There's also a lot of dismissing of the demi-fae as being bloodthirsty little animals. I kind of feel like I'm stuck in yet another vampire novel and we've just added this thin glaze of fairy dust to everything.
Kitto ate dinner on the floor and then then went back to his dog bed. At this point I can't even make jokes about it. I can understand how a writer can do dumb shit like forget how streets work in New Orlenes (favorite complaint of my mother: you cannot run out of THAT GRAVEYARD and run into THAT STREET. Every movie does it.) or specific details about languages and cultures they weren't raised in (My writer's group discussed certain mangled spanish phrases on warning signs once.) but FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK, HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THIS? This is basic human stuff. It's moral building blocks. You don't lie, you don't take shit that doesn't belong to you, you do not fantasize about having sex with children, and you do not treat your child like an animal.
...In fact, LKH is implicitly condoning child abuse. I don't think I've gone a month without hearing a story about parents locking their kids into some form of cage, or making them sleep in an inappropriate place. "Kitto needs the dog bed because his agrophobia won't let him use a normal bed" isn't that far removed from "Sarah needs the dog cage because she keeps wetting the bed" or "Bobby needs the dog cage because he keeps stealing food at night". There is a certain amount of consent explicitly stated--that Kitto actually likes this--but this is a woman that writes most of her sexual encounters with a heavy helping of non-con. It is suspicious and really icky that the one character she goes out of her way to show consensual encounters with is the simulation of a twelve year old.
"Ah, but we love and respect the demi-fae because they're the Queen's spies"
Yeah, because you didn't just call them "bloodthirsty animals" a few pages back, Doyle.
Merry also made Galen take the frilly white apron off because it was too distracting for her. Let me remind you that chapter 14 had information that, if used right, could help Merry leverage her way into safety, and instead of brainstorming that she's sitting around a table info-dumping shit that everybody at this table ought to already know and forgetting how to eat because Galen looks so sexy in that insane apron.
No. Literally. She forgets how to eat:
Galen leaned against the counter at the end of the kitchen, arms crossed over his now bare chest. He’d put the apron away, I think to save me embarrassment. I don’t know why his bare chest wasn’t as eye-catching as his chest peeking through all that sheer cloth, but I couldn’t eat and sit across from him while he wore the apron. The second time I missed my mouth with the stew, Doyle asked him to take the apron off.Then Galen tells us the story of where he came from. His Dad was a pixie who had sex with one of Queen Anadais AKA Crazylady's ladies in waiting.
...Tiny person, big person. This really is the "Let's include everybody straight in porn!" porn, isn't it?
Anyhoo, Anadais was outraged that a lower creature like a pixie would dare seduce her ladies in waiting, so she had him killed. And then she regretted it, because the pairing was fertile and having children justifies everything.
The info-dumping continues. This is what the demi-fey are, this is what the unseelie court is, this is what the slaugh is, now let's all go do the dishes while we talk about something else instead of actually advancing the plot.
Merry finally decides the best thing she could do is get control of the demi-fae away from Queen Anadais. Because actually using the world shattering information you got from Maeve Reed, or using the goblins you are trading your body for, would be asking too much.
But Merry has to appear like a Queen before Niceven, a fellow royal and an equal who has every right to demand healing for another person. What is the best way for Merry to do this?
“Lounge upon the bed with your men. Drape us around you for effect just as the queen would do. It is a way of looking powerful, for Niceven envies the queen her bevy of men.”BECAUSE SEX IS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.
And then Doyle and Frost start arguing over who has the right to have sex with Merry, because Frost hasn't gotten her pregnant yet and Doyle hasn't taken a turn yet.
Merry is a Faerie Princess in the state that paid for the Octomom's famous multiple pregancy, and most of the pregnancies before that on the basis that the Octomom was infertile and that conditon was covered by medicaid. I GO GET INVITRO FERTILIZATION AND MOVE ON WITH THE STORY.
Merry decides she has to intervene, not because two men are fighting over who gets to fuck her as if she were not sitting right there, but because Frost hasn't earned the right to be jealous of her yet. But before she can open her mouth the magical mirror of telephone rings--like a pretty silver bell--and everybody troops into the bedroom. The chapter ends.
...I just realized this is the first time LKH has ended with "we went to bed" and it wasn't a prelude to sex. Uh...yay?
"GO GET INVITRO FERTILIZATION AND MOVE ON WITH THE STORY."
ReplyDeleteEverything LKH writes seems strangely behind the times. From the faerie looking-glass presented as a wonderous magical artifact (And not a substitute for a cellphone), to infertility being an unsurmountable cultural death-warrant (And not a usually-treatable medical condition), to sex and gender stereotypes that come straight out of the '50s or '60s.n It's all just weirdly backwards.