Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 7

New Books: Stroke of Midnight and the Elsie Dinsmore Series

Okay. We're going to try to do two books at once. Stroke of Midnight, the next Merry Gentry book, and Elsie Dinsmore.

I've already discussed the many, many problems with Laurell K. Hamilton's writing. She's a polyamorous pagan author with the heart and soul of a conservative fundamentalist Christian. Complete with the rampant misogyny, racism, nausiating attitudes towards sex and consent, and an utter lack of empathy or understanding.

However, this is probably best shown through comparison. And there is no better comparison of that attitude than the Elsie Dinsmore Series.

Elsie Dinsmore is a series of books first published between 1867 and 1905. Martha Finley, the author, was a schoolteacher and wikipedia doesn't know much about her. The books themselves are set in the 1840s, and tell the story of a melodramatically devout christian Southern Belle, complete with the fortune and plantation. Black slaves are a prominent feature of this series, as are child abuse, neglect, spousal abuse, more neglect, and an attitude towards women that makes Anita Blake look like fucking Susan B. Anthony.

But CW! I hear you saying. These books were published so long ago. It was a different time! Different morals! It can't possibly make a good comparison to Anita Blake!

Well, kids, you'd be right...if these books had died back in the twenties.

They did not.

In the 1990s, a truly bizarre subset of Christians with a plethora of titles (Reformationists, Quiverfull, Fundamentalists, Christian Patriarchy) realized that the American Girl dolls were insanely popular. And they were. I lusted after those damn dolls, read all of the books I could find, played with the paperdolls, and basically enjoyed all the shiny prettiness of the dresses. Because that was the entire attraction of the American Girl dolls. They had pretty clothes. The goal was to get children to learn something like history (a very slanted history) while playing with the pretty dolls. And it...sort of worked.

However, the Bizarre Subset realized that these dolls did something they didn't want. They gave the girls who played with them ideas about (gasp!) independence! and adventures! And they weren't centered on men! And this was a problem because the whole purpose of women (according to the Bizarre Subset) was to wait on men hand and foot, forever, and be perfectly obedient to the nearest Approved White Penis. This is the same group that the Duggars (AKA the 20 Kids and Counting family) belong to. They advocate things like homeschooling (which means 99.99999% of homeschooling resources are published and controlled by these idiots) young earth creationism, "Homechurching", thought control systems, the Stay at Home Daughters movement (google it) corporal punishment for children starting at six months of age, and large families. Girls with an independent spirit are thus to be dreaded. Any kind of thinking for yourself, after all, wrecks the entire system. They needed to find something that would give their daughters the correct ideas about life. And they latched onto the Elsie Dinsmore series.

In 1999, Mission City Press, which published an awful lot of homeschool materials, published the Life of Faith series. They broke the truly massive Elsie Dinsmore series down into books slightly larger than the American Girl books, gave them attractive covers with pretty white girls on the front, and marketed them to parents seeking "wholesome" entertainment for their sheltered daughters. They also dumbed down some of the abuse in the original series so that parents wouldn't hit the wall. Things might have ended there, but Mission City Press had a partnership with a (now defunct) company called Vision Forum.

Vision Forum deserves its own blog post (it actually deserves several blog posts). They took the conservative values of Mission City and dialed it up to eleven. Doug Phillips, the dude that ran it, was a truly sick individual who is currently facing a strong lawsuit for the sexual assault of his former nanny. This, incidentally, is why Vision Forum is now defunct. (He got caught with his pants down, literally. Unfortunately he dismissed his relationship with the nanny as consensual adultery. The nanny, however, insists that it was nothing of the kind.) When it was alive it did things like organize an annual Titanic party to celebrate the sinking (not to commemorate it. They CELEBRATED the deaths of thousands of people) because the attitude of Women and Children First...um...meant something about the value of patriarcy. It's not real clear. Anyhoo, they also published a shitload of homeschooling products, and they decided to pair the Life of Faith series with a whole line of incredibly pretty dolls.

Which is how I encountered Elsie Dinsmore for the very first time.

I've mentioned a few times that when I was eighteen, I worked for a family I've been calling the Matthews. I idolized them. They ran one of the magazines my mom had used to homeschool me. They had a massive family (ten children), Mrs. Matthews was this short little bundle of energy who seemed like she could move mountains, and their business was this candy-coated victorian wonderland I fell in love with instantly. My homelife at the time was shit, to put it mildly, and I still feel that having the Matthews' business as a shelter was one of the things that saved my life. My S/I issues were out of control, verbal and emotional abuse at home was an every-day event, and I'd become so disconnected from anything resembling a support structure that anywhere would have looked good after that.

Which, of course, is why this mindset is so insidious. They target the already broken, after all. I've already covered what kept me from drinking the kool-aid, but it was a near damn thing. And part of it was Elsie.

The Elsie Dinsmore series got my attention almost immediately. It was pretty. And I identified with Elsie. Strongly. I read the first two books riveted to my seat. Something inside me was screaming the entire time this is wrong. Something about this is very, very wrong. The rest of me was overjoyed. Here, at last, was something I could relate to. I had no idea that what I was relating to was the pervasive, all-encompassing abuse running through every single page of the Elsie Dinsmore series, and Elsie's coping stratigy of utter passive submission. I did not understand that I was reading a story of abuse being praised as parental discipline, of victimization being promoted as goodness and Godliness. All I understood was that I could understand this world, that something about it resonated deep within me the way other books did not. I devoured the series and thrilled in both the feeling of utter fucking wrongness and the familiarity this series had that other books did not.

The Elsie Dinsmore Series is part of a conglomerate of thought control and abuse. The Matthews sold it, their magazine, books like Created to be His Helpmeet and To Train up a Child, books on theology that make straitjackets look roomy, books that compared virginity to weaving garments for prince-husbands (you had to have been there) books on caligraphy and sewing and other girly activities, and a whole plethora of Vision Forum tapes that made questioning a system rapidly devolving into abuse tantamount to questioning God. I remember burning several copies of this CD, for example. And for the last several months I have been reading--hell, overdosing--on stories of young women who were brought up in this mindset. I got off goddamned lucky, kids.

So while Elsie is over a hundred years old, she's still being pushed today. There are many, many, many little girls being exposed to this RIGHT NOW and told that THIS is how you're supposed to behave. THIS is how you're supposed to think. And best of all, its a theological horror show that was considered trashy back when it was published.  

So strap in, my lovelies. It's going to be a bumpy flight.

Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 33

I've decided that Laurel K. Hamilton is the literary version of Nickleback. I have the unfortunate affliction of liking Nickleback on occasion (...Look, I never pretended my taste was any good, okay?) When the mood strikes me, I like loud music that takes its own bass line and beats itself to death with it. (Lady GaGa has the same appeal) I am fully aware that it is awful, terrible music that no human being should like, but when I want something completely without challenge, that's what I go for. It's worth saying, I am usually some form of drunk when I go for NB.

However, if you listen to Nickleback for more than three seconds, you'll notice their songs have two themes: Sex and violence, or teh dramas. I'm listening because the bass beat is cool and I want my ears to hate me in the morning, but the lyrics are either about having sex, wanting sex, sex workers of one form or another, lonliness, drunken bar fights, or someone dying of drug addiction. Laurel K. Hamilton's books are about sex, having sex, wanting sex, sex workers of some sort, lonliness, fights, or someone dying of whatever. In other words, they are exactly the same. Only without the bass beat which is the only justification for Nickleback's existence. I mean, at least with Nickleback you feel like getting into a fight of some sort. LKH just makes you contemplate razor blades and tall buildings, and I'm speaking as a major depressive with a moderate S/I problem.

That said, when she nails it, she nails. it. 

There are no seconds in a seelie duel. Once one of the combatants can no longer continue, the fight ends. There is no second to pick up the weapon and avenge you. But you can choose who wields the blade that draws your blood for the oath.

This is what we came to the dance for, kids. Blood-oathed combat to the fucking death. We had to wade through a book of basically nothing to get here, but we're finally here and we get to--

wait. WAIT.

There are no seconds in a seelie duel.

WE ARE NOT IN THE SEELIE COURT YOU STUPID IDIOT.

Look, I was trying to give you a compliment. That's something I don't do often, which makes it very special. STOP FUCKING UP IN THE VERY FIRST LINE. 

I'm fairly certain she meant sidhe duel, but that's not what she wrote. She wrote seelie, which has about as much to do with the price of tea in china as the DOW index ATM. Seelie court and Unseelie court rules are, according to this mythos, completely unrelated. 

Laurel. THIS IS WHY YOUR NO-EDIT CLAUSE IS BAD. And I just hope to god that when they lowered the boom earlier this year (Which, apparently, they did) they managed to get you back under somebody's oversight.

Doyle had borrowed a ribbon to pull his hair back from his face.

I'm imagining Applebloom's little pink bow. Isn't it adorable.

He put the tip of his knife against my lower lip, the very point of his sharp knife against the soft skin of my mouth.

YOU ARE SAYING THE SAME THING TWICE. STOP IT.

And then we get a really quick analysis of what "To the third blood" means. Those of us who are hoping it's the Merryverse equivlant of "to the pain" are sorely dissapointed. It simply means that you get cut three times and have to rub your bloodied bits on the other person's similarly bloodied bits. What makes that interesting is that it (somehow) dictates how much protection you can have during the fight. First blood is a cut on the lip, it means armor sans helmets. Second blood is a slice on the wrist, so armor sans helm and gauntlets.Third blood means a cut in the neck, and somehow this means you can't have any armor on at all.

It's a nice chunk of worldbuilding. Worldbuilding that makes no sense, but it's something that has nothing to do with Merry's vagina, so I'm enjoying it.

Of course, the bad part about the wounds is if your own blade-weilder does a shitty job on the cutting, the other guy's friends get to cut you.

I’d had Galen wield the knife once, and he’d been so squeamish about hurting me that two of the wounds had had to be redone. Cel’s friends had damn near slit my wrist.

Is it just me, or is Merry finally developing a kind of attitude?

 I fought the urge to lick my own lip as I felt the blood seep down my chin, but we were supposed to save that blood for each other.

WHY? Seriously, this needs to be elaborated on. Why do you have to drink each other's blood for a duel? It works for Merry because it makes her opponants as mortal as she is, but if most Sidhe aren't mortal, why would they be swapping blood during a duel?

We stayed unmoving for a heartbeat or two, then she started forward, striding in her full skirt like a confident golden cloud. I walked to meet her. I had to be more careful, because the high heels I was wearing were not meant for striding over old stones.

FOR. FUCK'S. SAKE. TAKE THE GODDAMNED STILETTOS OFF FOR YOUR DUEL TO THE DEATH BEFORE THEY GET YOU KILLED.

I am not bothered by how LKH's characters dress. I am bothered by how they dress when all logic to the contrary insists they dress differently. CASE IN FUCKING POINT RIGHT HERE. If Merry can't cross a level floor at a slow walk in the damn things then HOW THE FUCK does she expect to survive the duel in them? YOU CAN TAKE THEM OFF THEY ARE NOT A PART OF YOUR SUPERHERO CATSUIT. 

 Miniver makes eyes at Merry's bloody wounds. Merry realizes that--holy shit--the bloodthirsty Seelie warrior goddess who cut her way to the top of the unseelie court actually has bloodlust. She's probably the person who set up Andais to kill all her guards and friends! And that gives Merry something she can use.

So...basically, asexual lesbian makeout scene.

I. am. not. kidding.

I closed the distance between us, wading into that stiff gold cloth until I could feel her legs, her hips, against my body. She watched the blood at my throat, as if the rest of me were not there. I finally moved close enough that I had to put my hands around her waist to keep steady on my high heels.

Yep.

That said, there's an interesting subtext in the Merry-Miniver byplay that actually works. This book, if it's about anything, is about total, paralyzing excess. Miniver is very repressed (as is a certain urban fantasy author we all know and love) and she's unable to act on her deepest desires. Merry notices this, marks it as bad, and decides to drag those urges to the surface to distract Miniver.

...It's worth noting that these urges are WANTON FUCKING MURDER. And that's where, as usual, LKH's attempts at making generalized morality bad falls apart. She doesn't understand why general morality is...well, generally negative. It's negative because of homophobia, transphobia, and generalized injustice, but she assumes its because of teh sex. If she were truely trying to show how repressed urges are wrong, Asher and Jean Claude (And their Merryverse clones, Frost and Doyle) would have fucked each other a long, long time ago. Instead, we get a very gender-specific, very heterosexual, extremely unhealthy sexual realtionship that is potentially lethal. LKH is trying to build a strawman out of repression and name it Miniver...but Miniver is repressing the urge to murder.

It'd also probably be cool if LKH were playing at the concept of non-human intelligances. But she's not. None of these people have needs apart from Merry. All things lead back to the Magic Vag of Holding. You cannot have a fully realized universe if the Main Character is the center of it. Nope, these Fae are human, in as much as they are allowed to be anything, and the theme here is not alien morality but rather sexual repression.

Anyway, Merry's entire tactical plan is to distract Miniver from using her long-distance hand of power--the one that would kill her ass--and to provoke her into using the hand that is up close and personal. Basically, Miniver has a magic gun, and Merry wants to make her use her brass knuckles instead.

She provokes Miniver into torturing her.

This is supposed to be a victory for the main character.

Merry then drains Miniver's blood using her Hand of Blood (...god that's repetative) and she explodes Miniver's throat.

With a thought.

So instantly it took me a second to find where it happened.

I stared at the gaping red mess that had been her throat, her spine shining wetly in the lights. I could see the bones of her clavicle just over her breasts. With all that damage, she was still struggling to kill me. She should have been dying by now. Why wasn’t she dying?

Because your author is trying to remove the only barrier between you and the throne. Also: Melodramatic horseshit hides the fact that she basically ended the climax fight so quickly I couldn't figure out where the fuck it happened for a minute or two.
  I shoved my power into her. I could feel it like a huge balled fist...
....As I said, asexual lesbian makeout scene.

Merry then explodes Miniver's chest. Because GOD FORBID we end a chapter without GRUESOME GORE AND MURDER.

And Miniver is still alive.

The Queen declares the duel over. Merry crawls out of the magic circle, then insists the Queen tell the court what Miniver and Nerys did. The Queen does. Then Merry feeds Nerys and Miniver to the Demi-Fey.

Please remember, the last time somebody got fed to the Demi-Fey, it was Galen, and the bit they ate was his crotch.

And then they throw the two women to the goblins, who begin literally tearing the two of them apart, but they don't die. So the Queen gives Merry--who can't fucking stand at this point--the Fair-killing sword and tells her that if she can't manage to kill somebody else when she can't fucking stand, the Queen will let the goblins and Demi-fey eat the two women alive. And it is heavily implied the goblins will rape them a whole lot first.

The Queen is not written to be the bad guy at this point.

Merry tries to be merciful and kill them. The Queen calls this weakness, so LKH has Merry try to be meaningful:

“I do not do it for their pleasure or their pain; I do it because it matters to me what I do, not what they do, not what anyone else does, only what I do.”

And the problem with this is why  that ought to matter. It's the reason why we have laws preventing us from, say, lynching pedophiles and serial killers and rapists. What makes us different from monsters is what we, as individuals, do. But our actions don't take place in a vacuum. It does matter what "anyone else" does. It matters because we have to live with the decisions and choices of others. That's why the debate over capital punishment, abortion, and war isn't cut and dried. We have laws, not to punish the wrong-doers, but to prevent ourselves from becoming monsters. The question we have to ask ourselves, every day, is which would make us more monstrous: To act, or to do nothing?

Merry's choice here is ultimately selfish: She does whatever she can live with. The real choice here, given that she's a princess, is what is the best message to send to her future followers. What action on her part would best show the value of the individual life, the individual rights, in the face of ultimate wrong-doing? What can she do to show that despite everything, despite bad behavior and poor choices, the life before her still has value and should be honored to some degree?

Of course this is not the question that Merry ever asks herself. The tone of Miniver and Nerys death is not one of a leader setting the tone for the future, but rather that of a relatively sheltered child recoiling in disgust from all the nasty bloody stuff.

“At the rate you are healing, the goblins will most likely use you for sex before they begin to cut off pieces of you for food.”

Yes, Merry. Let's threaten our captives with rape and cannibalism. That's exactly what a leader ought to do.

Finally, Merry kills Nerys, mostly so Miniver can see what will happen to her if she insists on this whole "living" thing. Galen makes Merry take off those goddamn high heels. Merry's response?

I turned my head just enough to see his face, and managed a smile. “Smart you.”

WHAT IS THIS I DO NOT EVEN NO. NO. NO YOU DO NOT GET TO WRITE A FEMALE CHARACTER AS BEING SO GODDAMN CLUELESS SHE WOULD NOT TAKE HER OWN GODDAMN HIGH HEELS OFF THE SECOND THEY BECAME UNNECESSARY. I mean, LKH posts photos of her own "sexy" heels ALL THE GODDAMN TIME (none of which are four inch stilettos) so I would think she'd understand the principle of TAKING THEM OFF WHEN THEY BEGIN TO HURT. I saw photos of men in heels and socks several years ago and my reaction was not "TEE HEE FASHION FAUX PAS" but rather "OH MY GOD THAT IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA WHY CAN WOMEN NOT DO THIS THIS WOULD SAVE US SO MANY BLISTERS AND PAINFUL MOMENTS"

One of the smaller Red Caps was kneeling beside Miniver. His fingers were playing in the healing flesh of her chest. He traced and tickled her flesh , as if he were touching her genitalia. A touch here, a caress there, and it showed skill, but his fingers weren’t between her legs. His fingers were inside the meat of her chest. He was caressing the top of her heart as if that would finally bring her to orgasm.

And this is the moment Merry loses all credability as a leader. Because HOLY SHIT that is the most disturbing passage in this ENTIRE NOVEL. INTERNAL ORGAN RAPE. Congradulations, LKH, you finally managed to find something worse than all your other books put together.

Miniver tries to kill Merry one more time, so Merry lets them drag her off alive.

Meanwhile, Merry gets magic healing! End of chapter.

Next chapter: THE GREAT SUMMERY OF DOOM.

Which...is a gigantic orgy in the Queen's bed, where Merry comforts all her men and they divide the housework. Not kidding.

END OF BOOK.

SO. DISCUSS: Next book. Options are:

Your suggestions (Which you haven't offeret yet)

'Nother ANita book

'Nother Merry Book

The Elsie Dinsmore series.(Which makes Laurel K. Hamilton look fucking progressive in comparison)

An actual positive book! My current vote is Pride and Prejudice but it's your choice, my lovelies.

Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 32

Everybody figures Merry's dead because she vanished from the back of her limo after the assassination attempt. As LKH's fae don't disappear when they die this makes very little sense, but it means we get to have a "rumors of my death" moment.

Merry waits outside the throne room for her melodramatic entrance. We spend a few paragraphs describing the flowers. The bloodthirsty flowers Merry brought back to life with her own blood. Yeah, the whole Merry-as-Messiah thing is getting old.

 Her group has goblins in it. Most of them get described in minute detail, including the two Merry promised to "bring over".

So they wait until somebody goes to the Queen to confirm that Merry's dead, and then Merry walks into the court, covered head to toe in blood. People scream. I think we're supposed to think it's screams of horror that the girl's still alive, but I'm thinking it's got more to do with the blood.

The Sluagh is behind the Queen. This happens:

Nightflyers like a cross among giant bats, tentacled horrors, and airborne manta rays clung to the stones at her back, going up and up like a living curtain of dark flesh.

I think that sentence had a point in there, but it got lost in the discription. Also: Someone needs to take the word "flesh" away from Laurel because it stopped looking like a word six chapters ago.

Sholto gets described. Sholto has one major flaw: His chest is made of tenticles. Which is freaky and apparently LKH's attempt to include every fetish known to man in this series. Also:

Modern clothing was nearly unwearable without his magic to make everything lie smoothly.

So...how does Glamour work in this universe? A lot of times during Sage's little adventure Merry repeated that his size was just an illusion, but there's a matter of physics here. If you can't get a shirt on over the things, how does the Glamour make them disappear? And why do they come back when the glamour is gone? Making something disappear is a hell of a lot harder than making something appear. You can, say, make a force-feild (I know, sci-fi in a fantasy) shaped like a man, that feels roughly like a man, and encapsulate a smaller thing--ie Sage--within that feild. But if you make a feild and you have bits outside of it, those bits get cut off. Is Sholto regenerating his tenticles every time he drops his glamour? Are they getting moved somewhere else? When you go out of your way to explain something like this, these questions come up.

There's a fae named Afagdu. Afagdu. I hope he's a deity because otherwise LKH mashed her fist into the keyboard a few times.

Merry's official title is now Princess of Flesh and Blood.

Kitto took his place at my feet, and all we needed was a jeweled collar to mimic Tyler at the queen’s.

Yes, we're comparing the person who looks and acts like a twelve year old to Andais's sex toy.

We get a couple middling-good paragraphs about Red Caps--which are truely terrifying critters straight from Ireland--and a whole lot of really awful ones on the same subject. One of 'em greets Merry with this:

“I am Jonty, and Kurag, Goblin King, has ordered me to protect your white flesh.

Yes. Let's fully establish this: the most desired skin tone in either court is white. And in this court it's like, fishbelly, cave-thing white. So basically we've got a second class citizen specifying that one of the things that makes Merry valuable is the color of her skin.

Fantastic.

Jonty licks the blood off her skin, because blood is important to goblins. And then Holly and Ash lick the blood off. And then the Demi Fey lick the blood off, and it just keeps going.

Finally one of the other Sidhe begin cat-calling Merry. Nice. Apparently he's king of shapeshifters, or something, so Doyle shows off for him. Hence that scene way back in the beginning of this book where he spontaneously shapeshifted.

Doyle says that Nerys smells like the spell that made the Queen try to kill everybody. Then he explains to everyone that Jesus Merry brought back his powers. Someone named Miniver says that he's lying. Merry's mortal and no mortal thing could bring back the magic the Sidhe have lost.

And then they really throw down the gauntlet:

“If this mortal becomes queen , then we are honor-bound to take blood oath from her, to bind us to her. To take blood oath, very much as we take on the dueling ground.” Miniver looked up at Andais, and there was something close to pleading on her face. “Don’t you see, my queen, if we take her blood into us and bind ourselves to her mortal peril, then we could lose our own immortality? We would cease to be sidhe.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. So we have a far-reaching conspiracy to incapacitate the queen and assassinate Merry to avoid the very real chance that Merry will be the next Fairy queen, because there's a strong fear that Merry's mortality will infect all of the Unseelie court. That looks like plot. That looks like GOOD plot. Why the fuck did this not show up earlier in the book?

 Miniver shook her head. “Your answer to everything is death and violence , Andais. It has led us to be childless and near powerless, but our immortality, you cannot have that.”

GODDAMN, girl. Miniver, I like you. Where have you been all this novel? Seriously, that lays out exactly what issues the court has with Merry becoming queen. These people have lost everything. Power, prestige, their status as deities, and their ability to have children. It's very much a decaying old order trying to cling to whatever privelage they have left, and the only thing they've got is immortality. It makes perfect sense that they'd try to kill Merry over this.

So Miniver challenges Merry to a duel. And this creates a catch 22 for Merry. See, the Fae have to exchange blood before a duel, and in the past, that's made Merry's opponents mortal. Which is why they believe that she is mortal. So if she wins and kills Miniver, she's proved that the mortality holds and that Miniver has a damn good point. If she loses, she's dead. Oops.

Seriously. WHY WAS THIS NOT THE BOOK. THIS is what I would have paid money to read. WHY IS THIS RELEGATED TO THE VERY FUCKING END?

Andais tries to refuse to let it go, and Nerys brings up that Andais never got in the way when Cel was trying to kill Merry. So Merry has to go and fight Miniver.

They choose magic, and Merry plans on using the cuts from the blood oath before the duel to kill Miniver, or at least incapacitate her .The chapter ends with Merry thinking "I've got her now."

And this, children, is why Laurel K. Hamilton is the most frustrating author I've ever read. WHY WAS THIS NOT THE ENTIRE NOVEL? WHY?

Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 31

So now we go into LKH's hastily planned ending, in which she finally begins, you know, actually writing story.

Sort of.

Andais, Merry and the assorted men (that sounds like it should be a candy box) go into the hallway and find the pool of water that Merry restarted through symbolic sex. And she pouts because this means she wasn't powerful enough, or good enough, or whatever, to bring the magic back to life. Because it's not good enough to be magic, you have to be the ultimate magic.

Andais reveals that one of Merry's new guards got between Merry and Andais in the last chapter...which I thought was a guard's job, but we're in the lair of bloody psycopaths, so we can't expect much.

I would like for Andais to pout without the slut shaming, though:

The gentle look left her face as she turned to me. “You must truly be a wondrous piece of ass. One quick fuck and he risks his life for yours.”

She didn’t look pleased. “As I said, you must fuck like a courtesan. Bloody fertility goddesses, always think they’re so wonderful.”

One: Merry is not a fertility goddess. Two: WHO CARES?!?

Merry works out that, because Andais promised anyone Merry slept with was hers, Andais is now forsworn for hacking on them all and Merry can do some very major shit to her if she wants to. Merry doesn't want to because Merry doesn't really want anything, so she promises Andais there won't be any reprisals for the forswearing part if she doesn't slaughter her own guards for not protecting her from Merry. The fact that Merry isn't gonna be punished for attacking her own queen is rather flabbergasting to me. It isn't even brought up. 

 Instead, Andais and the guards play dressup for a few pages. Then she pulls out her big heavy sword, lets Merry know that she knows her son did this, and then does absolutely nothing about it. Instead, they're going to kill the (female) guard who drugged her wine. Men are precious. Women are disposable.

I hate this book.

She looked at me, and something passed through her tri-grey eyes with their rings of black that left each grey darker and richer because of it, as if she had used eyeliner on her own irises.

Probably that eye-burning mascara from Chronicles of Riddick. Which...would fit these people pretty damn well.

Merry talks the Queen into killing whomever her assassin might be--sworn under oath, actually--and then suggests the Queen call the Sluagh to protect her from her own court. Which is a really good move. Almost like LKH suddenly remembered she promised political intrigue and is yet to deliver.

She then tells the Queen to bring the Goblins in, and explains her deal. Every goblin-sidhe cross she brings into power, she gets another month out of the Goblins. Andais's response is...predictable.

“Will you fuck them all?” It was said with no offense, as if it was the only way she knew how to ask the question.

Now we go over--and over, and over--who Merry's champions are. Doyle and Frost. There's an almost-interesting moment between Merry, the Queen and Kitto.

The Queen asks how she can be so sure of Kurag's cooperation, and Merry points out that she's covered in blood and the Goblin King will probably lick her clean.

And that is the end of the chapter.

Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 29-30

Aaaaaand we are still doing the crazy blood-letting thing.

There's a lot of shit that's wrong with this, so much so that I have no idea where to start. First there's the whole crazy=homicidal and bad aspect. Then there's the fact that all of this violence is happening because LKH couldn't think of a plot. But I think what drives me nuts the most is the reaction everyone is having.

They're distracting Andais. Not stopping her. Nope. Why should we stop the person in power from abusing it and badly hurting all the people in her care? Let's just keep her from doing permanent damage.

Seriously. You can see bones. You can see internal organs.

Even if you are mentally ill, you can have a highly developed sense of right and wrong. Having a disability does not make you defective, or homicidal, or hurtful. And, this is important kids, not having a sense of empathy or right and wrong does not mean you are insane. It means you have an utter disreguard for the lives of others. Andais is unsuitable to rule, not because she has mental instability, but because she does not value other lives. It wouldn't matter how sane she was. Without a sense of other's value she'll do...well, basically what she's doing right now.

And the book is handling this like it's something you have to do because Andais is so very very sick and needs to get better, instead of going "WOW is this wrong".

If this were, say, the climatic fight between Merry and the antagonist (WHAT ANTAGONIST) this MIGHT be tollerable. But it's not. It's violent, nasty, horrible, degrading filler and it 's VERY disturbing. Gore for the sake of gore doesn't swing it for me. If there had been any single good thing in this novel, anything at all, I probably wouldn't be as bothered as I am right now. But this has seriously put me off this book. Two whole chapters of unrelenting awfulness being justified as a coping skill is just...yeah.

Merry resolves it by draining all the blood out of Andais's body, and Andais responds by knocking Merry out before she goes unconsious.

End of chapter.

Next chapter: Merry is welcomed into heaven by God.

Okay, The God, and it's the summerland, but...seriously. Merry might be a slightly smaller monster than Anita, but neither woman are exactly sun and roses.

So the God--who looks like all of her men combined--pulls her into a loving embrace and Merry realizes she can just stay in Faerie Heaven forever...

...until she remembers how much all her men need her.

So the God gives her a gift of healing and she reappears in a pool of probably the Queen's blood. Though at this point I think you'd need an entire crime lab to sort out who bled where.

The God's kiss is still on her lips. It tastes like apples dipped in honey. Time to spread it around!

And when she kisses them, we get to find out what they taste like.

Galen tasted like the scent of aromatic herbs. I could taste dew, and feel the soft edge of a basil leaf. He tasted of basil, rich and thick and warm. Basil still growing in the earth, leaves flung wide to the sun, and dew upon the leaves.

Please don't do it for all of them please don't do it for every single guy please OH GODDAMN IT

He kissed me , delicate as a snowflake, melting on my tongue. It was as if winter had a taste. Not just the crispness of the air with snow on the ground, but as if my tongue licked along some smooth, cold icicle, and snow filled my mouth, and melted down my throat like the sweetest of snow cones. He melted down my throat, and when his mouth moved back from mine, our breaths fogged in the air between us. I realized I could breathe and the sharpest of the pain was gone.

Kitto declares that she has come back from the Summerlands with "the kiss of birds" within her, which makes NO FUCKING SENSE but it's all we've got to work with.

It continues with utterly gruesome descriptions of what Andais did to the men, and pretty pony princess descriptions of what they all taste like. And once again it's that whole "I'm the only good woman around" thing that LKH does so much, turned all the way up to eleven.

And then the Queen wakes up and demands that Merry heal Eamon and Tyler, the two guys she was tuning up at the start of this section. Because she feels oh, so guilty. So she demands Merry--who has many broken bones from...something---get up, walk over to her, and kiss Andais's boyfriends.

And then before any more kissing the Queen says that she was poisoned by one of Cel's guards. Basically, they gave her magic PCP. Everybody whistles.Andais touches Merry. The God talks to Merry and tells her, basically, that Andais is infertile, which we knew all the way back in book one.

And then Merry and Andais make out.

The press of her lips was like touching the skin of some delectable fruit, where the skin lies thin and ripe against your mouth. The scent of ripe plums filled my senses as if I could drink it out of the very air, or sip it from her lips. My mouth was pressed to hers , and I opened to it as if I would take a bite from the ripeness of her mouth.

And this would be awesome...if Merry didn't make it very clear that it's the God riding her, and the God making her make out with Andais.

Several pages later, everybody is healed from the magical make-out session, and Andais threatens to rape Merry.

She cocked her head to one side like a hawk that’s spied a mouse. “Reminding me that you are my niece will not keep you out of my bed, Meredith. We are like most deities, we often intermarry, or interfuck.”

Annnnnd then we get the single most disturbing part of this entire clusterfuck, at least for me:

I’d have been a lot happier to accompany her to the throne room if she hadn’t kept touching me. It wasn’t so much a lover’s touch, but almost like you’d pet a dog. Something you stroke for comfort, and because it can’t say no.

That's not cool, but that's the end of the chapter and I don't have to deal with it any more.

GOD I do not like this book.

Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 28

So in this chapter we get to meet Andais.

The problem LKH faces with this chapter, one she understands damn well on some level, is that Merry is a monster. Like Anita, Merry does not give two dicks for other people. Also like Anita, she FREQUENTLY abuses her sex partners, and has created a situation EVEN MORE ABUSIVE than Anita's stable. Those guys can run to the cops. Also: Merry is overflowing with goddess juice. So whoever Merry's main antagonist is, it'll have to be someone more powerful, bigger, badder, and more abusive than Merry.

This is where we realize just how badly LKH shot herself in the foot in this series by tying up Prince Cel for most of it. Theoretically he's the primary antagonist, but he hasn't been a player since book one. If Cel were still around this would be interesting. Because it isn't, LKH has to make Andais scary.

She goes way. way. way. way. way overboard.

When they get into a room, Andais is beating a man to death. A mortal. Now, it's been established that she only torments other people to hide the pain that is inside her. Which makes about as much sense as going to the moon to pick up a pound of chedder. There is no justification for abusing someone else. 

Her consort (AKA the guy she got a kid with) blocks her blows from the guy she's almost killed. Apparently killing humans they've invited into their fun zone is against the rules. And I gotta ask, how the fuck has this not gotten out to the public? Andais is batshit insane. This should not be a secret anymore.

And oh fuck if the Queen didn't find herself a Nathanial to play with. Are we going to treat this kid respectfully this time?

Once I realized she had a human against the wall, I was almost certain who it was. Tyler was her current human lover. Last time I’d seen him, he’d been a blond with a skater’s cut and a real tan. He was barely old enough to be legal. He was also, according to current rumor, a pain slut.

That would be a no. There's also a long, rambly paragraph about how you have a "sacred trust" between faerie and the humans they kidnap and I'm just like


Because no. Most of these people can't even leave the mounds anymore (Speaking of which, I'd really like to know what they did with the Cahokia Indian artifacts when the Fae moved in.) because they'll wither and die. So you have a group of people confined to a small-ish space with a bunch of homicidal magic people with no grip on reality whatsoever. And we are somehow supposed to find it okay because of a "Sacred trust".

This is supposed to show how far gone Andais is, but it just highlights how nothing in this universe is functional. There is NO WAY IN HELL the Faerie should be allowed to keep pet humans. They have no boundaries, no limitations, and no respect for anything other than themselves. Basically they're just repackaged vampires with even fewer limitations and less government oversight. Which is scary as fuck.

And if anybody argues that LKH is respecting the BDSM community with her shitty books, lemme just point straight up.

So the queen turns her attention to her guards and tries to smother the one protecting her human with magic. Then she starts literally cutting off pieces of him. And then the other guards intervene, and she starts cutting up them. And I cannot describe how awful it is, mostly because I don't want to.

Thing is? Merry does nothing during all of this. Her role is to sit and watch. As it's been throughout the rest of this book, the actors are all the men, and they're being abused by a woman. Look at how horrible this woman is. Look at how wonderful and martyr-like these men are. Won't it be wonderful when Merry finally steps in and saves them from all the other horrible women.

That's the book. That's the entire book, right there.

And of course one of the guards cowering in fear of their queen is Mistral, who will become one of Merry's major lovers. so nice set up there.

“Welcome to the world of the guards, Princess,” Adair said. “Welcome to how we keep each other alive. None but the queen and her Ravens have ever witnessed this. You are most privileged.” That last held an irony, a bitterness that seemed to cut the very air, as if there were power in it.

NO. The answer to dealing with an abuser is not to enable them, treat their symptoms and calm them down. You remove yourself from the situation, or else remove them. Andais should not be in authority anymore. NO ONE worth being with would tolerate this. EVER.

Andais is literally flaying her guards down to the bone, and the only thing they're doing is letting her cut on someone new when the old one is too hurt.

I’d once knelt on this same floor until I passed out. I was after all only mortal, and could not kneel for a day and a night . They could. And if she willed it, they would.

...being forced to stay up for 24 hours is horrible, but doable. It's not beyond the limits of human endurance. Hopefully Merry wasn't tortured for passing out in front of her aunt.

The chapter ends with Merry demanding Galen get out of her way so she can see who is hurt the worst.

And I'm going to stop now because that's pretty much all the LKH I can take for right now.

Seduced by Moonlight--Chapter 27

Merry is greeted at her aunt's overly described doors by a pair of guards. Who are naked, save for weapons. Merry's getting yet more boy toys to play with. One of the guards had his hair hacked all the way off for not wanting to sleep with Merry. He's not an enemy, he just doesn't want to participate. So Andais hacked off his hair.

I'd say "so what" but even if you ignore the long hair=beauty motif in the Fairy, this is actually a pretty effective threat. Hair cutting is humiliating and irritating, but it also means she can cut off something else. Cooperate now, or you lose your nose.

But of course, it's not played like that in the book. Nope. Hair cutting is the most horrible of horrible things you can do to the Fae.

Adair’s body was as empty of reaction to my approach as his eyes. He was lucky I was not my aunt, for she sometimes took lack of response on an involuntary level as a personal insult.

Translation: he didn't get a boner, like the other guy did.

Also: This is officially the lair of the bloody psychopaths.

And every single time we go back to Adair, we are reminded that he's limp. He does not have an erection. He's "limpbodied" to quote the book. This is the most important thing about this character: He doesn't have an erection when he looks at Merry.


So the guards bar their way and insist...something. It isn't very clear. People named Hawthorne and Ivy are going to test themselves against the ring--and screw her rather promptly--and if the ring doesn't know them, then one of these two are supposed to take the other guy's place. Only Hawthorne and Ivy aren't here and the guards aren't letting them through the door. So I have no idea what the fuck is going on.

So Merry pushes her way forward--it takes for. fucking. ever--and she and Adair start making out because now he wants to? I think? And they do? And then they magically teleport to somewhere with lots of dead plants, even though the Queen's doors and the rest of the guards are still there?

Seriously. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON I AM GETTING WHIPLASH WHAT THE HELL

 And then...

I held the dirty cup in my two hands, for it had no handle, and my hands were too small to hold it comfortably one-handed. I held it toward the place in the rock where the water had once bubbled forth. I knew exactly where the water should have flowed from. I knew it even though I had never seen it. I touched the cup to the rock, just below the opening.

Nothing annoys me more than when LKH drags out the biblical imagry. It's so. fucking. obvious when she does it. And I know there are motifs common to all religions, but as I've said about nine times this review, she keeps on bringing up the attitudes and gender issues of fundamentalist Christians, so it's pretty obvious that she may have jettisoned public Christianity, she's still got the soul of Fred Phelps (or Doug Phillips. Google it.)

But this particular image has kind of pointed out why I HATE the goddess-moves-through-Merry shit LKH is pulling here. See, the water-from-the-rock story in the Bible is when Moses is about to lead the Hebrews into the Promised Land. He prays, hits the rock, and water comes out. Cool, right? Except he was just supposed to talk to it, not hit it. Hitting it made it look like the water came from his effort, not God's...and God does not like it when you take His credit (or, for that matter, screw with his stuff). Moses did not get to go to the Promised Land because he took God's credit for the water episode.

Which brings me to my point: Why would a Goddess only act through Merry? Why would ANY true Deity choose just one vessel/mouthpiece? They're not in awe of the Goddess in these episodes. They're in awe of Merry. Why would the Goddess set things up so that Merry gets most of the credit here?

...because LKH doesn't know how to write something that DOESN'T glorify her main characters. Gotcha.

 I sent the power on my fingers into that small dark opening, spread it on the crack like invisible jam, so thick, so rich.

 I knew in that instant that it had been meant for another more real liquid to be spread upon it. But this would do; this, too, was part of Adair’s essence. Part of his power, his maleness. Male energy to touch the opening in the rock, like the opening of a woman. Male and female to bring forth life.

One: Yep. Straight sex, folks. It's magic.

Two: You honestly expect me to believe that the Lair of Bloody Psychopaths never bothered with blood sacrifice on one of their magic fountains? That they saw their realm dying and went "Oh, well. We ought to sacrifice the white stag during the next solstice but I really can't be bothered"? You want me to believe that THESE PEOPLE wouldn't have tried this already? That MERRY is the only person to try waking these things up?

And of course the water comes out (While Adair is wailing about how she tricked him) and the old nasty cup Merry was holding becomes a beautiful chalice made of wood and all I can think at this point is



Merry then realizes that the cup is meant for the Queen, and the chapter ends with them all wondering if they could get Andais to drink it.

Seduced by Moonlight--Chapter 25

Merry's bitching continues.

It was a long, cold walk from the parking area to the faerie mounds. The snow was knee-deep on me, and there was no way for my mortal body to wade through it in four-inch spike heels and a miniskirt. Not without breaking an ankle or getting frostbite. So I was carried, and the only one who wasn’t wet through was Barinthus. Everyone else’s clothes began to freeze in the icy wind, and those who had no magical protection against the elements shivered as we waded through the snow.

Alternatively: CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES. Obviously you still have the clothes the publicist changed you out of. Put them back on. You will no longer have a problem.

Barinthus is keeping her warm. He has enough power to do this, because being a human/fae space heater is, apparently, hard. It takes several paragraphs to establish this.

Everyone is cold, my dear ones. Do you get it? THEY ARE COLD. DO YOU WANT ANOTHER FIVE PARAGRAPHS ABOUT HOW COLD IT IS IN JANUARY IN ST. LOUIS?

LAURELL: THIS IS NOT THE FUCKING NORTH POLE. THEY HAVE MAGIC. LET THEM DEAL.

 It is established that people used to call Barinthus "Kingmaker", and then the chapter ends.

NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS.

Next chapter: THEY ARE STILL WALKING IN THE FUCKING SNOW.

A random faerie guard gets an entire kindle page to describe his hair. Merry then bitches about how the pleats in the back of her skirt will never be perfect again.

I am fucking dying here.

I want something to blog about. Desperately. I want to go "HEY THIS SHIT IS COOL" or "OH MY GOD THIS SUCKS" but NOTHING IS HAPPENING. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT PLEATS IN A SKIRT. THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR SOME REASON.

HELP. ME.

“If the ring knows us”— and he finished the rest in an imitation of the queen’s voice good enough to raise the hair at the back of my neck—“ then fuck Meredith, fuck her as soon as you see her. If she gets picky then you may go to her room, or yours. I don’t care , just get the job done.”

I am now of the opinion that consent did something to LKH as a child.

 It goes on to make it clear: If Merry won't willingly bed anybody the ring identifies as a fertile match, the men are to rape her. 

I AM DEAD SERIOUS.

 “Persuade her, or take her, or tell her what I have said, and let that be your persuasion. If Meredith will not take the pleasure I offer her, then perhaps she will take pain instead. For there is both to be had here among the Unseelie. Remind her of that if her sensibilities are too delicate for fucking.”

So let's make it clear: Merry has no option to consent to sex at this point. She does not get the right to say no. Consent no longer exists.

I hate. This book. And this chapter isn't over yet.

“I am soaking wet, freezing, and sober. I don’t want to be any of those three things.

This would be such an awesome book if LKH were any less of a prude.

Finally somebody explains about the flooding bit, and that--not the rape, mind you, just the flooding--is enough to get everybody into the Queen's presence and end the goddamed chapter.

Something had better happen soon, otherwise my liver will never survive.

Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 23-24

I'm just gonna go until something plot related.

The first several pages are yet more bitching about what the publicist wants Merry and Co. to do. We apparently needed to know every single article of clothing this woman makes the men change out. We get yet more reminders that Kitto is the same size as a twelve year old. Also, Merry needs to wear a pleated skirt so short the top of her thigh-high hose show.


Because of course a professional publicist wants to have her client flash the collective tabloid press every time she bends over.

And then she provides Merry with four inch spike heels. Patent leather.

And Merry is forced to wear all these things. Because her publicist says she has to. You know, if you want your main character to dress in teeny tiny clothes have them want to wear the damn clothes. If you want your character to not be ridiculed for, say, wearing said mini-skirt and heels to a crime scene, have them dress appropriately when they're on the job and how they want to when they're off. But making your character be forced to wear dental floss and boob tape sends the message "I'm dressed like a tramp, but I'm being forced to." It implies that there is something wrong with what the character is wearing. Either have your characters own the way they dress or let them dress the way they want. 

Also: WHAT PUBLICIST IN THEIR RIGHT FUCKING MIND WOULD MAKE THEIR CLIENT DRESS LIKE SHE"S GOING TO A RAVE?

There is, however, a very good bit where Merry flashes back to the press conferences over her father's death. This is completely reasonable. The trauma of the questions and flashing lights and intrusion of privacy on top of the trauma of having your dad be killed horribly would likely make most conferences an ordeal even if you have delt with your trauma, and Merry has VERY clearly never come close to processing this in a reasonable fashion. And yes, it happened years ago. But people process greif and trauma differently...and if the ENTIRE FAIRY COURT doesn't have PTSD I will eat my monitor screen.

The press conference is an utterly boring rehash of everything that has already happened in this book. EVERYTHING here has either already been rehashed or it happened a few pages ago. And of course all the sexist and stupid questions come from the female reporters because GOD FORBID we allow for female competence other than the main character.

One of the reporters in the back of the room is an old enemy of Merry's named Barry. He calls her an outright slut and starts flinging insults.This segues into a long soloquy about a character who hasn't appeared for two books being sentenced to death for selling nude pics of Merry to the tabloids.

Merry decides that she doesn't want her dad's death to be the lead in to the story, so they stage a motherfucking assassination attempt WHAT THE HELL.

A cop is bespelled to shoot Merry, and Frost steps in and gets shot. Merry is dragged out of the room and in the process Barinthus touches the magic ring of matchmaking, so we go from boring as fuck press conference to mind raping cops into distracing the press to making out with yet another man.

He gets his godhead back. It involves lots of water, so everybody in the press conference gets wet.

I am not kidding.

End of chapter

Next chapter, after descriptions of how everybody got to a limo, we rehash the shooting of Frost. It hasn't been established that the guys staged the shooting, but it is established that Doyle let him get off a shot so the other humans would believe the cop had really been about to shoot Merry. So the cop's dead now. Nice, guys. They quickly make it clear that none of them staged the shooting, but I really want to call bullshit on it because it's way too damn pat. Merry doesn't want her dad to be the lead-in on the press conference, and BAM, assassination attempt. She looks culpable at best.

It also turns out the chalice teleported itself into the press conference, which explains some of the fireworks. Everyone oggles it for several pages. Then we find out that the Queen's new plan is to force Merry to have sex with multiple partners at once.

You know, it goes without saying that Andais's tactics are basically rape, rape, rape with a topping of rape-sauce, but at some point SOMEBODY ought to have the spine to say "Fuck you". They've certainly got the power right now to make it stick. The reason they don't is because LKH wants to have the characters have sex without any of the responsability, because in her mind sex is something that ought to have consequences. If you don't choose to have sex, you don't need to keep any of the consequences. In this mindset consent is an actively dangerous act that needs to be repressed at all costs. Ones purity and appearance of goodness is far, far more important than one's health and well-being.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: A pagan author SHOULD NOT BE echoing the sentiments of fundamentalist Christian nutcases. 

 That sex and torture were my aunt’s hobbies had always made her difficult to deal with, or so I’d thought. Barinthus was saying the opposite.

Yes. We're referring to sadism with non-consenting partners as a hobby.

It turns out that Andais has been torturing people because it distracts her from her own mental illness.

I do not understand how anyone could ever think this anything less than reprehensible.

They then talk more about how bringing Barinthius back to his Godhead could have drowned all of St. Louis and the chapter ends.

IVORY SCARS, IRON BARS PREORDERS ARE LIVE

Here we go my lovelies:

Barnes and Noble Apple Smashwords

As soon as Kobo has its share posted, it'll be announced too.

Amazon-readers: Sorry. Amazon doesn't play nice with Smashwords (or...anybody, really) so you guys get to wait a little bit longer.

Also: The first piece of Silver Bullet, Black Hounds, AKA the first lil book I ever published, is FREE on Smashwords and all of its affiliate retailers (Ie Barnes and Noble) so if you haven't read it yet, go do so.

Let's get excited, my dears. This is gonna be a fun ride.