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Danse Macabre, Chapter 26
CN: Anita Blake book
This chapter is both extremely horrible and actually good. No kidding: there are some legitimately good bits here; not just "good for LKH", but good. I am confused and frustrated.
It starts out extremely horrible. Anita tells us that "everyone agreed to the test" about the ardeur's addictiveness. (242) She proceeds to tell us that everyone is happier about it than her, Remus, and some of Remus' guards. Remus has guards? I think she must mean the guards who are supervised by Remus -- they don't even work for him, they work for JC. I get the impression that there are, as usual, an awful lot of people in this room. Also, Anita's sure that Remus and his guards are sure that something's going to go wrong, and she feels the same way. Yet she's agreeing to do it. Because sex and happiness do not go together in these books, ever.
The following paragraph is a doozie. Buckle in:
Okay, ready? Here we go.
1) Part of me hopes that someday I get over being so damned uncomfortable about group scenes like this.
Anita is forced to do group scenes when she does not want to, so I can understand her trying to get more comfortable with them, since there doesn't seem a possibility for her to change this fact of her life. But, as she often does, she's focusing on the wrong thing. The problem isn't her discomfort. The problem is that she is forced to do sexual things she does not want to do. "Discomfort" is a rather mild response to that.
2) Part of me hopes I don't.
Because it's one shred of individuality you're clinging to in this cult atmosphere? Or because you still think you have to not enjoy sex, or certain kinds of sex, to be a "good girl"?
3) It's sort of the same part of me that mourns that I can kill without feeling bad about it, most of the time.
Uh. Huh. Group sex = murder. My first response is to rant about how sex-hating she is, but my second is to back up and remember that she's not choosing these orgies. Each time she's forced to do something like this, a part of her soul is chipped away. It's not about "innocence," but about trying to protect that tiny spark of personhood she still has left.
4) Yeah, that same part thinks that doing metaphysical sex in front of a bunch of men, for any reason, is just another step down the slippery slope to damnation.
Okay, here is where I rant about sex-hating. She explicitly says "for any reason" there. So, forced sex is the same as chosen. Also, of course, she is clearly saying that she thinks that having sex where men can see her is wrong -- completely evil, something that can lead to "damnation." Like murder. She did throw "metaphysical" in there, but if the magic were what she was worried about, this paragraph and this entire book would look very different.
5) But if the alternative is having the ardeur go off like a metaphysical bomb during the party tonight, well, what we were about to do was the lesser evil.
REASON FOR THE ARDEUR, RIGHT HERE. It's to force Anita to have sex when she doesn't want it and it doesn't fit her character. And that she doesn't want it is absolutely central. LKH didn't want to simply write sex scenes; in fact, she doesn't write very many sex scenes at all, proportional to how goddamned long most of her books are. If I were writing a book with a "protaganist must find new sex partner amongst many volunteers to add to her group" plot, tellyawhat, I'd have at least five sex scenes by page 242. There have been two so far. Angsting, arguing, and pissing contests over sex have taken up the rest of the book. So I'll amend my CAPSY statement: the reason for the ardeur isn't to force Anita to have sex. It's to force Anita to angst, argue, and have pissing contests about sex, and especially to watch men argue and have pissing contests over who is going to get to fuck her.
6) Still it might be nice, once in a while, not to have to choose between evils. Just once, couldn't I choose the lesser good?
O_o
I'm not sure what this means. The first time I read it, I thought it meant that Anita would prefer "accidentally" raping people to having consensual sex with them. Which, well, we already knew that. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe it means she wishes she had multiple good choices instead of all bad ones. And if that's how she sees her life -- well, she was lying to Richard about being happy, and she knows it.
Anyway. Requiem is lying back on the bed, and of course he has terribly long hair. That spills. "His day job, or would that be night job, was stripping at Guilty Pleasures." Oh how very cute you are, LKH, with that little "night job" wink, because he's a vampire and stripper, get it, say no more, tee-hee, barf. Also, of course he's a stripper. LKH is an awful lot like Frank Miller. Instead of whoreswhoreswhores, she's fixated on strippersstrippersstrippers. I wonder if she's ever even been to a strip club. The ones with male strippers I've been to (not many, admittedly) are pretty goofy and lighthearted. Also, I once saw a guy who'd been my doofus lab partner in 9th grade working at a strip club (not on purpose, I didn't know he worked there), so that's what I think of when I think of this, and... yeah. Not a turn on. LKH says that Requiem's body shows that he's a stripper. Because... strippers all have the same body type? No other men have sexy bodies? Bwuh?
Man, I'm still only on the third paragraph of this chapter.
Requiem is gazing at Anita, and this paragraph is actually okay. I will share:
This has a ring of truth to it. It hurts my heart that LKH doesn't write like this regularly; that her writing style, characterization, and Anita herself are almost always terrible when she has the capability to write like this instead.
Of course, LKH proceeds to ruin it with a follow-up paragraph that overexplains. She has no faith in her readers.
Anita asks JC if Requiem will ever get better. Requiem responds as if he hasn't heard her, and worries that Anita will insist JC join them during sex, and he is hilarious. "[W]ill I be as the heavens stretched between the heat of the sun and the cold kiss of the moon?" (243) Besides being goofily purple, that's how LKH described Marmee Noir: like the blankness between stars. Not a metaphor that should be recycled here.
London says, "Requiem does not embrace men." Pfft. The way these vampires talk is self-parody. Requiem refused to have sex with men when he was owned by Belle Morte, and she punished him for that. Gee, that sounds like someone but I can't quite put my finger on whom ANITA. JC is upset that Requiem would consent to have sex with a man now if Anita wanted it, because it shows he and Anita have inadvertantly enslaved Requiem more than Belle Morte managed to. It's a good emotional moment, with JC and Anita both feeling the wracking guilt they *should* be feeling, and hints of JC's despair at being worse than his former master. Don't get me wrong, it's still not great writing, but this bit only needs a little editing to be good, rather than a complete re-think and re-write. I'm actually sort of enjoying this! It's like I'm reading a real book!
Requiem keeps being worshipy at Anita and Anita is very upset by this, as she sees how awful it is. She asks JC if there isn't a faster way to fix this than to find a true love for Requiem. Which is kind of funny, but might actually be funny intentionally. Anita tells JC, "help him." !!!
Someone snuck this part of the book in without LKH's knowledge, didn't they?
Okay, LKH wrested control of the book back for two long paragraphs to describe Wicked and Truth's looks. Wicked is blond with blue eyes, and his eyes hold "a cynical joy." Truth has brown stringy hair, but also blue eyes, and looks "tired and wary." Most say they're these dudes. I say they're these dudes. After all, when did Legolas ever look cynical? And Keanu Reeves always looks tired and wary. Hereafter, Wicked is Bill and Truth is Ted.
Elinore asks Bill and Ted if they've ever been "bespelled" like Requiem. Bill says he'll only answer if Anita asks what she wants. Elinore asks them who their master is, and they say Anita and JC are both their masters. There proceeds a pissing contest over how Bill and Ted won't help with any kind of information unless Anita asks, because she's the one who cast the spell on Requiem. LKH is back to usual form. Grr.
Anita FINALLY tells the brothers that she wants Requiem to be free of her. They demand to know why. She says it's because she likes him, and "he's a good guy, especially for a vampire." (245)
I guess everyone in the room accepts that vampires are basically all assholes, though, because no one protests this. Bill asks if Requiem's better off dead, Anita says no, and Ted asks what she wants them to do then. Apparently their one skill is killin' stuff real good. Requiem then starts asking Anita if she's mad at him. She says she wants him to be free, he says he doesn't want to be, etc. Finally she says, "if I take you like this, it's rape, and I won't do it." (246) Who are you and what have you done with Anita?! And will you stay?
Requiem begs Anita, "let me be covered in your silken chains. Tie me down, and let me drown in your sweet flesh." (247) Bahahah! I'm sorry, even though the last few pages have been relatively good, I can't feel bad for Requiem like I should. On a logical level, yes, his situation is terrible, he's a victim. But emotionally, I simply cannot take the situation seriously when he keeps talking like this. LKH is so very very bad at tone.
JC comes up with the idea that Anita can use her necromancy to break the spell on Requiem. He even deploys continuity, reminding her that she broke Willie McCoy free when the Traveler had possessed his body. LKH then segues into informing us in greater detail who Willie is and what Anita did, and this information is not necessary. All we need to know here is that Willie was possessed by a vampire and Anita was able to free him.
Anita resists for a while, saying she doesn't think she'll be able to break a spell that she herself accidentally cast. This is treated as self-evident. I think that someone who casts a spell would have an easier time breaking it than someone else would, so I do not understand Anita's objections. She also realizes that Requiem needs blood, and that the need for the ardeur overrode it. Then they go into more backstory, but I cannot tell you about what. I tried to read this page three times, but it is too boring. I don't care about the Traveller and Willie and what Belle Morte did and whatever else is here that is too dull for me to retain long enough to comprehend it. Finally, JC tells Anita to "feed our Requiem", and I can pay attention again. (248)
Anita resists this too, as she's worried that feeding on her is what bound Requiem to her in the first place. JC tells her she is "very tasty." Ew, creeper! JC says he doesn't want to enslave people, that Anita has taught him that "sentiment is not always a bad thing." (249) This compliment makes her feel a big love bubble. "It sounded so stupid. But I loved him." Erm, why does it sound stupid that you love someone? Then there's something cringeworthy: "Richard reminded me at every turn that I was bloodthirsty and cold." No, he doesn't. I read those fifty pages, Anita. I know what Richard says to you. Btw, you are bloodthirsty and cold. "If that were true, then I couldn't have taught Jean-Claude about sentimentality."
Sigh. I'm so tired of being embarrassed for LKH. What Anita's feeling isn't love. It's gratitude for ego-stroking. She does not love JC; he is, at best, a bandaid over the wound Richard left. Also, "sentimentality" is not a deep thing. It's often fake, false, a poor substitute for real empathy, a lie. Also, even if this were an unalloyed good, that would not mean that you are a good person. Terrible people are capable of doing good things. Darth Vader killed the Emperor. But that doesn't negate the atrociously evil person he was before that, and killing the Emperor didn't suddenly make him jump into the "good guy" category, no matter what the ending of Return of the Jedi would have us believe.
Also, stop bringing up Richard when he's not there and not pertinent to the story. You're humiliating yourself.
JC is jealous of Micah and Nathaniel because apparently Anita's usually only "tender" with them. Anita thinks that she knew Richard was jealous of them (of course), but she hadn't known until now that JC was also jealous of them. Anita thinks about how sorry she is that she "made" JC jealous, because jealousy hurts. Oh fuck off and stop victim-blaming your own self-insert, LKH.
London, as annoyed as I am, says uh hey guys could you maybe stop gazing into each others' eyes and, ya know, do something about this situation that we're all standing around for, this is boring and annoying oh and by the way I'm thinking you were lying about wanting to free Requiem, you dickweevils. Not in those words, but that's the gist. Elinore scolds him, but Bill and Ted say he's got a point, considering how most people in their stupid society treat others. Bill notes that feudal systems are supposed to be about the people on top taking care of the people at the bottom, but that is not how it works irl. Anita says that's like trickle-down economics. !!!!!! She... she said a thing that... that was right. About politics and how their society is fucked up. The hell?
LKH can't help but ruin it with ego-stroking, though. "The brothers nodded, as if I'd said a wise thing. Maybe I had." (250) Oh shut up. Noticing the blatantly obvious fact that trickle-down economics doesn't work doesn't make you Molly Ivins.
The chapter is incredibly frustrating. That paragraph at the beginning is as bad as anything LKH has ever written. But then there's some good stuff with emotional resonance and good morality. And then there's some hilarious stuff: Bill and Ted's existence and Requiem's language. And then there's embarrassing Richard-bashing. And then there's Anita feeling guilty because JC feels jealous, and that being seen as the correct thing within the text, which is disgusting. And then there's London telling Anita and JC to stop sniffing each other's farts, and not being immediately smashed to bits for it, but rather being supported by Bill and Ted. And then there's a mini political polemic at the end, and in a better book, I'd think that would mean that Anita would start trying to change the "feudal" nature of supernatural society. (Not that feudalism was pretty, but LKH's supernatural society is SO MUCH WORSE.)
URGH. If LKH was just all bad all the time, she would be easier to deal with. But no, she has to leave these crumbs of nourishment for us in her poisonous tomes.
This chapter is both extremely horrible and actually good. No kidding: there are some legitimately good bits here; not just "good for LKH", but good. I am confused and frustrated.
It starts out extremely horrible. Anita tells us that "everyone agreed to the test" about the ardeur's addictiveness. (242) She proceeds to tell us that everyone is happier about it than her, Remus, and some of Remus' guards. Remus has guards? I think she must mean the guards who are supervised by Remus -- they don't even work for him, they work for JC. I get the impression that there are, as usual, an awful lot of people in this room. Also, Anita's sure that Remus and his guards are sure that something's going to go wrong, and she feels the same way. Yet she's agreeing to do it. Because sex and happiness do not go together in these books, ever.
The following paragraph is a doozie. Buckle in:
Part of me hopes that someday I get over being so damned uncomfortable about group scenes like this; part of me hopes I don't. It's sort of the same part of me that mourns that I can kill without feeling bad about it, most of the time. Yeah, that same part thinks that doing metaphysical sex in front of a bunch of men, for any reason, is just another step down the slippery slope to damnation. But if the alternative is having the ardeur go off like a metaphysical bomb during the party tonight, well, what we were about to do was the lesser evil. Still it might be nice, once in a while, not to have to choose between evils. Just once, couldn't I choose the lesser good?
Okay, ready? Here we go.
1) Part of me hopes that someday I get over being so damned uncomfortable about group scenes like this.
Anita is forced to do group scenes when she does not want to, so I can understand her trying to get more comfortable with them, since there doesn't seem a possibility for her to change this fact of her life. But, as she often does, she's focusing on the wrong thing. The problem isn't her discomfort. The problem is that she is forced to do sexual things she does not want to do. "Discomfort" is a rather mild response to that.
2) Part of me hopes I don't.
Because it's one shred of individuality you're clinging to in this cult atmosphere? Or because you still think you have to not enjoy sex, or certain kinds of sex, to be a "good girl"?
3) It's sort of the same part of me that mourns that I can kill without feeling bad about it, most of the time.
Uh. Huh. Group sex = murder. My first response is to rant about how sex-hating she is, but my second is to back up and remember that she's not choosing these orgies. Each time she's forced to do something like this, a part of her soul is chipped away. It's not about "innocence," but about trying to protect that tiny spark of personhood she still has left.
4) Yeah, that same part thinks that doing metaphysical sex in front of a bunch of men, for any reason, is just another step down the slippery slope to damnation.
Okay, here is where I rant about sex-hating. She explicitly says "for any reason" there. So, forced sex is the same as chosen. Also, of course, she is clearly saying that she thinks that having sex where men can see her is wrong -- completely evil, something that can lead to "damnation." Like murder. She did throw "metaphysical" in there, but if the magic were what she was worried about, this paragraph and this entire book would look very different.
5) But if the alternative is having the ardeur go off like a metaphysical bomb during the party tonight, well, what we were about to do was the lesser evil.
REASON FOR THE ARDEUR, RIGHT HERE. It's to force Anita to have sex when she doesn't want it and it doesn't fit her character. And that she doesn't want it is absolutely central. LKH didn't want to simply write sex scenes; in fact, she doesn't write very many sex scenes at all, proportional to how goddamned long most of her books are. If I were writing a book with a "protaganist must find new sex partner amongst many volunteers to add to her group" plot, tellyawhat, I'd have at least five sex scenes by page 242. There have been two so far. Angsting, arguing, and pissing contests over sex have taken up the rest of the book. So I'll amend my CAPSY statement: the reason for the ardeur isn't to force Anita to have sex. It's to force Anita to angst, argue, and have pissing contests about sex, and especially to watch men argue and have pissing contests over who is going to get to fuck her.
6) Still it might be nice, once in a while, not to have to choose between evils. Just once, couldn't I choose the lesser good?
O_o
I'm not sure what this means. The first time I read it, I thought it meant that Anita would prefer "accidentally" raping people to having consensual sex with them. Which, well, we already knew that. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe it means she wishes she had multiple good choices instead of all bad ones. And if that's how she sees her life -- well, she was lying to Richard about being happy, and she knows it.
Anyway. Requiem is lying back on the bed, and of course he has terribly long hair. That spills. "His day job, or would that be night job, was stripping at Guilty Pleasures." Oh how very cute you are, LKH, with that little "night job" wink, because he's a vampire and stripper, get it, say no more, tee-hee, barf. Also, of course he's a stripper. LKH is an awful lot like Frank Miller. Instead of whoreswhoreswhores, she's fixated on strippersstrippersstrippers. I wonder if she's ever even been to a strip club. The ones with male strippers I've been to (not many, admittedly) are pretty goofy and lighthearted. Also, I once saw a guy who'd been my doofus lab partner in 9th grade working at a strip club (not on purpose, I didn't know he worked there), so that's what I think of when I think of this, and... yeah. Not a turn on. LKH says that Requiem's body shows that he's a stripper. Because... strippers all have the same body type? No other men have sexy bodies? Bwuh?
Man, I'm still only on the third paragraph of this chapter.
Requiem is gazing at Anita, and this paragraph is actually okay. I will share:
Normally I could read Requiem, but today there was nothing in his face that helped me. He gazed up at me as if I were the most wondrous thing he'd ever seen. It was a step above, or below, love. Worship was the only word I had for it. It hurt my heart to see that look on his face. There was no Requiem left in that look.
This has a ring of truth to it. It hurts my heart that LKH doesn't write like this regularly; that her writing style, characterization, and Anita herself are almost always terrible when she has the capability to write like this instead.
Of course, LKH proceeds to ruin it with a follow-up paragraph that overexplains. She has no faith in her readers.
Anita asks JC if Requiem will ever get better. Requiem responds as if he hasn't heard her, and worries that Anita will insist JC join them during sex, and he is hilarious. "[W]ill I be as the heavens stretched between the heat of the sun and the cold kiss of the moon?" (243) Besides being goofily purple, that's how LKH described Marmee Noir: like the blankness between stars. Not a metaphor that should be recycled here.
London says, "Requiem does not embrace men." Pfft. The way these vampires talk is self-parody. Requiem refused to have sex with men when he was owned by Belle Morte, and she punished him for that. Gee, that sounds like someone but I can't quite put my finger on whom ANITA. JC is upset that Requiem would consent to have sex with a man now if Anita wanted it, because it shows he and Anita have inadvertantly enslaved Requiem more than Belle Morte managed to. It's a good emotional moment, with JC and Anita both feeling the wracking guilt they *should* be feeling, and hints of JC's despair at being worse than his former master. Don't get me wrong, it's still not great writing, but this bit only needs a little editing to be good, rather than a complete re-think and re-write. I'm actually sort of enjoying this! It's like I'm reading a real book!
Requiem keeps being worshipy at Anita and Anita is very upset by this, as she sees how awful it is. She asks JC if there isn't a faster way to fix this than to find a true love for Requiem. Which is kind of funny, but might actually be funny intentionally. Anita tells JC, "help him." !!!
Someone snuck this part of the book in without LKH's knowledge, didn't they?
Okay, LKH wrested control of the book back for two long paragraphs to describe Wicked and Truth's looks. Wicked is blond with blue eyes, and his eyes hold "a cynical joy." Truth has brown stringy hair, but also blue eyes, and looks "tired and wary." Most say they're these dudes. I say they're these dudes. After all, when did Legolas ever look cynical? And Keanu Reeves always looks tired and wary. Hereafter, Wicked is Bill and Truth is Ted.
Elinore asks Bill and Ted if they've ever been "bespelled" like Requiem. Bill says he'll only answer if Anita asks what she wants. Elinore asks them who their master is, and they say Anita and JC are both their masters. There proceeds a pissing contest over how Bill and Ted won't help with any kind of information unless Anita asks, because she's the one who cast the spell on Requiem. LKH is back to usual form. Grr.
Anita FINALLY tells the brothers that she wants Requiem to be free of her. They demand to know why. She says it's because she likes him, and "he's a good guy, especially for a vampire." (245)
I guess everyone in the room accepts that vampires are basically all assholes, though, because no one protests this. Bill asks if Requiem's better off dead, Anita says no, and Ted asks what she wants them to do then. Apparently their one skill is killin' stuff real good. Requiem then starts asking Anita if she's mad at him. She says she wants him to be free, he says he doesn't want to be, etc. Finally she says, "if I take you like this, it's rape, and I won't do it." (246) Who are you and what have you done with Anita?! And will you stay?
Requiem begs Anita, "let me be covered in your silken chains. Tie me down, and let me drown in your sweet flesh." (247) Bahahah! I'm sorry, even though the last few pages have been relatively good, I can't feel bad for Requiem like I should. On a logical level, yes, his situation is terrible, he's a victim. But emotionally, I simply cannot take the situation seriously when he keeps talking like this. LKH is so very very bad at tone.
JC comes up with the idea that Anita can use her necromancy to break the spell on Requiem. He even deploys continuity, reminding her that she broke Willie McCoy free when the Traveler had possessed his body. LKH then segues into informing us in greater detail who Willie is and what Anita did, and this information is not necessary. All we need to know here is that Willie was possessed by a vampire and Anita was able to free him.
Anita resists for a while, saying she doesn't think she'll be able to break a spell that she herself accidentally cast. This is treated as self-evident. I think that someone who casts a spell would have an easier time breaking it than someone else would, so I do not understand Anita's objections. She also realizes that Requiem needs blood, and that the need for the ardeur overrode it. Then they go into more backstory, but I cannot tell you about what. I tried to read this page three times, but it is too boring. I don't care about the Traveller and Willie and what Belle Morte did and whatever else is here that is too dull for me to retain long enough to comprehend it. Finally, JC tells Anita to "feed our Requiem", and I can pay attention again. (248)
Anita resists this too, as she's worried that feeding on her is what bound Requiem to her in the first place. JC tells her she is "very tasty." Ew, creeper! JC says he doesn't want to enslave people, that Anita has taught him that "sentiment is not always a bad thing." (249) This compliment makes her feel a big love bubble. "It sounded so stupid. But I loved him." Erm, why does it sound stupid that you love someone? Then there's something cringeworthy: "Richard reminded me at every turn that I was bloodthirsty and cold." No, he doesn't. I read those fifty pages, Anita. I know what Richard says to you. Btw, you are bloodthirsty and cold. "If that were true, then I couldn't have taught Jean-Claude about sentimentality."
Sigh. I'm so tired of being embarrassed for LKH. What Anita's feeling isn't love. It's gratitude for ego-stroking. She does not love JC; he is, at best, a bandaid over the wound Richard left. Also, "sentimentality" is not a deep thing. It's often fake, false, a poor substitute for real empathy, a lie. Also, even if this were an unalloyed good, that would not mean that you are a good person. Terrible people are capable of doing good things. Darth Vader killed the Emperor. But that doesn't negate the atrociously evil person he was before that, and killing the Emperor didn't suddenly make him jump into the "good guy" category, no matter what the ending of Return of the Jedi would have us believe.
Also, stop bringing up Richard when he's not there and not pertinent to the story. You're humiliating yourself.
JC is jealous of Micah and Nathaniel because apparently Anita's usually only "tender" with them. Anita thinks that she knew Richard was jealous of them (of course), but she hadn't known until now that JC was also jealous of them. Anita thinks about how sorry she is that she "made" JC jealous, because jealousy hurts. Oh fuck off and stop victim-blaming your own self-insert, LKH.
London, as annoyed as I am, says uh hey guys could you maybe stop gazing into each others' eyes and, ya know, do something about this situation that we're all standing around for, this is boring and annoying oh and by the way I'm thinking you were lying about wanting to free Requiem, you dickweevils. Not in those words, but that's the gist. Elinore scolds him, but Bill and Ted say he's got a point, considering how most people in their stupid society treat others. Bill notes that feudal systems are supposed to be about the people on top taking care of the people at the bottom, but that is not how it works irl. Anita says that's like trickle-down economics. !!!!!! She... she said a thing that... that was right. About politics and how their society is fucked up. The hell?
LKH can't help but ruin it with ego-stroking, though. "The brothers nodded, as if I'd said a wise thing. Maybe I had." (250) Oh shut up. Noticing the blatantly obvious fact that trickle-down economics doesn't work doesn't make you Molly Ivins.
The chapter is incredibly frustrating. That paragraph at the beginning is as bad as anything LKH has ever written. But then there's some good stuff with emotional resonance and good morality. And then there's some hilarious stuff: Bill and Ted's existence and Requiem's language. And then there's embarrassing Richard-bashing. And then there's Anita feeling guilty because JC feels jealous, and that being seen as the correct thing within the text, which is disgusting. And then there's London telling Anita and JC to stop sniffing each other's farts, and not being immediately smashed to bits for it, but rather being supported by Bill and Ted. And then there's a mini political polemic at the end, and in a better book, I'd think that would mean that Anita would start trying to change the "feudal" nature of supernatural society. (Not that feudalism was pretty, but LKH's supernatural society is SO MUCH WORSE.)
URGH. If LKH was just all bad all the time, she would be easier to deal with. But no, she has to leave these crumbs of nourishment for us in her poisonous tomes.