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Danse Macabre, Chapter Four
CN: Anita Blake book, jealousy, bad French, inhospitality
The Three Stooges and Graham go inside, where another bodyguard, Clay, is looking worried. Graham deploys his "mantle of bodyguardness." And there's this:
Clay shook his head. "Jean-Claude isn't with you?" His tone of voice made it a half question. (31)
Why is that only a half question? It sounds like a complete question to me.
Clay's worried because there are a bunch of guests in the room but no hosts, and the bodyguards "aren't even allowed to offer refreshments without one of the dominants being present." That is one of the most ridiculous, unworkable ways to structure your society I have ever heard of. It goes against every rule of hospitality and just plain common sense. If vampire/werewolf society has to be more structured and formal than human society because it's so much more dangerous, they'd be a lot more ready with refreshments than our society is. This is the kind of culture in which not offering refreshments immediately should be a deadly insult.
We get a full paragraph on Clay's appearance. Vital, I'm sure.
Clay says, "stupid... but yeah, I think the evening is starting off badly." He doesn't mean it's stupid not to provide refreshments for guests; he means it's stupid that he's worried about being inhospitable. Then he says that the men are behaving, but the women are not. Of course.
Jean-Claude isn't here because Meng Die acted up, so Asher (another vampire whom we'll get to later) had to call JC away from the party. I guess LKH must have told us that last chapter, but I don't remember it buried under the pissing match and physical descriptions. Anita could communicate telepathically with JC through the "vampire marks" he inflicted on her, but he warned her not to do that while the guest vampires were in town, because they might be able to read them. So, okay, how about a phone call? If it's before the time of cell phones, go use the phone in JC's office or one of the pay phones inside and/or outside the club.
Micah figures out that Anita's worried about JC without her saying anything. She gets pissy about this. "He raised his eyebrows, and shrugged, as if, sorry" (32). I'm probably going to make a couple comma errors just in this post, but wow. Oh, and Jean-Claude and Anita raped Clay -- and Graham? It sounds like both of them, but I thought she didn't have sex with Graham. Maybe "sleep" isn't a euphemism here, and they just hung out in Anita's bed? Clay says, "Jean-Claude rips us out of her [Meng-Die's] bed, forces us to sleep with you, and she's cool about it." Clay's in love with Meng Die, by the way. Meng Die is incredibly upset about Requiem dumping her.
Anita claims that Meng Die is angry about Requiem because his leaving her hurt her pride. No one considers that maybe she's angry because his leaving her broke her heart. But she's a woman who isn't Anita in an Anita Blake book, so of course she doesn't have a heart. However, from a non-meta viewpoint, if I'm a woman anywhere near Anita Blake, I'm getting the hell away from her as fast as I can. She sounds like a backstabber, like one of those women who tries to make herself look better by putting other women down.
Clay doesn't like to touch Anita. Anita thinks it's because he's scared of the ardeur. I think it's because she helped rape him or he was scared she was going to rape him or, at the least, that he was ripped away from the woman he loves and forced into Anita's bed. To-mate-oh, to-maht-oh.
It takes both her fellow Stooges to get Anita into her high heels. Strong, independent female character!
Anita needs a new pomme de sang and refused to choose anyone in St. Louis, so Elinore ("one of our new British vamps") had the idea to hold a contest between Masters from all over the U.S., since they're here for this party anyway. So they're all bringing candidates. It sounds like a Cinderella-type story, with Anita as Princess Charming, and that could be a good basis for an erotic novel. I think that was LKH's original idea. Unfortunately, what we get is not that.
Everyone wants to be connected to Anita because Jean-Claude is powerful enough to start his own bloodline, "sourdre de sang", supposedly literally "fountain of blood"*. Why are all these terms French? Vampires have been around longer than the French language in the AB world, haven't they? Shouldn't these terms be in Aramaic or Hebrew or Ancient Egyptian or Babylonian or an ancient language from what is now China or something? Latin, even? If it makes sense for them to be in a more modern language, why French? Why not a mishmash of different languages?
Hah, LKH brings up the Cinderella comparison on page 34. It's too bad she didn't follow a Cinderella plot much more strictly. I'd give LKH points for having one of the dudes drive up in a pumpkin. Anita's worried, as she should be.
It was a problem that only diplomacy, witty banter, and sly sedcution could manuevuer us through. (34)
Those aren't my typos. They're in the book. LKH tends not to give her editors any time to do their jobs, but I'm surprised she doesn't at least run her writing through spellcheck before sending it off. I wonder if this was fixed in the paperback version.
We end the chapter with the Three Stooges about to walk into the room with the four scary guests. Ooh, suspense.
*It's not. Sourdre is a verb meaning "to seep" or "to well up". The literal translation of "sourdre de sang" is "to seep of blood", except a literal translation of it doesn't work. It's like trying to divide by zero.
The Three Stooges and Graham go inside, where another bodyguard, Clay, is looking worried. Graham deploys his "mantle of bodyguardness." And there's this:
Clay shook his head. "Jean-Claude isn't with you?" His tone of voice made it a half question. (31)
Why is that only a half question? It sounds like a complete question to me.
Clay's worried because there are a bunch of guests in the room but no hosts, and the bodyguards "aren't even allowed to offer refreshments without one of the dominants being present." That is one of the most ridiculous, unworkable ways to structure your society I have ever heard of. It goes against every rule of hospitality and just plain common sense. If vampire/werewolf society has to be more structured and formal than human society because it's so much more dangerous, they'd be a lot more ready with refreshments than our society is. This is the kind of culture in which not offering refreshments immediately should be a deadly insult.
We get a full paragraph on Clay's appearance. Vital, I'm sure.
Clay says, "stupid... but yeah, I think the evening is starting off badly." He doesn't mean it's stupid not to provide refreshments for guests; he means it's stupid that he's worried about being inhospitable. Then he says that the men are behaving, but the women are not. Of course.
Jean-Claude isn't here because Meng Die acted up, so Asher (another vampire whom we'll get to later) had to call JC away from the party. I guess LKH must have told us that last chapter, but I don't remember it buried under the pissing match and physical descriptions. Anita could communicate telepathically with JC through the "vampire marks" he inflicted on her, but he warned her not to do that while the guest vampires were in town, because they might be able to read them. So, okay, how about a phone call? If it's before the time of cell phones, go use the phone in JC's office or one of the pay phones inside and/or outside the club.
Micah figures out that Anita's worried about JC without her saying anything. She gets pissy about this. "He raised his eyebrows, and shrugged, as if, sorry" (32). I'm probably going to make a couple comma errors just in this post, but wow. Oh, and Jean-Claude and Anita raped Clay -- and Graham? It sounds like both of them, but I thought she didn't have sex with Graham. Maybe "sleep" isn't a euphemism here, and they just hung out in Anita's bed? Clay says, "Jean-Claude rips us out of her [Meng-Die's] bed, forces us to sleep with you, and she's cool about it." Clay's in love with Meng Die, by the way. Meng Die is incredibly upset about Requiem dumping her.
Anita claims that Meng Die is angry about Requiem because his leaving her hurt her pride. No one considers that maybe she's angry because his leaving her broke her heart. But she's a woman who isn't Anita in an Anita Blake book, so of course she doesn't have a heart. However, from a non-meta viewpoint, if I'm a woman anywhere near Anita Blake, I'm getting the hell away from her as fast as I can. She sounds like a backstabber, like one of those women who tries to make herself look better by putting other women down.
Clay doesn't like to touch Anita. Anita thinks it's because he's scared of the ardeur. I think it's because she helped rape him or he was scared she was going to rape him or, at the least, that he was ripped away from the woman he loves and forced into Anita's bed. To-mate-oh, to-maht-oh.
It takes both her fellow Stooges to get Anita into her high heels. Strong, independent female character!
Anita needs a new pomme de sang and refused to choose anyone in St. Louis, so Elinore ("one of our new British vamps") had the idea to hold a contest between Masters from all over the U.S., since they're here for this party anyway. So they're all bringing candidates. It sounds like a Cinderella-type story, with Anita as Princess Charming, and that could be a good basis for an erotic novel. I think that was LKH's original idea. Unfortunately, what we get is not that.
Everyone wants to be connected to Anita because Jean-Claude is powerful enough to start his own bloodline, "sourdre de sang", supposedly literally "fountain of blood"*. Why are all these terms French? Vampires have been around longer than the French language in the AB world, haven't they? Shouldn't these terms be in Aramaic or Hebrew or Ancient Egyptian or Babylonian or an ancient language from what is now China or something? Latin, even? If it makes sense for them to be in a more modern language, why French? Why not a mishmash of different languages?
Hah, LKH brings up the Cinderella comparison on page 34. It's too bad she didn't follow a Cinderella plot much more strictly. I'd give LKH points for having one of the dudes drive up in a pumpkin. Anita's worried, as she should be.
It was a problem that only diplomacy, witty banter, and sly sedcution could manuevuer us through. (34)
Those aren't my typos. They're in the book. LKH tends not to give her editors any time to do their jobs, but I'm surprised she doesn't at least run her writing through spellcheck before sending it off. I wonder if this was fixed in the paperback version.
We end the chapter with the Three Stooges about to walk into the room with the four scary guests. Ooh, suspense.
*It's not. Sourdre is a verb meaning "to seep" or "to well up". The literal translation of "sourdre de sang" is "to seep of blood", except a literal translation of it doesn't work. It's like trying to divide by zero.
Bad French
(Anonymous) 2013-10-23 06:42 pm (UTC)(link)I don't know that Hamilton is aware of this, and I agree that a lot of her French terms are very bad translations-like Mort d'Amor for Lover of Death, for instance. Also, Hamilton appears to think of Europe as mostly France, plus possibly sometimes Scandinavian countries or Aryan enclaves somewhere. Germany, Great Britain most of the time, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, the Balkans don't come into it at all.
Re: Bad French
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-10-24 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)I care less about that per se than about the fact that the French itself makes me wince, at this far remove from my having learned some. Get someone to vet it if you don't know the language.
But what's troubling in general in-universe is the fact that Hamilton maintains that no one in law enforcement or in the general public has any understanding of how to deal with vampires and weres, there's only bad anecdotal information out there, and someone with a B.S. in preternatural biology is the only expert out there. The only one. The best. If you can get a degree in it, there are other people out there who know the field. Does not compute.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-10-24 05:53 pm (UTC)(link)I don't know that I buy that the council has existed from ancient(in human terms) times-that's not the impression I had, but I'm thinking mostly about the earlier books here-nor that there were a large number of vampires visible to the general population. We're also talking about times in which news was very localized. That the MOAD and Mr. Oliver were out there long before others decided they needed to police themselves is fine with me.