Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 41

Cerulean Sins-=chapter 56

So. The book is obviously winding down, and it's time for us to pick another one. Here are my suggestions:

-Another LKH book of some sort.
-...I could start the Left Behind series over from scratch and chapter-by-chapter it. And explain in detail why Jerry B Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's theology sucks eggs from a Christian perspective (Seriously. JBJ and TLH are to Christianity what homoeopathy is to real medicine. There are no words for how very, very deeply I hate that series).
-That Hideous Streingth. On the one side, this is one of my favorite books of all time. On the other side, it is apparently one of the most hated science fiction books of all time, and as I mentioned earlier the only homosexual in the entire novel is a sadistic nazi-esque lesbian, whose sole contribution to the entire book is the torture of a housewife. So it is problematic to say the least. I will have to explain why I like it without defending the creation of Fairy Hardcastle. The other downside is that it really is dryer than stale toast.
-Eternal Prey--Again. It's a novel about vampires and the Mayan prophesy-that-wasn't, and it involves shapeshifters who are really men posessed by the ghosts of dead dinosaurs. The male lead is an oversized veloceraptor. It also has a Bella Swan clone in it.

OR: Your recommendations. Come, my loyal blog readers. Let us discuss this in great detail.

Right. On to the shitty book.

O'Brien AKA Natural Punk Cop has to be my favorite character in the book so far. She's got a spine, she's female, she's not sexualized and she told Anita Blake to go fuck herself. So naturally this chapter is going to tear her down into itty bitty pieces.

Namely, she doesn't want to let Zerbowski and Anita interrogate the Aryan Terrorist. His name is Hienrick, but I don't want to use that because it's a brand of halfway decent gin.

Anita smiles and tells O'Brien that now that Heinrick is a suspect in a supernatural crime, he belongs to Anita now, so there.

O'Brien pretends to be obtuse about this. In the process she points out to Zerbowski that they could probably figure out how many people are in the tub by counting body parts. It might not reduce the potential number but if you've got more than one head and three or four pinky toes, having just one victim is kind of off the table.

O'Brien gets pissed because it's her case and Anita is taking it over. Blatantly:

“Actually, O’Brien, it’s everybody’s case now. Mine, because federal law gives me the jurisdiction. Zerbrowski, because it’s a preternatural case, and that means it belongs to the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. Truthfully, you have no jurisdiction on the murders. They didn’t happen on your turf, and you wouldn’t even have known that Heinrick was involved if we hadn’t shared information so freely with you.”

And then she loses all her coolness by revealing that all she cares about is whose name is in the papers. Because OF COURSE SHE DOES. Having a cool character who is not (a. Anita and (b. a moral vacuum without even a trace of restraint, yeah, that's WAY too hard to write.

Then Zerbowski shows her the photos of the crime scene, and O'Brien has to fight vicious nausea. And in the hands of a better writer this would be a good scene. It would be an asshole realizing that they're being an asshole over the ripped up bodies of several dead people. But because this is LKH, this scene is all about breaking and devaluing, hell, I'd go as far as to say de-empowering, a character who has proven in her only other scene to be much fucking better than Anita. It's not about doing the right thing. It's about a dominance play. It's about proving that Anita has a bigger imaginary penis.

Also, somehow we've figured out that the rapist is a man named Van Anders. Apparently Bradly Bradford slipped Anita a really big file or something. Nice of him to solve the case for her.

Oh, and because I haven't done this in a while:

Empowered female character. Requires male bad-ass to solve entire case for her in the space of one conversation.

Chapter ends with Anita walking into the interrogation room. Because it was MUCH more important to break the other strong female castmates than it was to, you know, actually solve the fucking  case.

I hate this book.

Cerulean Sins--Chapter 55

So the FBI agent who barges in on Anita and Zerbowski and the crime scene is a good guy. Well, at least we're bypassing the steriotypical pissing contest one would normally expect.

Bradley Bradford (gag) hands Zerbowski a photo of the killer. Yeah, there was a store with a surveillance camera that caught the whole thing. The tub apparently contains the body parts of two women. Apparently the apartment is owned by two women, and the physical description of these two women matches the two women in the photo with the men.

There are about nine jumps of logic here. Jumps that the cops would take anyway, but without the attitude of "GOD HAS SMILED ON US THE CASE IS SOLVED" that Mr. Bradford is producing. Cops would be a little leery of bursting into celebratory song and dance because, HELLO, the bodies are in parts, and it is strongly implied that no one is removing them yet. So unless there are two heads in relatively good condition, you have NO IDEA who those bodies are yet. Yes. They are probably the women who own the apartment. The cops would still check to make sure.

Eventually Anita acknowledges that the dude in the picture could be on the bottom of the bathtub, and categorizes him as pretty, but not "Richard pretty".

ANITA: STOP. BRINGING. UP. RICHARD.

Oh, and there's something fishy about how care-y share-y Mr. Bradford is, but this is bypassed so that Anita can compare every male to her ex boyfriend.

While standing in a puddle of blood that threatens to spill into her shoes.

Because priorities.

So in the middle of all of this, Laurel K. Hamilton realizes that she has her plot in like, six different boxes and it's time to try to shove it all into one, because the "natural punk" cop calls Anita and says that another detective has picked the same two photographs Anita did! A scene I actually liked because that nagging "I know these dudes but I can't place them" Feeling is good cop work. Anyhoo, Anita realizes that the two men she picked out were from the cemetery scene WAYYYYYYYYYYY back in the beginning of the book. They were body guards for one of the parties, either the insurance people or the distressed wife. Anita decides that they are Friends of the Aryan Terrorist, even though Aryan Terrorist has given no indication that he has those buddies. She also decides that the dude in the survaliance video with the two women are Friends of the Aryan Terrorist. Bradley Bradford is giving her "blank cop face". Anita also decides that the murderer is a Friend of the Aryan Terrorist, even though Natural Punk Cop AKA Detective O'Brien says there's no evidence. Anita knows better than the cops.

This happens:

“Fine, O’Brien, fine, you’re the detective in charge.”

 “Nice of you to remember that.” She hung up on me.

 I said a very heartfelt, “Bitch!”

Zerbowski and the others get pissed that O'Brien has been sitting on the best clue possible in their case. Except there are NO connections between the murders and the Aryan Terrorist, other than what Anita has been saying, and the murders aren't O'Brien's case, so there's no reason for her to go "Hey, my guys who tried to stalk your crazy-ass paranormal consultant and failed spectacularly, who turned out to be overpowered super Aryan Terrorists, are interesting. There's no evidence that connects them to the horribleness you have to deal with, but they're interesting. Want to take time away from your investigation to look at the mfor a while?"

Zerbowski and Other Cop run off to get a marked police car. Anita and Bradley Bradford (SERIOUSLY. WHO WOULD NAME THEIR KID "BRAD" TWICE?) talk. Someone named Van Anders is brought up, and he probably came up earlier in the novel but I CANNOT remember his name. Double Brad tells Anita that  in exchange for help getting Rapey the Werewolf dead, the Aryan Terrorist and his buddy ill get escorted out of the country, no questions asked.

Anita gives him the name and general description of her client from way back in the first chapter. Who has not come up since then, because there is no plot.

Zerbowski comes back with the car. The chapter ends before we pull the entire plot out of Anita's ass, but we're about halfway there.

Cerulean Sins--chapter 53-54

So we watched Cloud Atlas for the first time today. All I can say is mind=BLOWN. OH MY GOD WAS THAT A GOOD MOVIE. Non-linear storytelling FTW.  The music. The special effects (With the exception of the Somni senario's AWFUL makeup) the locations. THE FACT THAT THEY MADE ALL FIVE STORIES INTERESTING.

However, I did find the one discussion point re: the actors in "yellowface". IDK how big a deal this is. On the one hand, they...did not strike me as believably asian. I do not think anybody sane could put Keith David and Hugo Weaving in prosthetics and expect us to buy them as ethnic Koreans. Given that both Halle Berry and Doona Bae appeared in "whiteface" in senarios where people of their ethnicity wouldn't fit the narrative (Given that Vyvyan Ayrs was intended to be a flaming asshole, it wouldn't fit for him to have married a black woman, and the same stands true for the Pre-Civil-War era senario. A narrative about a white man realizing that he's a predujiced asshole loses a lot of power if it's revealed he's marred to an asian woman.) (ALSO: HUGO WEAVING IN DRAG. I HAD TO POINT THIS OUT. THEY CAST LORD ELROND AS THE SOCIOPATHIC NURSE) it seemed less an effort to whitewash people of ethnicity and more an effort to provide a rounding of the narrative.

THAT SAID: It's problematic to use white people to play asian roles. It's not okay to stick white people in roles intended for people of another ethnicity. They could have likely made more of an effort to cast ethnic people in the ethnic roles.

Second THAT SAID: They used the same prosthetics for every actor in the Korean scenario who was not Korean. This includes Keith David. Who is a black man.  And if those prosthetics were intende to convince you that these actors were ethnically asian, those prosthetics were fucking horrible. Hugo Weaving did not look asian. Hugo Weaving did not look human. Hugo Weaving looked, if anything, like Jocelyn Wildenstein after another round of reconstructive surgery.

I guess (and please correct me if I am missing the major issue, because again: dumb white chick) that the arguement is sane respectful racial bounderies vs. the demands of a narrative that requires the same actors to take every possible role (again. They put Halle Berry and Doona Bae in whiteface so that those actresses could play white roles in the white scenarios, and of course, HUGO WEAVING. IN DRAG.)

If I were in the role of writer for that movie, I would not know which was more important. Do I respect racial bounderies and cast ethnic actors when said casting damages my narrative, OR do I stick with the narrative and take the heat?

(If they had not put Doona Bae in whiteface for the end of the pre-civil war scenario, I would have a different opinion. But the narrative seemed to be about the connection between souls and I don't know if it would have had the same visual impact if they had cast different actors for the love interests.)

I am sure you all have opinions, and that they are all better than mine. So Discuss.

...so do I have to review shit again? I do? Fuck.

It's a murder scene. Good fucking Christ.

Look. I have NO official knowledge of crime scenes. Most of what I know comes from true crime books that are ususally slanted so that the police will keep talking to the writers. BUT GOOD FUCKING GOD can we have ONE crime scene that isn't an utter fail?

Having learned from the last crime scene, Zerbowski meets Anita at the door with booties and an ENTIRE BOX OF RUBBER GLOVES.

YOU DO NOT NEED AN ENTIRE BOX OF GLOVES FOR ONE CRIME SCENE. I THINK THIS IS A GENTLE HINT THAT ANITA SUCKS AT THIS.

Also, we find out that the killer changed his MO and moved into the bathroom.

In my thoroughly inexpert opinion, writers, ESPECIALLY crime writers, put too much emphasis on both MO and the ritualistic nature of a crime. These are two different, and very simple, things. MO=Modis Operandi. Meaning these are things that a criminal does to make his crime flow easier. Just like you've got a workflow habit for, say, working on an excel spreadsheet, a criminal has a method for a crime. It implies a habit in the method of crime. A change can mean a lot of things. They got interrupted, they realized they were about to get caught, or they've refined their method and removed risky and/or unnecessary steps. The ritualistic nature of crime is another thing blown out of proportion by mystery writers. This usually only surfaces IRL in ways that even REMOTELY resembles fiction when the killer is a sexual sadist and/or rapist, and the so-called ritual is a part of the fantasy. IRL this means that the rapist/murderer might talk during the kill, or ask the victim to preform an action, or bind the victim a certain way. IRL this results in funky ligatures and victims that report being told to tell their rapist how much they enjoyed the sex. In BOOKS this results in stories about a murderer that kills their victims via poetry with drugged ink (which was the last time I ever read serial murder mysteries because WHO THE FUCK GOES THERE)

LKH usually manages to avoid the killer poetry, which is one area where I've always liked her books. Murders in them are ugly, brutal and graceless affairs, and they do not usually have gimmicks. (In case you can't guess, unbelievable murder scenarios are a pet peeve of mine. WHO THE FUCK KILLS VIA HAIKU?) but there's still an unbelievable emphasis on how KILLERS ONLY WORK THIS ONE WAY.

He's killed three people. He crucified one and he liquified the other two by raping them to death. I think it's safe to say we're still figuring things out.

And it must be said:

The room was red. Red, as if someone had painted all the walls crimson, but it wasn’t an even job of painting. It wasn’t just red, or crimson, but scarlet, ruby, brick red where it had begun to dry, a color so dark it was almost black, but it sparked red like a dark garnet.

STOP DESCRIBING THINGS LIKE THIS. It's red. But it's not red. But it's a shade that would be "red" if you put it in a paint box, only it's not red. But it just sparkles red. Only, you know, it's not fucking red. Okay?

Basically, the walls and floor are covered in blood like something out of a bad anime/CSI episode. We also apparently have to know where the bathtub is, and what size, and the shower stall, and the toilet, and everything else because saying "THIS IS A BATHROOM" is not enough to give you a picture of the average american toilet. We have to know how this specific model flushes.

If the bathtub is not an infinity pool, I am not interested.

Then we move on to Anita's reaction, which takes two fucking pages to finish.

If I have one issue with true crime shows and books and media representation of crime, it's that everything is all about the criminal and the public's reaction to the crime, and not about the victim. Without googling, I dare you to name one victim of Ted Bundy, Dennis Radar or Gary Ridgeway. You don't know who they are. They're not the ones who get 24 hour media coverage and documenatries. We do not give Georgianne Hawkins made-for-TV movies. Nobody cares who Opal Mills was. Nobody is writing books about the Otero family. I get that we ought to respect the family's privacy and that they might not want these things written about, but I also know a lot of victim's families spend their lives screaming to the heavens about their dead loved ones, and that nobody seems to be listening. Meanwhile, we give 24 hour coverage to the criminals themselves. Because it's a lot easier to make a bad guy look interesting than it is a good girl.

The fact that we've gone four pages and discussed the gore and how it has affected Anita, and we haven't even found out the victim's sex yet? Yeah, I don't like that.

Zerbowski says "Who was the girl this morning" and for a second I think we're finally going to talk about the victim (Hair color. Eye color. Skin color. Clothing. ONE personal detail that would make me think "This is a terrible event, a good human has died and now Anita must go kill the bad human to make up for it."). But no. He's referring to Cherry.

Anita's sex life trumps a dead rape victim.

Anita then says that she needed a longer vacation because this shit was so bad.

Dave Reichert worked the Green River case from the early 80s to 2001. He might have taken a few vacations here and there, but he never quit the case. Ever. Because he had a board with all the victim's names on it, or with the Jane Doe number for the unidentified bones. Because, you know, he understood that the case wasn't about how tired he was. It was about the dead victim and the potential victim who was still alive.

Oh, but Anita is a little queasy. I am sure the victim would feel a lot of sympathy if she hadn't come down with a severe case of Raped and Dead.

They speculate about the bathtub for a while, and then decide that two people died in the bathroom. Given that we haven't addressed the issue of body parts--we've been  focused on describing the blood in generous detail--there could be FOURTY people dead in that room, and we the reader wouldn't know.

They make a joke about the 64 thousand dollar question and inflation. Anita puts her gloves on and goes to fish around in the bathtub.

Because that's what a cop would make you do.

Because it's not like special trace evidence could be floating around in the pinky blood water.

And the entire discussion about fishing in the bloody bathtub is about how much it grosses out Anita. GOD FORBID A WEREWOLF EVER DROP A BODY IN A LAKE. Then Anita would have to deal with a one to two week old floater.

...you know, I just realized every case I can think of in this series has been fresh? As in, fresh enough you can pin the time of death down to a couple hours? In most cases it's "Uh, this happened last week. Maybe" but Anita manages to get the cases in the deep woods where the blood is still all drippy and they could possibly have brought in the super glue tent and fumed the body for prints, if they weren't too busy playing "catch" with the body's internal organs.

The chapter ends with Anita finally entering the bloody bathroom.

Next chapter: THE BLOOD ON THE FLOOR ALMOST FLOODS ANITA'S SHOES.

BLOODY CRIME SCENES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.

Anita is holding onto the door .Anita is holding onto the door. The floor is slippery. We are holding onto that motherfucking door and hey, the blood looks just like an Easter Egg dying kit!


So...the victims?

Oh, yeah, and they let a detective, not a crime scene tech or the medical examiner, mind, but a detective, on his first fucking week on the job--you know, the "fuck up" week where the boss hides all the pointy objects and designates a trainer/shadow?--fish through the bathtub for the body parts.

HOW DOES HE EVEN KNOW HOW TO START WITH THIS?

Oh, but the "techies" are going to filter the tub for evidence. AFTER everybody's put their hands in it.

Anita is going to contaminate the crime scene with leopard hair and her own epithelials. And that's just for starters.

Oh, and the best part? They had Anita fish around in the tub and handle evidence she has no business touching so that Zerbowski and another Random Cop can win a bet.

THESE ARE ALL HORRIBLE PEOPLE AND I WANT THEM TO DIE IN A FIRE REPEATEDLY.

Seriously. Would you like to be the detective who has to explain to the District Attourney that you compromised chain of custody to win a Benjamin? How about the more important group of people here, the victim's family. "Yeah, we would have liked to catch the guy and go to trial and make sure nobody else died the way your daughter did, but we had to let our magical consultant handle the body parts outside of a controlled enviroment because, you know, I bet Dave over here fifty bucks she couldn't touch it, but she's a manly manly girl-man-girl and she did it, and her manly-ness trumps your family's right to have answers."

Fuck all these people. Sideways. With a shovel.

The chapter closes with the introduction of an FBI agent named Bradly Bradford.

Bradly. Bradford.

LKH got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for this book alone.

There are times I realize I have no soul

Yeah, I found this last night. I spent the morning reading the angry Amazon reviews. And then giggling to myself like a little school girl.

I have not been shy to admit, I hate Sookie Stackhouse. I hate her eternal internal monologuing, I hate her inability to commit to a relationship and stand up for herself in the relationships she does have (unless, of course, Standing Up for One's Self is part of the plot, in which case she will do it at the absolute worst time and place possible and manage to nearly get herself and her friends killed. Girls, it is good to have a backbone, but having one doesn't mean you stand up when your roofless double decker bus goes under an overpass. Wait for the danger to pass, THEN get off the bus) (also: having Standing Up for One's Self backfire spectacularly implies that standing up for yourself is wrong. Sookie telling Eric to stuff it in front of his superiors when said superiors are trying to take over Eric and Sookie simultaneously isn't empowering. It's just stupid. DON'T MOUTH OFF TO THE BAD GUYS WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO FIGHT THEM.) I hate that she manages to be this bizzare combination of independent and doormat and that this is never acknowledged as unhealthy. I think the only thing I don't hate about Sookie is how Anna Pacquin can rock a modified 1940's hairdo.

THAT SAID. I read the last book. The one before this one. And...uh, to say the Sam-is-my-One-True-Love thing was forshadowed is to say that thunder hints at lightning's existence.  To sum up the ending of the next-to-last Sookie Stackhouse book, she had a magical fairy thing that would grant a wish for True Love. Eric spent the ENTIRE BOOK trying to get Sookie to use it to save him from having to vampire-marry a vampire Queen (...it's complicated). Sookie refused to do so. Sam, her doggy-shapeshifting male BFF, died of Plot. Sookie did not hesitate to revive Sam with the magical True Love fairy wish right in front of Eric. And then the book was all like "Well, I've fucked up Eric's life and I've revealed to myself that I've had the hots for the only significant supernatural character I haven't fucked yet for God only knows how long, but we're going to save this for the next book because readers are stupid."

And I closed the book because I don't like getting teased with like FIVE different relationships, ALL of which were supposed to be Sookie's One True Wub, only to have the final, sixth relationship shoved in my face.

Also: The eighties called. They want their Very Special Episode plot back.

BONUS ROUND! In having come out of my popular culture rock, I discovered the spoken word...whatever "To JK Rowling from Cho Chang" And while I am not saying that she does not have valid points (...nor am I saying she does have valid points. It's not my issue to say stuff on) I am saying that using "Garcia Sanchez" as an example of a fucked up name might not have been t
Why do I know this? 80% of the people in my part of the world are hispanic. My first reaction to "You might as well name a french man Garcia Sanchez" was not "That's a valid point on the stupidity of rich white people" but rather "Hey, I think I know that guy."

Try not to use a valid naming pattern to point out an invalid one. Just sayin.

Cerulean Sins--chapter 52

Sales were awesome today. I love all of you. Every single one of you. You all rock. I just wanted to let you know. (Seriously. I refreshed my reports, which I check obsessively because I am that fucking narcissistic, and I was all like "OH MY GOD HALF OF THE NUMBERS JUST MOVED" *does stupid joygasm dance to AWOLNation AKA the Band of the Minute*. YOU ARE THE COOLEST PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE)

In other news, we have been slow at work. Because it buys me bonus points with le boss and it doesn't require a mopping of the floors, I have been studying the history of the cocktail. My obsession with alcoholic beverages is quickly approaching my obsession with knitting. Did you know that Cocktails were controversial, first for their containing bitters, which for the time was basically like dosing your gin with Nyquil (...which people do to this day, apparently) except that Bitters is water with herbs in it and Nyquil is basically 20 proof with antihystimines as a sleep aid. Oh, and it was what you drank in the morning.

Also: Parfait Armour does not live up to its historical legacy. BLECH.

Right. Shitty book.

Anita wakes up in a pile of warm, naked bodies.

...did I miss a chapter?

No. We go from "The baby vampires gave Belle a guilt trip" to "NAKED PEOPLE IN BED."

There are transitions for the sake of alleviating boredom and then there is RANDOM ORGY.

It involved Nathanial, Micah, Zane, and Cherry.

...I still cannot trust a character in this book named Cherry. This is probably problematic on my part, but every time I read her name I'm all like "REALLY? HER NAME IS CHERRY?"

And then the book takes a turn towards quality.

Not good. Not even quality. But it's like "Oh, hey, remember back when LKH could actually write her way out of a bedsheet? No? Well, here's a reminder!"

The phone rings. Cherry answers. It's Zerbowski, who spends a few paragraphs teasing Anita about her sex life and how she doesn't usually give him that much ammo. There are nine zillion reasons why this is wrong, the biggest being that it isn't actively funny, but it's close enough to quality for you to realize that if LKH had spent the last few chapters actively developing characters and letting the characters interact and build connections, this could have been actively entertaining. Because this used to be what LKH was good at.

We may all hold the obligatory moment of silence. Because when you read this:

“It’s the shape-shifter rapist again.”

And your first impulse is to roll your eyes and sigh? You couldn't save this book with the jaws of life.

HOW. HOW DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING WITH THAT MUCH POTENTIAL AND HAVE IT SUCK? It's like having Superman fight twin clones of Hitler in a post-apocalyptic future  and having it suck. (...which it did.)

Also: asking a cop how they're holding up is against the guy code. THE GUY CODE. Apparently you can't say "This is fucking awful and when we're done I'm going home and crying" because it violates some kind of "code."

Also? If you ever wanted proof LKH doesn't get shit about cop work? It's that little exchange right there. YOU ASK. BECAUSE IT KEEPS YOUR PEOPLE FROM GOING HOME AND KILLING THEMSELVES.

Also: Anita can't find a pencil and paper so she has to write directions to the crime scene on her mirror in lipstick.

Empowered female character. Can't find a pencil. Can find her lipstick.

(Eyeliner pencil. Random receipt crumpled on bottom of purse. If you cannot manage this much, and yet you carry lipstick with you, you have forgotten how to girl.)

 More crime scene fail:

He was dead silent for a minute. “There is no way I could get anyone to agree to letting another shape-shifter near this scene.”

Let's replace "Shape shifter" with ANY OTHER ETHNICITY EVER. Also: WE LET PSYCHICS INTO CRIME SCENES. WE CAN LET PEOPLE WHO CAN ACTUALLY HELP THE COPS COME IN TOO.

 “I can’t tell the upper brass that our perp doesn’t smell like the local werewolf pack, Anita.

Why not? You'll trust a blood hound to track a victim via her abudctor's car. AND BE IN THE RIGHT, because bloodhounds are awesome. WHY WOULDN'T YOU HAVE A LIASON WITH THE LOCAL PACK? Cops are willing to accept it when MS-13 says "It's not us, man" (...and there's proof to back it up) I could see not doing it back when the leaders were crazier than a rabid 'coon in a bubble bath, but the pack leader is a high school science teacher and his second is Anita.

...wait. Technically, that's a good enough reason.

 The chapter ends with Anita making the connection between the first, crucified victim and the Aryan Terrorist. Because this is absolutely logical.

Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate Hate HATE this book.

Cerulean Sins--Chapter 51

I ought to subhead this chapter "In which CW loses her mind".

One of my favorite books is That Hideous Streingth, a book that might as well be subtitled "The Problematic Chronicles" because it is written by a straight Christian white man and it has a sadistic lesbian as one of the secondary villians (who contributes fuck-all to the plot. I've spent the last several months trying to figure out what Lewis meant to do with her other than villianize lesbians, because he's got four other major villians in the piece and all of them serve a double purpose, and I can't come up with a thing.). I promise one day I will review this and be fair about it because it's not fair for me just to murder the books I hate when the books I love have issues too. Anyhoo, I bring it up, because it's the only book off the top of my head that has a banquet scene that is relivant to the novel's plot. It lasts for one chapter, most of which is actually Character X, Character Y and Merlin (...yes. That Merlin) Doing Things. It's dry as toast. Unless you get what Lewis is doing, and you have to be several flavors of fucked up to get it.

Compared to this? With the problematic antagonist factored into the equation? It's an awesome scene.

WHY DID WE HAVE TO HAVE FOUR FUCKING CHAPTERS DEDICATED TO A BANQUET IF NOBODY IS EVER GOING TO SIT DOWN TO EAT?

(Come to think of it, in THS most of the male protagonists's scenes are dinners of one kind or another. It's still better than this)

(Fuck, the scene where Mark has to eat in the Crazy Room is better than this)

So Anita and Jean Claude kneel beside Asher, and Asher is the most beautifulest thing that ever mattered and, because of this, Anita knows that Asher wasn't influencing her love for him through his vampiry powers because now he IS influencing her to feel like if she doesn't touch him, she'll die, and in case my regression to grade-school words isn't an indication, this isn't very clear what the fuck is actually going on.

This happens:

I opened myself wide and let Asher roll through me like a stream, long dammed, flowing, flooding, filling up a land that has been too long without water.

I like pretty words. I like strings of pretty words. Poetry makes me melt (Fatal Interview. Find it. Read it. Love it.) but I don't like overly complicated pretty words. I like my words to make sense on a casual read-through. You can be pretty and still function as a writer. It's hard. The prettier you get, the harder it is to understand you. Not because the reader is stupid, but because the human brain isn't wired to remember thirty fucking adjectives at once. Suffice to say, every time Laurel K. Hamilton starts trying for pretty words, I get a pretty fucking nasty headache.

The first half of that sentence is fine. It's not flowy, but it's pretty enough to get your point across. The rest of it is like "Yes. Okay. Uhhuh. I get it. This is the nine-millionth water meaphore you've used re: sex in your career. PLEASE MOVE ON TO THE NEXT POINT."

However, somebody on LKH_lashouts once pointed out that it helps to imagine it being spoken by Kronk from The Emperor's New Groove.



You're welcome.

  ...and the water metaphores continue. Seriously. It's like every time LKH has to write about somebody having an orgasm, she takes a shot of something high proof, holds her breath until the burn goes away, and then writes about the burn.

So Belle goes back to being pouty because Asher has proved that he's got powers now, and Jean Claude won't let him be taken away. In fact, because Jean Claude is now the source of power for his own bloodline--AKA author asspull--Belle needs to get the fuck out of St. Louis before tomorrow night.

Belle is like "But you can't!" and JC is like "TRY ME" and I'm wondering why they couldn't have done this a long, LONG time ago. Before she started fucking with his people.

And then Anita somehow sorts out that Belle intends to kill the MOAD and take her place as ruler of the vampire council.

Anita tells Belle that's stupid, the MOAD will eat her for breakfast. Note: this is a character who has never appeared in the series prior to this, who has done nothing but sleep this entire time. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU INTRODUCE A MAJOR VILLIAN, PEOPLE.

Let's go over a few other introductions, just as examples:

Darth Vader: Choked people to death
Koobus from District 9: Hoo-rahed with multiple magazines of LARGE ammo, then called Wikus van de Merwe a little shit in a manner that implied he really wanted to bite Wikus's nose off.
Voldemorte: HE WAS THE BACK OF ANOTHER MAN'S HEAD. IN A FUCKING KID'S MOVIE.

The MOAD? Is asleep.

I am not afraid of the MOAD. At this point I think Belle could take care of business with a hammer and two feet of Balsa.

Name-calling ensues. The highlight is Belle calling Asher and Jean Claude "petite catamites" which isn't nice at all. Then she turns around and drives Musette's body to the exit.

Valentina and Bartolome ask if they can stay so that they can "fix" Stephen and Gregory. Because what they did was wrong, wrongety wrong and they want to help put the pieces back together.

LKH gets a brownie point. It's probably going to die alone, but she gets it none-the-less.

Richard is ordered to escort the guests to their rooms and make them all go away.

Anita muses that the only reason Belle let Valentina and Bartolome stay is, Belle feels guilty for turning children into vampires. I'd give LKH a second brownie point for calling what Valentina's maker did, and what Musette did to Bartolome rape of a child, BUT:

 Valentina I understood because a vampire of Belle’s making had done the unspeakable. But bringing Bartolomé over as a child had been simply good business. I hadn’t thought Belle Morte lost any sleep over good business. But she’d still condemned him to an eternity in a child’s body. A child’s body with a man’s appetite forever.

 Yeah, it is STRONGLY implied that Belle's guilt isn't for raping a child, it's for condemning a man with appetites to live forever AS a child. That it's the deprevation she feels guilt over, not the whole "We raped and turned a child" part.

In short, my loyal blog-readers:

Snips and...you know, MLP kind of ruined that rhyme for me

So I got my second proof for Starbleached today. It looks alright. The title font is a big improvement, as are...uh, other top secrety things. That said, I have found more typos. I have found more rivers. The font is darker than pitch and will necessitate yet another round of color adjustments. And then probably a third proof. Which should be the last proof. Which probably won't be the last proof because as previously established I'm kind of a lazy ass. I'm irritated.

I'm also continuing to review Valkerie, the "season finale" book for Starbleached. It was, more or less, the book I've been slowly dragging my heels towards since I decided that Starbleached wasn't going to be a stand-alone thing.

It's gonna be fun cleaning this one up. :D

I've hit a kind of art-block. Covers are fun, but I've got three or four pictures sitting on my harddrive that I can't finish. One of them has been there for a couple of years. I'm gonna see if I can't fix that logjam but until then, I'm mostly staring at Photoshop and then jumping over to play minecraft for a few hours.

I go back to serious book-work on Monday. Oh, look, there's a new countdown! I love the countdowns. Mostly because they start making me shit myself when they hit the single digits.

The big reason I'm taking a soft break from both series for the summer is...I have to do a lot of outlining. A. LOT. OF. OUTLINES. Not so much for Starbleached because the next episode in that adventure is relatively straight forward, but Exiles...Yeah, I sat down the other day and wrote out exactly what I'll need to do to get the story pointed at the already written novel's direction (I have three full length novels sitting on my harddrive, FYI) and OH MY GOD THE WORK. THE WORK. It's like, two more Exiles novels, about three unrelated novels and a whole bunch of little filler short stories to get everything into place. I need to figure out what, exactly, all those things are.

Also? Summer is going to be a lot of ungodly, unholy work IRL. I live in a resort town, which means our population TRIPLES in the summer. This means CW makes lots of money, and CW gets very tired, and CW's internet crashes at 9 PM like a sundrunk toddler after a day at the beach. It's been two years. It hasn't changed yet. Except that last year we had a slow season and this year we haven't.

I don't want to deal with writing first drafts. I hate writing first drafts. I like having this big pile of words that I can play with and refine and sift through like I'm panning for gold. Writing the first draft is always like having surgery without anesthesia. The patient keeps moving around and sometimes they hit me. I also don't think it's a lot of fun for the patient.

Have fun, my loyal blog-readers and book-readers.

OH, and Taker will be free tomorrow, drop by Amazon and snag a copy for weekend reading.

Cerulean Sins--chapter 49-50

And in closing, as I think the drama is about to die down a bit--probably for another two or three months--I am very sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings, or allowed someone else to hurt someone else's feelings. It's not right and it's not okay to have someone else make you feel ashamed. Ever.

Unless you're doing it to me. Because God knows, I probably deserve it. No sarcasm. I'm a fuck up in a not-fun way. I accept that. I'm not sure I can change that because I think to effect positive change you have to, you know, not be a fuck up to start with. All I can promise is that I'll try.

All I can say is I'm sorry, and if I fucked up in your direction and you want to chew me out, please do so I know what  I need to apologize for. Just don't call anybody else names. Don't involve your fellow blog-readers in a shit-storm. If you need to bitch at somebody, bitch at me. Not each other.

You are not allowed to gang up on each other, kids. That's not why we're here.

This chapter. Uh...right.

...actually I think the shitstorm has been much more fun. Can we go back to discussing my failings as a human being? Please? Please?

I'm going to summerize really fast because I am burnt out, I think everybody here is burnt out, and then I'm going to find kittens or something to talk about at the end of this.

Asher is dying. Belle Morte has drained Asher of all his energy because she's pissed that she can't manipulate JC anymore. Anita tells her to stop, and demands that Belle save Asher, or she'll kill Musette.

Belle says "you can't kill Musette"

Anita says "Can too."

Belle says "Can not."

It repeats itself for several pages.

Finally Valentina says "Uh...he might die while you're talking and then she'll kill Musette and I'd rather not have that happen, so, duh..." and Belle decides to save Asher.

Meanwhile, Anita and Jean Claude are snuggling physically, and Anita and Richard are snuggling mentally, albiet in an "I hate you don't leave me" kind of way.

End of chapter. Next chapter. Belle starts doing vampire psychic stuff to Asher, only Asher freaks out and Anita realizes somehow that Belle is trying to bind Asher back to her. Anita freaks out. Richard asks her what the fuck is wrong with her and Anita gives him a pretty good summery, and then compares Belle Morte to Rania, the psychotic sexual sadist who had basically run the pack before Richard was in charge. Richard almost freaks out.

Belle says the options are, Asher can spend the rest of  his life as her slave, or the rest of his life as a piece of jerky.

Anita says "No, he just needs more power" and I start getting a BAD feeling in the pit of my stomach, because that means we're about to have a sex scene involving Anita and a piece of jerky, and this will probably involve enough food and beast metaphores to sustain a zoo.

It turns out that Asher has gained the ability to feed psychically. It is implied that this is the ardeur, and then it is implied that this is due to his feeding on Anita earlier, which Richard reacts to by chewing on a couple pieces of furniture. And of course this is all about how Richard doesn't understand the powers of LOVE and not, you know, about the several kinds of fucked up rolling around on the floor.

The chapter ends with Jean Claude and Anita kneeling on the ground in front of Asher, ready to plump him back up and let him sink fang.

Was there a plot in all this? Murders? International Aryan terrorists? Are we just going to stick with "bad guy does horrible thing, Anita sexes it back to life" for the rest of the book?

We are. Aren't we?

Cerulean Sins--chapter 48

So. Due to recent events, I spent today rewatching Downfall. Anyone who wants an accurate definition of evil ought to watch Downfall at least once. I have watched it three or four times. Evil is not a thing that humanity produces. It occupies humanity for a few decades at a time, and then it leaves, and those so occupied get to look around and think "What the fuck did I just do?"

I would not wish this fate on my worst enemy.

Oh, yeah. I can use this .gif again.

So. Where were we?

Right. Asher is screaming in agony.

Belle Morte is draining Asher of his life. Luckily Micah is there to break her hold over Asher. Unfortunately, Micah kisses Belle, and we are plunged into the universe of Arduer.

(Not incidentally: I have discovered AWOLNation. VNV Nation now has something like competition.)

(Also: I am intoxicated. It seemed appropriate.)

JC jumps to Asher's defense.

I'm going to address something that has bugged me from the start of this series. If you are white, and you live in the states, the initials JC are indicitive of something very specific. Specificially, you are invoking Jesus imagry in your novel. And I must state here and forever, Jean Claude makes for a piss-poor Jesus.

Anyhoo, Anita realizes that JC has no life to sacrifice to save Asher's life, and she realizes that she must do something to save Asher for JC's sake.

Yep. Anita Blake is officially a stand-in for Jesus Christ. We really are at that point, boys and girls. We have reached that level of Mary Sue.

Speaking of which, I am really sad that I have consumed all my beer. This means all I have left is my 40 dollar bottle of St. Germaine and I am not consuming that tonight, thank you very much.

Oh yeah, and this is the point where Anita's cross flares to life. Just in case you think I'm exaggerating on the blatant Christian imagry.

Angelito takes the cross away from Anita, thus exposing her mind to Belle Morte. Now, if I were writing this novel, this would be the point where the main character would start screaming "May I have a crusifix level with my eyes?" and when that fails, would start meditating on the meaning of the cross, and would do other things that would basically mean "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BRAIN YOU RAPIST FEMALE MONSTER."

What does Anita do?

She basically buries herself in sexual arousal. Because, you know, all this is an excuse for a prude to have sex, and not, you know, actual consensual sexing.

 Also, this happens.

 I felt movement and rolled my eyes back to see Richard. Belle saw him, too, “Interfere, and I will raise the ardeur in you again, wolf. You brought no women with you. Did you think that would save you? It won’t. The ardeur only wants to be fed, wolf, it doesn’t care how.”

Or to clean it up for you, we're threatening a rape victim with yet more rape.

...I'm now willing to research sealant methods. So we can put this part inside the toilet bowl.

 So Anita's mind is consumed by the thought of Asher, and of course it's Richard that comes to her rescue.

You know, a major plot point in Exiles is that the Main Character, Casey, cannot get over her ex. I'm doing that on purpose. Because not being able to tell an abusive ex to get fucked  is textbook codependancy, and Casey isn't ready to admit this, yet. (In short: DO NOT TREAT MY MAIN CHARACTERS AS YOUR ROLE MODELS, THEY ARE NOT HEALTHY AND I KNOW THIS)

Richard, on the other hand, should be ready to let his rapist ex fall flat on her face. OH, RIGHT, THE NARRATIVE FOCUSES ON ANITA.

Falling flat on your face to manipulate your abused lover into rescuing you is par for the course when you are an abusive waste of skin. Continue on.

(I will buy Anita as a good character when she starts working some form of 12 step program. From Jail. Because she is a rapist).

(PS. Anybody who thinks women can't be rapists needs to google Sandra Cantu. Not Melissa Hucklebee, because she's the rapist piece of shit that killed an eight year old. Sandra Cantu. Google it, my lovelies.)

 Oh, and the wereheyenas are here, somehow. And they start shooting into the crowd. Because...uh. Yeah. I've got nothing. Bobby Lee orders everybody to put their guns down. Then this happens:

I finally could think enough to remember that Jean-Claude might be fighting for his life.

NO. REALLY. YOU THINK?

Seriously? Let him die. He's about as bad as you are. Let's let Richard take everything over. At least he wouldn't make Rape his first recourse in a power play.
\
Yeah. JC is fine, BTW.

So...uh...things...happen? (...maybe four beers were too many) until Belle finally cries "Enough" and everybody backs down. Jean Claude is now apparently the source of his own blood line now, which means Belle and her people need to get the fuck out of St. Louie.

The chapter ends with the declaration that Asher is dying.

I need another beer. 

Pallate Clenser

So let's lighten that mood, shall we?

First off, I've finished the first round of proof prep...stuff for the print book. Release date will be July 15th, be ready, be excited, be happy.

I started reviewing the last Starbleached book. Not last as in "Last in forever" but last as in "Season finale" because I NEED A BREAK YA'LL.

And OH MY GOD I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU, I've sold 15 books so far this month. The goal is to break 365 by July 17th, and FINGERS CROSSED YA'LL I think I can do it.

You are awesome. Every single one of you are awesome. You put up with my whining, you put up with the fact that I can't spell or edit worth a damn, you keep on reading. I would not have done this without you, you guys are the awesomest people in the awesome universe and I bow before your zero-degree coolness.

In short, you guys rock socks, and I need to think up cool things to reward you guys with.

Please keep being awesome. Peace. Out.