And went red…
We also went to the JFVS Book Sale… where we were told in the last hour that books were $10… per box. I will valiantly try to both read everything I got and list it for my august Book Buying project, but I’m not even going to try to add in all the kids books and the nonfiction stuff that Jason got.
Though it starts with an immediate problem Danse Macabre in a matter of paragraphs seems to let all the tension leech out of the possibility of Anita Blake being pregnant. First Anita and her friend Ronnie have a fight about abortions (Anita is pro-life and pro-choice, Ronnie is downright evil in her suggestions that Anita shouldn’t carry the child to term), then Anita gives feeble excuse after excuse not to take a test and be done with the problem, and by the next page Ronnie has started another fight which ends with her admitting that she’s just arguing with Anita in the first place because she’s jealous of Anita’s ever expanding harem of men.
Feeling like the whole scene is the author’s intrusive message to non-fans and the tension flat from Anita’s unbelievable excuses not to take a damn pregnancy test and move on to other things I nearly gave up a mere nine pages in.
At some point in this series action has become stagnant drama and once strong, interesting characters who brought conflict and passion to the stories have become nothing more than outside voices meant only to support, agree with, or have sex with Anita. Case and point: at the beginning of the third chapter Anita and her two live ins can’t even get through a door without a battle of the wills, dominance challenges and a wasteful show of magic. Hamilton also shatters her own world rules willy-nilly leaving the reader feeling less like some great challenge has occurred and been overcome and more like Hamilton has just kept many things from the reader only to reveal them when there’s a dark corner or back alley in which she hasn’t thought of a logical way out. Directly from the prose:
“You can’t carry more than one (form of shape shifting) disease at a time, but I did. A medical impossibility, but blood tests don’t lie. I carried wolf, leopard, lion, and one mystery strain that the doctors couldn’t identify running through my veins.”
So even though she spent six plus books swearing up and down that it was impossible, somehow for Anita is is possible and all without the mess and rules of shape shifting too. By the way Anita is also already a necromancer, magically joined to a werewolf, magical joined to a vampire (and she has powers that only old master vampires can have too), magical joined to several leopards and who knows what else.
Most irritating of all not only is there not a clear end after 560 pages, but Anita is wrathful and eager to punish the whole of the werelions because their king refuses to break his marriage vows and have sex (to save the vampires of course) with her. This, combined with the overwhelming diatribes of how much Anita loves her men, and how people who disagree with her are just jealous( not just Ronnie, but all detractors are portrayed as “jealous” and “petty”), is a massive smack in the face to readers and fans who value monogamy and loyalty. I can’t help but feel that Hamilton’s authorial intrudes are all an attempt to genuinely attack her readers, a feeling I’ve never before had when reading a fiction novel.
In short the actual plot is so buried beneath back story, explanations of the rules and why they don’t apply to Anita, pointless shows of magic and silly dominance challenges and sex scenes that I cannot tell you exactly what it was supposed to be anymore. There’s no longer any passion or connection with these hollow characters, all of who sound more and more like extensions of Anita by the book. The tension is momentary and fleeting, giving the whole book a stodgy, weighed down feeling. And the author intrusions are rampant, eliminating any real flow or meaning to the tale, making it read instead like a vehicle for the author’s defensiveness.
I found myself skipping sections of sex and proto-violence in an effort to just enjoy the story, forcing myself to continue long after I wanted to give up and move on to something I might actually enjoy. The book very nearly got flung into the walls a few times and was closed a put aside often so I could let my temper cool down. I do not intend to try to battle my way through another Anita Blake book, and I am forced to officially give Danse Macabre BookLove’s first “Do Not Finish” tag.
Review of Part One
Review of Part Two
Review of Part Three
Review of Part Four
Part 5: Revelations, is a disappointing end to the Losing Latitude tale, mostly because it’s not an end at all. Like the four parts before it this one features Buck and Lilly. The former is a young adult running from his past. The later, a woman freed from her parents, after long last and through tragedy. We also revisit October, Nina, Rufus and learn of even more players coming to light.
In fact this installment is so packed full of expansion and plot building that it’s impossible to accept the scripted “The End” on the last page. With Lilly just getting out of the naval hospital where she’s spent nearly the whole story, and Buck just now finding something and someone he cares about enough to stop running away from all his problems, the story is prepared to do so much more. We finally see a bad guy, other than the nameless demon that Buck claims is pursuing him. We finally know the extent and “rules” of the paranormal aspects of the book and everything seems to be poised to come together, or clash as a climax should.
Except that’s where this story ends, flat on its face with the truly exciting and satisfactory bits just out of reach.
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Carnivorous
By Michele Lee
Ty Merrick isn’t exactly a good person. She’s more likely to steal evidence from crime scenes than bag it, she complains (a lot) and seems to have a serious grudge against the world. She’s also not exactly a lycanthrope, but one day after falling unconscious from carbon monoxide poisoning she wakes up and something has changed…