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impyI've racked up quite a fine trying to finish this fucking book, so you lot are going to share my suffering, okay? Okay!
Let's start at the end: I think this will be my final Anita Blake book. I've never been all that fond of Anita herself, but I was intrigued by the world LKH dreamt up. When she put her mind to it, the woman could do creeping dread really well, and early!Anita might not be someone you'd ever want to call a friend but you'd be glad she was out there fighting the good fight, catching the bad guys and all that.
Since I read the Merry books first, I had no real issue with the sex when Anita finally began having some... and even when some turned into a lot, so long as there was a plot elsewhere, I had no real issue.
Then her wires got crossed and all plot seemed to escape while the sex went on and on forever. Boring sex! Meh. STILL. I'd come to give a damn about some of these characters and I either wanted to see them again (Damian, Edward, Asher) or I wanted them to be redeemed (Dolph, Richard) so... I hung around.
But with each book, I began to hate myself a little more. I began to hate LKH a lot. I was ready to give up and then the sex cut back and plots were sort of reintroduced to the story! Hallelujah!
Yeah. No. No they weren't. Coupled with the fact that Anita is the biggest fucking monster in the series these days and LKH is either pulling the biggest con ever (I don't think she's that talented, sadly) or is too blind to see the fact that her heroine is now decidedly the bad guy? I'm out. This book exemplifies almost all the reasons why.
The case she's working on is only really worked on for about four little chapters at the beginning of the book and four smaller chapters at the tail end of the book. Everything else is either Anita boinking some new guy, talking about her sex life, or characters being assassinated without a single important body hitting the floor. More than two thirds of this book is pushing the squick factor and pushing it hard.
We begin with talk of vampires having kidnapped a teenage girl. The hunt is on to find them and Anita is talking to what she's deemed a low level vampire to get information. Naturally things go ass over teakettle. Girl is rescued but a bunch of vampires are taken out in the process, as are at least two officers. Whoops. Thing is, these vampires aren't your preternaturally pretty vamps. They're grandparents and soccer moms and sadly, yes, little kids or teenagers who will forever be trapped in the ultimate ungainly time.
The ones that are subdued/captured again are interrogated as to where the other vampires (the more powerful ones who did the actual killing of the cops) are. Or, rather, they're going to be.
Zerbrowski cooks up the idea that if they isolate the weakest vampire in the group and then proceed to chop up the already dead vampires (they need their hearts removed and their heads chopped off to make sure they're dead) in front of the weaker vamps, said vamps will talk.
They try and rope Larry into it. Larry draws his line in the sand and LKH takes that poor bastard down. We'll get back to that. First vamp they try this trick on flips out and tells them what they want to know, vampires are executed I get bored, and eventually there's a hostage situation where one of the vamps who knows he's going to die as soon as the law (or Anita) catches up with him decides to take his ex-wife hostage. Anita and the SWAT team take him out, we return to Anita's boring as hell life and later we resume the storyline with the realization that the first vampire wasn't kidding when he said there was an old vamp in town who was preaching about vampires not needing to blood oath themselves to a master vampire. They could have freedom! I should point out that more than one vampire actually chose to die rather than live in a place where they would be forced to be blood oathed to Jean-Claude and thus also Anita. People would rather die than deal with our heroine. Die a second time, that is. Think about that.
Anyway, old vampire didn't blood oath his vamps so they went ... crazy? Did stupid shit? Really? REALLY? I get that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I refuse to believe this many people turned vampires would go absolutely batshit all at the same time. If vamps are that fucking unstable, no, I'm not buying them as "people, too!" Anyway, some have taken this message to heart and one guy goes to blow up the Circus of the Dead, starting with Nathaniel.
Don't worry, that doesn't happen and the book ends within seconds of that not happening. Threats are issued, but that means we have to swing back around for the emotional torture.
Plot wise, meh. It could have been better, it should have been better, and yet it was apparently called on account of Anita needing to shit all over everyone. *sigh*
Issues!
Larry refuses to torture these vampires, even going so far as to ask how Anita can do this if she considers vampires to be deserving of humane treatment. These are vamps whose only crimes are not being blood oathed to anyone and not stopping stronger vampires from killing cops, who came in to kill THEM, I might add. They were also going to turn a teenage girl into a vampire because she wanted them to. She changed her mind, so this area is, admittedly, a little grey. Still. Larry refuses to cut up these people's friends and possible family in front of them simply to expedite the search for a couple of killers.
In another author's hands, this would have been a sad little exchange as their friendship collapsed under the weight of their differing opinions on the matters at hand. Larry choosing to believe that doing evil in the name of good is still doing evil and Anita choosing to believe that the ends justify the means.
But this is LKH, so Anita goads Larry into going beyond "I won't do this and I don't think anyone should" (after Anita's already thought about how evil and twisted this act is!) and into attack Anita territory.
"Even if your morals cost hundreds of lives?" I asked.
He nodded. "Morals aren't just for when it's easy, Anita. They aren't morals if you throw them aside every time it's convenient."
"Are you calling me immoral?" I asked.
"No, I'm just saying we have a different standard, that's all. We both believe we're right."
"No, Larry," I said. "I don't believe I'm right. I've done things that give me nightmares. I'll probably dream about this tonight, too."
"That means you know this is wrong; it's your conscience talking to you-yelling at you."
"I know that."
"Then how can you do it?" he asked.
"Because I'd rather have new nightmares than look a family in the eyes because their fathe, their brother, their mother, their daughter, heir grandfather is dead because we didn't get these vampires in time."
"I'd rather make the condolence call than do something that I know is this wrong, this..."
"Say it," I said, and whispered it then, "Say it."
"Evil," he said, "I'd rather do the condolence call than do something this evil."
I nodded, not agreeing, just nodding. "Good that we have me here then, so I can be evil, because I'd rather cut up the bodies, terrify the prisoners, than have to see one more grieving family, or explain to anyone why these bloodsuckers killed again, because we were too good, too righteous to get the information we needed."
"you and I are never going to agree on this," he said, voice quiet but very firm.
"No," I said, "we're not."
"You go be Zerbrowski's bogeyman, and I'll stake the bodies down here."
"I'm not the bogeyman, Larry. He's not real and I am."
"Just go, Anita, just let's stop this."
I shook my head. "Not yet," I said.
"Anita..." he said.
I stopped him by holding up my hand. "I'm the monster, Larry, not the bogeyman."
"Same thing," he said.
"No, it's not. Like I said, the bogeyman isn't real, but the monsters are real, so I'm the cop's pet monster."
"You're no one's pet, Anita, if anyone makes you a monster, it's you."
And to that, there was nothing to say. I got my equipment and I went for the building, because when a friendship breaks this badly it doesn't turn to hatred; it turns to pain.
I... *slams head into nearest wall* Larry was willing to give Anita an out; he wanted to stop their 'fight' but she kept pushing and pushing and pushing until she got what she wanted. He hurt her feelings and she stalked away because he happened to tell her something truthful about herself that wasn't pretty, even though it was something she just told him repeatedly.
Later, Zerbrowski tells Anita, "Don't let people like Kirkland make you feel bad about yourself, Anita."
After he bitches about how she keeps pushing and pushing for answers. Kirkland was ready to walk off and just chalk it up to Anita willing to do things he wouldn't; she's the one who pushed until he said something she regretted! The hell, Zerbrowski? Anita's in the fucking wrong on this one. Don't take her side, man. Don't do it.
Fast forward to newbie Marshal Brice inviting himself along to lunch with Z and A. Larry stops him and asks what kind of Marshal he wants to be and Brice answers one who is good at his job. Larry pulls an Anita and declares that he's good at his job and then everything Brice says is easily twisted into "Are you calling me a bad Marshal?" See, Anita does it and it's okay; Larry takes offense and looks like a jackass. This section is just badly written and exists to assassinate what's left of Larry's character because the whole reason Brice is so keen to go to lunch with Z & A? Is he's telling them he's gay and wants advice on how to keep that under wraps. I'd say not telling Anita would be the best way but whatever, dude.
Later Anita decides not to push things when Micah says something she could push and she spends the rest of the book not pushing and people are all fawning all over her about her about face on this. But she still whines that Larry called her a monster... when she pushed the issue. It's never brought up that maybe she learned that sometimes you don't push, it's just, "Wow, who are you and what have you done with the real Anita?" and she's confused by this reaction EVERY time. OI.
Let's move on. Sin is Anita's blue weretiger to call. He's also a teenage boy. He was 16 when we met him and now he's 18 or so and Anita goes to his PTA meetings and dealings with the school. Let that sink in. She's fucking him and filling in as a parental figure at school. She cheers him on at his football games, when she's not making out with the guy who claims to be his brother (Nathaniel) and then making out with him, too. (I assume she's not full out having sex with Nathaniel in the stands and then screwing Sin at halftime on the field, so... yeah. Making out.) The whole parental guardian thing squicks her out but she keeps going back to him and letting other people talk her into keeping him around even though she's not in love with him.
Honestly, I'm going to stop it right there. The Sin/Anita thing is just gross. He's too young for all this, she doesn't WANT to deal with the emotional fall out of being his first everything and how he's reacted to her dangerous job(s), but because he's allegedly bonded so well with EVERYONE else, she... won't send him back to Vegas. Um, okay, then stop sleeping with him. Seriously, woman.
But no, Sin's solution is for her to stop coming to school stuff like a parent. o_O; Oh, honey... no. That's just... *headache* Also? This is a line in the book: Sin didn't look like a little boy anymore. That's just all kinds of wrong. I don't care that you're comparing their body types to Nicky's, it's just not a phrase a grown ass woman gets to throw around without getting some serious backlash.
I won't even touch the whole pissing contest over who gets to kiss Anita after Nathaniel does. Seriously. It happens. It's just as stupid and wrong as one would think, only worse because it's between the teenage boy she's fucking and the guy whose mind she raped so completely he's lost all semblance of freewill where she's concerned.
Then she admits as much but tries to make it all okay by saying that obsession and love might not be the same thing but dude, when you react like that, it's fine, right? Jesus. Just keep reminding yourself that Anita brainwiped him and then see how long it takes for you to get ill every time he's all lovey dovey and she tries to pretend it's a normal/healthy relationship.
Because Larry's too small a character to count as a real assassination, and Richard's wisely keeping his distance, we move on to... Asher. He does something stupid (kisses Anita and then draws blood and won't let her up when she tries to pull away) and a fight breaks out annnnnnnnnnd then we realize his problem is this:
Asher is tired of sharing JC with Anita and other women. He doesn't want to share Dev (don't ask; just don't ask) with a woman, and Asher is mostly just tired of sharing in general. Funny how Anita's supposed to be making everyone get what they want out of this whole ardeur crap but when what Asher needs is to not share the people he loves, he's a horrible person (vampire). Maybe not everyone wants a million "sweeties" and "honey buns" and "main squeezes." Maybe they want one. Or two, if that's how the cookie happens to crumble. Maybe they want to feel like they're the most important in some way; which is something Asher has never gotten from Anita... or anyone, actually.
But he's talking crazy talk, what with his "true love waits" philosophy. Craaaaaaaaaazy talk! I really don't think this guy's in for the huge square dance that is the Anita/JC sexcapades. I think he signed up for JC/Anita since he'd have to take Anita to get JC and then things got out of hand and because LKH is as subtle as a fucking sledgehammer, Asher lacks the ability to say he'd like to scale things back. So instead he clings to those he thinks are his and they of course freak out under the constraints and he's a horrible, no good, very bad person for it.
He's shipped away to another city and Anita's pretty much plotting actively against him by the time the book ends even though the dude's apologized a million times and it's been, maybe 48 hours since the book started so it's a max of 24 since the attack. It's likely even less than that so... yeah. Plotting against someone who doesn't want to play your sex games any more is not cool.
"And there it is: your weakness."
"What weakness? That I want someone to love me more than they love you, just this once?"
Also:
"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said."
"You've said that before. If you really meant it, Asher, you wouldn't have to keep saying it."
Really, Ms. Blake? Please tell me more of this after you've spent countless books hurting people and then making half-assed apologies only to turn around and do it again and again and again... and again.
Which leads into Nicky complaining that Asher hurt Anita's mouth so badly she won't be able to perform oral sex on anyone until she heals! The horror! You know what she does in every single sex scene that follows? Yeah. No, I'm not kidding.
Annnnnnnd there's more of the whole Anita making Nicky her mind fucked bitch (actual quote) and she's more upset about the fact that she's not sure how he really feels beyond the whole mind-fuck than she is about the fact that she did this to him in the first place!
You are a terrible character, Anita Blake. Earlier you would kill current you and run screaming from everything that made you a possibility as her future.
Let's start at the end: I think this will be my final Anita Blake book. I've never been all that fond of Anita herself, but I was intrigued by the world LKH dreamt up. When she put her mind to it, the woman could do creeping dread really well, and early!Anita might not be someone you'd ever want to call a friend but you'd be glad she was out there fighting the good fight, catching the bad guys and all that.
Since I read the Merry books first, I had no real issue with the sex when Anita finally began having some... and even when some turned into a lot, so long as there was a plot elsewhere, I had no real issue.
Then her wires got crossed and all plot seemed to escape while the sex went on and on forever. Boring sex! Meh. STILL. I'd come to give a damn about some of these characters and I either wanted to see them again (Damian, Edward, Asher) or I wanted them to be redeemed (Dolph, Richard) so... I hung around.
But with each book, I began to hate myself a little more. I began to hate LKH a lot. I was ready to give up and then the sex cut back and plots were sort of reintroduced to the story! Hallelujah!
Yeah. No. No they weren't. Coupled with the fact that Anita is the biggest fucking monster in the series these days and LKH is either pulling the biggest con ever (I don't think she's that talented, sadly) or is too blind to see the fact that her heroine is now decidedly the bad guy? I'm out. This book exemplifies almost all the reasons why.
The case she's working on is only really worked on for about four little chapters at the beginning of the book and four smaller chapters at the tail end of the book. Everything else is either Anita boinking some new guy, talking about her sex life, or characters being assassinated without a single important body hitting the floor. More than two thirds of this book is pushing the squick factor and pushing it hard.
We begin with talk of vampires having kidnapped a teenage girl. The hunt is on to find them and Anita is talking to what she's deemed a low level vampire to get information. Naturally things go ass over teakettle. Girl is rescued but a bunch of vampires are taken out in the process, as are at least two officers. Whoops. Thing is, these vampires aren't your preternaturally pretty vamps. They're grandparents and soccer moms and sadly, yes, little kids or teenagers who will forever be trapped in the ultimate ungainly time.
The ones that are subdued/captured again are interrogated as to where the other vampires (the more powerful ones who did the actual killing of the cops) are. Or, rather, they're going to be.
Zerbrowski cooks up the idea that if they isolate the weakest vampire in the group and then proceed to chop up the already dead vampires (they need their hearts removed and their heads chopped off to make sure they're dead) in front of the weaker vamps, said vamps will talk.
They try and rope Larry into it. Larry draws his line in the sand and LKH takes that poor bastard down. We'll get back to that. First vamp they try this trick on flips out and tells them what they want to know, vampires are executed I get bored, and eventually there's a hostage situation where one of the vamps who knows he's going to die as soon as the law (or Anita) catches up with him decides to take his ex-wife hostage. Anita and the SWAT team take him out, we return to Anita's boring as hell life and later we resume the storyline with the realization that the first vampire wasn't kidding when he said there was an old vamp in town who was preaching about vampires not needing to blood oath themselves to a master vampire. They could have freedom! I should point out that more than one vampire actually chose to die rather than live in a place where they would be forced to be blood oathed to Jean-Claude and thus also Anita. People would rather die than deal with our heroine. Die a second time, that is. Think about that.
Anyway, old vampire didn't blood oath his vamps so they went ... crazy? Did stupid shit? Really? REALLY? I get that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I refuse to believe this many people turned vampires would go absolutely batshit all at the same time. If vamps are that fucking unstable, no, I'm not buying them as "people, too!" Anyway, some have taken this message to heart and one guy goes to blow up the Circus of the Dead, starting with Nathaniel.
Don't worry, that doesn't happen and the book ends within seconds of that not happening. Threats are issued, but that means we have to swing back around for the emotional torture.
Plot wise, meh. It could have been better, it should have been better, and yet it was apparently called on account of Anita needing to shit all over everyone. *sigh*
Issues!
Larry refuses to torture these vampires, even going so far as to ask how Anita can do this if she considers vampires to be deserving of humane treatment. These are vamps whose only crimes are not being blood oathed to anyone and not stopping stronger vampires from killing cops, who came in to kill THEM, I might add. They were also going to turn a teenage girl into a vampire because she wanted them to. She changed her mind, so this area is, admittedly, a little grey. Still. Larry refuses to cut up these people's friends and possible family in front of them simply to expedite the search for a couple of killers.
In another author's hands, this would have been a sad little exchange as their friendship collapsed under the weight of their differing opinions on the matters at hand. Larry choosing to believe that doing evil in the name of good is still doing evil and Anita choosing to believe that the ends justify the means.
But this is LKH, so Anita goads Larry into going beyond "I won't do this and I don't think anyone should" (after Anita's already thought about how evil and twisted this act is!) and into attack Anita territory.
"Even if your morals cost hundreds of lives?" I asked.
He nodded. "Morals aren't just for when it's easy, Anita. They aren't morals if you throw them aside every time it's convenient."
"Are you calling me immoral?" I asked.
"No, I'm just saying we have a different standard, that's all. We both believe we're right."
"No, Larry," I said. "I don't believe I'm right. I've done things that give me nightmares. I'll probably dream about this tonight, too."
"That means you know this is wrong; it's your conscience talking to you-yelling at you."
"I know that."
"Then how can you do it?" he asked.
"Because I'd rather have new nightmares than look a family in the eyes because their fathe, their brother, their mother, their daughter, heir grandfather is dead because we didn't get these vampires in time."
"I'd rather make the condolence call than do something that I know is this wrong, this..."
"Say it," I said, and whispered it then, "Say it."
"Evil," he said, "I'd rather do the condolence call than do something this evil."
I nodded, not agreeing, just nodding. "Good that we have me here then, so I can be evil, because I'd rather cut up the bodies, terrify the prisoners, than have to see one more grieving family, or explain to anyone why these bloodsuckers killed again, because we were too good, too righteous to get the information we needed."
"you and I are never going to agree on this," he said, voice quiet but very firm.
"No," I said, "we're not."
"You go be Zerbrowski's bogeyman, and I'll stake the bodies down here."
"I'm not the bogeyman, Larry. He's not real and I am."
"Just go, Anita, just let's stop this."
I shook my head. "Not yet," I said.
"Anita..." he said.
I stopped him by holding up my hand. "I'm the monster, Larry, not the bogeyman."
"Same thing," he said.
"No, it's not. Like I said, the bogeyman isn't real, but the monsters are real, so I'm the cop's pet monster."
"You're no one's pet, Anita, if anyone makes you a monster, it's you."
And to that, there was nothing to say. I got my equipment and I went for the building, because when a friendship breaks this badly it doesn't turn to hatred; it turns to pain.
I... *slams head into nearest wall* Larry was willing to give Anita an out; he wanted to stop their 'fight' but she kept pushing and pushing and pushing until she got what she wanted. He hurt her feelings and she stalked away because he happened to tell her something truthful about herself that wasn't pretty, even though it was something she just told him repeatedly.
Later, Zerbrowski tells Anita, "Don't let people like Kirkland make you feel bad about yourself, Anita."
After he bitches about how she keeps pushing and pushing for answers. Kirkland was ready to walk off and just chalk it up to Anita willing to do things he wouldn't; she's the one who pushed until he said something she regretted! The hell, Zerbrowski? Anita's in the fucking wrong on this one. Don't take her side, man. Don't do it.
Fast forward to newbie Marshal Brice inviting himself along to lunch with Z and A. Larry stops him and asks what kind of Marshal he wants to be and Brice answers one who is good at his job. Larry pulls an Anita and declares that he's good at his job and then everything Brice says is easily twisted into "Are you calling me a bad Marshal?" See, Anita does it and it's okay; Larry takes offense and looks like a jackass. This section is just badly written and exists to assassinate what's left of Larry's character because the whole reason Brice is so keen to go to lunch with Z & A? Is he's telling them he's gay and wants advice on how to keep that under wraps. I'd say not telling Anita would be the best way but whatever, dude.
Later Anita decides not to push things when Micah says something she could push and she spends the rest of the book not pushing and people are all fawning all over her about her about face on this. But she still whines that Larry called her a monster... when she pushed the issue. It's never brought up that maybe she learned that sometimes you don't push, it's just, "Wow, who are you and what have you done with the real Anita?" and she's confused by this reaction EVERY time. OI.
Let's move on. Sin is Anita's blue weretiger to call. He's also a teenage boy. He was 16 when we met him and now he's 18 or so and Anita goes to his PTA meetings and dealings with the school. Let that sink in. She's fucking him and filling in as a parental figure at school. She cheers him on at his football games, when she's not making out with the guy who claims to be his brother (Nathaniel) and then making out with him, too. (I assume she's not full out having sex with Nathaniel in the stands and then screwing Sin at halftime on the field, so... yeah. Making out.) The whole parental guardian thing squicks her out but she keeps going back to him and letting other people talk her into keeping him around even though she's not in love with him.
Honestly, I'm going to stop it right there. The Sin/Anita thing is just gross. He's too young for all this, she doesn't WANT to deal with the emotional fall out of being his first everything and how he's reacted to her dangerous job(s), but because he's allegedly bonded so well with EVERYONE else, she... won't send him back to Vegas. Um, okay, then stop sleeping with him. Seriously, woman.
But no, Sin's solution is for her to stop coming to school stuff like a parent. o_O; Oh, honey... no. That's just... *headache* Also? This is a line in the book: Sin didn't look like a little boy anymore. That's just all kinds of wrong. I don't care that you're comparing their body types to Nicky's, it's just not a phrase a grown ass woman gets to throw around without getting some serious backlash.
I won't even touch the whole pissing contest over who gets to kiss Anita after Nathaniel does. Seriously. It happens. It's just as stupid and wrong as one would think, only worse because it's between the teenage boy she's fucking and the guy whose mind she raped so completely he's lost all semblance of freewill where she's concerned.
Then she admits as much but tries to make it all okay by saying that obsession and love might not be the same thing but dude, when you react like that, it's fine, right? Jesus. Just keep reminding yourself that Anita brainwiped him and then see how long it takes for you to get ill every time he's all lovey dovey and she tries to pretend it's a normal/healthy relationship.
Because Larry's too small a character to count as a real assassination, and Richard's wisely keeping his distance, we move on to... Asher. He does something stupid (kisses Anita and then draws blood and won't let her up when she tries to pull away) and a fight breaks out annnnnnnnnnd then we realize his problem is this:
Asher is tired of sharing JC with Anita and other women. He doesn't want to share Dev (don't ask; just don't ask) with a woman, and Asher is mostly just tired of sharing in general. Funny how Anita's supposed to be making everyone get what they want out of this whole ardeur crap but when what Asher needs is to not share the people he loves, he's a horrible person (vampire). Maybe not everyone wants a million "sweeties" and "honey buns" and "main squeezes." Maybe they want one. Or two, if that's how the cookie happens to crumble. Maybe they want to feel like they're the most important in some way; which is something Asher has never gotten from Anita... or anyone, actually.
But he's talking crazy talk, what with his "true love waits" philosophy. Craaaaaaaaaazy talk! I really don't think this guy's in for the huge square dance that is the Anita/JC sexcapades. I think he signed up for JC/Anita since he'd have to take Anita to get JC and then things got out of hand and because LKH is as subtle as a fucking sledgehammer, Asher lacks the ability to say he'd like to scale things back. So instead he clings to those he thinks are his and they of course freak out under the constraints and he's a horrible, no good, very bad person for it.
He's shipped away to another city and Anita's pretty much plotting actively against him by the time the book ends even though the dude's apologized a million times and it's been, maybe 48 hours since the book started so it's a max of 24 since the attack. It's likely even less than that so... yeah. Plotting against someone who doesn't want to play your sex games any more is not cool.
"And there it is: your weakness."
"What weakness? That I want someone to love me more than they love you, just this once?"
Also:
"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said."
"You've said that before. If you really meant it, Asher, you wouldn't have to keep saying it."
Really, Ms. Blake? Please tell me more of this after you've spent countless books hurting people and then making half-assed apologies only to turn around and do it again and again and again... and again.
Which leads into Nicky complaining that Asher hurt Anita's mouth so badly she won't be able to perform oral sex on anyone until she heals! The horror! You know what she does in every single sex scene that follows? Yeah. No, I'm not kidding.
Annnnnnnd there's more of the whole Anita making Nicky her mind fucked bitch (actual quote) and she's more upset about the fact that she's not sure how he really feels beyond the whole mind-fuck than she is about the fact that she did this to him in the first place!
You are a terrible character, Anita Blake. Earlier you would kill current you and run screaming from everything that made you a possibility as her future.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-23 04:47 pm (UTC)I also read a couple of the Merry books, which I liked a lot better than Anita, at least until her sex with everyone became detrimental to the plot. I'm not a prude; but I just remember thinking that it just got to be too much (and probably stuff that squicks me out like bondage, but I can't remember if that was actually there or not.) I don't know...I might try giving the Merry books a reread, but I'll pass on Anita Blake.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-23 11:50 pm (UTC)I loved the first three Merry books. ♥ I still remember getting a 2am call from the person I told to read the books when she read the scene where Andais goes on a rampage through the guards.
Merry's books I think are stuck in a holding pattern of she has no idea what to do with them so she's been stalling for time. She can't even manage that any more so Merry's been put on the backburner. Which I'm torn about because I like Merry but I don't really want her to write another one while she's still very much against writing it. It'll just end badly. Or in a fit of "...seriously?" Again.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-23 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-24 12:53 am (UTC)Annnnnnnnd I'm going to hop over and request some book goodness now. I don't mind smut so long as it's either presented as "Smut is all you need" or it coexists with a plot. It's when I get smut when I ordered plot that I get cranky.