Cerulean Sins--chapter 57

So the front runners for the Next Book CW Reviews are:

-The Wolf Gift. Ann Rice. The writing is awful. IDK about the plot yet, but again, it's ANN RICE.
-ANOTHER LKH book
-Eternal Prey, Nina Bangs. Shapeshifting dead dinos.

ALSO, on a personal note, my Dad and I had a good conversation. It started because I needed information on foster care, specifically on the training new foster-parents and/or their helpers have to go through, and what the requirements are to have a new home licenced. Suffice to say that foster care in Texas is basically a franchise of a franchise, and I am REALLY glad my Dad saved all of his training materials from back in '92. But then we moved on to how I was doing. I had a couple setbacks this last month (NOT related to last week's business) and he and I talked about them. I mentioned how severely fucked up I was last year, and he told me that he had been on the verge of having me committed.

I had not known this. And it told me how horrendously messed up I was that my reaction was not "OH MY GOD MY FAMILY WANTED TO PUT ME IN THE NUTHOUSE" but was rather "...they noticed. Oh my God, they love me." And this moved onto how rejection of any sort is a major, major MAJOR trigger for me. He told me what he thought the root causes were, and it made a lot of sense. So much so that certain other events are falling into place. This is the good news.

The bad news is...today made it very clear the issue is getting worse and not better. It's one thing to be wailing when you're a weepy mess and you think the world is falling in. It's another thing entirely to be relatively clear headed after a year of some pretty major wins and realize that, despite how AWESOME this last year has been, and how stable my general situation is, my emotional stability has degraded a fair amount, and a couple of doors I closed last year now have to remain nailed shut.

Ah, well. Enough of my depressing shit. Let's interview an Aryan Terrorist!

 We get a description of Aryan Terrorist Heinrick, and this includes a WTF involving coffee:

It had been sitting long enough that the cream had started to separate from the darker liquid, so that swirls of paleness decorated the top of the coffee.

I have never had this happen. I've let coffee sit for about five hours before (...iced coffee, at work, when we get a massive breakfast rush and I forget that half the coffee is there) and it has never unincorporated. It's a nit-picky thing, but it's like...HUH?

At some point (hopefully, a point that I skimmed and missed) Bradley Bradford told Anita that these people might want Anita to raise the dead for them. AGAIN: NOTHING HAS CONNECTED ANYTHING TO ANYTHING BEFORE THIS. We're just like "OH FUCK WE NEED TO END THE BOOK NOW HERE IS A PLOT".

Anita asks Heinrick if he wants more coffee. He says no. She asks if he's had too much coffee. He says no.

We absolutely needed to know how much caffiene Heinrick has had today.

Anita shows Heinrick photos that "Van Anders" (seriously. WE HAVE NEVER MET THIS PERSON. FUCK ME, EVEN CHIMERA GOT A COUPLE PARAGRAPHS ONSCREEN PRIOR TO CLIMAX) did several years ago. He tells her she's lying about there being fresh murders in St. Louis. She shows him the fresh murders. And OH MY FUCKING GOD:

“This woman was killed three days ago.” I got another file out of the stack. I opened it, and fanned the photos on top of it, but didn’t put them with the stack. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d be able to match the photos back to the right crime. They were supposed to be marked on the back, but I hadn’t marked them personally, so I didn’t want to risk it. Once you get into court the lawyers get damned picky about evidence and stuff.

THIS IS IN THE TEXT, FOLKS. IT IS IN THE TEXT. ANITA DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT CHAIN OF CUSTODY. SHE HAS NO FUCKS TO GIVE ABOUT TRIALS. SHE IS THE LAST PERSON WHO SHOULD BE ON THAT SIDE OF THE INTERROGATION TABLE AND THIS FUCKING PROVES IT. Holy shit. Holy shit. There's forgetting gloves and booties, and then there's not bothering to keep your evidence files sorted. WHY DO THEY LET HER IN THE BUILDING?

Heinrick promptly shits himself, and says "He promised he wouldn't kill people here" or something like that.

Well, I suppose if you're an Aryan Terrorist, it helps that all the victims so far were implied to be rich white women. But really? REALLY? He spends twenty four hours in custody being stoic and a couple bloody photographs are all it takes to get his mouth running? After all that work up on him being a soulless killing machine or whatever?

Well, he also probably knows this is his "Get out of America free" card, and that Anita is an idiot, so he's gonna play it up for all he's worth. 

So he spills that they did indeed come to recruit Anita for a mission, and that the team for her recruitment was thrown together in a hurry, and folks, I have to ask:

WHAT KIND OF FUCKING MISSION RECRUITMENT REQUIRES YOU TO BRING A FUCKING SHAPESHIFTING WEREWOLF RAPIST-MURDERER WHO LIKES TO JULIENNE HIS VICTIMS? AND HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO ACCEPT IT WHEN YOUR RAPE-MURDER WEREWOLF SAYS "Don't worry, Leo, this time I promise I'll be good"?!?

Seriously. If "clandestine" and "not killing people horribly" are two of your mission requirements, don't bring the rapey werewolf. WHY WOULD A GROUP EVEN TOLERATE THAT KIND OF FUCKED UP CRAZY? Is the guy an expert bomb-maker? Could he con Henry fucking Gondorff? Could he hack the best computer in the world? WOULD ANY OF THAT JUSTIFY KEEPING RAPEY THE WEREWOLF ALIVE? IS THERE A SINGLE GROUP IN THIS UNIVERSE THAT IS NOT UTTERLY FUCKED UP ON EVERY LEVEL?

Oh, and the plot that involved recruiting Anita? Apparently a leader of an unspecified country died, and this group, which includes Rapey the Werewolf and Heinrick the Aryan Terrorist, wanted to recruit Anita to raise the leader in a condition that would trick the country into believing their leader was still alive. Leaving aside one obvious fail (this being that if a dictator has died, I think the country would know in damn short order, unless the dictator's staff are the folk who hired the Aryan Terrorist and Rapey McWerewolf) THAT COULD HAVE BEEN THE PLOT FOR THIS BOOK. INTERNATIONAL INTRIGUE! ANITA DECIDING GOOD VS. EVIL!

And nope, that was solved WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYyyyyyyyyyYYYYYYYYYY back in the beginning when she raised the zombie in chapter two and he was all...drippy. They decided Anita couldn't do what they wanted her to do.

SO WHY THE FUCK WERE YOU STILL FOLLOWING HER THEN?

Well, I'm sure that we will now have daring intrigue involving the hunt for Rapey McWerewolf, and it will involve having to follow clues and set up a trap for Rapey that will involve most of the ca--

“I know where Van Anders is staying. I will give you that address.

You know, I'm WAITING for Anita to start finding her enemy's strongholds via Google Earth. Also: FUCK YOU LKH GOD that is such a cop-out.

They send St. Louis's version of SWAT out to pick up Rapey.

OH, BUT IT GETS BETTER.

Anita talks with Heinrick, and realizes that because her Wiccan friend got squicky over animal sacrifices and made Anita use her own blood, her zombies have been of poor quality and this is what saved her from being kidnapped by Rapey. So someone else's moral qualms have saved Anita's life, basically.

Hey Anita? You remember how you were bitching about Richard's moral code? And how it makes your life harder? You want to re-think that position a little, maybe?

 And then Anita ends the interview and walks out into chaos. Apparently Swat has already reached Rapey, and enough time has passed to let Rapey cut them up. Only it doesn't feel like enough time has passed. It should have taken about thirty minutes minimum for the team to reach Rapey, assemble around his pad, blow the door, and then get torn to ribbons. There were three paragraphs between when Anita passed Rapey's address off to SWAT, and when Rapey ate most of the cops sent to arrest him.

Text=time in a book. If you want to give the reader a sense of time passing, you fill things up with words. This is why a lot of authors waste time on minute details. No. They don't think the upholstery is that important, or that you really need to know how the ray gun works. However, they DO want to make the reader feel as if time has passed. The OTHER acceptable method is to use a scene break or a chapter break, which wouldn't really work here because LKH wants you to have a sense of shock.

The paragraphs between receiving the address and when SWAT got ate read like five minutes. It's a minor discontinuity, and it might not bother anyone but me, but it kind of ruins the whole "OH FUCK HE ATE DETECTIVE BENNY" vibe LKH is trying to give the end of the chapter.

Oh, yeah, and that's the end of the chapter.

You know, I think I broke my caps lock key today.