Harlequin--Endgame

So Anita is possibly posessed by the MOAD right now. This is not definite right off the bad, and you'd think it'd be something you'd want clearly defined, but whatever. She has a dream...vision...thing of how Pantaleon was turned by the MOAD. She then lets him know that he's going to die.

So the climax for this book is a character who has existed as his own thing for less than two chapters, dying while our heroine gloats.

Right.

You know, I know that Anita being posessed by the MOAD would be a bad thing, and that it doesn't happen in the series, but part of me would really have liked to have read that book. Nothing else, it'd be a facinating character study.

The MOAD then tells Jean Claude that Anita inadvertantly woke her up because the world revolves around Anita, always has, always will.

And then LKH writes something I like:

She gave a low, dry chuckle. “Legend says that necromancers can control the dead, and that is true, but what legend does not say is that the dead give necromancers no peace. We pester the poor things, because they draw us like moths to the flame, except with vampires and necromancers it is a question who is flame and who is moth. Beware, Jean-Claude, that she does not burn you up. Beware, necromancer, that the vampires do not put you in your grave.”

If The MOAD is giving a low dry chuckle that means Anita needs a drink of water. That's her throat that's dry. Other than that, though, I REALLY like this concept. Necromancers collect vampires. Like cats. Big scary ones. I'd read that book.

And again: Laurell. You make these connections. You come up with awesome plot ideas and wonderful things. WHY are you wasting your time (YOU ARE. YOU REALLY ARE) on RAPE PORN instead of using the good ideas that manage to slip through the cracks?

Pantaleon, who I am now calling Pants the vampire, tells the MOAD that Anita should die by the MOAD's laws. The MOAD spanks him upside the metaphysical head and starts chewing his ass out for jumping the Harlequin's rules the way he did and for making a weak Columbine to replace another Columbine that died. And she is bad fucking ass in this scene (Compartively. She's more bad ass than Anita) for all of LKH's attempts at self sabotage by giving the MOAD dainty pearl slippers.

And then Random Werewolf Jake turns out to be Harlequin too, and he interrupts the MOAD's not-posession of Anita (I think she's now left Anita alone and is walking across the room towards Pants) to tell Anita that she needs to stop the MOAD. Well, thanks for the advice Cap. Obvious. The MOAD is feeding off Anita's boundless anger, so she and Jean Claude turn to, of course, boundless sex.

A better lesson would be zen or something, but nope. Sex.

The MOAD vanishes after promising to punish Jake. Just. like. that.

Jake tells Anita he can keep the MOAD out of her head using a random charm. Anita says cool beans.

Jake info-dumps that Pants came to St. Louis to nab his own territory before the MOAD woke up and took that chance away from him. Pants is still alive. Anita is free to kill him according to human laws because the Harlequin is too angry at him to bother right now. Again: Cool beans.

Anita tells Wicked and Truth to go take Pants's head. Pants drops his punctuation and does this:

Pantalone, with a missing arm, stabbed, shot, moved in a black blur.

You know, I would love to stabbed-shot-moved. Can someone teach me how to stabbed-shot-moved?

 Truth beheads him. It takes less than a paragraph.

Columbine is panicky now because her master is dead and Anita is the baddest person in the room. Even though Columbine should be dead because her master is dead and surviving your master is a rare, painful occurance. She is also showing no pain.

Anita interrogates her by threatening to give her to Olaf.

Olaf glanced back at me, gun still trained on them. “Do you mean it?” “Right this minute, yes. She’s a petite dark-haired woman, she even fits your victim profile. If she doesn’t answer my questions, never say I didn’t give you a good present.”

Anita will never be redeemable.

Richard tries to get Anita to back off. All the other guys stand around her and give him the stink eye. And then this happens:

Jean-Claude stood and went to Richard. He began to try to soothe him. It reminded me of when you gamed and you had to send the Paladin around the hill so you could loot the dead.

ONE: you'd have to be a D&D type tabletop gamer to get WTF she's talking about, or at least be familiar with the terminology. Otherwise that's a whole lot of word salad there.

Two: Thank you for letting us know about your new hobby, Laurel. Please stop doing that now.

Columbine answers Anita's questions, but balks at telling her which council members she works for. There is NO REASON for her to balk, and NO REASON for Anita to want to know what member of the council she works for. She already knows she's on their shit-list and she already knows Columbine and Pants came to St. Louis on their own. But because she balked, Anita lets Olaf rip Columbine's heart out while she's still alive.

Yes. Anita follows through on her threat to let Olaf disembowel the female vampire even though the vamp answered ALL of Anita's important questions. 

 And then the most jaw dropping, creep inducing scene in the entire series so far manifests like a demon from the pits of hell. Laurel writes a several page scene where Anita and Olaf nearly snuggle while they're cutting out Giovanni's heart.

He slid his hand inside the hole I’d made, so that his arm slid up alongside mine in the chest cavity. It wasn’t until his hand cupped mine, pressing both our hands into the still warm heart, that I looked at him . We were both leaning over the body, our faces inches apart, with our arms up the much longer torso of the male. He looked at me over the body, our hands around the heart, blood everywhere. He looked at me as if it were a candlelit dinner and I were wearing nice lingerie.

Laurel K. Hamilton has written serial killer porn folks.

Serial.

Killer.

Porn.

And it is nausiating and there is just not enough brain bleach in the world and

He kissed me.

We FINALLY stop the scene several paragraphs later, when Olaf begins to masturbate looking at Anita.

She pukes, and it's time for the end-of-plot summery.

Olaf went home. Anita is scared of Olaf, and she dreams about making out with him in Giovanni's not quite-so-dead body.

Nice.

Peter's fine.

Anita's got new scars, and we have to get complex magical reasons for these new scars. They're not very important. NEXT.

Sampson got sent home. I guess somebody let Laurel know that the incest plot was a little too squicky for her readers.

Anita caught tiger from Soledad. I now badly want Anita to get into a fight with that were-hippo.

Haven stayed in town with his new lions. Joseph, his wife, and his brother all vanished. Most of the pride was offered a chance to join Haven’s new pride . Some accepted

My headcannon is that Joe and his family used the night to run to Florida. They're alive and well and safe from St. Louis's insanity. NEXT.

Richard had left the church before I threw up. He never saw me have my moment of conscience, or panic. Whatever. We aren’t dating anymore, again . This one may stick, and the thought doesn’t upset me, which is why it may stick.

He never saw me have my moment of conscience

moment of conscience

 Anita with a consssspppppphhhhhAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA sorry could NOT type that with a straight face. But hey, guys. Anita still has a conscience. She might have raped thousands of people but she freaked out while making out with a serial killer while inside of the dead body of her enemy, so that's got to count for something, RIGHT?

(And IMHO that wasn't a moment of consience. That was Anita being sexually assaulted by an asshole.)

Anita is actively wearing the charm that Jake the Undercover Harlequin Randomwolf gave her. Because somebody tied to the MOAD is the perfect person to help hide you from the MOAD. I completely trust everything about this person and see no reason for Anita to worry. NEXT.

And then the summery gets really introspective about Anita's self doubts re: dominating Nathanial, and having Asher teach her how to dominate Nate, and of course we get some Richard bashing in there and THAT'S THE END OF THE NOVEL CHILDREN.

OH.

MY.

GOD.

OFFICIAL WORST BOOK EVER PEOPLE. WORST. BOOK. EVER.