Ow, quit it!
Aug. 12th, 2009 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyIt took a week, but I finally finished Skin Trade. I will probably never be clean again, but these things happen.
If you're wondering whether or not Anita is safe to read again, she's not. It's sadly that simple. Not even Edward could save this train wreck, and alas, his appearance was obviously that of a clone, because the real Edward was nowhere to be seen.
Anita has never been my favorite character in the books. I hated her for the most part from the word go, but for quite awhile I liked the idea that when she was recruited to do a job, she did it. She might not do it perfectly, and she'd whine like hell, but she would get the damn thing done.
As the series wore on, this ability was a little less rock solid. When Anita finally gave it up to JC and Richard, I was okay with that. I came from Merry-ville originally, so it's not like I had room to complain about sex in the series. But when we hit double digits for the various boytoys and guys kept as food, you knew that if your fictional counterpart ended up anywhere near Anita's stomping grounds, your death would go unpunished because Anita had better guys to do. Even if they didn't want to do her.
Which is to say nothing of the quality of the writing taking a serious header for the shitcan.
But the ideas and the world presented, those have always kept me interested. That, and the hope that Edward or someone would kill Anita.
It won't happen now. Our failsafe is gone. Instead, a new one has been put into action and we all know it's flawed from the start.
V, whose name I cannot recall even though this is his SECOND book to show up in, sends Anita a head in a box. She goes on and on about how this should bother her, but it doesn't, and how she ponders, idly, if this makes her a bad person before going on to wonder if maybe she should bring in photos of her 'family' to put on the shared desk. But then, she angsts, who would she bring photos of? Her, Nathaniel, and Micah? But what about JC and Asher and everyone else she lurves so much? No. Better not to give the badguys ideas as they have enough of their own.
While. Staring. At. Severed. Head.
This is also the teaser in the back of whatever book they shoved out in paperback just so they could tease this.
She talks to Vegas cop who gets all huffy because she's a girl and she's not freaking out and she's screwing the Master of the City and blah blah blah. BLAH.
I'll try and keep this rant limited to one, and only one instance where I point out that V wouldn't be doing any of this if Anita had stopped screwing around however many books back and just hunted him down after he ran screaming from the city. Just. Saying.
But she didn't. So now she's got a head in a box, people in comas out in Vegas, and quite a few corpses. Fun times! Oh, and a message written in blood inviting her to Vegas for the weekend. It'll bea trap! fun!
And she goes after angsting a bit with Jason about how she's losing herself in all these men she's acquired.
Honey. You've already admitted you have too many and the dating them all thing isn't working. Let. Them. Go. Otherwise the polys of the world will have to kill you for ruining their gig even more with every passing book.
However, I should point out that if you're not really fond of most of her cast of masochists/boyfriends/boytoys/meat, this might be the book for you since almost none of them show up. So, those of you with Richard aversions are clear. Ditto her vampire to call [which makes me sad because I love him. SHUT UP.] and Micah and Nathaniel and... you get the idea.
That said, if you hate Requiem, Wicked, Truth, or Crispin, the weretiger from last go round, you should run screaming from the freakin' building. Now.
So. Anita flies to Vegas with minimal whinging about her fear of flying/planes/whatever. She shows up in Vegas, pisses cops off left and right, and for the rest of the book she will discuss her sex life with anyone who asks, and many who do not, all while trying to convince us she's not a slut and that that we shouldn't think badly of her because she *has* with random people she doesn't want to have sex with, and who don't want to screw her either. But just because she'll do that, she won't necessarily have sex with anyone who wants to... and really, I'd think with the types of corpses she's looking at, sex shouldn't be that close to the forefront of anyone's mind other than Olaf's.
Olaf, Edward, and that other guy who is very pretty [but aren't they all, you ask? They are. She says so. It's boring.], and Anita get dicked around by the locals because HEAVEN FORBID WE HUNT VAMPIRES DURING THE DAY WHEN THEY'RE ASLEEP.
I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Head-desk. May you live long and happy lives.
There's weretiger action and we learn that if JC had any brains at all he would have kept Anita as far away from them as possible because, duh, The Mother of All Darkness [you call her that other thing and I'll kill you.G'ah.] was using her to essentially taste the rainbow of weretigers.
I'm not sure if the phrase taste the rainbow was used, because Skittles could sue and all, but there were numerous mentions of "rainbow of weretigers." So, really, I wanted a jumbo bag of skittles and some self-restraint to keep me from finishing what I had started.
You see, MoD wanted to use Anita to siphon enough power to do... something. Basically use Anita to find a new body since she couldn't really steal Anita's and the baby plan didn't work. The weretigers, being her animals to call, were basically her way of upping the odds. Which isn't exactly an awful idea, except for that part about tasting the rainbow and the blue tiger being just 16.
Yes. Blue. Whatever. I'll let that part go. But the kid is 16 and he's the one everyone talks about when they review ST. For good reason. At the end of the book, off-screen essentially, Anita has another totally awesome orgy, and the blue tiger, virgin in all ways, is broken in. He's naturally infatuated with Anita because they all must be and Anita's "horrified" but... not nearly enough.
You find out V is Day Father or some such crap and he's super awesomely powerful just like the mother of all darkness. Only he's a dude and Anita uses that against him despite the fact that the dude is a serial killer [moreso than your average vampire] because he'd been burned and essentially ruined for all the fun stuff.
Throw in some jinn and flashbacks on my part to other series, some psychic stuff for a police force that's actually vaguely interesting...
But she kills the MoAD with explosives, off screen, and I cry foul. You can't convince me the Mother of All Freakin' Darkness didn't have a backup to her backup plan. Just not happening.
Annnyywaaaay. We find out that Edward is awfully fond of Anita, which kind of grosses me out, even if it's just that "Aw, if anyone's going to kill you, it's going to be me" way.
Requiem finally gets the balls to leave Anita and is promptly tortured with holy water and other fun things. That's right. Someone has the guts/brains to leave and they are immediately smacked down with agony.
Subtle, thy name is LKH.
Sadly, due to the lack of sex in the book, people are rating this flaming pile of WTF much higher than it actually deserves. Half of them are copping to doing just that. Others, well, I choose to believe that's why this book is getting 4 stars from people who appear to be semi-intelligent.
Let me believe the lie.
Oh. Anita asks Wicked and Truth to kill her if she becomes too evil, but no one's really sure where that line is drawn, exactly.
It's drawn five miles back, guys. Get with the killin'. Now, please.
And because I believe in letting someone dig their own grave, I present, in its entirety, the moment that made me realize she'd just completely phoned this one in.
quotes:
"I'm no one's victim, Edward." She says with a straight face.
I said to Domino, "I'm not into rape; if you don't want me, fine." p 190
To keep that from happening, I would mind-fuck Domino. Was it evil to think it all the way through and still do it? Maybe. Was I still going to do it, if it would keep the white queen from mind-fucking me? Oh, hell, yes. 209
He stopped struggling, and by the end of it, he was crying in my arms. - Still Domino, folks. 212
"The yellow, or golden, clan was supreme to all the other clans. They ruled the earth and all the energies on it, including the rest of the clans." And this is more of the Super Speshulness of Anita fucking Blake... or possibly the start of the "clan" drinking game. Whichever.
Even before I was dating a stripper, I never forgot that everyone was real. 305 The mind, it boggles. Painfully.
Chapter 67
But he didn't find me first. She found me. I stood in the room where I knew her body lay. She looked small under the silk sheet; no, shrunken. For the first time, she looked like a corpse under a sheet. I waited for her to move or hear her breathe, see movement, but there was nothing. She was gone.
Then I was in a night long ago, with the scent of jasmine and rain on the air. The air was hot, but not muggy, as if there wasn't a lot of moisture in it. But there was that edge of rain, and you could almost feel the ground underneath your feet, eager for it, like a lover waiting for an embrace.
She'd stepped into this night as a woman's figure, and as the night itself, but now she was a voice whispering against my skin. "Necromancer, they are coming to kill me. They are coming with modern weapons and things I do not understand. I have abandoned the shell in the room. That they may have it."
The smell of jasmine grew stronger, as the rain blew closer, a thick, clean smell. "What do you want?"
"You, Necromancer. I want your body."
"No," I said.
"NO, because you have kept me out. You and your ties to your men. But I need power, enough to survive when my shell is consumed. I cannot take your body, Anita, but I think I can feed through you."
"Feed how?" I asked, and felt the first tightness in my gut. The first hint of fear.
"The tigers, little necromancer, did you think they found you by accident?"
"No, I knew you had done something to me."
"Simply feed on all the colors of their rainbow and give the energy to me. It will give me enough strength to survive until I can find a host."
"Are you asking me or telling me to do this?"
"Would asking make you do it?" the voice asked.
"No."
"Then I tell you to do it."
"No," I said.
"I can make you do it, necromancer, but it will be less pleasant."
"I won't help you find another body, just because you can't have mine."
"Remember, necromancer, I gave you a choice. You have chosen the path of pain. Now, if you become pregnant, it is too late to help me."
"What did you say?"
"When I realized I could not get inside you, I tried to have you pregnant by one of the weretigers, but you stayed too far away from them for too long. Now you lie with two of them, and have a blue tiger close at hand. A color even I thought was lost. There are even two kings of two different bloodlines within walking distance of you. I would have given you a choice to use your protection when you fed for me, but if you will not do it willingly, then I will do what I did when you first met the white tiger."
"Wait," I said, because now I was afraid. I'd met Crispin in North Carolina, when he'd been traveling for a VIP bachelorette party, and I'd been a guest at the same hotel. I'd woken up two days later, naked, bruised, scratched, sore, with three naked men passed out around me. One had been Jason, but the other had been Crispin, who I'd just met, and Alex, who was just an innocent reporter covering the wedding, who also happened to be a red tiger. I could suddenly taste my pulse in my throat.
"Don't," I said.
"Either feed on the tigers voluntarily and let me take the power, or I will take you again. I will not make it days, though; as I said, pregnant now does me no good. So the sex will be quicker."
"Why me pregnant by a weretiger?"
"Because I was a necromancer in life, Anita, like you, and a wereanimal. The tigers are the most powerful cat left on this earth. I thought if the baby was part weretiger and part necromancer, I would have a greater chance of taking it's body."
I was still scared, but the first anger was there, too. "You had no right."
"You've been inside my mind, little necromancer; do you really believe I care about right and wrong?"
The scent of jasmine was thick on my tongue. "No," I whispered. The rain was almost here, and the wind cool with it. The night was so dark.
"This is your last choice to make, Anita. Is it willing you are, or is it force?"
"If I help you, you'll use the energy to escape the assassins and hide in someone else's body. You'll take them over and escape."
"Yes," she said.
The rain blew the thin dress against my body. I was wearing sandals that I'd never owned. My hair blew across my face. All I could taste was jasmine, as if I'd drunk perfume. The first spatters of rain rode the wind.
"Time grows short, necromancer. Your answer?"
I knew what the jasmine on my tongue meant. It was her power growing in me, like the tripper on a gun with a finger on it, already moving to squeeze.
I swallowed, and it was like it hurt to swallow past the sweet taste of it. "I can't help you take over another person's body. I can't sacrifice someone else to save myself."
"They would be a stranger to you," the voice in the dark said.
I shook my head. The wind hit me, and the rain came like a wall, so that one moment I was dry, and the next I was soaked to the skin. The rain was cold, and the world tasted of jasmine.
"I can't," I said.
"Oh, you can, and you will, necromancer. You will feed me. You will save me. I am the Mother of All Darkness. I will not die because one stubborn girl said no."
I stood there in a desert night that had existed longer ago tan books or cities. I shivered in a cold rain that hadn't fallen for thousands of years. I tasted jasmine on my tongue and felt her cut off my breath as she slid her power down my throat.
I managed to say," No means no, bitch!" Then there were no more words.
If you're wondering whether or not Anita is safe to read again, she's not. It's sadly that simple. Not even Edward could save this train wreck, and alas, his appearance was obviously that of a clone, because the real Edward was nowhere to be seen.
Anita has never been my favorite character in the books. I hated her for the most part from the word go, but for quite awhile I liked the idea that when she was recruited to do a job, she did it. She might not do it perfectly, and she'd whine like hell, but she would get the damn thing done.
As the series wore on, this ability was a little less rock solid. When Anita finally gave it up to JC and Richard, I was okay with that. I came from Merry-ville originally, so it's not like I had room to complain about sex in the series. But when we hit double digits for the various boytoys and guys kept as food, you knew that if your fictional counterpart ended up anywhere near Anita's stomping grounds, your death would go unpunished because Anita had better guys to do. Even if they didn't want to do her.
Which is to say nothing of the quality of the writing taking a serious header for the shitcan.
But the ideas and the world presented, those have always kept me interested. That, and the hope that Edward or someone would kill Anita.
It won't happen now. Our failsafe is gone. Instead, a new one has been put into action and we all know it's flawed from the start.
V, whose name I cannot recall even though this is his SECOND book to show up in, sends Anita a head in a box. She goes on and on about how this should bother her, but it doesn't, and how she ponders, idly, if this makes her a bad person before going on to wonder if maybe she should bring in photos of her 'family' to put on the shared desk. But then, she angsts, who would she bring photos of? Her, Nathaniel, and Micah? But what about JC and Asher and everyone else she lurves so much? No. Better not to give the badguys ideas as they have enough of their own.
While. Staring. At. Severed. Head.
This is also the teaser in the back of whatever book they shoved out in paperback just so they could tease this.
She talks to Vegas cop who gets all huffy because she's a girl and she's not freaking out and she's screwing the Master of the City and blah blah blah. BLAH.
I'll try and keep this rant limited to one, and only one instance where I point out that V wouldn't be doing any of this if Anita had stopped screwing around however many books back and just hunted him down after he ran screaming from the city. Just. Saying.
But she didn't. So now she's got a head in a box, people in comas out in Vegas, and quite a few corpses. Fun times! Oh, and a message written in blood inviting her to Vegas for the weekend. It'll be
And she goes after angsting a bit with Jason about how she's losing herself in all these men she's acquired.
Honey. You've already admitted you have too many and the dating them all thing isn't working. Let. Them. Go. Otherwise the polys of the world will have to kill you for ruining their gig even more with every passing book.
However, I should point out that if you're not really fond of most of her cast of masochists/boyfriends/boytoys/meat, this might be the book for you since almost none of them show up. So, those of you with Richard aversions are clear. Ditto her vampire to call [which makes me sad because I love him. SHUT UP.] and Micah and Nathaniel and... you get the idea.
That said, if you hate Requiem, Wicked, Truth, or Crispin, the weretiger from last go round, you should run screaming from the freakin' building. Now.
So. Anita flies to Vegas with minimal whinging about her fear of flying/planes/whatever. She shows up in Vegas, pisses cops off left and right, and for the rest of the book she will discuss her sex life with anyone who asks, and many who do not, all while trying to convince us she's not a slut and that that we shouldn't think badly of her because she *has* with random people she doesn't want to have sex with, and who don't want to screw her either. But just because she'll do that, she won't necessarily have sex with anyone who wants to... and really, I'd think with the types of corpses she's looking at, sex shouldn't be that close to the forefront of anyone's mind other than Olaf's.
Olaf, Edward, and that other guy who is very pretty [but aren't they all, you ask? They are. She says so. It's boring.], and Anita get dicked around by the locals because HEAVEN FORBID WE HUNT VAMPIRES DURING THE DAY WHEN THEY'RE ASLEEP.
I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Head-desk. May you live long and happy lives.
There's weretiger action and we learn that if JC had any brains at all he would have kept Anita as far away from them as possible because, duh, The Mother of All Darkness [you call her that other thing and I'll kill you.G'ah.] was using her to essentially taste the rainbow of weretigers.
I'm not sure if the phrase taste the rainbow was used, because Skittles could sue and all, but there were numerous mentions of "rainbow of weretigers." So, really, I wanted a jumbo bag of skittles and some self-restraint to keep me from finishing what I had started.
You see, MoD wanted to use Anita to siphon enough power to do... something. Basically use Anita to find a new body since she couldn't really steal Anita's and the baby plan didn't work. The weretigers, being her animals to call, were basically her way of upping the odds. Which isn't exactly an awful idea, except for that part about tasting the rainbow and the blue tiger being just 16.
Yes. Blue. Whatever. I'll let that part go. But the kid is 16 and he's the one everyone talks about when they review ST. For good reason. At the end of the book, off-screen essentially, Anita has another totally awesome orgy, and the blue tiger, virgin in all ways, is broken in. He's naturally infatuated with Anita because they all must be and Anita's "horrified" but... not nearly enough.
You find out V is Day Father or some such crap and he's super awesomely powerful just like the mother of all darkness. Only he's a dude and Anita uses that against him despite the fact that the dude is a serial killer [moreso than your average vampire] because he'd been burned and essentially ruined for all the fun stuff.
Throw in some jinn and flashbacks on my part to other series, some psychic stuff for a police force that's actually vaguely interesting...
But she kills the MoAD with explosives, off screen, and I cry foul. You can't convince me the Mother of All Freakin' Darkness didn't have a backup to her backup plan. Just not happening.
Annnyywaaaay. We find out that Edward is awfully fond of Anita, which kind of grosses me out, even if it's just that "Aw, if anyone's going to kill you, it's going to be me" way.
Requiem finally gets the balls to leave Anita and is promptly tortured with holy water and other fun things. That's right. Someone has the guts/brains to leave and they are immediately smacked down with agony.
Subtle, thy name is LKH.
Sadly, due to the lack of sex in the book, people are rating this flaming pile of WTF much higher than it actually deserves. Half of them are copping to doing just that. Others, well, I choose to believe that's why this book is getting 4 stars from people who appear to be semi-intelligent.
Let me believe the lie.
Oh. Anita asks Wicked and Truth to kill her if she becomes too evil, but no one's really sure where that line is drawn, exactly.
It's drawn five miles back, guys. Get with the killin'. Now, please.
And because I believe in letting someone dig their own grave, I present, in its entirety, the moment that made me realize she'd just completely phoned this one in.
quotes:
"I'm no one's victim, Edward." She says with a straight face.
I said to Domino, "I'm not into rape; if you don't want me, fine." p 190
To keep that from happening, I would mind-fuck Domino. Was it evil to think it all the way through and still do it? Maybe. Was I still going to do it, if it would keep the white queen from mind-fucking me? Oh, hell, yes. 209
He stopped struggling, and by the end of it, he was crying in my arms. - Still Domino, folks. 212
"The yellow, or golden, clan was supreme to all the other clans. They ruled the earth and all the energies on it, including the rest of the clans." And this is more of the Super Speshulness of Anita fucking Blake... or possibly the start of the "clan" drinking game. Whichever.
Even before I was dating a stripper, I never forgot that everyone was real. 305 The mind, it boggles. Painfully.
Chapter 67
But he didn't find me first. She found me. I stood in the room where I knew her body lay. She looked small under the silk sheet; no, shrunken. For the first time, she looked like a corpse under a sheet. I waited for her to move or hear her breathe, see movement, but there was nothing. She was gone.
Then I was in a night long ago, with the scent of jasmine and rain on the air. The air was hot, but not muggy, as if there wasn't a lot of moisture in it. But there was that edge of rain, and you could almost feel the ground underneath your feet, eager for it, like a lover waiting for an embrace.
She'd stepped into this night as a woman's figure, and as the night itself, but now she was a voice whispering against my skin. "Necromancer, they are coming to kill me. They are coming with modern weapons and things I do not understand. I have abandoned the shell in the room. That they may have it."
The smell of jasmine grew stronger, as the rain blew closer, a thick, clean smell. "What do you want?"
"You, Necromancer. I want your body."
"No," I said.
"NO, because you have kept me out. You and your ties to your men. But I need power, enough to survive when my shell is consumed. I cannot take your body, Anita, but I think I can feed through you."
"Feed how?" I asked, and felt the first tightness in my gut. The first hint of fear.
"The tigers, little necromancer, did you think they found you by accident?"
"No, I knew you had done something to me."
"Simply feed on all the colors of their rainbow and give the energy to me. It will give me enough strength to survive until I can find a host."
"Are you asking me or telling me to do this?"
"Would asking make you do it?" the voice asked.
"No."
"Then I tell you to do it."
"No," I said.
"I can make you do it, necromancer, but it will be less pleasant."
"I won't help you find another body, just because you can't have mine."
"Remember, necromancer, I gave you a choice. You have chosen the path of pain. Now, if you become pregnant, it is too late to help me."
"What did you say?"
"When I realized I could not get inside you, I tried to have you pregnant by one of the weretigers, but you stayed too far away from them for too long. Now you lie with two of them, and have a blue tiger close at hand. A color even I thought was lost. There are even two kings of two different bloodlines within walking distance of you. I would have given you a choice to use your protection when you fed for me, but if you will not do it willingly, then I will do what I did when you first met the white tiger."
"Wait," I said, because now I was afraid. I'd met Crispin in North Carolina, when he'd been traveling for a VIP bachelorette party, and I'd been a guest at the same hotel. I'd woken up two days later, naked, bruised, scratched, sore, with three naked men passed out around me. One had been Jason, but the other had been Crispin, who I'd just met, and Alex, who was just an innocent reporter covering the wedding, who also happened to be a red tiger. I could suddenly taste my pulse in my throat.
"Don't," I said.
"Either feed on the tigers voluntarily and let me take the power, or I will take you again. I will not make it days, though; as I said, pregnant now does me no good. So the sex will be quicker."
"Why me pregnant by a weretiger?"
"Because I was a necromancer in life, Anita, like you, and a wereanimal. The tigers are the most powerful cat left on this earth. I thought if the baby was part weretiger and part necromancer, I would have a greater chance of taking it's body."
I was still scared, but the first anger was there, too. "You had no right."
"You've been inside my mind, little necromancer; do you really believe I care about right and wrong?"
The scent of jasmine was thick on my tongue. "No," I whispered. The rain was almost here, and the wind cool with it. The night was so dark.
"This is your last choice to make, Anita. Is it willing you are, or is it force?"
"If I help you, you'll use the energy to escape the assassins and hide in someone else's body. You'll take them over and escape."
"Yes," she said.
The rain blew the thin dress against my body. I was wearing sandals that I'd never owned. My hair blew across my face. All I could taste was jasmine, as if I'd drunk perfume. The first spatters of rain rode the wind.
"Time grows short, necromancer. Your answer?"
I knew what the jasmine on my tongue meant. It was her power growing in me, like the tripper on a gun with a finger on it, already moving to squeeze.
I swallowed, and it was like it hurt to swallow past the sweet taste of it. "I can't help you take over another person's body. I can't sacrifice someone else to save myself."
"They would be a stranger to you," the voice in the dark said.
I shook my head. The wind hit me, and the rain came like a wall, so that one moment I was dry, and the next I was soaked to the skin. The rain was cold, and the world tasted of jasmine.
"I can't," I said.
"Oh, you can, and you will, necromancer. You will feed me. You will save me. I am the Mother of All Darkness. I will not die because one stubborn girl said no."
I stood there in a desert night that had existed longer ago tan books or cities. I shivered in a cold rain that hadn't fallen for thousands of years. I tasted jasmine on my tongue and felt her cut off my breath as she slid her power down my throat.
I managed to say," No means no, bitch!" Then there were no more words.
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Date: 2009-08-12 03:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-13 12:10 pm (UTC)This is why you don't employ just friends/family and why you don't marry the head of your fanclub. Your work, it suffers.