Monday, January 21, 2013

Narcissus in Chains chapter 48+49

So they walk down stairs that weren't made for people, following a person named Earnie who used to have a mullet.

he’d had one of those long hair cuts with the sides shaved.

AKA a mullet. Now he has a short haircut that he can "Gel into spikes", so basically we have a trend-follower who has no idea what he really wants to do with his hair.


Who the fuck is Ernie? Why couldn't it be Jason or Asher or one of the other nine thousand characters already introduced in this book?

Ernie is a human. Anita figures he's feeding vampires other than Jean Claude because Jean Claude can have lycanthrope for dinner. We find out that all the body guards fought over who would get to walk first and who would walk last, and that all the leopards are trailing behind Anita and Micah like lost little children. Anita worries about what she's going to do when she sees Jean Claude.

They keep walking down the stairs.

The chapter ends.

...I'm gonna have to do two again, aren't I?

So they go into Jean Claude's lair, and it looks like it was decorated by the laziest wedding planner on the face of the earth. There's drapes hanging in the middle of the room, it's all white and gold and silver and jewel box and fairly land and...hold on...


That's better. Hey, what's this description actually like?

it was everything a fireplace should have been, except it was painted white.

...what the fuck does that even mean?

Asher(s) ... gold hair in ringlets...his mustache and Vandyke beard a blond so dark it was almost brown.
The dot dot dots are descriptions of the painting Asher's in. Look, hair is either blond or brown. Pick one, stick with it. It's less frustrating for the rest of us.

And then Anita senses Jean Claude coming, and realizes all he wants to do is screw. She becomes scared. I have no idea why, the only thing of any concequence anybody in this fucking book has accomplished in a short amount of time has been fucking.

This is what Jean Claude is wearing:

He was wearing a silver frock coat with white edging, white buttons. His shirt was a spill of white froth, the pants, what I could see of them, were white, but the white leather boots covered almost all of his long legs. The leather looked soft, pettable, held in place with small silver buckles going from just above his ankles to his very upper thigh.
...yeah. When this review is done I'm going to go fire up my computer and play violent first person shooters just to get the taste of this out of my mouth. Seriously, white leather thigh high boots? You can walk in those, I guess, but...one, you can't sit down comfortably, and two...why does he need to wear pants? How can Anita even see that he's wearing pants? And "pettable". Holy fuck, she's sexualizing inanimate objects, and she's critizing other people for having sexy thoughts?

And it turns out that Jean Claude hasn't fed his own ardeur yet, and because he hasn't fed "all his hungers" he's going to be useless for saving Damian, and oh fuck that means somebody's going to have sex, doesn't it? When sex is a plot roadblock, you need to stop putting it in your books.

And then Micah speaks up and the whole damn thing turns into a pissing contest. Micah somehow breaks Anita's control over her own ardeur. Both Anita and Jean Claude literally fall on their knees before Micah's godly beauty. Jean Claude, I shit you not, is vacant-eyed and drooling.

And then he touches Anita and catches the ardeur like it's a goddamned STD.

Asher tries to break things up. This happens:

I’d been afraid; now it was sheer terror. I looked up at Asher and saw him through a film of all the times we’d touched him, all that beauty, all the beauty that I still saw. I whispered, “Help us!”
Laurel. Please. Start making some goddamned sense. 

They waste several minutes trying to explain to Micah that Jean Claude needs to have an orgasm.

Micah still offers himself as food for Jean Claude because Anita won't be fed on. Anita, you just fucked over Richard for refusing to be food for you. Your highly vaulted morals aren't worth shit.

And then we get paragraphs of hot man on man action as Jean Claude climbs over Micah and...just...stands there. Seriously. It's like "They stare into each others eyes. They stare into each others eyes. They stare into each others eyes" for a couple pages. Then Anita somehow recovers from the unbearable ardeur, and then Micah jumps her and Jean Claude jumps her and the chapter ends, mercifully, just before they have sex.

...it's still not as fucked up as the Gap series.

8 comments:

  1. ...on their knees because of his godly beauty. I am cracking the fuck up.

    And LKH has a very...odd idea of what sexy and elegant look like in terms of the clothes her vampires wear, I must say.

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  2. " it was everything a fireplace should have been, except it was painted white."

    'The fireplace was big and deep and made with heavy stones and thick mortar. It would have looked like Hollywood's Platonic ideal of an old fireplace, had Jean-Claude not chosen to coat the whole thing in sparkling high-gloss white paint.'

    " And then we get paragraphs of hot man on man action as Jean Claude climbs over Micah and...just...stands there. Seriously. It's like "They stare into each others eyes. They stare into each others eyes. They stare into each others eyes" for a couple pages. Then Anita somehow recovers from the unbearable ardeur, and then Micah jumps her and Jean Claude jumps her and the chapter ends, mercifully, just before they have sex."

    So basically the only way we see any guy-on-guy action is if it's during a threesome with a hot chick. Well done, LKH. This scene in no way diminishes or dismisses gay male sexuality. Truly you are a progressive and open person. Kudos to you.

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    Replies
    1. LKH unquestionably has a slash fetish (and of course Anita has to too) but she also refuses anyone to have sex without her Mary Sue involved and getting the bulk of the attention, so this type of thing happens repeatedly.

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    2. Some Mary Sues can be fun protagonists. Cordelia Naismith started her literary life as a Mary Sue Starfleet captain in a Star Trek fanfic that evolved into the Vorkosigan Saga, and was an interesting PoV for two books. But Bujold kept Naismith under control, and then shoved her off into the background for the rest of the series. She's kind of obnoxiously Awesome and Always Right from then on, but she's not the focus of attention.

      The early Anita Blake books actually look kind of interesting, but at this point it's clear that Hamilton has no interest in reigning her in. Other women only exist so Anita Sue can be better than them, gays and bisexuals only exist so Anita Sue can have hot group sex with lots of guys...

      Oh crap. Please tell me Anita and her boytoys don't 'cure' any lesbians.

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    3. Honor. Effing. Harrington. 'Nuff said.

      I...uh, do not remember if she does but I think several girls become involved at some point? I think?

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    4. She adds a girl to the harem in Bullet, but she doesn't have sex with her, just manages to give her an orgasm without actually using her mouth or hands on her somehow. I think the girl just rubs on her or something and gets off just from that. Basically LKH wants her to have a bisexual relationship because OMG EDGY but not actually have to do anything icky with a girl, ew!

      The girl is also this oh so fragile little doll and needs Anita to protect her and is totally terrified of men because of abuse from the vampire who previously owned her...because there's no way a pretty little feminine lady could ever just be a lesbian, she must have had a horrible experience with men instead!

      Also, she's Asian, and is really super badass at martial arts despite her "victim mentality" while also being a petite little porcelain 'China Doll', much like how the only other Asian female character is also omg badass and sexy but looks like a tiny delicate porcelain 'China Doll'...yeah, no awkward racist stereotyping here or anything.

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    5. Wow, that's, um, so many wrongs in so little space...

      Fluttershy, Imma gonna need that bucket.

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  3. Not sure where else to put this, so here you go: Reference material for artists - Non-sexualized images of breasts (Not porny, but NSFW) http://www.007b.com/breast_gallery.php

    ReplyDelete