Danse Macabre, Chapter 7, Part 2

[lliira]

 

CN: Anita Blake book, treating people like food 

Picking up where we left off on page 62, Anita is telling Auggie that if he wants a woman of Belle's* line, he'll have to court them, as JC isn't going to make anyone have sex against their will. This no-rape policy will last for about eight pages.

Now for some fun with repetition. Each of the following starts a new paragraph at the bottom of page 62. Most are one-line paragraphs; one is just over two.

“Are you saying I need a woman's touch?”
“Yeah, and...”
“Are you saying I have to court them?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I am.”
“And Jean-Claude...”
I nodded...

I'm kind of impressed. It makes sense that someone who can silence her inner critic to the extent of being able to write like that is so prolific. Too bad she publishes her first drafts.

Auggie changes the subject to pimping fuckbuddies to Anita. The following is the worst “treating people like food” bit yet in the books, and I have to quote it to show how bad it is. It made me lose my appetite, so be warned:

“Taste Haven,” Auggie said. “If you don't like him, then I'm going to have to send home for some less dominant take-out” (63).

Haven kneels in front of Anita and she notices that he's not much shorter than her, even kneeling. Anita is 5'3. I did a quick experiment with my husband. He's 5'10 and I'm 5'8, and when he kneels in front of me, he comes up to my chest. If I were 5'3 he'd only be a little over a head shorter than me while kneeling. I think we're supposed to be astounded at how huge Haven is, but it sounds to me like he's around 6'4 which, while tall, is not OMG GIANT MAN. 

There are multiple paragraphs dealing with Haven's French-cuffed shirt with cufflinks. I had to look up “French-cuffed shirt”, as I'd never heard the term before. They do not look any more difficult to unhook than barrel cuffs, and I wonder if LKH was thinking about Portofino cuffs. Anyway, there is a reason most writers don't go into minute detail about getting people's clothes off. It's boring. It took Anita about three times longer to describe and gripe about the French cuffs than it would have taken her to unbutton the things – or, here's a weird idea, ask Haven to unbutton them himself. 

Haven starts to show a bit of annoyance with Anita underneath his laughing suavity. Anita approves of this. “I liked truth, most of the time.” Wait, what? Most of the time? I don't know what to think about this. Is Anita a straightforward badass without a deceptive bone in her body or not? Well, not, but I thought that LKH thought she was. This throwaway line makes me wonder, though.

After all the French cuff nonsense, Anita decides to go for Haven's neck instead. He hasn't suggested this to her, and while he gave her his hand, he did not proffer his neck. I think this is why she's going for his neck. It's because he's fine with her smelling (or whatever) his wrist, but has not shown that he's fine with her doing whatever to his neck. Anita does not want to do things to people that they consent to. So she goes to sniff his neck and loses control, because when Anita is turned on, she just can't help herself. Ugggghhhhh.

Oh goody, sexy times. Supposedly. Actually it's a mixture of disturbing, dull, and confusing. I don't know where to start. Okay, simplest problems first. Haven smells warm. Does Anita have synesthesia? He's wearing a “powdery sweet cologne” (64), and that does not work for this character at all. He should be wearing something musky. I would also accept spicy or clean. Not powdery or sweet by any stretch of the imagination. 

Haven also has a “musky hint of cat. Cleaner, less sharp than leopard.” Lions smell cleaner than leopards, I guess? “But definitely cat, not wolf, not dog.” Thanks for clearing that up, Anita.

Then, I am not kidding, Haven grabs Anita and starts to knead her. Like a housecat. And he whispers, “Oh, God.” All this from her lips barely touching his neck. Anita is just that sexy, she can get a guy to start acting like he's actually having sex with her from barely touching him. Plus the kneading.

Are we all being trolled? HE IS KNEADING HER. I'm surprised he's not purring. Does LKH have any idea why cats knead? It's not sexual. They do it when they're kittens in order to get their mothers to produce more milk, then they keep doing it as a comfort thing when they're older. And I am a cat person to the nth power, but I have never seen a grown cat knead another cat, not even when we had cats who were completely in love with each other. 

Now that knead no longer looks like a word, back to the so-called action of the book. Anita can smell Haven's blood and she licks his neck. Just a big ol' lick. Ew. Also she wants to murder him. “I needed to taste his pulse, feel it quiver between my teeth until it burst hot and scalding in my mouth.” I don't understand why Anita is a vampire here. 

Micah reads Anita's mind I guess, because he's suddenly there, smelling like leopard, telling her not to do “this”. He tells her to let Haven go, and she refuses, as she has the impulse control of a 2-year old. She thinks of Haven as “pulsing candy”. God this is gross. Graham tries to block her from Haven as well, but she doesn't want his wolf smell. Then Nathaniel comes along, smelling like vanilla, and she doesn't want that either.

Haven smells like lion, as he is a werelion. Micah smells like leopard, as he is a wereleopard. Graham smells like wolf, as he is a werewolf. Nathaniel smells like vanilla, as he is a wereorchid. 

Anita goes to bite Haven, but “two things happened simultaneously”. Okay then Anita, why don't you tell us what those two things are, rather than informing us that things happened first? This reminds me of Bella telling us that she's thinking but not what she's thinking. Thankfully, LKH isn't quite that ridiculous. Someone grabs Anita's hair and “a wrist I didn't know well was suddenly in my face.” 

Joseph has teleported in, and says that if Anita wants lion, “here I am” (65). Haven goes apeshit, clinging to Anita and yelling that she's his. Anita follows Joseph's scent away from Haven, and Haven attacks Joseph. Anita muses that “Joseph had saved me, from something, something...”

Yeah, he saved you from trying to murder someone, and you later repay him by murdering him and his entire family because he won't fuck you.

My husband recently finished the second Anita Blake book. In that, the villain predicts that someday, Anita will want power. There is also a villain in another book who warns Anita that if she kills her, she will become her. Those predictions have come true, and one can trace Anita's moral degradation throughout the series. But we're supposed to think Anita's a good person, the best person in fact. And yet, part of me wonders – are we?  

So Joseph beats the crap out of Haven with so little effort that we don't even see it. LKH spent as much time on those stupid French cuffs as on this fight. Haven attacks Joseph, Joseph throws Haven across the room, and that's that. Haven's a heap on the floor while the only harm Joseph suffers is to his shirt. 

Auggie tells Joseph that he is the master here, in a voice that is “intimate, soft, and thunderous all at once”. I can't imagine this. Joseph, who seems to be in the middle of changing shape, says that he's the Rex of the St. Louis pride, and finds the lions Auggie's brought wanting. If LKH is basing this on actual lions, it should be women finding the outside male werelions wanting. I don't understand LKH's weregroups. They're supposedly very like the animals they're based on, but in practice they're almost all strictly male-led and utterly ridiculous. 

Something else I don't understand: why can vampires control weres so easily? Why can they control weres at all? That's what happens next, as Auggie forces Joseph entirely into his human shape. Anita and the rest stand there watching until Auggie tries to get Joseph to kneel and crawl to him. Then, FINALLY, Anita intervenes. Which sounds a lot better than it is. It's a pissing contest between her and Auggie. Auggie says he won't respect her treaty with the St. Louis werelions because she's only a human servant, and she's angry with him for what he did to Joseph. Still, at least she is trying to do the right thing here.

Nathaniel, Graham, and Micah all come to support Anita as Auggie tries to do something to her metaphysically. I don't know what. Knock her over, I guess. Anita's afraid she won't be strong enough and that she'll lose St. Louis for JC. I wish I understood any of this, but it all looks like a bunch of bullshit to me. Why would they lose the city if Auggie could knock Anita over with this metaphysical mumbo jumbo? Or even if he could knock over JC? Leadership is not decided through fistfights, so why should it be decided through metaphysical whatsits? Also, where are Thea and Samuel and their sons in all this? 

Anita does stand up on her own, not needing Micah et al, and decides to use her necromancy to save the day. It's a potentially cool moment. However, Anita just waves the necromancy and Auggie and his servant back off. Nothing happens. It's like Dragonball Z. Anita's gone Super Saiyan and her enemies are staring at her in awe but no fighting is actually happening. Nor is politics or logic or emotion or anything else of any interest. Only nattering.

Finally, Anita and Auggie play red light green light with each other. Anita calls Auggie and it sort of works, he resists, Anita says she'll meet him halfway, and there's this huge power struggle about meeting each other in the middle of the room. Then Auggie grabs Anita and rips her control away to bring the ardeur. “He could do what he'd wanted to all along, and Jean-Claude couldn't even get mad” (70).

What? Jean-Claude can't get mad about Auggie raping his human servant? Why not? This is supposed to show us how devious Auggie is, figuring out how to fuck someone who has the ardeur without giving anything up himself, but it makes no sense. This whole chapter, Anita has repeated over and over that JC will not force anyone to have sex or allow Auggie to do so. 

It doesn't help that the stakes are so small. Auggie's doing all of this so that he can have sex with and/or rape an ardeur-bearing person. That's it. I'm supposed to think this is a strong, intimidating, intelligent, devious Master Vampire who controls Chicago? He's pathetic! He's like a small time drug dealer/pimp. Yeah, they can do tons of damage, but characters like that are low-level mooks in stories for a reason. This is not a satisfying boss.

Speaking of unsatisfying, the next chapter is all sex.

 

*Anyone else find it an interesting coincidence that LKH came up with a pale tiny female vampire named Belle years before Bella Swan sprung out of Stephenie Meyer's skull? There's also an important asshole character named Edward in both writers' books. Hrm.

 

 

 

Comments

[lliira]

Yeah, I've heard the DBZ manga is better than the anime. I've only seen parts of the anime, too, though all the fights I saw were dick-wagging contests. Or hair-wagging contests: he with the biggest, most neon hair wins!

I was wrong about it being a sex scene next -- what comes next is actually the weirdest excuse for foreplay I've ever read.