There's a lot of shit that's wrong with this, so much so that I have no idea where to start. First there's the whole crazy=homicidal and bad aspect. Then there's the fact that all of this violence is happening because LKH couldn't think of a plot. But I think what drives me nuts the most is the reaction everyone is having.
They're distracting Andais. Not stopping her. Nope. Why should we stop the person in power from abusing it and badly hurting all the people in her care? Let's just keep her from doing permanent damage.
Seriously. You can see bones. You can see internal organs.
Even if you are mentally ill, you can have a highly developed sense of right and wrong. Having a disability does not make you defective, or homicidal, or hurtful. And, this is important kids, not having a sense of empathy or right and wrong does not mean you are insane. It means you have an utter disreguard for the lives of others. Andais is unsuitable to rule, not because she has mental instability, but because she does not value other lives. It wouldn't matter how sane she was. Without a sense of other's value she'll do...well, basically what she's doing right now.
And the book is handling this like it's something you have to do because Andais is so very very sick and needs to get better, instead of going "WOW is this wrong".
If this were, say, the climatic fight between Merry and the antagonist (WHAT ANTAGONIST) this MIGHT be tollerable. But it's not. It's violent, nasty, horrible, degrading filler and it 's VERY disturbing. Gore for the sake of gore doesn't swing it for me. If there had been any single good thing in this novel, anything at all, I probably wouldn't be as bothered as I am right now. But this has seriously put me off this book. Two whole chapters of unrelenting awfulness being justified as a coping skill is just...yeah.
Merry resolves it by draining all the blood out of Andais's body, and Andais responds by knocking Merry out before she goes unconsious.
End of chapter.
Next chapter: Merry is welcomed into heaven by God.
Okay, The God, and it's the summerland, but...seriously. Merry might be a slightly smaller monster than Anita, but neither woman are exactly sun and roses.
So the God--who looks like all of her men combined--pulls her into a loving embrace and Merry realizes she can just stay in Faerie Heaven forever...
...until she remembers how much all her men need her.
So the God gives her a gift of healing and she reappears in a pool of probably the Queen's blood. Though at this point I think you'd need an entire crime lab to sort out who bled where.
The God's kiss is still on her lips. It tastes like apples dipped in honey. Time to spread it around!
And when she kisses them, we get to find out what they taste like.
Galen tasted like the scent of aromatic herbs. I could taste dew, and feel the soft edge of a basil leaf. He tasted of basil, rich and thick and warm. Basil still growing in the earth, leaves flung wide to the sun, and dew upon the leaves.Please don't do it for all of them please don't do it for every single guy please OH GODDAMN IT
He kissed me , delicate as a snowflake, melting on my tongue. It was as if winter had a taste. Not just the crispness of the air with snow on the ground, but as if my tongue licked along some smooth, cold icicle, and snow filled my mouth, and melted down my throat like the sweetest of snow cones. He melted down my throat, and when his mouth moved back from mine, our breaths fogged in the air between us. I realized I could breathe and the sharpest of the pain was gone.Kitto declares that she has come back from the Summerlands with "the kiss of birds" within her, which makes NO FUCKING SENSE but it's all we've got to work with.
It continues with utterly gruesome descriptions of what Andais did to the men, and pretty pony princess descriptions of what they all taste like. And once again it's that whole "I'm the only good woman around" thing that LKH does so much, turned all the way up to eleven.
And then the Queen wakes up and demands that Merry heal Eamon and Tyler, the two guys she was tuning up at the start of this section. Because she feels oh, so guilty. So she demands Merry--who has many broken bones from...something---get up, walk over to her, and kiss Andais's boyfriends.
And then before any more kissing the Queen says that she was poisoned by one of Cel's guards. Basically, they gave her magic PCP. Everybody whistles.Andais touches Merry. The God talks to Merry and tells her, basically, that Andais is infertile, which we knew all the way back in book one.
And then Merry and Andais make out.
The press of her lips was like touching the skin of some delectable fruit, where the skin lies thin and ripe against your mouth. The scent of ripe plums filled my senses as if I could drink it out of the very air, or sip it from her lips. My mouth was pressed to hers , and I opened to it as if I would take a bite from the ripeness of her mouth.And this would be awesome...if Merry didn't make it very clear that it's the God riding her, and the God making her make out with Andais.
Several pages later, everybody is healed from the magical make-out session, and Andais threatens to rape Merry.
She cocked her head to one side like a hawk that’s spied a mouse. “Reminding me that you are my niece will not keep you out of my bed, Meredith. We are like most deities, we often intermarry, or interfuck.”
Annnnnd then we get the single most disturbing part of this entire clusterfuck, at least for me:
I’d have been a lot happier to accompany her to the throne room if she hadn’t kept touching me. It wasn’t so much a lover’s touch, but almost like you’d pet a dog. Something you stroke for comfort, and because it can’t say no.That's not cool, but that's the end of the chapter and I don't have to deal with it any more.
GOD I do not like this book.
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