Caress of Twilight--chapter 30

And we hit the halfway point for the next Exiles book. I'm going to see if I can't hammer out another K or two of words (4k so far today). But even better news is...THE FIRE. IS. ON.

Good writing always makes me feel this awesome. And sexy.Yes, folks. I am finally excited about what I'm writing at the halfway point. This is usually a signal that the editing job is going to be an ungodly mess but I do not care, it is heating up and thus will be done soon. Ish. And then we get to start editing the next Starbleached book and/or the next Gray Prince book too.

All in all...I have accomplished Things today, my loyal blog readers. Things.

...

And now I'm telling myself "It can't get any worse. It can't get any worse. She's already fucked Kitto." Because I don't remember this part of the book very well. And then...oh, fuck I can't remember if she screws sage or not, and...and the sooner I read a couple chapters, the sooner I can get the next part of the story done. Right.

ON THE FIRST DAY OF MY BEING RESTRICTED TO THE APARTMENT,

Wait. WHAT? When did THIS happen? When...no. No. It is not worth my time and energy to re-read this thing and try to figure out if LKH fucked up or if my reading comprehension is that bad. But I don't remember anybody saying "Merry has to stay home indefinately".

And she's hiding behind her wards.

Folks, one of the sad truths to western writing (IDK about other cultures) is heroes are by their very nature reactive. Something has to happen to make your good guy character move. If your character is active, as in they move first, they are at best an anti-hero. At worst, they're a villian protaagonist, which is always fun when intentional (Jaqueline Cary's Banewrecker does such a fantastic job of villian protagonists; she basically turns Sauron et al into misunderstood, sympathetic characters. She also turns Gandalf into an ass, but that's not all that hard to do. It's like making Sherlock a misogynist. It's right there in the text.)

(And speaking of Mr. Holmes, Mary Russel, anyone? Also that squee sound you heard about midnight? That was me realizing there is a Mary Russel novel that I haven't gotten to read yet. SQUEE!)

Laurel K. Hamilton is at no risk of making her protagonists into villian characters. Oh yes, they are horrible, horrible people, but they are not constructed that way. BOTH Merry Gentry and Antia Blake are constructed to appear as heroines. They react to what somebody else does. Often to the point of being the last person on earth to react at all. The fact that their behavior has no chance of living up to the title doesn't change it. Laurel is trying desperately to convince you that Anita and Merry are the good guys. And because their behavior can't live up to it and LKH for whatever reason is not willing to curtail the rape, sexism, bigotry and not-child fucking (Kitto is unforgivable) that makes her protagonists into terrible wastes of tree (...whole forests have died for Merry Gentry. FORESTS.) she's falling back on the psychological cues to convince us.

Which is why Merry Gentry never does jack shit. 

Seriously. In a better novel Merry would be trying to track the Nameless, or the Elder Gods ghosts, or trying to fix it so that Maeve Reed can have her child safely. What is she doing instead? Hiding behind her fucking wards. Because heroes don't act, they react, and to make up for Merry being a horrible person in every imaginable way, LKH only has her react when the bad guy is literally on her fucking doorstep. 

In short? LKH's attempt at psychological manipulation re: active/reactive characters? It's not working.

So instead of us getting an actual account of actual events, we get an account of what Merry Gentry did when her boyfriends confined her to the house.

Somehow this does not involve fucking.

Instead, Merry gets another invite from the important Seelie secretary, which she also declines because the Unseelie court is having a ball on the same night. Oh, don't you just hate that. Hey, wasn't there a murder going on a few pages back?

Jeremy had been pissed enough [About the Gray agency being barred from the crime scene--CW]that he told Teresa not to tell them what she’d seen, but Teresa is all about helping her fellow man. She went dutifully from the hospital to the police station and finally found a detective who would take her report.

And that puts Jeremy on my shit-list too. Mass murder in the double digits kind of makes any personal grudges you happen to hold petty and irrelivant. Just saying. I also like how Theresa is kind of shit on in this passage for doing the right thing and talking to the cops.

Now, it's time for me to admit that I garbled the spelling of a cop's name a couple reviews back, because I am not perfect and I am usually writing these things after work and/or after a couple of beers or a mixed drink (...I like booze, and it's hard to maintain not drinking when my boss has a habit of shoving liquor in my face. As a side note, if you ever get a chance to try jalapino-laced tequila, do it, it is the best thing ever.). I transcribed "Peterson's" name as "Pearson". (Also note: The font in this e-book more than sucks)

Now, with my fuck-up admitted, let's see how well he comes off this time:

Peterson had come in about then and thrown the report in the trash can in front of Teresa. Usually the police wait until someone’s left the room before doing that.

You know, there's always this thin veneer of "Cops are so awesome" in most of these books. I'm not getting that here. This "Peterson is an idiot" thing is getting old.

Meanwhile, we get an accounting of Galen and Sage being sterotypical male, and I mean that male-ness that doesn't actually exist outside of reality TV. At one point Galen almost causally kills Sage, and there is a confrontation that doesn't go anywhere.

This is like reading about somebody being home sick with the flu. Only it's not like that because I've read a lot of books that make confinement to quarters actually work. Anybody here read Catching Fire? Anybody remember the couple of chapters after Katniss broke her ankle? Confined to bedrest? Remember how Collins not only made that interesting, but also relivant to the plot (because that's when she figures out about Important Plot Point that I'm not spoiling for those of you who HAVEN'T read Hunger Games, AND WHY HAVEN'T YOU?!?)? This isn't even Merry being out of comission because she's hurt. It's her being confined to quarters because something might try to hurt her.  IT WOULD NOT BE HARD TO MAKE THIS INTERESTING.

He smiled, obviously happy. “Since you asked nicely.” He grabbed his tiny crotch through the filmy skirt he wore. “The cure is trapped here, where Queen Niceven laid it.”

That's not what I meant.

And yes. Merry acts all shocked and shamed, as if this were not explicitly stated last chapter.

And then we get a debate about if a blow job counts as intercourse. I think. It's not really clear.

Merry calls Niceven via the mirror (...do mirrors come with a good long distance deal? If you break the contract to go to a better carrier does it come with seven years bad luck?) and rouses her out of bed. She demands a cure for Galen that doesn't involve having sex with a barbie doll. Niceven says why, he's a wonderful lover, and Merry is all like "Sex with ME is a privelage".

He means all the words, Laurel. All of themAnd then, probably because that "hotdog down a hallway" metaphore would be literal for Sage, Sage turns into a real, full sized man, and Merry objects because he could get her with child and could become king, and I STILL do not understand why nobody understands the concept of condoms in this universe. Spermicidal lube, at least. It's like we're allowed cars and planes and forensic science, but not reproductive medicine. THIS ENTIRE PLOT COULD BE RESOLVED BY PATIENCE AND A PETRI DISH. 

Finally, and you have no idea how long it takes for them to agree, Sage and Merry agree on a kiss. Which they do, and Sage's lips are like, you guessed it, eating fruit.

It's too much to hope for lip gloss, isn't it?

Also? the word "Heat" no longer looks like a word. No. You don't want to know.

 Merry has the cure and she kisses Galen, and oh my fucking god, here we go again:

Our lips touched and it was as if the heat were hungry for him. Our lips sealed together, so that no drop of heat would be lost. Lips, tongue, even teeth fed at each other’s mouths. The heat filled my mouth almost like liquid. I could feel the warm, sweet thickness of it like warm honey, warm syrup that filled my mouth and spilled into Galen. He drank at my mouth, drank the magic down.

I swear to god LKH writes by throwing a cookbook, a thesaurs and a list of synonyms for genitals into a blender and pushing "stiff whip". It's the only possible explination for this. Either that, or all of her novels are being ghost written by Pat Monahan.

If I see the words "hefty bag" in any of these books, I have only one recommendation: 

It's not that I hate Train. I just have a low tolerance for whiny bullshit.Niceven assures Merry that Galen will be healed, Merry and Galen are all kids in a candy store over the looming return of the penis, and Frost is staring on in envy because he loves Merry and wants her all to himself.

Remind me again why these circumstances are supposed to be romantic?

And then the chapter ends.