Blue Moon snark

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It was junior high all over again, stumbling on couples under the bleachers, hearing their laughter chase me into the night.

Lol wat.

I mean really. What is that even supposed to mean?

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"Don't let him die, not like this. Please, mon chardonneret."
He jumped like I'd hit him when I used the old nickname that Jean-Claude had used so many years ago. It meant literally, my goldfinch, which sounded silly in English. But the look on Asher's face wasn't silly. It was almost shocked.

I can tell you it sounds as silly in French. Or just plain gay. Referring to someone as a small seed-eating bird? Yeah...

Vilecat wrote:

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"Don't let him die, not like this. Please, mon chardonneret."
He jumped like I'd hit him when I used the old nickname that Jean-Claude had used so many years ago. It meant literally, my goldfinch, which sounded silly in English. But the look on Asher's face wasn't silly. It was almost shocked.

I can tell you it sounds as silly in French. Or just plain gay. Referring to someone as a small seed-eating bird? Yeah...

Actually, when you think about it, "small, seed-eating bird" pretty much sums Anita up.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

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It was junior high all over again, stumbling on couples under the bleachers, hearing their laughter chase me into the night.

Lol wat.

I mean really. What is that even supposed to mean?

I think it's supposed to mean that Anita was awkward in high-school and things like couples making out under the bleachers made her feel even more awkward, because she was too awkward to find boyfriends to do things like that with, and the people she saw making out laughed at her because she's so awkward.

This begs the question of why she went under the bleachers in the first place.

Yes. Anita's like Bella: Constantly going on about how awkward and unsexy she is, yet everything with a penis wants to be inside her due to her grace, beauty and forcefully decisive personality. She's geeky. She's in a love triangle with a vampire and a werwolf. She's got mommy issues. Actually, the worst scene ever involving her and Richard was when they were still dating, and she went to meet him at work.

Richard is a junior high school science teacher. Richard is Perfect. All the junior high school girls want him in the worst way.

So when 26-year-old Anita comes traipsing in to talk to Richard and is obviously Hot Teacher's Girlfriend... she revels in all the dirty looks she gets from girls literally half her age.

Congratulations, full-grown woman who has graduated college and has a successful career! You have beaten out a bunch of underaged girls -children- to their sexy teacher. A winner is you!

Anita's always had a few annoying traits, but those made her human. Before Richard came along, she was never pathetic, let alone so downright fucking pathetic as this. I hate him so much.

Anyway, about two or three novels from then, we return to Chapter 14 of Blue Moon.

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"Shit," I said.
Damian held his hands out to me like a child that had burned its hand. I didn't know which was worse, the terror in his face or the almost resigned look in his eyes.

FACES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. Eyes are too big of a part of a facial expression. An expression can be complex, yes, but the eyes cannot blatantly contradict the rest of the face. It just doesn't work. You just can't look terrified and "almost resigned" at the same time. Whatever the attempt would look like, it wouldn't be any recognizable emotion, and would probably look more like you were having a stroke.

Anyway, Damian begins rather explosively rotting all over everyone and everything in the room while Anita has an argument with Asher over whether or not she can do anything to save him. Damian continues rotting and having impossible facial expressions, like "grateful, and pain-filled."

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The smell swelled stronger. I breathed through my mouth, but that just put the odor on the back of my tongue. I was almost afraid to look at Damian. I turned slowly like a character in a horror movie, where you know the monster is right behind you, and you delay looking because you know it will blast your sanity forever. But some things are worse than any nightmare.

I am pretty sure most horror movies' characters are reluctant to look because they REALLY don't want to see whatever is going to fucking murder them. They'll worry about their sanity later. (Also looking over your shoulder just makes them attack you, and it doesn't help you run faster.)

...also, you're kind of writing in the horror genre, Hamilton. Jeez. Anyway, through some wordy, urgent dialog while Damian is doing his best imitation of an ambulatory compost bin, Anita learns that a vampire suffering from corruption can be healed by drinking the blood of another, more powerful being. Usually a master vampire, and a powerful vampire at that, but the main thing is that they have to be a magical being of some kind, and more powerful than the vampire.

Guess who the most powerful person in the room is? It's our necromancer queen, Anita Blake. But the vampires both protest since she could die. (Asher fails to mention that if Anita dies, it doesn't matter that the process will cure Damian because Jean-Claude will kill them both). Anita wins the argument, of course, and gets Damian to feed off of her, offering her neck. And, um.

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Damian was like a feeding thing at my throat.

...

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Damian was like a feeding thing at my throat.
Damian was like a feeding thing at my throat.

I don't hear film noir narration anymore, I hear a fucking Valley Girl. "So I like, let him bite my neck and drink my blood, like? He was, like, totally a feeding thing at my throat!"

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The power took the pain, turned it into something else. I felt his mouth at my throat, felt him swallowing my blood, my life, my power. I gathered it all into us and thrust it back into Damian. I fed it into him with my blood.

I found as many ways to repeat myself as possible.

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I visualized his skin whole and perfect. I felt the power spill down his body. I felt us push out the other. I could feel it flowing out of us, not onto the floor but into the floor, past the floor, into the ground below. We were exorcising it, ridding ourselves of it. It was no more.

The power of Sue compels you! The power of Sue compels you!

The day is saved. Everyone showers the rotten vampire slime off, and then they discuss the Real Meaning of Colin's attack. Anita wants his head on a stick, Asher thinks he's being too cunning for it to be merely an attempted murder, not to mention that if Nathaniel were to die, it'd be an act of war.

Conveniently, Nathaniel is now well enough to tell them what happened. He met a local werewolf for some sex, she chained him to the bed and had her way with him just the way he wanted, and then left him chained there for the vampires to take him.

Oh, I can't believe I forgot to mention this. Mira's leader (and the leader of all the local werewolves) in this rural hick town in Tennessee... is named Verne. Know what I mean?

The chapter ends with some vague mutterings about retribution and how it'd better be good before Anita frets over her wardrobe.

Chapter 15 is only three pages long. Yet I kept tripping over the first 11 paragraphs because while the first two are about the unique difficulty of washing off Damian's rotten fluids, the next NINE are about clothes.

Anita runs in circles over the undead whore-clothes Jean-Claude has packed for her. She's committed to picking an outfit out of these clothes, but she wangsts over how much each shows. I guess that's the difference between her and Betty Schaffer the Not-Raped: She'll dress slutty but feel bad about it.

After dithering about how... appropriate her outfit is, she turns to more practical concerns, like how she can wear weapons with it.

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It was a mini-Uzi on a shoulder strap. It had a clip that attached to the back of the skirt so it didn't swing around too much, but you could pull it out into the open with one hand.

Okay, her whole wardrobe's custom, but:

A: Uzis are reloaded with magazines, not clips
B: This would necessitate some sort of magazine pouch or similar rig attached to the skirt. Contrary to what video games might teach you, you can't simply glue guns and/or magazines to your ass.

As per normal, once she's got her weapons situated, some pansy-ass comes up to complain about it:

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I looked up at him. "I didn't bring everything I had."
"So glad to hear it," [Asher] said. "But the machine gun is a killing weapon, nothing more."

Dammit, Anita! When will you learn to bring guns with a "stun" setting?

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"The reason I'm in this outfit is because you said we need to make a good show. Well, we can't cause harm from a distance. We can't spread corruption from any of your bites. What the hell are we going to do, Asher? What can we possibly do that will impress them?"
I swung the Uzi into my left hand, pointing it at the ceiling. "If there's anyone with him tonight that I can kill, I'll kill him with this."
"And do you think that will impress or frighten Colin?"
"Have you ever seen a vampire cut in half by one of these?" I asked.
Asher seemed to think about that for a few seconds as though he'd seen so many horrible things that he just wasn't sure. Finally, he shook his head. "No, I have not."

I can pretty much guarantee that no one has ever seen anyone cut in half by an Uzi. It is, after all, merely a 9mm submachine gun. To cut someone in half with it, you'd have to constantly shoot them with multiple reloads. You'd have to keep shooting them after they were dead.

But this is Anita Blake, in whose universe merely having a gun loaded with hollowpoints is a tantamount to tac nukes, and any caliber above 9mm is for taking out tanks.

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"Well, I have." I let the gun swing to the small of my back. "It impressed me."

Yep. When 32-or-less little pieces of lead manage to cut a body in half, it's pretty impressive. You MIGHT be able to do it with a .50BMG. A 9mm? No way.

That's it for the interesting shit in the chapter. The remainder of it is all about fucking clothes. Goddamn, what is this, a Bratz novel?

Suddenly, I've stopped feeling silly for running around with double 1887s (double Ahnold, all the way!) in Modern Warfare 2.

We get some more [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] about how Anita just doesn't understand bisexuality or why Asher would want to shower with Jason and not Damian to help scrub off the rot, blah blah blah.

Another thing Anita likes doing besides blather about clothes and other people's sex lives: Licking water off of dudes' chests. When she was dating Richard, she wanted to. When she was with Jean-Claude, she did it. But when The thing is, Jean-Claude's not around, so what does she do? Shoehorn a little fantasizing into the narrative. In this case, about Asher the half-ugly, half-godly lusterpire.

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If we'd been lovers, I'd have licked the water off his chest, caressing my tongue down the deep scars, maybe even slid a hand under the towel. But we weren't loves, and I'd never seen him nude.

Awkward and apropos of nothing! Sounds like a good place to stop, or have a moment of clarity and delete these two sentences. That's what a competent author would've done. But, you know. Hamilton.

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He'd told me once that he was still fully functional

Dick up, balls online. Thanks for sharing.

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but that didn't really tell me what he looked like under the towel.

I'm sure you'll be finding out in a subsequent novel, Anita.

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And as comfortable as I was with him, I wasn't sure I wanted to know. If it was as bad as his chest, I was almost sure I didn't want to see. Yes, I admit that a small part of me did want to know for sheer curiosity's sake.

In this whole paragraph, she has indulged in a sexual fantasy about Asher, wondered about how his penis looks, and then quickly backtracks and says "just curious!" Riiiiight.

Anyway, after some really boring sexual tension and talk about gold hair, Bisexual Jason the Bisexually Bisexual comes in and stares wistfully at the way Asher and Anita look at each other and gets "kinda jealous."

I'd just like to point out that it has taken three pages for Asher to shower, dry himself off and be stared at. Fortunately, Verne the local Ulfric/Alpha/Stupid Leader Name of the Week comes in just in time for Anita to stop thinking about how tight "something low in [her] body" has gotten and shove a gun into someone else's body.

Verne wonders why Anita has abruptly shoved a gun in his back.

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I felt his ribs expand through the gun barrel.

I didn't know my own strength. Or that of his bones.

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"I can smell the shit on the carpet, the sheets. Colin pay you a visit?"
I shoved the barrel tight enough into his back to leave a bruise. "He left us a present."
"He gave us one of his presents once," Verne said. "I know what I'm smelling in here because I held Erin's hand while he rotted to death."

Erin is a boy's name now?

Anyway, they fill each other in on what happened. Basically, Colin the Evil Vampire has Verne and his pack by the wereballs. They're at odds with each other, though, so Mira's betrayal is news to Verne. Verne learns of how Anita Sued the sludge out of Damian.

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Verne turned and looked at me then. "Our vargamor said she felt your power tonight. said you conjured up some sort of spell."
"I don't know the term vargamor," I said.

You know, when you get right down to it, Anita's pretty incompetent at everything. Spoilered for size of rant:

Spoiler:

Basically, as a tough, smart, powerful, independent, vaguely noir PI type character, Anita fails at everything forever. So it's no surprise she has no idea that Verne is talking about his pack wise woman.

Anyway, Verne asks what he can do to make up for this breach of hospitality.

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"First, delay the greeting ceremony," I said. "We're going to be ass deep in vampires; there won't be time for anything else tonight."
Verne nodded. "Done."
"And I want Mira's head in a basket," I said.

Remember this; it'll show later just how fucking incompetent Anita is.

The chapter ends with some more hand-wringing over what exactly to do about Colin, and Anita letting us know that she looked forward to the chance to kill some of Colin's vampires.

In a six and a half page chapter, Anita basically has an internal monologue about Asher and his penis, gets spoon-fed a little more plot, and resolves to kill vampires.

Oh, What the hell, LKH? *facepalm*

Ok, for some reason I was looking up Anita Blake online trying to find some other scathing criticisms that may be funny to read (great snarkage, Penguin ), and I come across a news bulletin saying the Anita Blake TV show will NOT be showing up on IFC. Huzzah! However, there's a link to LKH's blog, and it reads:

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It has been frustrating watching other shows in the genre I pioneered go on the air while we didn’t,

Emphasis mine. WAT? No, seriously, what the hell, idiot? You think you pioneered the, what is it... "paranormal romance" genre? Seriously?

Also, more snickering:

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It’s been over ten years since I sat down to write Guilty Pleasures and longer than that for the first Anita Blake short story, "Those Who Seek Foregiveness" which only saw publication in my short story collection, Strange Candy. That story was beloved by editors, but no one bought it because zombies weren’t hot then, and mixed genre wasn’t either.

Yeah, they probably got a laugh out of you submitting it with a spelling error in the title. I know I did! Just keep telling yourself it's because there were zombies in it, LKH.

And wow, reading this log is like reading a bunch of crazy. Here's the link for y'all.
LKH's Blog

EDIT:

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I love that with each book I find new ways to push the mix of vampires, wereanimals, monsters, and zombies, to that next logical conclusion.

*dies laughing*

SECOND EDIT:

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Most writers take the mundane and make it fantastic, I like to take the fantastic and make it mundane.

*fist pounds on the table* No, no, stop, LKH! I can't... breathe... this blog is a gold mine. XD

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It has been frustrating watching other shows in the genre I pioneered go on the air while we didn’t,

YOU DIDN'T DO THAT.

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I love that with each book I find new ways to push the mix of vampires, wereanimals, monsters, and zombies, to that next logical conclusion.

YOU DIDN'T DO THAT EITHER.

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Most writers take the mundane and make it fantastic, I like to take the fantastic and make it mundane.

THIS IS ALSO NOT A THING YOU DO.

"Ms. Hamilton? A gentleman by the name of Mr. Bram Stoker wishes to speak to you. Something about your making claims to have created something you didn't."

BTW, I read the anthology Strange Candy when it came out, and while I can remember fairly well several of the stories in it, I don't remember anything with a character named Anita Blake. And that would have been back when LKH was still in her sane stage, so if the story was that great, I ought to remember it.

This is great. I picked up Narcissus in Chains at my library for no reason, and god, it was awful. My least favourite thing was that she'd have male characters in a threesome, or in love with each other or something, but also went to such great lengths that they would never even touch each other, because we can't have gay characters, oh no.

There's also a great sporking of Danse Macabre over here, if anyone's interested.

Chapter 17 starts off pretty badly. Thank God for Hoegaarden.

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I walked through a world of silvered moon shadows and the black outlines of trees.

Yawn, coming up with overwrought descriptions of the background is so much work. We only need one line about it anyway. Let's talk about Anita's fashion accessories instead. That'll NEVER get old.

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The boots were low-heeled enough and they fit well enough that they actually weren't bad for walking through the woods. It wasn't the fit of anything that made it uncomfortable to be out in the woods; it was the heat and the noise. There was sweat at the bend of my knees underneath the nylons and leather. I'd added a leather jacket, borrowed from Jason. The jacket hid the mini-Uzi and the big leather purse I had slung over one shoulder. The purse was Cherry's and had a can of aerosol hair spray in it. I had a golden lighter in the pocket of the jacket. The lighter belonged to Asher. It was too hot to be wearing the jacket.

Wait a minute.

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a leather jacket, borrowed from Jason
The purse was Cherry's
The lighter belonged to Asher.

Why should I give a shit? Does Anita expect her audience to remember this for her so they can remind her to give them back? It's like 50% of this book is Anita going on about her relationships, 30% about fashion accessories, 15% of her tough girl persona, and 5% actual story.

Oh wait.

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Earlier, Asher had made things in my body go low and tight. But now, standing in the hot, summer woods, watching the gleam of moonlight reflecting off the silk and leather on Richard's body, seeing his hair slide like a soft cloud around his shoulders, it made my chest tight, closer to tears than to lust, because he wasn't mine anymore.

YOU USED TO DATE
I
FUCKING
GET IT

I am averaging about a bottle of beer per page now. Anyway, Anita resolves not to run away from Richard. Why? She never has without at least a shouting match before.

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So I stood there in the silvered dark, my heart beating in my throat, and waited for him to come to me.

This sort of narration is more appropriate to hiding in the dark with a rifle topped with a night vision scope, not waiting on your ex for a social gathering.

Plus, one use of "silvered" in the book was more than enough. Twice within three pages in the same chapter is just ridiculous.

Anyway, Richard and company show up, we get more "oh gee wow the last time you led me through the woods you ate Marcus" angst about their romantic backstory, you know, because Hamilton doesn't want the reader to ever forget that Anita and Richard used to date.

Richard's bodybuilder frame keeps tearing shirts and Anita gets all wet for him Hulking out.

No. Really.

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He wadded his hands to the front of the shirt and pulled. The silk tore into black shreds, ripping like a soft scream. He tossed the silk at me. I caught it by reflex, not thinking.
It didn't just make me catch my breath, it made me catch and hold, forgetting to breathe for a few seconds, so that when I did remember, my breath came out in a shaky gasp. So much for being cool and sophisticated.

Yes, that's right. This is supposed to be some sort of big show of force/get-together and we're busy having a striptease now.

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He lowered his arms and all that was left were the sleeves. He pulled them off like a stripper removing long gloves and let the bits of silk fall to the ground. He stood looking at me, nude from the waist up.

Just in case you didn't get it from all the subtlety, Richard is putting on a striptease for Anita.

Anyway, Anita realizes what's going on as Richard starts throwing innuendo at her and getting too touchy, so she goes off to find the lupanar (the werewolf shindig's location) herself. So she has an embarrassing talk with Jason and the two of them start heading out.

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We started walking through the woods in the general direction everyone else had been going. We didn't need no stinking directions.

This is the conclusion of the chapter, and on a personal note, every time I see or hear someone say "We don't need no stinking ______," I want to drop them out of a plane over central Mexico.

Oh, God. Get out, Penguin! Get out now! I can hear your brain frying from here!

Your meltdown is producing hella awesome snark, though. :D I read these excerpts and find myself completely unable to believe that someone actually got paid for writing that. The snark makes it aaaalllll better.

Listen to Tungsten! It's not worth sacrificing your life for!

On the other hand, this is, hands down, the best snark I have read on GAFF in a long time.

PS: If you perish due to alcohol poisoning, we'll make sure to erect a memorial in your memory for bravery above and beyond the call of sporking.

Sometimes reading this book does feel like forcing my way through a wildly implausible deathtrap...



Chapter 18 starts off with a valiant attempt at surpassing 17's sheer awfulness.

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We found the lupanar, and we didn't need directions. We had Jason's nose and my ability to sense the dead.

So if we glance from the last sentence on the page on the left to the first sentence on the page on the right, we get:

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We didn't need no stinking directions. We found the lupanar, and we didn't need directions.

I seriously regret choosing not to drink today. Anyway, Anita and Jason begin detecting vague shit that has them spooked.

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We both looked at each other. I was pretty sure we were both thinking the same thing. Rotting vampire. I realized that I was clutching his arm, and he was clutching mine. We stood in the dark like children wondering if that noise was really a monster or if it was the wind. Neither of us took that next step to find out. If we'd had covers, we'd have been hiding under them.

Leave it to Hamilton to ruin a bit of humanity thrown Anita's way by planting the thought of her in bed with some guy in your head at the end of it.

It's also more than a little out of character what with Anita going out of her way to be the toughest girl on the planet at every opportunity. In a rare moment of awareness, Hamilton follows this up with an explanation:

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If we'd gone in there just to kill them, I'd have been all right. A slash-and-burn operation was my style lately. Every time we approached the vamps on their own territory by their own rules, we got hurt. I realized suddenly how much I did not want to walk into that place and negotiate with the monsters. I wanted to press a gun under Colin's chin and pull the trigger. I wanted done with it. I did not want to walk in there and give him power over me through some ancient rules of hospitality among the terminally anemic.

Even though this is sort of in character for Anita (it's a far cry from the headstrong but experience-tempered hunter in the early novels) it shows just how much pursuing the lit porn route has murdered both Anita's character and Hamilton's ability to write any sort of internal monologue that isn't about muscly mantits (not that she's good at that, either). Basically, the phrase "terminally anemic" would fit the series perfectly. And be an awesome name for a rock band.

OH SHIT
We've gone this long with the book actually moving forward? Fix that immediately. Summon the strippers!

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Damian came gliding through the trees. He was dressed in the standard uniform of black leather pants so tight you knew there was nothing under them but vampire.

Vampiric testicles are impervious to being crushed by the vampire's own pants.

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But he was wearing a black silk T-shirt with a scooped neck. It looked almost like a woman's shirt. His shoulder-length hair helped the illusion of feminity, but the chest and shoulders that peeked out of the shirt ruined the effect: masculine, definitely masculine.
Jason was wearing an almot identical outfit, except the shirt and pants were satin.

After this brief moment of bullshit, we get some more yakkety-yak about Colin. Not only does he feed on fear, but he can cause it in others without even trying, which means that he never has to worry about going hungry. Of course this implies that the only reason why Anita and Jason are rattled is because somebody's magicking them into being scared. Oh Anita, you're so tough.

They finally reach the actual setting of the lupanar, a massive oak tree that the local werewolf clan named itself after. No, nothing special or mythological, just Oak Tree Clan. It's surrounded by bones and has skeletons and ropes hanging all over it. Everyone is creeped out and the other factions show up. Anita holds hands with Richard but she's pissed at him for not preparing her for this place.

Time to meet the bad guys!

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The vampire had hair that I would have called golden if I hadn't had Asher's hair to compare it to. The hair was cut short, all over.

Hahaha, Colin! Your hair is short and inferior. You deserve to die for not being a stripper. We meet a Native American human woman who is "striking rather than beautiful" and Blondie sexually harrasses Anita.

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"Are you always this offensive, or am I getting a special treat?" I asked.
He laughed, but it was just a laugh, ordinary, human. He couldn't do the voice tricks that Jean-Claude and even Asher could do.

EVEN YOUR LAUGHTER IS INFERIOR
JUST STAKE YOURSELF ALREADY

Oh wait. Speaking of Asher... we've neglected to describe one of our strippers! This will be rectified immediately.

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Asher stood. He'd started the evening wearing satin a pale icy blue only two shades darker than his white-blue eyes. The jacket had darker blue embroidery at the sleeves and lapels. It fastened with one of those cloth loops over a large, silk-covered button. The pants matched the jacket perfectly. He'd tried the jacket on with no shirt. His chest had been very visible. The scars had seemed harsher against the soft blue cloth. He'd stared at himself in the room's only mirror for a long time. He'd finally put a white silk shirt on under the jacket.

Being utterly self-absorbed is a heroic trait in the Anita Blake universe. She goes on to mention that his white shirt is now in tatters (of course) because some vampire had tried to "cause harm from a distance" to him. Some vampires in this series can telekinetically slash people, but Hamilton never comes up for less wordy or awkward term for it than "cause harm from a distance."

Colin gets a bit more direct with the demands that Anita start taking her clothes off.

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"Remove the jacket, or I'll remove it for you," Colin said.
"Colin, you've made your point." The woman's voice was surprisingly deep, a rich, smoky alto.
Colin patted her hand, smiled, but his words weren't gentle.
"I will tell you when my point has been made, Nikki." He moved away from her then, dismissed her, and the pain of that dismissal showed.

...
Nikki?

She's described as a tall, strong-featured, "striking" Native American woman who quickly shows that she's very powerful like Anita, and... she's named Nikki. I am suddenly reminded of Castle when Kate Beckett learns to her horror that Castle's new mystery protagonist, based heavily on her, is named Nikki Heat.

If you don't watch Castle, you should remedy this immediately. Anyway, more [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] for this already excessively drawn-out pissing contest: Colin slashes out at Anita's jacket with his Harm From A Distancesis, which causes the silver cross she's wearing to spill out into view and freaks out Colin's vampire entourage.

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Except for Colin and the black-eyed vamp. Why was I not surprised that those two were old enoguh and powerful enough to face the cross? They weren't happy about it. They were protecting their eyes, squinting against the light, but they weren't cowering.

Anita spouts some tough talk at him. Barnaby the Black-Eyed Vampire rots himself on purpose, schlorps up to Anita and rips it off of her, and more pissing contest ensues. Colin tells Barnaby that Jason is scared of him, which is the result of some backstory from a previous novel.

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"Barnaby won't hurt him, just play with him a little."
I shook my head. "I gave Jason my word that I wouldn't let the vampire that did Nathaniel touch him."
"Your word?" Colin said. "You're a modern American. Your word means nothing."
"My word means something to me," I said. "I don't give it lightly."

Anita Blake: Avid fan of Jack Bauer. Colin thinks he can demonstrate his power by ordering Verne forward.

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Richard said, "Verne."
But Verne wasn't looking at Richard. He was looking at me. He was carrying a small covered basket in his hands. I didn't wait to find out what he had in the basket. I pointed the gun at his chest.

Anita Blake: Memory of a sand flea.

And that's it for 18.

Hurrah for a shout out to Castle! :D

Great snarking.

Chapter 19 starts with Verne assuring Anita that the basket is a present and a pissing contest ensues between the snubbed Colin and Verne before Verne finally kneels and lays the basket at Anita's feet.

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I raised the hinged lid of the small basket. A face, a head, looked up at me. I scrambled to my feet. The Browning just appeared in my hand. I pointed it at Verne, then the ground, then pressed the flat of the barrel to my forehead.

Could it be that she has suddenly realized the depth of her own carelessness and ineptitude?

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I found my voice, finally. "What is that?"

Nope, and apparently she's so far gone she can't even recognize a disembodied head anymore.

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"You said you wanted Mira's head in a basket. That if we gave you that, it would make it right between our clans."

Just in case the reader's attention span is as short as Anita's.

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You'd think after all this time, I would stop forgetting that they weren't human. But I had. I'd been pissed, and I'd spoken as if I was talking to another human being, but I hadn't been. I'd been speaking to werewolves, and I'd forgotten that.

There's no "you'd think" about it. It's more like, "you'd completely reasonably expect." You're supposed to be an expert. Dealing with the supernatural is how you earn your pay. Werecreatures and vampires shape most of your personal life. You've academically studied them and their world before that. Hell, your best human friend -well, your best interesting one- is a completely sociopathic hitman. There is no possible excuse for making this sort of mistake.

Anyway, Anita has a quiet freakout and stares at the head for a bit. Apparently in life, Mira was "pretty." Which, as we all know in this series, the prettier you are, the better person you are. Anita has clearly done a horrible thing.

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"This is my fault. This is my fault." I started to put my left hand in front of my face, and I caught a whiff of Barnaby's rotted flesh. It was enough.

I'm just gonna let a line from the previous chapter speak for itself:

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Except there was no smell. The last vamp I'd seen who could rot at will had also been able to control the smell, like a magical deodorant.

But a little thing like continuity isn't going to stop Anita being a drama queen.

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I crawled to one side and vomited. I knelt on all fours, waiting for it to pass. When I could speak, I said, "Don't any of you understand the term? It's just a fucking expression!"

Hands up, any of you who've ever said in a moment of anger, "I want ____'s head in a basket!" Or heard someone else say it. Hell, even in a movie.

Yeah, me neither.

And that was Chapter 19: Anita Gets Head, Pukes. The end.

Chapter 20's a bit longer, so I'll try and get to it tonight.

Hey Penguin just wanted to say this snark is fairly awesome and I've been following it for awhile so I thought I'd comment just so you were aware of all this

A+

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Hands up, any of you who've ever said in a moment of anger, "I want ____'s head in a basket!" Or heard someone else say it. Hell, even in a movie.

The closest I can come in real life is occasionally hearing someone say "I'd like to kill them" or "I wish they were dead" when they were extremely angry at someone, but I think most people are aware that doesn't actually mean they want the person dead-they're just blowing off steam. Actually, that kind of statement seems to be fairly common amongst teenagers, along with the perennial favorite: "I hate you!"

Apparently, Werewolves are a literal-minded bunch. And Anita is a ninny, because she should KNOW THIS.

I know, right? And as for venting, it's such a weak statement. Besides, "on a stick" just sounds better than "in a basket." But then again, that's kind of a double entendre for ol' Hamilton. Heheheh, head. Heheheheh, stick. Hehheheheh.

Anyway, the next chapter starts off with more trash talk. I'm not even going to post quotes, just watch some DBZ episode about Goku and Freeza to get the gist.

"I AM MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU!"
"HA YOU THINK YOU ARE POWERFUL!?! AAAAAAAAAAARGH!"
"OH MY GOODNESS YOU ARE POWERFUL I'D BETTER POWER UP SOME MORE HAAAAAAARGH"
"OH NO HE HAS BECOME MORE POWERFUL, MORE POWERFUL THAN I IMAGINED! BUT I AM MORE POWERFUL STILL! HUHHHHAAARGHH!"

And the bystanders gape and gasp. On the next chapter of Anita Blake... /guitar riff

So I'm going to spare us all that bullshit and get mostly straight to the action. But before that, this gem as Colin trades barbs with Asher:

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"I have been told many things," Colin said. "My people have watched you from afar. We believe you are enamored of the girl and of Jean-Claude. We are aware of your history together. We even believe a lover of men like yourself would do their Ulfric [Richard] if he would let you. What we do not believe is that you are bedding any of them. We believe this is a pathetic story to save yourself." (emphasis added)

This is an extremely wordy way of saying "you're a lying faggot."

I considered skipping the next paragraph but it's so awful it deserves to stand on its own.

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I started walking to Asher. The plan was that we'd put on a mild show of petting. I'd warned him that it'd better be mild, but we never got the chance.

You're all dressed like a fetish show nightmare and you think a little public cuddling is going to impress some vampires? See previous comments about Anita's ineptitude. At least sheds some light on the junior high comment: Hamilton's concept of sexuality is firmly locked in junior high. Clearly, Anita thinks that vampires can be impressed by the raw sexuality of Mormon missionaries.

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There was movement in the dark. Dozens of vampires appeared out of the darkness, encircling the clearing.

I imagine Hamilton's editor whittling down the above sentences from the original manuscript consisting of: "There was silvered movement in the dark. Dozens of dark vampires darkly appeared out of the dark darkness, darkly encirclying the dark clearing of dark."

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Colin had been distracting us while the vampires moved up to flank us, and neither Asher nor I, nor any of the wereanimals had sensed them.

Anita Blake: In command by sole virtue of being slightly less incompetent than everyone else.

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"Asher?" I asked without taking my gaze from those slowly menacing figures.
"Oui."
"Does this break the truce?"
"Oui."
"Great," I said.

To the untrained observer, it may seem like Anita is being sarcastic in the face of overwhelming odds (and a vampire sidekick so irritatingly French he should be named Napoleon Vichy), but by now we should all know that she is simply relishing the fact that she can set her incompetence aside to be a human howitzer. But first, she has to get warmed up on an enemy shirtless vampire.

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I moved [Asher] to one side with my left arm and brought the mini-Uzi out with my right, swinging it around my body, shooting before I'd actually pointed so the bullets cut across the vampire's legs, making him jerk.

Anita Blake: Completely unfamiliar with the concept of trigger discipline.

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I grabbed it with both hands and fought the gun to spray it back and forth across his body. I was screaming as I did it, wordless, not to sound menacing. You couldn't hear the screams over the machine gun. I screamed because I couldn't help myself, because the tension, the horror, something came up my hand from the gun and out my mouth.
The blood that sprayed from his body was black from distance and night. It looked like his body was torn in half by some giant hand. His upper body fell slowly to one side. His lower body collapsed to his knees.

...
This is a mini-Uzi:
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It has a maximum capacity of 32+1 rounds (that is, 32 in the magazine plus one in the chamber), of the relatively weak 9mm variety. It has a firing rate of 950 rounds per minute, or about 15 rounds per second. And that's on the slow side; some put it at 1250 RPM. This is approximately how long the magazine will last when fired in controlled bursts:



This scene, here, is pure Hollywood. If you want to hit something with a mini-Uzi, you must aim, and you must fire in short bursts. Any attempt to hose the target down in one long burst will end in abbreviated, humiliating failure. If someone were to attempt what Anita has done in the above paragraphs, they would expend the entire magazine while still in the process of bringing the gun on target, hit nothing but air, and be left screaming like a retarded howler monkey with an empty weapon until the undead monstrocity silenced them and added a bit of chlorine to the gene pool.

But this is Anita Blake, so it works. And it gives the vampires pause. More shit-talking ensues before the battle resumes. Anita wonders if Richard can stop being a pussy long enough to save their asses.

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There were over a hundred bad guys, vampires, and only eight of us. Sixteen if you counted Verne, but I didn't know I could count on him and his people. It would have been nice to be able to trust Richard at my back, but I didn't.

Being in love with the perfect man dipshit has its drawbacks.

Anyway, about half the vampires start rotting (it remains to be seen what sort of advantage this gives that isn't psychological) which tells Anita that Colin has let Barnaby sire 50 or so vampires in his territory. Still more trash talk ensues. Richard makes a heroic statement about compassion that sounds straight out of some action anime. You know, I suppose that it can be said that Richard fancies himself as some sort of Vash the Werewolf Stampede, except that when you cripple rapidly-healing monsters instead of human criminals that can actually suffer permanent physical injury, the whole concept of a non-lethal resolution is a wash.

During the ensuing fight, Anita never needs to reload and manages to hit a friendly werewolf while firing wildly at attacking vampires. See above comments about aiming and trigger discipline. Anyway, they rapidly start losing the fight when Anita has a brainstorm and screams at the friendly vampires to fly away. So they do, as do Colin and Barnaby who've figured out that something is up. Anita then calls the munin, the spirits of dead werewolves, and some other ritualistic bullshit, and then using this magic, proceeds to set all of the enemy vampires on fire.

She trades a few barbs with Nikki, who departs on foot, and realizes she has slain the enemy vampires. "All of them." Human artillery piece: Fired for effect, good effect on target.

Fight and chapter over.

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I imagine Hamilton's editor whittling down the above sentences from the original manuscript consisting of: "There was silvered movement in the dark. Dozens of dark vampires darkly appeared out of the dark darkness, darkly encirclying the dark clearing of dark."

You mean she actually HAS an editor?

I kid you not; this reads like the crap you stumble across in bookstores that come from the vanity presses, where you pay them to publish your stuff. No editors, no proofreaders; if what you've written looks (and reads) like it was composed by a not-too-bright 10-year-old, that's how it goes on the page.

And by the way, it surely would've been a 'darkly silvered movement in the dark.' You can never have too many dark and silvery moments in an Anita Blake novel.

I remember reading on Hamilton's website once that around Christmas time she picks up things that she thinks are great gifts for her characters. She'll be just about to pay for the items before she thinks "Oh hey, I can't get these rollerskates for Jean-Claude because he doesn't exist lol"
Something's not quite right there, to say the least.
Great snark by the way. 10/10

Vanilla-villa wrote:

I remember reading on Hamilton's website once that around Christmas time she picks up things that she thinks are great gifts for her characters. She'll be just about to pay for the items before she thinks "Oh hey, I can't get these rollerskates for Jean-Claude because he doesn't exist lol"
Something's not quite right there, to say the least.
Great snark by the way. 10/10

I've often wondered how much of a self-insert of Hamilton Anita is; especially in the later books. Because I read the first couple of books, and the Anita from now might as well be an entirely different character than the Anita from then. She's turned into a Sue of epic proportions, but we're still supposed to view her as the tough, kick-ass paranormal investigator she was in the beginning. Which is impossible-she's turned into the heroine of a bad supernatural romance novel-always running TOWARDS the danger when she should be getting out her crosses and stakes and just dealing with it the way she was taught.

You know how Anita Blake earned her nickname, "The Executioner"? It was because, as a vampire hunter, she had killed something like five or six vampires by 24, when the series starts. That's it, and the vampires came to fear her as their Executioner.

Now Anita has instakilled some 50 vampires all at once. This is only a year or two after the beginning of the series. This must be a big deal, right?

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Another fight, another shower.

That's how Chapter 21 starts. Everyone's reaction to this turn of events is rather muted, all told. They do react to it somewhat, but it's no different than the usual gaping wonder sort of reaction that comes whenever Anita does something badass.

Well, except Anita. She needs to wank about it for a paragraph.

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I'd scared myself tonight. Something in the power I released had extinguished the torches around the lupanar. Those of us still standing had moved by the light of burning corpses. It had been a scene right out of Dante's Inferno, and I had done it. The power inside of me had done this thing. Yeah, scared about covered it.

"I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to stretch problems out long enough to justify talking about my relationships or clothes."

She admits to needing a hug but hates herself for it.

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Damian came up to me. He whispered, "Jason's crying in the shower."

1. Why does the vampire care? Werewolves are toys and ambulatory snacks to them.
2. The werewolves have a different hierarchy than the vampires. While Anita is at the top of both within her group, wouldn't it make more sense to bother an actual werewolf about this?
3. Surely the Fearless Leader has other, more important problems to deal with.

But Anita must be Big Mama to her friends, so she swallows her annoyance and goes to see what the problem is.

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...he'd cranked the shower up as hot as it would go. Hot as it would go was enough to scald the flesh from your bones, if you were human.

I am pretty sure that a shower this unsafe in traveler lodging is a lawsuit waiting to happen, even when it is owned by a werewolf.

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"Talk to me, Jason. What's wrong?"
"I can't get it off me. I can't get clean."
"You mean metaphorically or speaking literally?" I asked.
"It's all over me and I can't get it off."
I was being a coward and a prude.

Oh come on now, Anita. This is how you operate!

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Jason had his knees drawn up tight to his chest, arms locked around them. The heat from the water was enough to make me draw back. His skin had turned a nice cherry pink but that was it. I'd have blisters or worse by now.

Werewolves: Virtually impervious to heat, but shoving a gun in their back can bruise them.

Also, at this point in the series, Hamilton's overuse of a sarcastic "nice" to describe wounds and marks that Anita sees has blended in with her hypersexualization of characters to the point where I cannot truthfully tell if this is meant to be a painful "oof, you're lookin' pretty red there, guy" or stating that the hot water turning him pink is an improvement.

The narration talks about how there are spots on Jason where he can't scrub off the rotten vampire bits, and this is freaking him out. It then goes into a flashback detailing what happened in a previous book to so traumatize Jason. TL;DR version: He was almost-raped by rotting vampire chicks.

After the flashback, Anita turns down the heat, observing that while fire will kill wereanimals, apparently heat itself won't, which is why Jason can withstand this ridiculous steam cleaning.

Anita scrubs those hard-to-reach places for Jason, which does wonders for his psyche even as he admits that while he won't desert her, he can't take facing the rotting vampires (especially Barnaby) again.

The problem is that a mentally healthy Jason is a smartass Jason. His quick recovery ends with testing Anita's willingness to resist his sexual advances. For once in Anita's life, when she points out that while Jason is her friend, a real friend won't try and steal a kiss, he backs off.

Just in time for Richard to open the door! Tales of ribaldry indeed.