Incubus Dreams--chapter 40-41

We are at Chapter 40 before Anita even comes close to raising a zombie.

CHAPTER. FORTY.

Anita has not fired a gun, pulled a gun, polished a gun, or even considered actively using a gun, at all, ever in this book.

I know that violence is bad (...according to other people) but I'd much rather see Anita bashing the heads of vampires in than I would see her have sex on her office floor. Actually, I would rather see her cut her toenails at work than have sex on her office floor, but bashing vampires means she is DOING SOMETHING POSSIBLY PLOT RELATED and that would be rather nice at this point. Like a really cool change for something positive.

 So Anita explains why she HAD to start telling people that raising zombies involves beheading chickens at the gravesite. Now, I'd think that'd be a part of the animator brochure, but apparently not. And there's one little stand out:

She’d turned out to be a vegan. That’s like a rabid fundamentalist vegetarian.

...this was published in 2005. My dad married a vegan in 2006 and I did not need to have this explained to me. (BTW she gave me the best explination ever of what vegans are. If it has eyes and a mommy she doesn't want it hurt. I have used this so many times at work it is unreal).

It also gives me creepy vibes and I'm not sure why. There's an us-vs-them attitude when you introduce "fundamentalist" into a conversation and you don't have it pointed at you. I will gladly introduce myself as a Christian who was raised borderline fundie and who got over it, but I won't introduce my parents as fundamentalist Christians because my mother isn't, and I respect my dad too much to introduce that bullshit into his future relationships.

Also, this is the word "fundamentalist" being used by a woman who has actively campaigned against moral codes for the last three books of her series. I'll bet you money she hates that Anita Blake is Episcopalian and she can't change it.

Well, I'm pretty sure that LKH can't top the vegan stupid in this paragraph. I mean--

I’d been glad later that it hadn’t been cold enough to wear a coat, because leather is the only kind of coat I own.

Oh. Anita. Get down. with your bad self.

/sarcasm.

And then we get a long, drawn out, melodramatic and utterly fucking stupid paragraph about what happens when you wear a thong and a mini-skirt to a graveyard at night, in St. Louis, in motherfucking October. Her vagina is freezing, and I have absolutely no sympathy because she is wearing thigh-high stockings and a thong and a miniskirt in a city where the average October temperature at night is 41F.

 Anita wishes she had borrowed a taller man's coat. Well, yeah, that would have given her better ass coverage alright, but you know what would really have helped with her labia's lament? Pants.

In fact, why in the name of God would you plan to go to work--to your job, where you will be beheading chickens with a machete--in a miniskirt? Why would you not have a pair of fuck-these-jeans in your back trunk for bloody evenings and/or crime scenes?

Anita re-describes Requiem and Graham because we might have forgotten what they looked like between chapters. She then explains why she's there, and are will-and-testament disputes the only reason why you raise a zombie? If I were rich enough to afford Anita I'd be resurrecting notable scientists and asking them to look over my dissertation for a few hours.

...this series could have had the ressurection and abduction of fucking Tesla. The closest the human race has ever gotten to throwing an honest-to-god comic book mad scientist. The dude that invented a fucking earthquake machine. THINK ABOUT IT.

I’d learned long ago to control it enough so I didn’t raise the dead by accident. There’d been a professor in college that committed suicide. He’d come to my dorm room one night. He wanted to tell his wife he was sorry.

OH GOD IT WOULD BE THE SIXTH SENSE ONLY EVERYBODY COULD SEE THE DEAD PEOPLE TOO WHY ARE WE NOT READING THAT BOOK?

Anita's power decides it has to feel up Requiem instead of raise the zombie.

Again: why are we not reading the Visible Sixth Sense and the Abduction of Zombie Tesla?

And then Anita gets lots of powers through flowery language because having an actual plot is hard work and this is pretty.

Except it isn't because I don't actually care.

The power began to spread outward, began to seek another grave, but some small part of me that was still me, knew better. It wouldn’t be just one more grave. I knew in that instant that I could raise this cemetery. That I could raise them all. No blood sacrifice. No chickens. No goats. Nothing, but the power blowing through me, and the vampire at my back. Because the power wanted to be used. It wanted to help me, help me caress them all from their graves, pull them to the light of stars, and fill them with  .  .  . life. It would feel so good to lift them all up, so good.

...Anita now has the ability to raise the dead without beheading chickens. Rules of magic in this universe? Nah, that just gets in the way of the cool toys.

I reached out to the other third of our triumverate. I reached out to Richard.

GHA NA DA LKHOJHLKJHNLJNLKJBHLIJHLI!!:::

STOP. BRINGING. UP. RICHARD.

YOU TWO ARE NO LONGER AN ITEM. YOU RAPED HIM AND HE DUMPED YOU AND IT IS TIME TO MOVE ON TO YOUR HAREM OF PRETTIES AND STOP BRINGING THE OLD BUISNESS BACK UP.

So Richard does wolfy things and it gives Anita back her sanity, but it takes a lot of purple prose to get there. Graham is now sitting on the grave because she smells like pack.

The zombie gets raised, and because we're breaking the rules of the universe he looks perfect, but Anita has to let him drink her blood. THANK YOU GOD it is not Erotic blood play. Only the zombie won't stop feeding because he got no blood sacrifices, and WHY IS RICHARD STILL RUNNING AROUND IN THE WOODS? I love non-linear but that's getting really fucking annoying.

...and then he snaps too rather suddenly, and he has no idea that he's dead.

Sadly, though, that doesn't go anywhere. The chapter ends with Anita bandaging her arm back up.

Next chapter, Anita has canceled all of her other clients for the evening.

So basically we've accomplished...exactly nothing in this book. Exactly nothing. That's rather hard to do.

Anita then sits in the car shivering because she wasn't smart enough to wear the rest of her clothes to work today. And yes, I know that's a traditional slut-shaming line, but I don't give a fuck about how provocative Anita's dress is. It's forty degrees outside and she's wearing a miniskirt and thong. YOU'RE GONNA BE FUCKING COLD EXPECT NO SYMPATHY FROM ME.

“Graham under the blanket would double your body heat.” He said it very crisp, no wasted words, it was nice to know he could be concise when he needed to be.

Oh no. No no no no no. We are NOT doing one of these scenes. HELL NO.

Blog-Readers, I read the entire Twilight series. All of it. Because I wanted to. Because it sucked, and I couldn't look away until it was done. And I only felt the urge to throw the book across the room one time. And that was the camping scene. Where Edward wishes out loud that he had a space heater for Bella and Jacob comes in and offers.

In short: I hate this with the passion and fire of ten thousand fucking suns.

And yes. She huddles against Graham for warmth and he talks about how wonderful and tiny and small and pretty she is as if she is not there. She snuggles until she falls asleep. Then they need her to put the zombie away, and she...freaks the fuck out and almost breaks one of Graham's ribs. Okay.

You know, I read a couple people talking about how this was their favorite Anita Blake book. This was.

 Oh, and then we find out that Anita failed at Magic 101

“Yes,” I said, “I got distracted by all that new power and forgot to put up a protective circle. It keeps the zombie in, but it also keeps other things out. A lot of metaphysical shit likes to mess with bodies, if they get the chance. I knew better.”

THAT IS BASIC SAFETY HOW COULD YOU FORGET THAT PART?

...she almost makes up for it by having the zombie try to bargain his way into getting to stay alive. Everything about this sequence is good. Not awesome, but good. Again: Kiddnapping of zombie Tesla.

And then Anita bullshits the zombie by first putting the circle where it is supposed to go using an asspull mental visualization, and then makes the zombie try to walk outside of the circle that she just put up for the very first time, and when he can't, she tells him it's because he is bound to his grave.

No. It's because you just put up the wall you were too distracted to put up earlier. You're lying your ass off because this zombie is clearly much smarter than you are. And a much better character.

So Anita negotiates for a blood donor, who naturally turns out to be Graham, so that she can throw blood on the zombie and put it to bed. She sends Requiem off to get a first aid kit while she makes sure that Awesome!zombie is now safely dead again, and not just stuck down there all aware and stuff. She thinks about how she could actually stick an aware zombie in their grave, and the chapter ends.

Also: Zombie Tesla. I am going to make this a thing someday. It is too awesome to let die.