...please somebody tell me how Jean Claude, he of the suave incredible magnificence, can say "bad kitty" to a were-leopard without irony and still maintain any dignity.
So Anita goes into Jean Claude's office and basically does sexy poses on his desk until he looks happy.
ALRIGHT. LOOK. SEX IS FINE. WE CAN HAVE SEX IN BOOKS AND I WON'T BE OFFENDED, BUT IN THE NAME OF FUCKING CAN WE PLEASE HAVE A GODDAMN PLOT TOO. PLEASE.
Nope. Instead of having Anita pull a gun and go gangster on some asshole we get to read about her sucking Jean Claude's nipples.
Guys, I expected this book to be bad, but it's been about thirty chapters of sex with nothing in between. Save for one zombie that stole the whole book out from under Anita. Seriously. The terminally dead have more charisma than the main character of this novel.
Anita tells Jean Claude to draw blood. Normally this would result in Erotic Blood Play (TM) but in this book it requires negotiations first, because that is always sexy.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE NOTHING BUT SEX GET ON WITH THE FUCKING ALREADY.
And he takes the blood from her breast. Of course he does.
...and the imagry is actually pretty good. Okay. LKH gets an e-cookie for this one. JUST ONE THOUGH.
A few minutes later Anita tells Jean Claude to fuck her--well, we've all been saying "Fuck you" to Anita for the last several dozen chapters so it's only fair--and "Wet and tight" shows back up again:
“You are wet, but you are still tight.”
...She's had sex three times today, twice in the last four hours. And there has been no shower or mention of shower. I do not think that wetness is what you think it is, and how the fuck is she still tight?
Somewhere in the last please, he began to force himself inside me. I was tight, so tight, and so wet.We get it. You've got quarter inch PVC pipe where the rest of us have panty hose. Yay for you.
...and the blood-related imagry is no longer sexy.
The chapter ends with an orgasm.
Chapter 45 opens with a phone call.
IT IS ZERBOWSKI! YES! IT'S THE COPS! THE PLOT IS ON LIFE SUPPORT AND IT OPENED ITS EYES OH GLORY BE SOMETHING RESEMBLING SUBSTANCE IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.
GOOD FUCKING GOD THIS BOOK HAS SUCKED.
So Zerbowski has another dead stripper, and it is at the Sapphire Club AKA the nice strip club. Anita has issues with that club. Apparently they wanted vampire strippers, Jean Claude has the market cornered on those in his territory, the Church of Eternal Life AKA Vampire Jesus frowns on stripping because it is morally questionable (...vampire Jehovah's Wittnesses. OH. MY. GOD. WHY DO YOU WASTE THESE PLOTS, LAUREL? THEY WRITE THEMSELVES) so they wanted to import and Anita had to talk to them about it. Apparently it didn't go well.
Anita agrees to go down, but first she and Jean Claude have to have this conversation:
I stared at him, and he stared at me. I said what I was thinking, which I’d almost broken myself of. “So what, you take blood from me, then we fuck, and you have a blood donor standing by, and we fuck. We could like, what, have a room full of donors and just screw until we were so sore, or so tired, we couldn’t move?” I was sort of kidding. The look on his face wasn’t. The look on his face, the expression in his eyes, made me blush.Okay, so to that "vibrator that takes out the trash" dream a lot of women have, let's also add "That isn't a blood sucking dick" to the list.
Also: MURDER PLOT. GET TO IT. NOW.
Blah blah blah stuff involving Belle Morte and fatal blood-letting for the purpose of sex. Not interested. MURDER PLOT.
And then we have another "ooooooh the world is full of moral gray areas" because Jean Claude's regret for killing dudes for sex is supposed to negate the fact that, you know, he killed dudes for sex. I don't give a fuck. MURDER PLOT. NOW.
Then Jean Claude reveals that he hasn't made any more vampires because:
“Because, to make them vampire, I must first take away their mortality, their humanity. Who am I to do that, ma petite? Who am I to decide who will live on, and who will die in their appointed time?”
Oh god there is so much world-breaking stupid in that paragraph I don't even.
First: Jean Claude doesn't have to make more vampires. He's a blood-fountain, or what-the-fuck ever the head of vamp lineage is called, and can control everybody descended from him. He can make his minions make more vampires.
Second: Jean Claude wouldn't give a fuck. as evidenced by--
THIRD: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT JEAN CLAUDE HAS JUST DONE TO ANITA.
Seriously. She went from a mostly-sheltered virginal shut-in, albeit a shut-in because her life revolved around killing things and then animating their corpses, to being what we've been enjoying for the last month: Somebody who will break promises, violate boundaries, rape people, spit on the morality of others and put vunurable people at unnecessary risk just because she wants to. At this point it isn't just the unnecessary inhibitions Anita has lost. It's the necessary ones. Like "Thou shalt not fuck in your workplace within earshot of your boss during business hours" and "Don't put that in your vagina, you don't know where it's been".
And then we get this:
“I’m your fail-safe. I’m your judge, your jury, and your executioner if things go wrong.”WHY. WHY COULD THIS NOT HAVE BEEN A GOOD BOOK. That line would have been so. fucking. kick. ass. That whole concept--that Jean Claude values Anita because she'll keep him from becoming his sire--would have been just...OH GOD. If it were handled differently. If LKH hadn't spent three books shitting on basic morality, if Anita hadn't spent those same three books raping men and rubbing their assault in their faces, and generally ignoring sane limits. It's like walking along a beach covered in raw sewage and finding that one little pearl that would have made the walk worth it if, you know, it had been a beach and not something covered in raw sewage.
Then they quote poetry to each other, alternating on the lines. Gag me.
End of chapter.
"She's had sex three times today, twice in the last four hours. And there has been no shower or mention of shower. I do not think that wetness is what you think it is, and how the DUCK is she still tight?" sometimes Anita just grosses me out in ways OTHER than the 'she's a sociopatic rapist misogynist asshole' way
ReplyDelete"He began to force himself inside me".
ReplyDeleteUg, even when it's consensual, it's forced.
I really hope that she showers before going to the police, or I'm going to cry foul LOUDLY when she starts bitching that everyone's disgusted by her because she's a stupid GURL.
Nope. It's the come-smell.