Harlequin--chapter 46

There's a stampede. Because of this stampede Micah touches Anita and Jean Claude realizes that Anita loves Micah and he can use her love like a weapon and I think I just threw up a little. One, we did the "love conquers all" shit in the last chapter. And two...a grown ass woman actually wrote this.

Love, love was power in more than just a metaphorical way. “Love won’t conquer her .” It was Richard from behind us. He’d come back to the stage.

Please don't start arguing during the climax please don't start arguing during the climax please--OH GODDAMN IT.

So Richard takes Anita's hand the way Micah did, only there's no love magic anymore. She doesn't love Richard anymore. Under normal circumstances this would be where we'd drop Richard like a hot rock and move on into the sunset, but of course THAT will never happen.

And then Richard realizes that the darkness in the room doesn't smell like the MOAD. So even though we were told last chapter that this was the MOAD it's not the MOAD.

I turned back to Columbine and her servant. “Belle Morte said that the Harlequin are the servants of the Dark Mother. Did she mean that literally?” “All of us bear a piece of the orignal darkness inside us, little girl. Feel the power of the night given human form and know true terror.”

COLUMBINE. YOU. JUST BLEW. YOUR BIG SECRET. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL THE CRAZY PERSON THAT YOU ARE BLUFFING.

So Columbine brings the shadow of MOAD down on Anita, who shreds it with her perfect puffy cloud of light and love and happiness.

Not kidding. Not even remotely. Guys, all we need now is a fucking unicorn and we'll have a perfect scene here.

And THEN Anita figures out that this ISN'T THE REAL COLUMBINE. GASP! SO THE ENEMY WE DON'T CARE ABOUT IS ACTUALLY ANOTHER ENEMY WE DON'T CARE ABOUT! How dastardly.

Columbine then summons more darkness, only it doesn't smell like rain and jasmine, it apparently smells like wet dog  wolf. So yeah. We're supposed to be terrified of a wolf that just took a bath. She uses her necromancy (now that the church is free of unknown dead people) and scans until she finds a vamp hiding up in the corner. She tells Edward to shoot it.

Apparently, she's forgotten how.

So they all go running to confront the enemy hiding in the rafters and REMUS IS THERE. The...uh...bodyguard. Who never did anything. And he does the bodyguard thing and he gets hit by whatever is making the wet dog smell and he dies.

And we're supposed to care.

Well, if we'd taken time to introduce him instead of RequiemLondonSampsonWickedTruthDamian ALL THE OTHER POINTLESS MALES we would actually care about that "wet, rending sound"

A claw cut across my breast. I cut the claw back.

We have regressed to Dr. Seuss.

This is not boding well.

So someone offscreen comes to Anita's rescue and, when she gets over the swoon, Remus is dead with a severed arm sticking out of his chest. On my first read-through, I thought that meant he'd been impaled.

We have a paragraph where every single named character, it seems like, gathers around Remus's body to pull the arm out. WE ARE STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CLIMAX.

 Richard tries to make Anita go sit down with Wicked and Truth because she's hurt so bad.

MIDDLE. OF. THE. CLIMAX. MIDDLE OF CLIMAX. THIS SHOULD BE THE CLIMATIC FIGHT. START FIGHTING FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

So then Anita goes over to the shapshifter vampire thingy who killed the C-list character nobody cares about.

“I am Pantalone, once Pantaleon. I was one of the first children of the dark.”

ONE: WHY ARE YOU INTRODUCING A NEW FUCKING CHARACTER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING CLIMAX WHAT THE FUCK LAUREL HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN EVERY RULE OF STORYTELLING OR JUST MOST OF THE GOOD ONES.

Two: Pantalone is also Pantaloon. So we're supposed to be scared of a pair of fucking bloomers.

Three: Pantaleon is not a variation of Pantalone. Pantaleon was a Greek King from ancient history. So not only are we introducing random ancient royalty IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING CLIMAX, we're introducing it in a way that no one will recognize (I only found it because I couldn't spell Pantalone right and thought Pantaleon was just a variation) but we're doing it as the king in question lays dying.

WHAT THE FUCK.

I really hope LKH was just trying to be obtuse and clever.

And then the MOAD possesses Anita so she can bitch-slap the snot out of her son...person...thing. The dude on the ground. The chapter ends with Anita psychically cutting everybody and smelling jasmine.

I hate this book.