Cerulean Sins--chapter 31

So today's pre-review rant is all about music. Specifically, Lindsey Stirling. I have only recently discovered her awesomeness, and only more recently located her MP3s on Amazon.

This is my favorite of her sons so far. Start it, and it might make the rest of this chapter go easier.



(BTW, in case you haven't figured it out, the easiest way to get me to heart a musician forever is to give them a fiddle and let them kill it in awesome ways. Heather Alexander, Emilie Autumn, and now Lindsey Stirling. I heart them.)

I should also mention tonight that I am drunk. I had the customers from hell, it was the only way to medicate. This is the only way I can explain how much I like the opening bit for this chapter. Maybe it's the booze, maybe it's the fact that I love non-linear narratives, or maybe it is that LKH, when she has her act together and she is writing with both hands at the same time, is actually a halfway decent narrator and writer. But there is something about the juxtipositioning of Anita running for Jean Claude and Richard chasing for prey that is actually kind of pretty.

And then she uses the word "asnooze", as in all of the vampires in the city save for JC are asnooze in their beds, and that kind of kills it dead. Sorry. If ever a wrong choice of a word there was...

Seriously. I don't get how you can do something that pretty and then fuck it up with one damn word. Do you not read it through a second time?

...we're talking about LKH, who sent her latest book in without bothering to edit. Right.

You know, I hated Under the Dome when it came out? I hated it. I enjoyed reading it but the writer in me wanted to take a weed whacker to it. That was fucking poetry. That was Fatal Interview compared to this. I will never understand how any author can send the first draft of anything to another professional. That's like showing up to an interview dressed in a bra, ripped jeans and a see through top. You don't do that.

LKH then compares the death of Richard's prey, a deer, to champagne opened and left to go flat. And I have an issue with this, because "champagne going flat" is not a positive in my business. Flat champagne means a loud lecture from my boss and Sangria, which means more work for me. LKH needs to consider the plight of the waitress in her food based murder metaphores, is what I'm saying.

And yet, everything about this chapter could still work. If LKH had taken three seconds to polish it up and take the burs out, this would be gorgeous. Seriously. Dead fucking serious. There's a rush and an urgency that, if properly framed with a good plot, written by an author who gives a shit about craft, would blow my fucking mind.

In Sunshine, (WHICH YOU HAVE ALL READ NOW, RIGHT?) there is a scene involving Rae, the main character, Constantine and, by virtue of a blood transfer, a doe. It is my favorite scene in any book ever. This had the potential to come kind of close to that in awesomeness. And it didn't, because everybody attached to this book decided that they just didn't care.

And then Jean Claude sheilds Anita from Richard's feeding, and the potential for awesome ends.

I am sad panda.

She and JC make out. Anita quotes that bit about "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?" and I am reminded of Shakespere in Love, which is not one of my favorite movies. LKH is being paid a lot of money for these books. You'd think she could come up with her own revolting sex dialogue, you know?

So the problem, apparently, is that Jean Claude can't get an erection without sucking blood, and no matter what Anita says he won't set fang and feed on her. So she decides to give him a blow job.

I am about to read about a blow job involving a permanently flaccid penis.

Somebody thought this would be erotic.

You need to send me more booze. That's the only thing that will ever make this okay.

I will also never understand the description of a male's genetalia as "all of him." A guy is more than a cock and balls, just as a girl is more than a vagina. It's not romantic. It's demeaning. Use your words. Even if they sound silly. Find a way to make them sound not silly. Or else stop writing erotica that isn't erotic.

I mean...this?

It was the most amazing sensation to be able to hold him, to flick my tongue on the loose skin between his testes, to roll the delicate eggs of his body against my teeth and cheeks.

 Yeah. That is not sexy. That's more snort-soda-up-my-nose.

And eventually Anita drives JC to orgasm without an erection.

I got nothing, folks.

And then she goes off on how she loves Jean Claude because he's a political son of a bitch, because:

if I took away the Machiavellian plottings, the labyrinth of his mind, it would lessen him, make him someone else.

Okay. Whatever. You're attracted to a guy who would sell you for sex if he thought it would advance his political career, and you wouldn't change that because it would make him less attractive to you. Big fucking whoop. You need therapy. MOVING ON!

So now, with the ardeur sated, Anita insists that JC take blood from her.

This is also known as the fourth mark of a vampire servant. The thing it would take to keep Anita forever safe from Belle Morte's politicking. Antia says it's because it's the one thing she's never held back from JC and it's only fair she give it up now. the fact that this would SAVE HER OWN ASS is never brought up.

But Anita is wearing her cross, and JC says he can't feed on her when she's wearing the cross. Anita says that it's never reacted to JC before and they discuss this for a few minutes, because breaking every bit of world building lore ever is, you know, important.

And then Asher shows up and the cross goes off like nova because he rolled her mind during their sex thing earlier ,and once again the chapter ends without anything being resolved. 

I hate this book.