed up by "nakedness" as in "plunge (his) nakedness into me" and it's like HE CAN STUFF A STATE OF DRESS OR LACK THEREOF INTO ANITA'S VAGINA? If I ask nicely can he put Final Fantasy cosplay there? It'd probably be more entertaining.

But I do have to admit:

He seemed carved of ivory and pearl, and where the blood ran close to the surface he blushed pink like the shine inside a seashell, delicate and shining.

I kind of like that. That repeat of "shining" needs to go die, but it's a good image. If this were the only image in the sex scene it would work. Purple itself is not bad in books. It's knowing where to point it that matters.

Meanwhile Nate is begging for sex.

 Because this is sexy and romantic and in no way creepy or abusive. I am totally not thinking of serial rapists and kidnappers while I'm reading this.

(I am. It's creepy and abusive)

...Nate starts going "Think happy thoughts" again.

 Anita screams from orgasm and Damian flashbacks to torturing women in his basement.

Reading an LKH sex scene is like following triple fudge chocolate cake up with a dill pickle.

And then the only way to fix Damian's bad memories is to let him fuck Anita, because that totally erases severe psychological damage.

Chapter 14

Anita wakes up after blacking out in the kitchen, and it's morning, and Damian is lying in a puddle of sunlight.

Look, there comes a point where sexy adventures stop being adventures and become dangerous as fuck. We just blazed right through that territory. Damian starts smoking and has to be dragged out of the sunlight and he wakes up and starts screaming, and--

WAIT. WAIT A SECOND.

A MAJOR part of Anitapires is that they don't sleep when the sun comes up. They die. Their souls return to wherever vampire souls go and they become inert and motionless. There've been a handful of vamps who retained some kind of power/consiousness during this sleep phase, but all of them were REALLY powerful. Like "is that a nuclear device in your pocket or did you just sneeze" kind of power.

Why is Damian moving?

Fuck it. Damian screams and backs into the cabinets, so Nate and Anita drag him into the dark living room. Only Gregory comes into the room and brings sunlight with him, and Damian runs into a room where all the windows are open and the lights are on, and I don't care because the chapter is over and I can start painting things now.

Starbleached Omnibus

It's over here. So if you've been putting off getting into Starbleached until that book went live, now's your chance.

Incubus Dreams--chapter 11--

It is the Fourth of July.

This time last year was ugly. This time last year I was not only considering suicide, I had a fucking plan. When you are researching methods, that is the time to go find help from a solid source, because you need it, my lovelies. This time last year I didn't just have no hope. I was doing the one thing in the universe I had told myself would end my career.

One year ago, TODAY, I committed to self-publishing, with the expectation that I would fail.

I have sold 382 books. I have sold over a book a day every day I have been self publishing.

I get to stand (well...sit) in front of you today, and I get to tell you this:

No matter who you are. What you do. What circumstances you are laboring under. What failures you face. What opposition you must overcome:

It.

Gets.

Better.

I may not be a successful writer. I may never be able to support myself with writing. Fuck, I may never be able to afford a real editor. But you know what? I'm here. I've accomplished this much. And you've helped me, and it is wonderful that you have. But that's beyond the point.

If you ever start feeling like you can't manage it, that the universe hates you, that nothing will ever go right, that God does not exist, I want you to take five minutes and think about this: Last year, I'd given up. This year, I get to make plans for something awesome.

Whatever it is you've decided you can't do, do it. Commit to doing it today. Whatever it is. Do it.

In fact, let's all come back here next year and tell each other how much better this year is than last year. Okay? Okay.

...I have to review this stupid book, don't I?

*goes and gets another beer*

Chapter Eleven opens with several paragraphs about how leopards can see better in your average living room than humans. This is played for erotic overtones.

I need something stronger than beer.

I'm going to take a break from Anita for a sec and look at where all my other books are at chapter Eleven.

Hunger Games; Katniss is IN THE GAMES

Sagittarius Whorl: THE BOOK IS OVER (It's by Julian May. The first book in the series is something like Orion's Arm. Go read it. Now.)

Fight Club: Look, the first rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about fight club. But it involves cooking Marla's mother.

Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson): Mercy has been kidnapped by (SPOILER) and now must rescue (SPOILER) from (SPOILER) before (THE SPOILER SPOILER-VERBS THE SPOILER)

John Dies at the End:

Read this book. Seriously. You will never sleep again but it will make you laugh while it traumatizes you.

DO YOU SEE THE POINT I AM TRYING TO MAKE HERE?

This is, I shit you not, the first character development related paragraph in this chapter:

There was a vase in the middle of the table. Jean-Claude had sent me a dozen white roses a week after we started dating. Once we had sex, he’d added one red rose, so it was actually thirteen. One red rose like a spot of blood in a sea of white roses and white baby’s breath. It certainly made a statement.

Because it's like deflowering a virgin. Gag me.

So now Anita has to decide: does she feed off Micah or Nathanial?

It's time for me to admit/repeat something: I fucking hate sex scenes in novels. I can count on ONE HAND the number of sex scenes I've read that I've actively like. Sex takes a very large chunk of book and makes it absolutely worthless. A sex scene in a book is like having a benign tumor. It's not hurting anything directly, but it's taking up space and feeding off things that actually have purpose. There are people who like sex in books. More power to you. I would much rather be reading about the knights storming the castle than find out how many times the prince stormed the princess's gates, if you know what I mean.

This scene would have meaning for me if there were an actual struggle here. Anita struggling for humanity, Nate struggling for a romantic relationship. There is not. Anita has a choice between Nate and Micah, and having to make it would require her indicating a preference, or at least a fondness, or at very bottom minimum, a choice. She can choose Micah of her own free will, which will signal to Nate that their relationship is doomed and he'd better disconnect and find somebody who isn't an abusive waste of skin and sin, or she can choose Nate and decide that, fuck it, she wants this relationship anyway.

Instead, LKH chickens out.

See, a wolf calls. There's an emergency. Oh, yeah, it's something they can handle. But see, there's this other emergency that nobody can handle because of this first emergency and that means that Micah has to go drive down to Random Bar because Random Werewolf drank too much and basically Anita has to fuck Nate because she's got no choice whatsoever now.

I do not find this to be empowering. Irritating yes. Empowering, no. See, empowering looks like this:


I'm using this gif ever second I can. This was the coolest moment of THIS ENTIRE YEAR.Having your choices of potential sex partner be reduced by chance so that you don't have to make a morally difficult decision? Yeah. NO. In the "Strong Female Character" Olympics, I think we're playing a game of "one of these things just doesn't belong here" and that Anita just lost to the good senator from San Antonio.

See, Anita can't leave right now because she HAS to feed the Ardeur. Which means Micah has to go. Which means Anita now HAS to sleep with Nate, the guy who is head over heels in love with her. Which means that Anita now gets to avoid having to make a decision RE: Nate, but she still gets to have sex with him.

And then Damian shows up.

Damian is Anita's vampire servant. What, exactly, that means is never fully explained. She got him by rolling his mind with her necromancer skills, and now he's tied to her forever. Basically, she gets to override his free will whenever she wants.

You know, not even GOD gets to do that. LKH has officially made her main character bigger than God.

We find out a little bit about a new club of JC's called "Danse Macabre". Apparently you get to dance with vampires there. And then go home again. Big whoop. Can we move on?

...apparently not for two whole Kindle pages. Great.

We have a debate, because apparently Anita allowed him to find not-Anita lovers, but he has nowhere to bring them, so he's asking Anita for his own room.

...Anita needs to invest in a trailer park. Not kidding. Every guy could have his own place, and she wouldn't have to juggle this kind of shit.

OH RIGHT. DO SOMETHING ANITA. DOOOOOOO SOMETHING.

And then apparently Anita steals Damian's calm, so we have to have a confrontation about that.

It accomplishes nothing. Anita tells Damian to leave and Nate comes in. The arduer rises.

End chapter.

Next chapter.

...Why does LKH have to compare everything in sex to food? I'd let it go if it were just this one scene, but EVERYTHING is "Flavor" this and "Candy/chocolate/cupcake" that. I'm almost ready to say the woman has a serious vore fetish.

I knew that one hunger could be turned into another, but until that moment, where I could almost taste his lips on mine, I hadn’t realized that there would come a point where something must be fed.

BULL. FUCKING. SHIT.

This was covered in Narcissus in Chains. It was covered in Cerulean Sins. YOU FEED ON FOOD OR YOU FEED ON SEX. YOU KNOW FUCKING GODDAMNED WELL HOW THIS WORKS BY NOW.

And then we start eating a deer? Blog-Readers, I can copy-paste this shit, but in reality, you need to be reading along with me to know how seriously WTF this transition was. We go from sexing up Nate to hunting, killing and eating a deer.

What the fuck am I reading.

Anita comes back to herself, screaming. I have to assume that she and Nate are making out, and all of a sudden she just starts randomly screaming for no discernable reason.

And then we find out that it's a shared hunt-vision with Richard.



STOP. BRINGING. UP. RICHARD.

And then Anita reaches out to Jean Claude for...um...reasons? And he's drinking from Jason's throat and that's about as much of THAT paragraph as I feel comfortable repeating.

Anita comes back to herself, and she's flat on her face, on the floor, with Nate holding her wrist and peering into her face like "OH MY GOD ARE YOU STILL ALIVE SHOULD I CALL NINE-ONE-ONE OR THE MORGUE?"

Romantic.

Anita licks her way up to a serious artery and bites kind of sort of hard, so that if she bit any harder she'd puncture the skin and Nate would bleed to death in her mouth.

 Seriously Romantic.

Richard ignores her. Jean Claude tells her to Feed or GTFO because:



Damian shows up. He gets a paragraph about how EMPTY he is inside. It contributes nothing to what we've just read.

And we get a flashback to Anita's mother?

And then it turns into Nate's fucked up childhood?

And it turns into a medival battle? And then a ship? Possibly of the same era?

...Did I just drop acid?

No, no, that's what the book says happened. Apparently that has something to do with the marks, as in Anita having them means that she's getting memories from everybody. And that doesn't make sense, but I just read something that makes me long for a David Lynch movie so that something can start making sense again.

...and then Peter Pan comes to the rescue. I am dead serious: 

 “Please, Anita, please, happy thoughts, fly for me, Anita, please, God, fly for me.”

That's Nate speaking, but we are literally going "Think happy thoughts" so that Anita doesn't re-traumatize them with their worst moments ever.

And of course Anita's happy moment is of her and Micah and Nate all sitting together and reading to each other. Because this confirms that they were just made for each other forever. It's not like Anita just lost control of her magic and...oh wait. YES IT IS.

DOES THIS POSSIBLY SERIOUS FLAW EVER GET ADDRESSED? FUCK NO.

She drags Damian down for a kiss and then FUCKING FINALLY, the chapter ends.

I feel safe saying that EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BOOK IS GOING TO SUCK.

Cover Art Time!

First of all, the Starbleached Omnibus, which is totally cheating except not really:

Yeah, that very first cover is too good to abandon. If there is ever a movie
then I'm gonna insist there be at least one poster that imitates it.
(Oh, come on, guys. By now ya'll should know I absolutely do have my head jammed that far up my own anatomy. I gave my books their own soundtrack for god's sake.)

And now for Dragonbreath's WIP:


Yeah. I know. It's not much to look at. Yet. But hey, I'm working on it. And oooh, lookit that! Countdown has updated! Yes, sports fans! We are moving towards the drop-date on my One year self-publishing anniversary.

I think if I say that a few thousand more times, I'll believe it.

Anyhoo, the Omnibus goes live EARLY tonight/tomorrow morning.

Have a real good day, have a great day tomorrow!

Incubus Dreams--chapter 9-10

Cool shit for the evening: A co-worker at work usurped the restaurant's speaker system after hours and introduced me to the freakiest shit ever.  It's an album called Mashed in Plastic, and it's basically pop music mashed into theme songs from David Lynch movies. I am completely in love, and the best part is the music is free.

It's over here. I recommend it.

So in the next chapter Anita goes back out to the parking lot. We've entered and left this reception, what, three times each? One murder, one meltdown, and one attempted sexy thing involving Nathanial.

This is not riviting. STOP TALKING AND DO SOMETHING. 

Anyway, who should Anita run into but her old friend Ronnie. Ronnie used to be awesome, but she stopped because LKH hates girls she didn't like Anita dating a sexually manipulative, physically abusive, mind-controlling asshole vampire like Jean Claude. She's totally envious, ya'll. Ronnie would love to have her every will and whim overridden by Jean Claude's sexcapades.

Seriously. At this point my head cannon for this series is everything after Obsidian Butterfly is a brainwashing session, only instead of using addictive drugs Jean Claude is using the Ardeur to break Anita's resistance, and his already-washed followers to feed her the stuff he wants her to internalize. Everybody Anita's demonized since are the people telling her HELLO THIS PERSON IS NOT HEALTHY OR SAFE TO BE AROUND.

Oh, and Ronnie is fighting with her boyfriend the wererat, because apparently Louie asked her to marry him and she said no.

GASP! A WOMAN TELLING A MAN NO WHEN THEY ARE IN A HAPPY RELATIONSHIP! BLASPHEMY!

We'll come back to that. Anita and Micah and Nathanial are now going to fight over how Anita didn't kiss Nathanial right because she was embarissed to do so in front of all her cop buddies. Well, she kissed him in front of Jessica Arnet. Yeah, but that was just to prove that Nate was hers. She was marking her territory, ya'll. Nate's actual feelings totally don't matter because she doesn't want to be in love with him, but it's fine for her to sleep with him because Fuck If I Know.

Can this woman please enter into one fucking relationship because she wants to? PLEASE?

And then everybody is all like "Well, let's feed the ardeur right now" and Anita is all "WE ARE AT A WEDDING RECEPTION" and they're like "So?" and she's like "HAVING SEX IN THE PARKING LOT WOULD BE TACKY." and they are all like "SO?"

So basically we have a bunch of under-socialized, manipulative idiots slowly breaking down all of Anita's bounderies because HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW. There aren't even reasons for this shit. It's basically "Inhibitions? Morals? THESE ARE BAD! LET US HAVE A WANTON ORGY IN THE NEAREST VEHICLE IN THIS PUBLIC PARKING LOT!" while the plot is enjoying its vacation to Bermuda. There certainly is no member of the plot family here.

Then Jason drags Anita off and berates her for playing with Nate's feelings the way she is. This is relatively acceptable RIGHT UP UNTIL he starts going "He doesn't want anyone else, can't you understand this?" and Anita kind of stews in guilt, and everybody involved in this chapter is a terrible person. Anita sucks for stringing Nate along when she clearly has no intention of being in a permanent relationship, Nate and Jason suck because they're trying to manipulate Anita into a relationship she doesn't want, and Micah sucks because he just does. 
 
End of chapter

At the start of the next chapter, Ronnie has driven off without Louie, so we're gonna get an info dump about how horrible it is for poor Louie to be in love with Ronnie and she doesn't want to marry him. Just like with Anita and Nate! Oh, dearie dearie me, how horrible of these females to not want to be in a relationship with hot men. They both surely need to shape up and submit their emotional desires to the feelings of their partners.

Gag me.

“She says she doesn’t want to marry anyone. She says, if she married anyone, it would be me, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to.” The pain in his voice was so raw, it hurt to hear it.

Maybe she's seen too many bad marriges. Maybe she's come out of bad relationships and she doesn't want to risk getting pinned into another. Maybe she's got some plan on the side. Maybe she's being blackmailed. IT DOESN'T MATTER. THE FACT THAT YOU LIKE SOMEONE DOES NOT OBLIGATE THAT PERSON TO CONFORM TO YOUR DESIRES.

Real love is not that "I'll hold onto you forever" nonsense. That's obsession. Love is letting go and letting the other person be whoever that other person is without placing unreasonable demands on their life or behavior.

And then, of course, the conversation segues into "Maybe Ronnie stopped being your friend because you're living with people and she's not."

Yeah. That's totally it. I'm sure. It couldn't be because most of Anita's boyfriends are toxic, and they are slowly making her toxic too.

Oh, and DO SOMETHING. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SOOOOOOOOOMEEEEEEEEETHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING.

They see Louie into Jason's car, because having Louie and Anita together when the Ardeur rises would be bad, and Anita starts thinking about Nate...and this goes into Treasure Island, which she's reading to Nate and Micah, and then we start talking about how Nate cried when Charlotte died in Charlotte's Web, and then we start talking about werewolf movies because Fuck If I Know.

This takes up three whole kindle pages. One of which is a discussion about werewolf movies, and how werewolves react to werewolf movies, and how the other shifters feel left out, and there's this one really obscure movie that nobody knew about until Anita found it and now they're going to have a marathon--

They get into the car and Anita is all like woe is me, and the phone rings. It's Marianne, Anita's witchy friend from Tennessee. She got some kind of premonition and has decided that Anita absolutely needs to have a Tarot reading. Done over the phone.

Tarot is one of my hobbies, though I'll admit I like studying the meanings more than I like doing spreads. The symbolism and connections and stuff is more than a little mind blow-y. But there are two reasons why I don't bring my tarot stuff out in public. One: It's flakey. Two: It's complicated and a lot of the meanings and connections I use probably aren't kosher, and Three: IT IS BORING. Trying to explain how the four, five and six of Pentacles flow into each other is the kind of thing that makes your brain shut off, if just bringing up the word "Tarot" didn't do it in the first place.

So even understanding that my reading style is different from "normal" readings (I guess. I've never really talked to anybody else about Tarot) this next part is PAINFUL for me to read. Technically most of those cards could work that way if you squint at them sideways and then define them by the "Baby's First Tarot Deck" book that usually comes with the kind of decks you buy at Barnes and Noble (Barnes and Noble has a few really good decks, but the books that come with them usually contradict each other and universally suck.) but for fuck's sake, don't change the definitions between paragraphs.

Basically, everything about this passage pisses me off in unfunny ways.

And the gist of it all is...Anita, your life sucked before, but now it's wonderful and fine and you have a wealth of lovely men in it, so you need to shut up and stop pushing for your morality and just enjoy it, and then a bunch of random stuff on the dead woman because Marianne pulled the eight of swords out of the deck and OF COURSE THAT MEANS MURDER (...okay, that's actually a really good meaning for that eight.)

(Seriously. I am biting my tongue SO HARD trying not to rant on this.)

Yeah, LKH could literally stack the deck for this reading scene and we get Anita Needs To Love her Menz and murdery gobbledeegook. Obviously, she didn't get along with that tarot deck she bought.

The chapter ends with everybody going inside.

I'm now going to go do a shot of something high proof and try to finish the Table of Contents for the omnibus.

Also: Plot. Let me know when we find it, plz.

Incubus Dreams--chapters 5-8

First off: Book stuff.

The Starbleached Omnibus will go live July 4th. I'm trying to decide on cover art as we speak, and I'll let ya'll know what I decide before the 4th.

It'll be fun. I promise.

EDIT TO ADD: ALSO. I Just found out that my FAVORITE CHAPTER BY CHAPTER BOOK BLOG IN THE UNIVERSE is reviewing MY FAVORITE WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST READ BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE...which translates to Mark Reads is reading John Dies at the End, and reacting about as well as you expect.

Go. Read. Now. 

Now. Review.

I DIDN’T WANT to go back to the reception. First, I wasn’t in the mood to be merry.

Well, that's fair. LKH hasn't been in the mood to be Merry for what, four years now?

Having returned from a horrific murder scene that could get JC AKA Boyfriend Prime in hot water, Anita's big problem now is dancing. See, she promised Micah and Nathanial a dance, and she hates dancing, and this is going to be the driving motivation for this entire chapter.

Dancing. At a wedding reception.

Oh, but Anita has to be careful, because if she dances badly her co-workers who are the cops will make fun of her. And if she dances well her co-workers the cops will make more fun of her, and GOD FORBID she dance well with a stripper AKA Nathanial, because they'd never stop making fun of her.

Anybody remember back when the cops found out about her penguin collection? Because it got ruined by a zombie? And they bought a whole bunch of different stuffed penguins and stuck one on every desk just for her, and then gave her all the penguins because it was a joke between friends and colleagues?  Anybody else miss that kind of camaraderie?

Nathanial and Jason are talking, and there is some rumbling about how both Jason and Nathanial are "kept" men because they're both pomme de sangs for Jean Claude and Anita, respectively, though in Anita's case that'd be pomme de sexe as she's not a blood drinker. Anyway, apparently how you keep your breakfast is an issue of order for vampires and Anita had to shell out for good tuxedos for the guys, but couldn't bother to find a good one for herself because manly manly Anita can't care about her clothes.

 Micah shows up.

Now I was able to watch him walk toward me, able to admire how the suit clung to his body, how it flattered the broad shoulders, the slender waist, the tightness of his hips, the swell of his thighs. The suit fit him like a roomy glove. Watching him move toward me, I realized the suit was suddenly worth every penny.

...*sigh*

Look, anything that lets me use this macro is a good thingBut yeah, unless you're OJ's lawyer, gloves don't work that way. "Roomy gloves" =those yellow rubbermaid things that are a pain to clean with.

Also, apparently Anita is wearing a leather jacket over her tuxedo's coat. I really hope that's Mal's Firefly duster because otherwise that's gonna look really awkward.

Also-also: LAUREL. NOBODY CARES THIS MUCH ABOUT YOUR CHARACTERS' CLOTHES.

We get a long internal monologue about how Micah is too perfectly perfect perfect, and how she doesn't know anything about him but he is PERFECT...and then this segues into "I think I'm a sociopath because I looked at a dead body and didn't care."

Anita. Just like morticians and homicide detectives, Dead bodies are a part of your job. Eventually you adapt. Besides, last book you had to deal with a body that had been raped until it was literally liquified, and then you got to fish through a bathtub containing the separated bits of two people. At this point your psyche is really happy that this body is intact and pretty much bloodless. You didn't know this girl, you see bodies every other week, and you're preoccupied with your complicated personal life and the fact that your immediate supervisor would probably like to rip off your head and shit down your neck if he thought his career could survive. Not collapsing into a sobbing mess and/or swearing eternal revenge against the poor dear's murderer does not make you special. It makes you a normal human being who has to deal with bodies on a regular basis.

The chapter ends with Anita remembering Chimera, and asking about Micah's broken nose.

End of chapter.

Next chapter, we're standing out in the parking lot looking at the autumn leaves. Okay. Micah is going to tell Anita all about his broken nose. Apparently Chimera broke it. A lot. Only it wouldn't stay broken because were-whatevers heal really quickly. So Chimera got particularly pissed off, and cut Micah's nose off and ate it. And then kept punching him when the nose grew back so that eventually it stayed broken-ish. Except now it's healing because SYMBOLISM!

 Of course, that's not the part that bugs me. This is:

“No, you wanted to know. You can know.” He took in a breath so deep it made him shudder. “One of his favorite torments was gang rape. Those of us who wouldn’t participate, he made us grow our hair long. Said, if we wanted to act like women, we should look like women.”

And of course, his hair is still wonderfully long, because Anita/LKH like it and find it sexy.

Yeah, would anybody else have found the nearest blunt butter knife and made like the Barber of Seville ASAP? I wouldn't even have donated to the Locks of Love, because that's some bad juju on that hair. Seriously. HIS HAIR IS A SYMBOL OF HIS DEGREDATION AT THE HANDS OF HIS ABUSER.

Oh, and Micah was never raped, because Chimera's gay man personality would only rape other gay men and Micah wasn't gay.

“He didn’t just rape women,” Micah said, “but strangely, he would only rape a man if he were already gay. It was as if he only wanted the sex the person enjoyed to be used against them.” He shrugged, but it turned into a shiver. “I didn’t understand it. I was just grateful to not be on his list of victims.” He shivered again.

Yeah, because trauma not related to sex doesn't count. And yeah, he could just be referring to Chimera's rape victims, but it really wouldn't have hurt for him to tag a qualifier or nine onto that statement.

And all of this--the discussion of rape, the abuse visited on Micah's pard, the consuming of Micah's nose--is just so that he can fall on his knees in front of Anita and sob into her chest and be so very very grateful that she rescued him.

She promises to never let anyone hurt him ever again, and the chapter ends.

Next chapter...Anita goes back to the reception to go dance with Nathanial.

Alright, alright, it's not quite that bad. First Nathanial, Micah and Jason all discuss the ardeur with Anita, and how she'll have to feed soon, and how Jason would like another "turn" but Anita doesn't want to sleep with anyone else she's not attached to... and she pointedly avoids looking at Nathanial. Who hasn't been having any active sex with Anita at all.

THEN they go back inside and have a dance. End chapter, start chapter.

Anita hates dancing. Nathanial is good at dancing because he is a stripper. Her cop friends might make fun of her for reasons we have already covered.



Nathanial then describes an act he'd do where he'd dress in formal wear, pick a random woman out of the crowd and dance with her, and I have to say the whole thing sounds very cool and classy. No sarcasm, that might actually be a lot of fun. Anita continues to freak out. Somehow this transitions from "Anita is socially awkward" to "Anita doesn't love Nathanial right". The ardeur shows up and shows Anita that Nate is highly frustrated. Apparently he's been the pomme de sexe for months and hasn't gotten any. No sex. No oral. No handjobs. Nothing. And he's deeply in love with Anita.

Yeah. Anita has been feeding off this guy for months and she hasn't allowed him to have any orgasms.

Have we covered how terrible a person she is yet? She is feeding off erotic sensations and she won't let her food orgasm because it makes her feel guilty. 

Nathanial backs away from Anita, crying, and then runs out of the room. Anita chases after him because she feels very guilty now.

We're on chapter eight now. We have no plot. We have pages and pages dedicated to describing clothes, and pointless conversations about sex that don't actually involve sex because How The Fuck Should I Know.

This is definately an Anita Blake book.

Anita Blake it is! Incubus Dreams--chapter 1-4

Yeah, so I read (or in the case of Eternal Prey, re-read) the first chunks of the book, and decided to go with this.

I'm gonna double up on chapters as often as possible, though, because holy shit I almost forgot how much LKH likes to drag.

Oh, and as for how my weekend went, I somehow forgot that it's the Fourth next week. We got slammed. Good slammed, but also "too tired to pick out a new book" kind of slammed.

Right. So let's just dive in, shall we?

We open with a Halloween Wedding. Not Anita's. It's Larry Kirkland and Tammy Reynalds, animator and Christian Witch/Detective, respectively. Anita, naturally, is one of the groomsmen. Grooms people. Because Heaven forbid Anita Darling have to spend 300 bucks on an ugly orange dress for her friend's wedding. Oh, and GOD FORBID she have to put on makeup. Oh, no. She's just as unruly as all the men are, the wedding planner hates her for being so manly manly manish, and have we properly established that all Anita needs is a penis of her very, very own?

Frankly I kind of like the idea of having female groomsmen, especially if said fem is the groom's very best buddy, but there's "Hey, I'm here to represent and support my former student and fellow co-worker in a spirit of mutual respect and dignity, and also, I happen to look great in a tux" and then there's this. ANITA IS MORE MAN THAN GIRL. DO WE UNDERSTAND THIS YET Y/Y?

Oh, and this chapter also exists to shit all over Tamnmy during her own wedding.

They’d done something with her hair so that it was smooth and completely back from her face, so that you could see just how striking she was. I’d never really noticed that Detective Tammy was beautiful.

Every time Tammy does something at her own wedding it's a subtle negging, just like in that bolded part there. First we have the "OH GOD ORANGE IS SO UGLY" criticism of the Halloween wedding color scheme. Then we have the description of Tammy in her wedding dress. In the next chapter we also get to criticize her for having bad taste in ornaments and being clumsy. This is this character's freaking wedding.

THIS IS THE FIRST FUCKING CHAPTER OF THE BOOK. SEND HELP. 

The double standard is alive and well. The woman is supposed to be beautiful on her wedding day, the groom is just supposed to stand there and not embarrass himself, or her.

*sighs*. On the one hand, I agree that the beauty standards for women are terribly skewed, mostly unhealthy and almost entirely unnecessary. On the other hand, girls get princess dresses, flowers, kickass shoes and fire-engine red lipstick, whereas the traditional fancy guy wear begins and ends with "black suit." Also? Anita? Darling? Honey-Bunny Bear? Sometimes women like to conform to the traditional gender role. Yes. It's constricting as fuck when you don't want to be there, but it can be rather fun if you're playing that game because you want to. Being a "liberated woman" does not give you the right to decide that I can't play that role, and it sure as fuck doesn't give you the right to shit all over another woman's wedding just because the woman employed traditional beauty standards and decided to wear lots of makeup. She's not conforming to traditional gender roles because, sweetheart, you're standing on the groom's side of the aisle and you're wearing a tux. Your friend wants to play dress up and you don't. It's her wedding. She went out of her way to accommodate your lifestyle. Shut up and deal.
 
Oh, and Tammy is four months pregnant, as previously established, and this is theoretically a shotgun wedding, judging by the look on Daddy's face.

...yeah. You can't arrange a traditional church wedding on this scale in four months, unless you are Satan and you own a minister's soul. And that's just the "booking the church" part. So either Tammy and Larry can work miracles, or the pregnancy is a side effect of the wedding prep, and not a cause.

And of course, we take time to dump on Richard, who "Dumped me because I got along better with the monsters."

Anita:

YOU.

RAPED.

HIM.

The first time he dumped you, it was because you promised you would love him forever and never leave if he would just shift in front of you and accept his dark side, and the second he shifted in front of you and accepted his dark side you ran the fuck away and gave Jean Claude a blow job. The second time it was because you fed your mystical sex thing on him when he told you multiple times that you could not. Shut up, get therapy, be really thankful the law doesn't define "forced envelopment" as a crime (yet), and leave Richard alone.

Eventually we get to the point of this chapter, which was apparently to put Micah, Nathanial and Anita all into tuxes together at a party. We get a drool-y description of how perfect Micah is perfect perfect, even though a. Anita knows nothing about his human side and b. he raped her the first night they met.

...at least this is better than the "slit up to my waist on both sides" dress Anita wore to some date with Jean Claude. I have no problem with what a character chooses to wear riiiiiiiight up until the character starts whingeing about, say, how hard it is to put a gun back into your waist holster when you're wearing it under your dress and you decided to go commando. If you want to be provocatively dressed, do so. If you want to make it easy to use your weaponry, we've already established you look great in a Tux.

And then we have Detective Jessica Arnet drooling over Nathanial:

Jessica Arnet was a few inches taller than Nathaniel’s 5' 6", so she had to look down to meet that lavender gaze. No exaggeration on the color. His eyes weren’t blue, but truly a pale purple, lavender, spring lilacs. He wore a banded-collar shirt that was almost the same color as his eyes, so the lavender was even more vibrant; drowning beautiful, those eyes.

You know, it took me five years to understand that Elizabeth Taylor's eyes were violet and not blue. And I still don't see that marked a difference between most green eyes, most blue eyes and most violet eyes.

Anyhoo, Jessica decides to give Nathaniel a hug instead of a handshake, and because Nathanial is so precious passive, he doesn't let go, or ask Jessica to let him go because that might hurt her feelings. Aw, isn't it precious. Someone so eager to please that he will allow himself to be pawed via unwanted sexual advances just so he won't hurt someone else's feelings. And of course the only way to fix this is for Anita to stake her claim on Nate by pawing him in front of Jessica, while simultaneously thinking about what she's going to do when she has to dump Nate, because he aims so hard to please and he so obviously loves Anita.

LKH can go fuck herself for writing that. Also, for writing that as a stripper, Nate should be used to getting pawed by random people.

End of chapter. In the next chapter, we find out that the wedding reception is skeleton themed, and that Tammy Reynalds is too tall for her own decorations.

Jessica Arnet sits next to Anita and they trade barbs for a while. Basically it's "Is Nathanial yours?" "Technically yes" repeated for three pages.

Then Dolph calls Anita and asks her to come to a crime scene. Apparently they are on speaking terms because Anita talked his son until putting off conversion into undeath for a while. Because, you know, him having an honest-to-god psychotic meltdown in the precinct office and physically assaulting Anita is the kind of thing you can blow off with a little paperwork. Anita heads off to the crime scene.

Next chapter: Anita feels guilty for heading off to the crime scene, because looking at a murder victim is so much better than dealing with social stuff and that makes Anita a terrible person.

The victim is an exotic dancer of some kind who stepped out for "air", or probably a cigarette. I will give LKH kudos for one thing: There is no veneer of "Oh, she asked for it" like there was with Nate. Very small kudos, because she did do that bullshit with Nate, but good behavior ought to be rewarded. The victim has been drained by multiple vamps, shoved behind a dumpster, and then displayed so that somebody would find her.

And of course, we take a break from the crime scene so that Anita and Dolph can have a pissing contest RE: Jean Claude. Can he be sure that Anita won't cover up a crime JC's people committed? None of JC's people would do this, he'd kill them (Note: Anita does not say no.) Oh, so JC is a murderer now? Oh, Lay off, Dolph. Work out your issues on your own time (Again: Not a no)

This accomplishes nothing, because even the little bits of backstory we get from the dialogue were already explained in the preceeding paragraphs.

 In the next chapter, we explore the body. Anita figures out there were a minimum of seven vamps draining the body, and that leaving the body here was a statement. Dolph makes the jump to serial killer, probably because the ritualistic posing of the body suggests some kind of fantasy at work, and that type doesn't usually stop with the first one. Anita assumes this means Dolph has info he's not giving her, because actual good policework is asking too fucking much.

The chapter ends with Anita worrying over her friendship with Dolph. Because being dragged up a staircase, having your face shoved in bloodstains, and then having a table thrown at you in an interview room are not at all indicators of a toxic personality that should be avoided at all costs.

...I should have gone with the dino book, shouldn't I?

(Joking).

(....mostly.)

The Wolf GIft--chapter 39-END

Called Perry. Expect it to do no good, but I called Perry anyway.

Anybody who could ignore what happened at the capitol on Tuesday is going to keep on ignoring it because Reasons.

Incidentally my boss brought up an interesting point on the subject, one that I did not think about. A key point in the bill would require doctors preforming abortions to have admitting privileges in a nearby hospital. She said something like "I'll bet they're trying to corporatize it. Give it to the companies. Make it into big business."

Given that ANYTHING political is a "follow the money" principal, that makes too much sense for me not to bring it up.

Also, and this is TOTALLY unrelated to politics...yeah, I spent the afternoon researching henna, because I found a couple awesome picture of it and I wanted to understand how blue henna can exist. Short answer: It can't. And don't EVER do a photo search for black henna while eating. Or ever allow black henna to come anywhere near your body because HOLY FUCK OW OW OW OW OW.

This has been your daily public service announcement.

THIRDLY: I'd say our two categories are either more Anita Blake, OR the possessed-by-dinosaurs book. We can do the next book in line (I can't be arsed to check at this point) or we can skip ahead to something relatively interesting. I know that "Interesting" and "Anita Blake" are not exactly synonyms at this point, so it's up to you. Next Anita Blake, Random Anita Blake, or the dinosaur book.

Right. So shitty book.

They're still eating the same food from the last chapter. Only now instead of a salad, it's pies.

This reads like the food fight scene in Hook. And we don't get the lovely visuals this time.

Margon tells Ruben and Stuart about the origin of werewolves. And are you ready for this guys? Are you ready? Are you REALLY ready?

Okay. This is where werewolves came from.



MONKEYS.

“Yes,” said Margon, “there was such a species, an isolated and dying species of primates who were not what we are and they did exist on an isolated island, yes, thousands of years ago off the African coast.”

And how did this power pass from ape-man to man-man, you ask?

BY DRINKING MONKEY URINE.

“He acquired the power by being severely and repeatedly bitten, but only after he’d been prepared by imbibing the fluids of the species— the urine, the blood— in whatever quantities he could acquire for two years. He had also invited playful bites from the tribe whenever he could. They had befriended him, and he was an outcast from his people— exiled from the only real city in the whole world.”

AND THAT IS NOT THE MOST DISTURBING PART OF THIS SCENE, BLOG-READERS! No, the most disturbing part is immediately before this, where Stuart says "So did we get this power by mating with the apes" and Margon is all like "NO THAT WAS NOT SUCCESSFUL"

AS IF SOMEBODY ACTUALLY TRIED TO MATE WITH THE MONKEY-WOLF PEOPLE.

And of fucking course it is revealed that Margon is the "he" in the paragraph about drinking monkey urine. Which means he's also the dude that tried to mate with the monkey people. And of course nobody goes "DUDE. WTF" and instead go off thinking about how MARGON IS AN IMMORTAL MAN.

Ruben. You've got a houseful of immortal men. This has already been very well established. Knock it off.

And then we get a long thing about how Margon was thrown out of his home city because he refused to worship the "gods of stone". And I don't know if this is an agnostic/athiestic statement of faith, or an author-screed against pagan/non-Catholic religion. So I'm gonna go with both.

And of course Margon is from THE OLDEST CITY IN THE HISTORY OF THINGS EVER and he was this city's god-king. Because ONLY THE BEST PEOPLE CAN BE IN THIS STORY.

...and yes. He's white.

And then there is a long screed about truth, and how we are taught that lies are necessary, and somehow this has relevance on Stuart's being gay, and it's supposed to be meaningful, and it's not. It's really not.

And then we get an account of the perfect monkey people, who were more perfect than perfect and who knew no sin, and who never ever took advantage of their abilities as werewolves...and who freaking worshipped Margon, a dude they could have eaten in three or four bites, right up until he tells them that their gods don't exist either, and they decide that it's time to kill him because the plot wants to make some kind of point about belief.

And then Margon turns into a wolf and he eats some of the monkey people, and the rest now literally worship him as God.

Oh, and the monkey people are mortal even when they do change, whereas humans who are bitten become immortal. Because...OH LOOK A BUNNY!

Things degrade into a debate about how this power could have evolved and why.

You know, I woke up today, and I did not think "I need a scientific explination for werewolves". I don't think anybody else ever woke up and thought that. But Anne Rice did, and she's giving it to us in GREAT DETAIL.

And then we go off on Pretencious Spiritual Tangent NO. 36587 AKA Transcendent Witnesses and Salvageable Truths, which evolves into a Rapsody on the theme "SCIENCE IS EVIL."

Now we're discussing Childhood Development.

Then they decide to give the Chrism to Laura whenever she's ready. Which won't be this book.

If Laura turns into fucking Bella Swan, the universe will have proved it contains no justice.

End of chapter.

Next chapter, we get a summery of events:

Stuart has a Jaguar. Buffy Longcourt is going to buy a new wardrobe to get over her abusive husband's death. Grace is on a tour of talk shows discussing the Man Wolf, who has dropped off the face of the Earth. Ruben and Stuart avoid the police while Ruben writes more "Rah Rah Wolf" pieces for the paper.

A new random wolf--Frank Vandowhatever--shows up and talks all about the fun he had baiting the cops to Mexico. This is reported in summery because that couldn't possibly be as interesting as the philosophical debate of last chapter.

Meanwhile, Anne Rice murders a simi-colon:

It was impossible to guess the age of any of these men, really, Reuben felt; and it was clearly not polite to ask.

She so doesn't need an editor, guys.

After a few months everybody, including all of Ruben's family, has a real thanksgiving in the house.

There are no reports reguarding wheither or not Laura made a salad. However, we do find out that people played the piano and that Jim was rather mopy.

This happens:

Reuben began to write a book. But it was not an autobiography, or a novel. It was something quite pure and had to do with his own observations, his own deep suspicions that the highest truths a person could discover were rooted in the natural world.

Translation: Ruben is writing a book of pretensious philosophy that will be meaningful to exactly six people, until the seventh hitches it up to Objectivism or something.

Felix basically remodels a local town because he can. Margon and Stuart decide to start living together together.

Laura takes off for a weekend alone, and Ruben and company go to Mexico to kill all the men frequenting a Mexican brothel. Yeah, Hostel is a reality for this book, as long as you're a werewolf. Ruben gets back from Mexico, Laura is not there. So instead he takes a walk, rambles philosophically about Things for several pages, and then throws his arms up in the air and prays:

“Lord, forgive me my blasphemous soul,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “But I thank You with all my heart for the gift of life, for all the blessings You have rained down upon me, for the miracle of life in all its forms— and Lord, I thank You for the Wolf Gift!”

And then a jet engine fell on him. The end.

I wish.

But yep. End of book! Book is done! WE ARE FINALLY DONE.

I have reviewed Mission Earth, Captive of Gor, TWO Anita Blake novels and a book where a woman had hot and heavy sex with a lake. So far, THIS is the worst book I've read.

I'm going to go watch something stupid until I fall asleep. Night, all.