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Danse Macabre, Chapter 21
CN: Anita Blake book (nothing really offensive this time except very bad writing)
This is around the fourth time I've tried to start this post. That's because this chapter is... wtf. What the ever loving fuck. It's actually not particularly offensive from a moral standpoint this time, unless you consider lazy writing for which people are expected to pay money to be morally bad, which I do. You know how in first drafts, lots of people write unrelated scenes with plans to link them up in the second draft? This is what LKH did here, but she never linked them up. Also, I think it's the worst chunk of writing yet, purely from a style standpoint. It's just plain bad.
So we have Anita lying in bed with the men she has just fucked (though I don't think Micah orgasmed), and Marmee Noir, the biggest baddest vampire of them all, suddenly invades her psyche cuz um why not. Why not throw yet another plot thread into this mess. Anita's pregnant, there's a mermaid-siren who'll fuck her own sons if Anita doesn't, a man tried to rape Anita but she raped his people instead, her relationship with Richard is a disaster, Anita needs a new pomme de sang, there's a vampire ballet because vampires have never been able to be artists before...
That last point should have been the main plot, imo, and Anita looking for a new pomme de sang could be a subplot. Richard shouldn't have been here at all, though fighting him has taken up the most space so far. Actually, that was tied in with Anita's pregnancy, so maybe the pregnancy has gotten the most space throughout the entire novel. So the plot of the novel seems to be that Anita's pregnant and isn't getting along with Richard, and all this stuff about vampires is a distraction.
The chapter starts with everyone cuddling. In an 11-line paragraph, which is long for her, LKH uses variations of either the word "cuddle" or "curve" in every sentence. Then we are informed that when they "die" for the day, vampires lose heat faster than dead humans, and Anita doesn't know why. Thanks so much for that useless factoid, Anita.
Everyone's all cuddled and curved against each other and playing with each other's hair (of fucking course), but I don't get a sense of warmth and love from them. Anita tells us, "I'd had worse nights." (190) I guess that's her way of saying she's happy? I don't know. Her boytoys manipulated her into having horrible sex. So yeah, she's had worse nights, but this one's pretty terrible.
Anita falls asleep, and the next sentence has her "instantly awake." There's no flow at all, so it seems like she was asleep for as long as it took me to get from one sentence to the next. "I didn't know what had woken me, but it was something bad." That sentence is embarrassing. See Anita wake up. See Anita see something bad. Run, Anita, run.
Anita looks around and can't see anything even though JC leaves the light in the bathroom on for Anita, Nathaniel, and Micah when they sleep over. JC leaves the light on for them. I -- GOD SO EMBARASSED. There's nothing wrong with wanting a nightlight, but Anita is supposed to be such a badass and she is afraid of the dark when she sleeps over at a lover's house that is filled with bodyguards. This could be handled well, but instead it's not handled at all. Oh and also, Anita said she woke up in "pitch black."
JC's dead, and Anita says, "dawn had come and gone, and taken him from me again." (191) That attempt at poetry also embarrasses me. It doesn't sound like Anita at all. And he's going to come back at night, Anita. She has no object permanence.
Anita can't wake her mens and plans to scream. She doesn't seem to care about not being able to wake her mens; she simply tells us that she can't in a remote way. The style of a couple of paragraphs on top of page 191 is very Twilight-esque, btw. It's that bad.
The entity that's done this speaks in Anita's mind, telling her not to scream. It's Marmee Noir, the Mother of All Darkness, and I have to say: I think that name is stupid. Both variations, though Mother of All Darkness is worse. "Marmee Noir" shows how much LKH was influenced by New Orleans native Anne Rice. "Mother of All Darkness" shows how much LKH is a barely pubescent fanficcer at heart.
"The last time I'd seen her in a dream she'd been as big as the ocean, as black as the space between the stars." Hm, not bad. "She'd scared the shit out of me." Bad, because first, it's unecessary, and as such, takes away from the previous well-done sentence. Second, the tone is completely different from that of the last sentence. LKH doesn't give Anita a consistent character voice. We did not need to be told the MOAD scared Anita; it's obvious from that description about her being this huge blank thing.
Anita is wondering if this is real or a dream. She thinks they are in "deep, deep shit" if it's real (why?) and that "if it was a dream, then I'd had powerful vamps invade my dreams before." What? That sentence doesn't even make any sense! IF this is a dream, THEN powerful vampires have invaded your dreams before? If it's NOT a dream, then powerful vampires have NOT invaded your dreams? And if this is someone invading your dreams, it's still real. And comparing the progenitor of all vampires, the being who is supposed to be this massive elemental force with godly powers, to other "powerful vampires" diminishes her threat. It's like comparing Cthulhu to Darth Vader.
Anita doesn't like being "naked" in front of Marmee Noir. I'm going to add this to my evidence that LKH thinks "nude" means "wearing no clothes," but "naked" means "wearing no clothes and being helpless." Anita wishes she had a "gown", and is suddenly in a white silk nightgown. Um, what? Wishing for this is completely against Anita's supposed stone cold badass one-of-the-guys personality. Again, LKH cannot give Anita consistent characterization. I'm inordinately fond of long white silk nightgowns myself, but in a situation like this I'd wish I had some body armor, not a damn gown. And, unlike Anita, I don't think traditionally feminine things like white silk nightgowns are bad.
Anita realizes this is a dream, then asks the MOAD why she's here. The MOAD replies that Anita interests her. I guess Anita's gotten evil enough to attract even the queen of the vampires now. The MOAD informs Anita that soon, the MOAD will wake from her coma or whatever. Anita says, "I was suddenly cold down to my toes." (192) I am fascinated by the fact that LKH manages to get literally everything wrong. Toes are normally a relatively cold part of one's body. If she said she was cold through to her gut, that would mean something. But having cold toes at night? Big fucking whoop. Oooh, the MOAD can make people's toes cold, how frightening.
The MOAD says she needs someone to wake her after her "long nap." FFS, even she is twee. She and Anita speak to each other in simple sentences, with the MOAD informing Anita that until JC gives her the fourth mark, another vampire can take her away. This shouldn't matter to the MOAD; she should be able to slice through every vampire mark of any vampire without trying. The MOAD then says she's "lost the knack of being human," and I wonder when she was ever human, and why she should care. Then she asks Anita if she should show her true form. Anita can't decide. The MOAD asks, "then what do you want?" Anita thinks that she needs JC to help her answer, and says, "I don't know how to answer that question."
The MOAD says of course Anita knows how to answer the question, and Anita says she wants the MOAD to go away. As I've suspected, Anita does have desires and does want things, but she feels much more comfy with some man telling her what to do and speaking for her. Then she can be a "good girl." She has to have her back to the wall to say what she wants herself. The MOAD sure is evil and powerful; she forces Anita to actually admit to having desires.
The MOAD shows her true form, and it is underwhelming, to say the least. To sum up a bunch of attempted purple prose in which the word "dark" is repeated so many times it no longer looks like a word: she looks like a moonless summer night. Oh how scary. Anita says, "you don't want the dark to be able to think, because it won't think anything you want to know." (193) I used to run around alone on summer nights as a teenager. I am not scared of the dark. There are things in the dark that can be scary, but I enjoy the dark itself. I'm a night person. LKH is obviously not. I do not appreciate her informing me what I don't want. "I am Nut, and I have come so that I may enfold and protect you from all things evil."
Anita refers to "the cold twinkling of stars, beautiful and deadly." Christ, the woman's afraid of stars too.
Anita tries to call JC, Micah, and Nathaniel, but the MOAD has severed her link to JC (yay!), and since the MOAD's animals are cats, she can control Micah and Nathaniel through their wereleopardosity. Which means the only person who can save Anita from the darkness (she can't save herself, don't be silly)... is werewolf Richard.
Ack. I am so embarrassed. LKH needs to stop spitting up her subconscious on the page.
Oh, Jason the werewolf's in there too. But Jason hasn't been in this book until now, and he's basically a smutty cipher. Richard is a central character in the books, and he's the important one here. He's the one who can save Anita from the forces of darkness when the men she just banged (badly) cannot. I can't say anything about this other than *flail*.
Okay, I'll try. Over 25% of this book so far has consisted of Anita fighting obnoxiously with Richard. She may be pregnant with Richard's baby. She shoved Richard away to have sex with other men, but in a time of crisis against the biggest bad of them all, those other men are completely useless. Only thoughts of Richard can save Anita. The only man Anita trusts is Richard. Monogamous Richard. Boy scout Richard. The man who insists on clinging to his humanity and living in the civilized world, tries to be moral, is angry about JC and Anita raping people, and thinks Nathaniel is a joke.
If you're gonna put symbolic dreams in your book, Ms. Hamilton, be sure they're not symbolizing things you don't want known.
Anita thinks that, basically, she no longer needs a werewolf near her to summon her own wolf. I'm annoyed that she ever needed to be near a man she was fucking to call her own wolf in the first place, but at least she's made progress here. "[W]e'd grown closer now, my wolf and I, and it came." (193) After the last chapter, that's really unfortunate phrasing. I now think that the MOAD is going to be defeated by wolf orgasms. Anita pictures her wolf as separate from herself, is able to put her fingers in its fur, etc. Blah. I know this is a dream, but she has a wolf because she's infected with lycanthropy. The "wolf" is inside of her, part of her, not a pet that's entirely separate from her.
Dreams don't have to make sense, but writing does. A magic system doesn't have to be fully explained, but it has to be internally consistent and have some kind of framework. LKH instead goes the route of having anything happen she pleases whenever she wants, which is lazy and self-indulgent.
Touching this external wolf (grr) pushes Marmee Noir away. "It wasn't Richard's wolf, it was mine. Not his beast, but mine." Anita sounds like a toddler having a temper tantrum. MINE MINE MINE. I guess LKH is going for the traditional empowered heroine schtick, which is a good thing to go for, but she fails miserably because Anita is an atrocious person and Richard is not. This works when the heroine learns magic from the evil wizard who has imprisoned her and turns it against him. Not when -- well, this.
Anita hears "a sound like a thousand screams." (194) She thinks of this as "eons of victims." I looked up "eon", because I thought of it as an incredibly long period of time (that is also usually spelled "aeon"), and found out a few things. It has a specific definition in astronomy: a billion years. Otherwise, it generally means a super-long undefined amount of time. Some people apparently define it as only 1000 years. Still, in this context, I keep thinking "with strange aeons, even death may die." In that context, I don't know if the MOAD has even been around for one aeon. Any modern writer of horror/fantasy/whatever LKH writes should have enough of an acquaintance with her forebears to know that famous quote. This whole chapter has been so strange, and so very poorly written, with such terrible attempts at purple prose, I think LKH was intentionally trying to call back to H.P. Lovecraft and failing miserably. Intentional or not, putting the word "eon" in there when attempting to describe an eldritch horror is only going to remind readers of Lovecraft.
The wolf jumps at the MOAD and Anita feels it tear flesh. Argh. What. Look. No. Psychological dreamland villain made of pure darkness + a wolf biting said villain and tearing her flesh = error, does not compute. Then somehow Anita sees the MOAD's real body jerk in her coffin, wherever it is, and I am annoyed that we're supposed to think this is her real body when she can become an ocean of nothingness. Then the MOAD breathes "necromancer", just like Thea breathed "succubus." Anita wakes screaming.
That -- that was -- oh my god it was so bad. The writing was SO BAD, you have no idea. What did words ever do to you, LKH, that you feel the need to punish them so?
This is around the fourth time I've tried to start this post. That's because this chapter is... wtf. What the ever loving fuck. It's actually not particularly offensive from a moral standpoint this time, unless you consider lazy writing for which people are expected to pay money to be morally bad, which I do. You know how in first drafts, lots of people write unrelated scenes with plans to link them up in the second draft? This is what LKH did here, but she never linked them up. Also, I think it's the worst chunk of writing yet, purely from a style standpoint. It's just plain bad.
So we have Anita lying in bed with the men she has just fucked (though I don't think Micah orgasmed), and Marmee Noir, the biggest baddest vampire of them all, suddenly invades her psyche cuz um why not. Why not throw yet another plot thread into this mess. Anita's pregnant, there's a mermaid-siren who'll fuck her own sons if Anita doesn't, a man tried to rape Anita but she raped his people instead, her relationship with Richard is a disaster, Anita needs a new pomme de sang, there's a vampire ballet because vampires have never been able to be artists before...
That last point should have been the main plot, imo, and Anita looking for a new pomme de sang could be a subplot. Richard shouldn't have been here at all, though fighting him has taken up the most space so far. Actually, that was tied in with Anita's pregnancy, so maybe the pregnancy has gotten the most space throughout the entire novel. So the plot of the novel seems to be that Anita's pregnant and isn't getting along with Richard, and all this stuff about vampires is a distraction.
The chapter starts with everyone cuddling. In an 11-line paragraph, which is long for her, LKH uses variations of either the word "cuddle" or "curve" in every sentence. Then we are informed that when they "die" for the day, vampires lose heat faster than dead humans, and Anita doesn't know why. Thanks so much for that useless factoid, Anita.
Everyone's all cuddled and curved against each other and playing with each other's hair (of fucking course), but I don't get a sense of warmth and love from them. Anita tells us, "I'd had worse nights." (190) I guess that's her way of saying she's happy? I don't know. Her boytoys manipulated her into having horrible sex. So yeah, she's had worse nights, but this one's pretty terrible.
Anita falls asleep, and the next sentence has her "instantly awake." There's no flow at all, so it seems like she was asleep for as long as it took me to get from one sentence to the next. "I didn't know what had woken me, but it was something bad." That sentence is embarrassing. See Anita wake up. See Anita see something bad. Run, Anita, run.
Anita looks around and can't see anything even though JC leaves the light in the bathroom on for Anita, Nathaniel, and Micah when they sleep over. JC leaves the light on for them. I -- GOD SO EMBARASSED. There's nothing wrong with wanting a nightlight, but Anita is supposed to be such a badass and she is afraid of the dark when she sleeps over at a lover's house that is filled with bodyguards. This could be handled well, but instead it's not handled at all. Oh and also, Anita said she woke up in "pitch black."
JC's dead, and Anita says, "dawn had come and gone, and taken him from me again." (191) That attempt at poetry also embarrasses me. It doesn't sound like Anita at all. And he's going to come back at night, Anita. She has no object permanence.
Anita can't wake her mens and plans to scream. She doesn't seem to care about not being able to wake her mens; she simply tells us that she can't in a remote way. The style of a couple of paragraphs on top of page 191 is very Twilight-esque, btw. It's that bad.
The entity that's done this speaks in Anita's mind, telling her not to scream. It's Marmee Noir, the Mother of All Darkness, and I have to say: I think that name is stupid. Both variations, though Mother of All Darkness is worse. "Marmee Noir" shows how much LKH was influenced by New Orleans native Anne Rice. "Mother of All Darkness" shows how much LKH is a barely pubescent fanficcer at heart.
"The last time I'd seen her in a dream she'd been as big as the ocean, as black as the space between the stars." Hm, not bad. "She'd scared the shit out of me." Bad, because first, it's unecessary, and as such, takes away from the previous well-done sentence. Second, the tone is completely different from that of the last sentence. LKH doesn't give Anita a consistent character voice. We did not need to be told the MOAD scared Anita; it's obvious from that description about her being this huge blank thing.
Anita is wondering if this is real or a dream. She thinks they are in "deep, deep shit" if it's real (why?) and that "if it was a dream, then I'd had powerful vamps invade my dreams before." What? That sentence doesn't even make any sense! IF this is a dream, THEN powerful vampires have invaded your dreams before? If it's NOT a dream, then powerful vampires have NOT invaded your dreams? And if this is someone invading your dreams, it's still real. And comparing the progenitor of all vampires, the being who is supposed to be this massive elemental force with godly powers, to other "powerful vampires" diminishes her threat. It's like comparing Cthulhu to Darth Vader.
Anita doesn't like being "naked" in front of Marmee Noir. I'm going to add this to my evidence that LKH thinks "nude" means "wearing no clothes," but "naked" means "wearing no clothes and being helpless." Anita wishes she had a "gown", and is suddenly in a white silk nightgown. Um, what? Wishing for this is completely against Anita's supposed stone cold badass one-of-the-guys personality. Again, LKH cannot give Anita consistent characterization. I'm inordinately fond of long white silk nightgowns myself, but in a situation like this I'd wish I had some body armor, not a damn gown. And, unlike Anita, I don't think traditionally feminine things like white silk nightgowns are bad.
Anita realizes this is a dream, then asks the MOAD why she's here. The MOAD replies that Anita interests her. I guess Anita's gotten evil enough to attract even the queen of the vampires now. The MOAD informs Anita that soon, the MOAD will wake from her coma or whatever. Anita says, "I was suddenly cold down to my toes." (192) I am fascinated by the fact that LKH manages to get literally everything wrong. Toes are normally a relatively cold part of one's body. If she said she was cold through to her gut, that would mean something. But having cold toes at night? Big fucking whoop. Oooh, the MOAD can make people's toes cold, how frightening.
The MOAD says she needs someone to wake her after her "long nap." FFS, even she is twee. She and Anita speak to each other in simple sentences, with the MOAD informing Anita that until JC gives her the fourth mark, another vampire can take her away. This shouldn't matter to the MOAD; she should be able to slice through every vampire mark of any vampire without trying. The MOAD then says she's "lost the knack of being human," and I wonder when she was ever human, and why she should care. Then she asks Anita if she should show her true form. Anita can't decide. The MOAD asks, "then what do you want?" Anita thinks that she needs JC to help her answer, and says, "I don't know how to answer that question."
The MOAD says of course Anita knows how to answer the question, and Anita says she wants the MOAD to go away. As I've suspected, Anita does have desires and does want things, but she feels much more comfy with some man telling her what to do and speaking for her. Then she can be a "good girl." She has to have her back to the wall to say what she wants herself. The MOAD sure is evil and powerful; she forces Anita to actually admit to having desires.
The MOAD shows her true form, and it is underwhelming, to say the least. To sum up a bunch of attempted purple prose in which the word "dark" is repeated so many times it no longer looks like a word: she looks like a moonless summer night. Oh how scary. Anita says, "you don't want the dark to be able to think, because it won't think anything you want to know." (193) I used to run around alone on summer nights as a teenager. I am not scared of the dark. There are things in the dark that can be scary, but I enjoy the dark itself. I'm a night person. LKH is obviously not. I do not appreciate her informing me what I don't want. "I am Nut, and I have come so that I may enfold and protect you from all things evil."
Anita refers to "the cold twinkling of stars, beautiful and deadly." Christ, the woman's afraid of stars too.
Anita tries to call JC, Micah, and Nathaniel, but the MOAD has severed her link to JC (yay!), and since the MOAD's animals are cats, she can control Micah and Nathaniel through their wereleopardosity. Which means the only person who can save Anita from the darkness (she can't save herself, don't be silly)... is werewolf Richard.
Ack. I am so embarrassed. LKH needs to stop spitting up her subconscious on the page.
Oh, Jason the werewolf's in there too. But Jason hasn't been in this book until now, and he's basically a smutty cipher. Richard is a central character in the books, and he's the important one here. He's the one who can save Anita from the forces of darkness when the men she just banged (badly) cannot. I can't say anything about this other than *flail*.
Okay, I'll try. Over 25% of this book so far has consisted of Anita fighting obnoxiously with Richard. She may be pregnant with Richard's baby. She shoved Richard away to have sex with other men, but in a time of crisis against the biggest bad of them all, those other men are completely useless. Only thoughts of Richard can save Anita. The only man Anita trusts is Richard. Monogamous Richard. Boy scout Richard. The man who insists on clinging to his humanity and living in the civilized world, tries to be moral, is angry about JC and Anita raping people, and thinks Nathaniel is a joke.
If you're gonna put symbolic dreams in your book, Ms. Hamilton, be sure they're not symbolizing things you don't want known.
Anita thinks that, basically, she no longer needs a werewolf near her to summon her own wolf. I'm annoyed that she ever needed to be near a man she was fucking to call her own wolf in the first place, but at least she's made progress here. "[W]e'd grown closer now, my wolf and I, and it came." (193) After the last chapter, that's really unfortunate phrasing. I now think that the MOAD is going to be defeated by wolf orgasms. Anita pictures her wolf as separate from herself, is able to put her fingers in its fur, etc. Blah. I know this is a dream, but she has a wolf because she's infected with lycanthropy. The "wolf" is inside of her, part of her, not a pet that's entirely separate from her.
Dreams don't have to make sense, but writing does. A magic system doesn't have to be fully explained, but it has to be internally consistent and have some kind of framework. LKH instead goes the route of having anything happen she pleases whenever she wants, which is lazy and self-indulgent.
Touching this external wolf (grr) pushes Marmee Noir away. "It wasn't Richard's wolf, it was mine. Not his beast, but mine." Anita sounds like a toddler having a temper tantrum. MINE MINE MINE. I guess LKH is going for the traditional empowered heroine schtick, which is a good thing to go for, but she fails miserably because Anita is an atrocious person and Richard is not. This works when the heroine learns magic from the evil wizard who has imprisoned her and turns it against him. Not when -- well, this.
Anita hears "a sound like a thousand screams." (194) She thinks of this as "eons of victims." I looked up "eon", because I thought of it as an incredibly long period of time (that is also usually spelled "aeon"), and found out a few things. It has a specific definition in astronomy: a billion years. Otherwise, it generally means a super-long undefined amount of time. Some people apparently define it as only 1000 years. Still, in this context, I keep thinking "with strange aeons, even death may die." In that context, I don't know if the MOAD has even been around for one aeon. Any modern writer of horror/fantasy/whatever LKH writes should have enough of an acquaintance with her forebears to know that famous quote. This whole chapter has been so strange, and so very poorly written, with such terrible attempts at purple prose, I think LKH was intentionally trying to call back to H.P. Lovecraft and failing miserably. Intentional or not, putting the word "eon" in there when attempting to describe an eldritch horror is only going to remind readers of Lovecraft.
The wolf jumps at the MOAD and Anita feels it tear flesh. Argh. What. Look. No. Psychological dreamland villain made of pure darkness + a wolf biting said villain and tearing her flesh = error, does not compute. Then somehow Anita sees the MOAD's real body jerk in her coffin, wherever it is, and I am annoyed that we're supposed to think this is her real body when she can become an ocean of nothingness. Then the MOAD breathes "necromancer", just like Thea breathed "succubus." Anita wakes screaming.
That -- that was -- oh my god it was so bad. The writing was SO BAD, you have no idea. What did words ever do to you, LKH, that you feel the need to punish them so?