Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 31 – Do You Voodoo?

Yep, it’s been a while.  I could bore you with epic tales of boring from my boring ass job, but that would be boring as shit, so I’m just going to jump right back into it.  Here goes.

Fuck, I have no idea what has been happening in this story, hang on while I go reread the damned chapter.

Well, let me stop right there.  This is an exposition catch up chapter.  You know, a lot of books have them.  It’s just a big chunk of narration done while the character is doing mundane things that take no thought whatsoever.  So Anita is coming home and taking a shower and listening to her answering machine.  And she’s going through all the loose ends LKH is going to have to tie up before we can end this story.  Fine, perfect for someone who so abruptly stopped like I did a few months ago.  On with it.

She falls asleep and inevitably dreams about Jean Claude.  Of course.  And he’s got bloody blackberries and is telling her some very obvious shit.  Like, duh, she has to strike first against Nikolaos.  What was she otherwise going to do?  Wait for her to come to her?  Anita’s got a lot of shit on her plate right now and if you keep coming to her with blackberries and blood dreams, you’re going to creep her the fuck out.

Ok, hold on, let me have a moment of fairness.  Anita in the future probably would have killed Zach on the spot, but she hasn’t had all of the voodoo weirdness happen to her yet.  The shit with Jean Claude right now, I just have to mull it over for a while longer, because I’m trying to objectively see if he was being manipulative from the start, and I;m pretty sure all this crap constitutes as manipulative.

Another thing I want to address here and now is LKH’s absolutely fucked up view of voodoo itself.

Let me start this argument here.  LKH might say that she’s Mexican and whatever, but this girl is as white as they come.  I used to want to make the argument that she’s racist, but I actually think she’s just ignorant.  Which isn’t much better, but there it is.  I think that she’s just been around nerdy white people for so long in her life that she has zero clue how to write any other ethnicity without the white people goggles and they all become stereotypes.  Which is fine, if that’s the thing that you’re going for, but I don’t know.  Something about the way she wants to write people of other ethnicities/religions/sexualities et al. just makes me fucking cringe, every single time.

Right now, it’s just the voodoo, so I’ll stick to that argument, but expect this to be revisited as we go on through the series.  LKH has seemed to have done only the bare amount of research on her topic, just enough to make the bare bones of a story, something she seemed interested in at the time.  So she’s taken all the fantastical points of voodoo and made them into some Hollywood glamor of a thing.  Sure, I understand that real voodoo can’t keep a dead man alive (or can it?  Read the Serpent and the Rainbow), and I understand the rule that reality is no defense for fiction, sure, got it.  But as with every aspect of Anita Blake, it seems like she just took the things that sounded the coolest about whatever the fuck she’s talking about and mashed it into her story wherever it would best fit.  If I was a practitioner of voodoo, I might be a little pissed.

Anywho.  I’ll go ahead and knock out the next chapter while I’m shaking the rust off my keyboard.  Sorry for the vacay, had to pay some bills.  ;D

Get them links.

Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 29 – I’m Accomplishing Nothing. But Look How Good At It I Am!

So.  Anita has helped a dead guy raise a zombie for a bunch of vampires to torture.  She left her junkie date back at the

sexy ladies!

freak party alone, knowing he can’t say no if he gets pressed.  And now she’s sliding around in panty hose.  I can’t tell you the last time I wore a pair of panty hose…

Anyway.  Even Anita knows that we seem to be on a fun string of pearls adventure, because just as we’re going to ask what next, she just goes ahead and does it for us.

And gets an answer.

“Greetings, animator.  You seem to be having a full night.”

Of course, it’s Nikolaos.  Because, why not.

But, Willie McCoy is with her!  I kind of love him.

Let me stop here for a minute and make a little listie…

1. Her voice rose in a lilting song-song.  The dangerous little girl had returned.
2. The child voice was slipping, like a mask sliding down.
3. She was smiling, a cute, harmless, model, beautiful child.
4. The perfect child bride wasn’t perfect anymore.
5. She really needed a dimple to go with it all.
6. She laughed then, a sound to bring a smile to your face and a song to your heart.
7. I might never enjoy Shirley Temple movies again.
8. The voice was cold, very adult.  Children didn’t know how to strip skin with their voice.
9. She was tiny, a delicate fairy of a child.
10. She reached a small pale hand toward me.
11. She had to rise on tiptoe to breathe on my neck.  It should have ruined the menace.  It didn’t.
12. A pale little hand shot out, the barest touch.  His whole body jerked backwards.

dimples!

So there’s that.  We fucking get it.  Nikolaos is a tiny fucking girl.  A terrifyingly tiny little monster.  We’re supposed to understand by repetition that she’s a perversion, a child vampire is bad fucking news.

The thing about child vampires, and I’m thinking of our Valentina (is that her name?) and Bartolomew I think?  And think of Claudia from Anne Rice and whatever other kid vampire you can.  The fact is, they grow up.  And this is a thousand year old vampire master.  So she knows how to survive.  Shes had to be ruthless to rise to where she is, smart.  Anita of all people should understand this.

I think that it’s pretty interesting that the first villain that AB faces is smaller than she is.  She’s also blonde haired and blue eyed.  Tiny, delicate features and attributes.  Completely petulant.  You don’t get to be where this broad is in life by being a petulant child.  It’s one thing to act the part to make people underestimate you, and a completely other thing to actually be a petulant child.  It seems like for the past thousand years there has been absolutely no character arc for Nikolaos.  Was she always as powerful as she was?  Or did she slide under the radar for long enough to become as powerful as she is, then became a master?  Because that would imply that she has a lot more smarts than we’re giving her credit for.  I don’t buy it at all.

I fucking hate Tom Cruise. But I agree with him..

The child vampire can be fucking terrifying.  Think of the neighbor kid that Aiden befriends in Being Human.  That kid is scary.  He is a child, with all the lack of impulse control that comes with being that age.  Aiden kills him because he knows that he’s not going to learn it.  There’s two options.  They stay kids, or they mature in children’s bodies.  A well put together story about one of them could be a good read.  You can’t just plop this girl in here as a terrifying master and expect us to believe with her behaviors that she’s lasted for this long without pissing someone bigger off and having them off her in a heartbeat.

Rant over.

So Anita has some remorse about raising her zombie and letting the vampires kill it.  We never actually find out why they wanted to raise and torture it, at least not in this chapter.  What is the back story of Estelle Hewitt?  Here’s what the Anita Blake wiki has to say about her.  Absolutely nothing more than what we’re given.  She was born, was something less than 65 when she died and was buried in her wedding dress.  The wiki has it wrong, she can’t be more than 65.  But whatever, words.  She’s not an important character at all, so it doesn’t matter.  But what the fuck is her story?  Why was she buried in her wedding dress and why do these vampires want to rip her apart!?

I think Estelle is nothing more than a plot device.  She’s there to use the ritual to prove that Zachary isn’t alive.  After that, she’s only used in the conversation with Nikolaos for leverage.  Anita now wants to put down the zombie that she errant raised, the cost is going to be Nikolaos tasting her blood.  It’s weak.  The only reason she has importance for two chapters is to prove Zach’s death, give leverage and also to show that Anita does take responsibility for her zombies and has respect for the dead.  A trait I would think vampires would dig on.

“They won’t hurt it much.  My little vampires will be disappointed.  The dead cannot feed off the dead.”

“Ghouls can.  They feed off the dead.”

“But what is a ghoul, animator?  Is it truly dead?”

“Yes.”

Is this connected to the plot?  I’m so fucking lost.

Anita has to admit that she helped Zachary raise the zombie, and there’s a lot of conversational exposition.  Willie is pretty chivalrous.  We learn that he was punished for not being able to hire Anita the first time he talked to her.  Nothing like terror

This sucks!

in a cross lined coffin for something you had no control over.  All it took was the threat of a little rat man rape to make her change her mind.  Damn Willie, get it together.

Anita has an interesting moment where she realizes she can look at Nikolaos and start to see all her flaws that she’s not supposed to see.  Instead of keeping this to herself, she blurts it out about the little scar next to her mouth.  Stupid ass.  You have literally one advantage over this lady.  ONE.  And you blow it.  And in doing so, you possibly could have blown the cover for JC who is still very much under this lady’s power.  What the fuck are you doing?  Think about shit for a moment before you just go off and say things.

Some learning happening while we’re chatting away.

“No tasting.”  I said.

“Then let me enter your mind again.  That’s a type of feeding.”

I shook my head, too rapid, too many times.  I’d die before I let her in my mind again.  If I had the choice.

It’s either the neck or the mind.  Let’s just mark it right here, Anita does not want vampires in her mind.  Never mind the fact that she’s going to use this shit like a telepathic baby monitor later, or that she’s going to forcefully dive into other people’s minds and eat their emotions, but right here, that’s the shit she don’t like.

“Call it a shadow feeding, human.  Blood and fear are always precious, no matter how one obtains them.”

It’s interesting that she calls Anita ‘human’ here and refers to her in other places as ‘animator’.  And there’s going to be nothing in it for her to taste Anita’s blood right then.  Here’s an interesting question.  Is she going to be able to taste weird stuff by just having a lick?  Does blood have properties to vampires that we don’t perceive?  If someone powerful were to taste Anita, would they be able to tell that she’s an animator?  Marked?  A necromancer?  It’s interesting.  But not explored, so it doesn’t matter.

We learn that vampire masters can use telepathy to talk to their vampires.  It’s in this way, Nikolaos is able to tell Theresa to shoo the vampires away and leave the zombie alone.

So it’s coming down to the taste and dayum, they are dragging it out.  The suspense it literally killing me.

We’re saved from it by Phillip, who comes plowing down through the trees.  Apparently being gone for probably over an hour has tipped him off that there might be something wrong with his date.  Why not go head to head with a master vampire over her virtue?  I mean, she didn’t just insult you own or anything.

There’s a completely campy moment where Willie is going to clothesline Phillip, but Phillip just walks around the outstretched arm.  Really?  You think she may have picked a better body guard, or maybe two of them or something.  Hahah.  I love Willie though, I really do.

Phillip is all, don’t hurt my lady!  And Nikolaos is just like, dude, we already have a thing.  I’m just going to lick her all creepy like.  It’s a thing!  And Phillip is like, aww, man, you said you wouldn’t hurt her and stuff.  And Nikolaos is like, dude, we have this shit under control.  She’s all like, I keep my word, most of the time.  Stop hatin.

So we get that Nikolaos keeps her word, with the caveat that it’s only most of the time.  This leaves her far from being reliable, but she might be able to be trusted to at least not kill Anita tonight.  What she would break her word for is never really defined, so it doesn’t matter.

His face crumbled with confusion.  He didn’t seem to know what to do.  His courage seemed to have spilled out on the grass.  But he didn’t back off.  Big point for him.  I would have backed off, maybe.  Probably.  Oh, hell, Phillip was being brave, and I didn’t want to see him die because of it.

Actually, it seems like he’s been pretty brave all around for the most part, you’ve just been seeing it after something shitty happens to him that you put him into in the first place.  So whatever, Nikolaos kicks his feet out from under him and bitchslaps him light enough to draw blood from his face.  Again, everyone please remember that this little thing is fucking dangerous.

This could escalate farther, but we’re saved by the company of the Church of Eternal Life.  They’re coming to break up the pervert party!  Nikolaos excuses herself, can’t risk getting caught by them, and she runs off into the trees, leaving Willie all by himself, bumming a ride home from Anita.  Poor dude can’t catch a break.

So Anita, Phillip and Willie make a run for the car.  Anita pulls out her gun, knowing that the bullets won’t kill the vampires, but they might slow them down.  Screw Crystal, Madge and Harvey, they’re on their own.  Someone is going to call the cops, and there’s no way she’s going to be able to explain being there.  Uh, yeah, you were conducting part of an investigation.  And if that fails, there’s a zombie in the back, she could be putting down.  There’s reasons other than the sexy party for her to be there.  Stupid.

Anita caps a rushing vampire in the belly and they make it to the car, only the human rushed them.  Really?  The human?  She fired her weapon and feels cornered.  She’s shooting mid mass and you’re THE ONLY ONE that can be seriously hurt by her bullets!  Why the bloody fuck would you rush the car, mysterious ballsy human!?

At any rate, they get the fuck outta dodge.

“Safe, but for how long?”  He sounded as tired as I felt.

I patted his arm.  “Everything will be all right, Phillip.”

No.  I knew this guy was going to die as soon as I read this line.  Anita has effectively signed his death warrant.

I can’t even.  

This is a winding bumbling chapter where nothing really got accomplished.  The zombie NEVER got put to rest.  For all we know, she’s still wandering around, attracting ghouls and whatever.  Nikolaos never got to taste Anita.  Phillip never found his balls.  Willie is left scrambling for gas money.  It’s a fucking mess.  There’s too much in the air for her right now, she’s going to have to start teasing out some of the plot soon.  Very soon.

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Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 27 – The Grinch Who Stole The Whole Roast Plot

Let me start out by saying that the entire first chunk of this chapter is a fucking weird childish tantrum and the author herself even says as much.  Cause with three kids in my house, I totes enjoy reading about a grown woman having a damned tantrum.  Hooray.  The other half of this chapter isn’t so bad, but, well, you know, standards being low and all that.

Cheers!

Phillip and Anita are stepping out of the bathroom and Madge tries to get all gropey with her again.  We go in again on how gross and icky old ladies are.  So not sexy.  Why are they trying to be sexy?

A man I did not know fell at my feet.  Crystal was on top of him, pinning him to the floor.  He looked young and a little frightened.  His eyes looked up past Crystal, to me.  I thought he was going to ask for help, but then she kissed him, sloppy and deep, like she was drinking him from the mouth down.  His hands began to lift the silk folds of her skirt.  Her thighs were incredibly white, like beached whales.

What the actual fuck?  Like, seriously, what the fuck did I just read?

So does this guy want her help or not?  I don’t get his motivation at all.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and assert the fact that Anita is not a reliable narrator at all.  There’s a lot of bias in there, I’ll get to that in a moment.  Is she projecting her fear of what’s going on into other people?  Cause he’s scared at first, then he starts lifting her skirt.  And let me say, this lady has something going on if she’s able to bring these young boys down.  Thighs like beached whales or not.  Who fucking CARES?

Anywho.  Anita is still mad about the bite or whatever.  So she’s going outside to take a breather.  Instead of showing these people her and Philip on a united front, she decides to insult him in front of the lot of them, hurt his feelings (twice) and fight not to slam the door behind her as she storms off into the night.  Don’t forget Voyeur Hubby is still on the prowl, better grab a sweater.  Or a toothy junkie.

“I’ll go out with you.”

“No.  That would defeat the purpose, Phillip.  Since you are one of the things I want to get away from.”

Dayum!!  No seriously, what did you think it was going to be?  A fucking tupperware party?  Come on.

POW!

“It’s dark,” he said.  “They’ll be here soon.  I can’t help you if I’m not with you.”

I stepped closer to him and said in a near whisper, “Let’s be honest, Phillip.  I’m a whole lot better at protecting myself than you are.  The first vampire that crooks its finger will have you for lunch.”

His face started to crumble, and I didn’t want to see it.  “Dammit, Phillip, pull yourself together.”  I walked out onto the trellis-covered porch and resisted the urge to slam the door behind me.  That would have been childish.

Like you’ve been real fucking mature to this point.  Look, everything you’ve done has led up to this point.  Pretending all this time to be his lover, what did you think was going to happen at a damned sexy party?  You were going to sit around in a skirt and play Boggle?  Eh, no, that’s not how it works.  Maybe you should have thought about what you were going to do instead of blindly rushing into it and then hating the PRACTICAL STEPS someone is taking to ensure that you get through the night alive.  And perhaps not insult him right after he made some major breakthrough in his fucking addiction.

Anita Blake lacks some serious tact at this point.  And doesn’t regret her decisions in the slightest.  Like, fuck Phillip, he’s taking orders from someone else, but at least he isn’t bullshitting her about it.  I don’t know where I stand on him yet.  Yeah, it’s shitty that he’s doing someone’s shit work, but he’s at least making an effort to be helpful to her.  Most people would only be thinking about themselves and how to stay alive though it.  You can dislike him for his methods, but maybe cut the insults out?  It’s not going to do you any good in the long run.

Goat outta here!

Whatever.  She’s outside and feels some magicy shit and hears a goat bleating.  So she goes to find out who is conveniently trying to raise a hundred year old corpse in a pretty little subdivision.  What the hell is it doing buried there?  Who planned this subdivision!?

She comes across Zachary trying to raise a zombie, but it’s too old, there’s not enough of it left.  Well, they knew that, it was just part of the plan to kill him.  Maybe for fucking up the last zombie.

I really don’t understand why Nikolaos needs an excuse to kill him.  This seems like a lot of work to go to just to kill someone.  I mean, he works for her.  Can’t she just call a meeting in one of the conference rooms under the Circus and eat him?  What the hell is this giant charade?  To make Theresa feel special?  I don’t fucking get it.

And for the record, Zachary is just a really shitty animator, apparently.

So.  Zachary fails and Anita just has to make a big show in front of the vampires to save his life.  Why?  I don’t know.  She’s saying fuck it to Monica because she turned her over to the vampires, she’s being shitty with Phillip for whatever reason she has for the next 10 minutes and this asshat who assaulted a zombie and broke him, presumably to do whatever in the dungeon when Nikolaos had her own temper tantrum, she wants to help this guy and keep them from killing him.

No one ‘gave’ Zachary to the monsters.  He’s there of his own accord.  He made his own choice to work for them when he signed on with them.  He’s obviously not living up to what he advertised, so not he’s paying the price.  Why is Anita’s hero complex kicking in for this piece of shit when she thinks nothing of shitty thoughts for Phillip who didn’t ask for any of it when he was assaulted at 12?  Her moral compass has no true north.  And that’s fine, as long as she could admit it.

I promised myself I wouldn’t cryyy!

There’s some crap about Theresa being dressed like a goth girl at prom, yadda yadda.  Anita feels since she has nothing to be afraid of from her, it’s totally ok to poke Theresa as much as she wants.  There’s never any consequences to her being an ass, so fuck it, go hard.

She pulls Zach out of the fire by offering to help him raise the zombie by acting as a focus for him.  He doesn’t know how it works, but she’s totally willing to show him how to do some more powerful magic than what he knows.  Cause that won’t backfire.  Let’s show all the people working with the big bad how to do some stellar fucking magic.  Magic for EVERYONE!

Theresa strode over to us in a swish of cloth.  “Enough of this, animator.  He can’t do it so he pays the price.  Either leave us now, or join us at our… feast.”

“Are you having rare Who-roast-beast?”  I asked.

“What are you talking about?”

It’s fucking delicious!

Seriously, what the actual fuck are you talking about?  Why the fucking hell would that line pop into your head?  At that time?  No fucking way.

“You are crazy.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Do you want to die?”  She asked.

Please, just kill her now.

I can’t even.

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Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 26 – Tough as Nails! Not really…

For reals.

Still jumping through hoops at the freak party.

Edwards date for the night climbs into Phillip’s lap and thankfully doesn’t try to undress him or grope him, though why Anita cares is beyond me.

There’s a bit more there about how dangerous Edward is and how he can fit into a crowd like none other.  Cool.  Got it.

Edward, excuse me, scrumptious Teddy is letting his date grope all over Phillip for the moment, and he’s having a complete junkie moment over it.

So here’s my dilemma with this whole situation.  Is it alright for Anita to drag Phillip back into this addiction?  We know that he’s working for someone, got all those breadcrumbs she’s been leaving.  And that means that whoever he’s working for has made him go back into this scene as well.  So neither side really cares about Phillip and the habit he’s trying to kick.  He’s literally a pawn to both of them.  Shouldn’t Anita as the hero of the story have more sense than this?  Is this what a hero character does?  I know that it bothers her and it gets mentioned a few times in the next few novels, disappears for like fifteen and then comes back, but it doesn’t seem to affect her very much coming up.  There’s no real lesson gained from it, as she continues to use people in the same way in books to come.  I’ll get more into that as we go along, but this would be the time for her to draw her line in the sand, and she just doesn’t do that.

Don’t get me wrong.  Phillip is the epitome of conflicted character at this point.  He is genuinely trying to help Anita and still complete the tasks that he’s being forced to do.  Phillip knows that if he goes against who he’s working for, they’ll kill him and possibly hurt other people.  So it’s a noble thing that he’s doing.  And he’s helping her find clues.  Even as he’s possibly selling her out to someone.  These pieces need to fall into place soon.

Anywho.  Darlene is licking on Phillip and whatnot, grinding her red coordinated panties on him.  Am I the only one that thinks of weird 80’s hair and lace porn when they read this?  Phillip stops her as she’s feeling his chest up and we get the first sketch of rules that these parties entail.

We coordinated our panties as well!

If Phillip lets Darlene do anything to him, it leaves Anita alone and fair game to anyone else.  Alone at her first party.  Oh nooo.  So Darlene assumes that her scars are from another freaky party and Phillip explains that they’re from an actual attack and he just can’t leave her alone.

Darlene offers Scrumptious Teddy to keep her safe for the party and of course, they can’t do that, Phillip is being the damned hero here, thank you.  Awkward moment as Anita realizes Edward has been to other parties in the past.  Though, I doubt this is how he got all his information about vampires, but alright.  Moot point, Phillip says no, Anita is his charge for the night and they head off down the hallway to the bathroom.

There’s a little victory thing as Phillip realizes he didn’t let Darlene do whatever she was going to do to him.  Hooray.  But there’s another issue.  Creepy husband is chilling right outside of the bathroom window watching them.  What the hell kind of subdivision is this?

Anita offers a second time for them to leave, but both of them know they can’t, because he’s supposed to be keeping Anita here for whoever the fuck he’s working for.  When she asks him, it’s pretty obvious she’s not going to get an answer.

“Why would you offer to let me out of my promise?”

I shrugged and rubbed my hands over my arms.  “Because… because you seem to be in some kind of pain.  Because you’re a junkie trying to kick the habit, sort of, and I don’t want to screw that up for you.”

“That’s a very… decent thing to offer.”  He said decent like he wasn’t used to the word.

Probably because he’s been dealing with people like you, jerking him around!  Hell no he wouldn’t know the likes of the word decent.

Because people inherently suck.

There’s a weird beat where Phillip changes tune so abruptly.

“Your shirt’s wet.”

He released me so suddenly, I stumbled back from him.  He drew the shirt over his head in one fluid motion.  Of course, he had a lot of practice in undressing himself.  It would have been such a nice chest without the scars.

Jesus.  Scars are only an issues if you make them an issue.  From what we know, Phillip got some of his scars by being ASSAULTED AS A CHILD.  You have zero right to make him feel bad or pass judgement on his scars in any way.  Sure, he’s being a junkie, but it looks like he’s really trying to move past all that.  This is pretty judgy.  Maybe AB has body issues about her own scars, though by the clothes she wears, it seems that she doesn’t.  She of all people should understand about body image and what she does by saying and thinking these sorts of things.

So Phillip does the only reasonable thing and bites the shit out of her neck, drawing blood.  Hey!  Can’t answer prying questions about who he’s working for if he’s putting on a peep show for creepy hubby in the window!

I let Phillip help me out of the bathtub.  I whispered, “Could he hear us?”

Phillip shook his head.  His arms slid around my back again.  “We are supposed to be lovers.  Do you want Harvey to stop believing that?”

“This is blackmail.”

He smiled, dazzling, hold it in your hand and stroke it, sexy.  My stomach tightened.  He bent down, and I didn’t stop him.

And then he does the bite.

Oh damn!

But there’s the whole removal of choice which is a hallmark of LKH.  No character can just want to get into something or choose to do something.  They have to be coerced into it.  I would have thought more highly of AB if she had been the one to go for the kiss because she knew Harvey was watching and she had to keep her role for both of their safety.

And there’s nothing sexy about lack of choice.  Nothing.

So anyway.  There are few people in the world that have ever bitten someone.  It take a lot of force with our omnivore teeth to break skin.  But he draws enough for it to be on his lip and whatever.  Whatever.  I’ll let it go for the sake of story, but I didn’t buy it.  

After all this, Anita is scared of who Phillip is, now suddenly.  He’s basically fixed the first rule for her.  She’s marked, so apparently no one can touch her for the rest of the night.  He ushers her back out to search for clues.  In all the foreplay, he’s successfully dodged the question of who he’s working for again.

It was damn embarrassing that every time he took his shirt off, my brain went out to lunch.  But no more; I had had my first and last kiss from Phillip of the many scars.  From now on I would remain the tough-as-nails vampire slayer, not to be distracted by rippling muscles or nice eyes.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Eminem thinks it’s FUNNY AS SHIT!!

Seriously?!?!

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Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 25 – Bonerkiller

It’s all downhill from here.  We’ve finally reached the halfway point.

This is a pretty dismal chapter.  They get to the party and there’s so much awkwardness it physically hurts.

All the awkward!

I’m just going to dive in, I really just hate everything.

Basically, the house is just your typical suburban house, living room, central air keeping everything cool, blah blah and so on.  There’s a few people there, a husband and wife and a black woman.  Basically, in the middle of all this suburban bullshit, they have the most stereotypical BDSM party going on.  I’m not here to judge, and I know not everyone has a dungeon in their basement and these things can take place anywhere.  But here, there’s a ridiculous lack of research and a whole lot of dependence on how you *think* a freak party would go.

It’s not like this.

The BDSM culture has a basis in respect and understanding.  And trust.  A lot of trust.  Anita is obviously uncomfortable here and they’re still pressing in on her, trying to make her participate.  Telling her that once the “big guys” get there, she’s going to have to participate, Phillip is going to have to share.

Lots of trust.

The whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

Another thing that bothers me about this chapter is the whole weird sense of homophobia and gay panic that’s happening.  At this point, she’s getting groped and whatever by two women and she turns and smiles at the unknown man in the group, knowing damn well that it’s going to get his attention.  It just doesn’t make sense.

She looked like she wondered what flavor I was and how long I’d last.  I had never been looked at that way by another woman.  I didn’t like it much.

This is Madge, Harvey’s wife.  They’re both doing a spectacular job of making AB super squicky and uncomfortable.

Her eyes said she was thinking naughty things about me, and her.  No way.  Rochelle swished her skirt, exposing far too much thigh.  I had been right.  She was naked under the skirt.  I’d die first.

Really?

Ok, just a head’s up.  It takes like twenty books for this author to even get her main character into the thought of women, and even then she has zero idea of what to do with them when they get there.

GTFO!

Here’s my theory and it’s just that, a theory.

Parallel to LKH, I’ve been writing through my twenties, through a few kids, through a divorce, through new men.  And when you’re writing, it comes out in the writing, whether you want it to or not.  My early works show that I had no fucking idea what I wanted from a man or how I wanted to be treated.  The awkwardness you feel around other people, it can come through in your work, especially if you’re knowing or unknowingly basing the character on a part of yourself, which becomes apparent that she is.

Anyway.  I doubt that she’s rather die than get it on with a black lady.  That’s pretty extreme and sort of racist.  I had a problem with it.

This is pretty though..

And again.  HOW DO NONE OF THESE PEOPLE RECOGNIZE HER?  She doesn’t even bother with a fake name.  She should be screaming this in her head.  They have to know her, why is no one bringing it up?

Anyway, after all the awkwardness, Phillip says he brought her there and he was going to take her home.  Madge tells him she might be a sweet piece of tail and calls her a bedwarmer, but he’s not going to go up against the vampires when they get there.

Anita is all like hell the fuck no.  Madge comments on her temper and Anita has to say something awful.

“Did you know that when you smile, you get deep wrinkles on either side of your mouth?  You are over forty, aren’t you?”

So here’s the thing.  This is a BDSM party.  A not very well educated one, but that’s what it is.  A sex party thing.  Anita gets invited to it because of Phillip, so far that’s all we know.  When you’re in this setting, you don’t mock someone else’s appearance.  If they’re confident enough to come in front of you, old overweight in their skivvies, you take the higher road and not insult them.  The same thing she describes when Crystal gets there.  She’s less of a person because she’s fat and older.  So fucking what?  If she’s fat and older and still banging Phillip, who the fuck cares?  What?  Sexy parties are only for young hot people?

Did you just cum on my mom?

Crystal is obviously a terrible person because she looks like shit and obviously shouldn’t be there.  She throws herself at Phillip, and Anita is as tactless as ever, telling the woman to keep her hands off her date.

Anyway.  If Anita had any hope of getting information from these people, she probably just ruined it.

And I remembered what he said, that he had stopped coming to these parties.  Was this why?  Crystal and her like?

Yes, who wants to be groped by a middle aged mom?  That’s the WORST.

Madge of the sharp fingernails?

More old ladies.  Gross.

I had forced him to bring me, but in doing so, I had forced him to bring himself.

If you thought of it that way, it was my fault Phillip was here.  Damn, I owed him.

HOLYFUCKINGSHITDUHHHH

Really?  You’re just now getting here?  To this conclusion?  Trust me, stupid, the old ladies aren’t even the worst of it.  Didn’t you think before there was a reason he stayed away from his equivalent of an opium den?  Come the fuck on!  How did you graduate college?

So she makes Crystal cry.  Cause she’s a badass fucking vampire slayer, that’s right!  These people just came here to get their jollies and Anita is just killing the mood all over the place.

F U

Phillip is shaking.  Anita offers that they can leave if he wants.  Just now getting the scope of what she’s asked him to do, she offers that if it’s too much, they can leave.  But he chooses to stay, because if there’s a choice, he can do it.  I get the sentiment and it was clever that she gave Phillip a redeeming quality.

But it’s never true.  Phillip has in fact been getting orders from someone.  Someone has told him to get her there to the party and keep her safe.  But that’s not it at all.  He’s lying to her, but she can’t get him to tell her what the lie is or who is giving him orders.

But that’s alright.  Edward walks in.  Oh yes.  The highlight of this chapter.  Anita looses all of her sense and curiosity in figuring out the truth behind Phillip, because she’s in shock that he’s there.  Edward at a freak party.  She wonders what the hell he’s doing there, though it’s pretty obvious he’s there to do his fucking job and kill something.

Bringing down the house!

AB should probably focus and find out who the hell Phillip is getting his orders from, but she can’t get past it.  She’s thinking Edward might have met his match.  And if Nikolaos connected Anita to Edward, she was in a world of shit.  She knows that she should tell Nikolaos that he was here, but she wasn’t going to turn over a human to the monsters.

Edward is way better at acting than Anita, but that’s not saying much.  Edward knows she’s not going to turn him in.  Maybe she should have started working with him instead of Phillip?  He’d be guaranteed to kill his share of vampires and they’d probably get down to the bottom of the murders.

But she’s not going to do that.  Instead, she contemplates using his lack of honor like he’s using her honor now.  This doesn’t sound like it’s going to be good.

And she never finds out who the hell is ordering Phillip around.  Get your head in the game, girl.

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Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 24 – You Catch More Flies With… ABUSE!

On our way to the weird ass freak party, finally.

Anita is on her way to Guilty Pleasures to pick up Phillip.  She parks in a no parking spot, law abiding citizen that she is and he’s waiting for her.  Complete in black leather pants and a fishnet shirt.  The cliches are literally choking me.  Even Anita thinks he looks sort of sleazy.  Don’t get me wrong.  I can rock the shit out of leather pants, but summer in the midwest isn’t the time.  No, not at all.

Anyway.  She’s imagining him going from flirt to hustler and then she’s dropped into trying to picture him at twelve.

Whatever had been done to him, he was what he was, and that was what I had to deal with.  I wasn’t a psychiatrist who could afford to feel sorry for the poor unfortunate.  Pity is an emotion that can get you killed.  The only thing more dangerous is blind hate, and maybe love.

Stop the train right there.

Lady.  I absolutely get the fact that you cannot change someone, all you can do is accept who they are.  Sure, yes, that makes sense.  But “I can’t afford to feel sorry for the poor unfortunate”?  Are you kidding me?  I get it, yeah, Anita Blake is such a fucking badASS.  But there’s a certain level of empathy you need to have and understanding of people when you work in law enforcement of any kind, and I am damn sure empathy and compassion should probably fall in there somewhere in the zombie raising aspect of your damn job.  Pity sure the hell is an emotion that can get you killed, but only if you’re pitying a motherfucker while someone has a gun to your head.  Right there, in this moment, she can damn well afford to take a look at Philip as a fellow human.  I don’t care much for the guy either, but this is Nicky level sociopathy.  Come the fuck on.

And don’t even get me started on the harem of damaged and similar men she picks up along the way.  SO.  MANY.  HURTS.  All of them have some goddamn trauma in their past, it’s amazing how her tune changes from this to what it is farther down the line.  Tell me again about hate and love and how they’re so fucking dangerous.

This is not a character arc.  Not at all.  I’ll get more into the aspect of self insertion into story later on, I will, as it becomes more apparent.  But this right here, I get why it’s there and the character aspects you’re supposed to take from it, but it’s entirely over the top.

Anyway, back to it.

He gets in the car and they are on their way.

There’s a nice little awkward chunk there where LKH goes into how being alone with a man is weird.  Like it’s always going to amount to awkwardness, sex or fear.  Ehm, no, not always.  Especially if you’re working with him, none of those things ever have to happen.  But Anita even now can’t seem to have a simple work relationship with anyone and has to make shit totally unprofessional.  Yeah, I know, they’re on their way to a fucking freak party, but still.  She is getting paid to solve these murders.  Paid twice.  So maybe she should try to show a little professionalism and stop adding weirdness where it is very much not.

So Phillip is also being weird, leaning toward her and putting his arm around her.  Hello, she’s driving!  Stahp!!  And he’s all trying to find out what turns her on.  Now, right here would be a good time for her to explain that they have a working relationship.  See, this is where the empathy thing would be a good tool to use.  Let him know that this isn’t like working for a vampire, sexy shit isn’t going to fly.  But instead, she slaps him with the trauma that made him who he is.  What they hell kind of a person brings up a childhood assault to make a guy not hit on her?  Jesussss.

And it works.  Understandably.  He is instantly terrorized.  Duh, Valentine assaulted him when he was a kid.  His ‘community’ knows this and they took the time to assure him that Valentine wouldn’t be at the party.  What the fuck kind of game are you playing with this kid?  Come the fuck on!

I didn’t want to see Phillip afraid.  I might start feeling sorry for him, and I couldn’t afford that.  Anita Blake, hard as nails, sure of herself, unaffected by crying men.  Riiight.

Bitch, then why the hell did you bring him up?!  What is wrong with you?!

This is the first time in the book I wanted to put it down and walk away.  See, I’m all about characters poking the thing that makes them uncomfortable.  I really am.  Good story warrants it, but this is just rude.

Phillip gets ahold of himself and is informed that Anita paid to have him investigated, to see if she could trust him.  No, lady, you probably can’t, but you’re really making him feel super valuable with all the shit your playing with him.  Even if you know your source is going to betray you, you let on otherwise and aren’t surprised when it happens.  Hard as nails, my ass.

“Where are we going, Phillip?”

“What?”

I wanted to say, “Question too hard for you?” but I resisted.  It would have been like picking on him.

Riiight.  Like you’ve been a sweet dove to him this whole time anyway.

Anyway.  They end up in a neat little subdivision.  Yes, Captain Obvious, a policeman would probably wonder what the hell you were doing with leather pants guy in the car, but you know what, he’d probably BE A FUCKING PROFESSIONAL about it.  Until you weren’t.  That’s where the fight would start.

So they get to the house and Phillip gives her some ground rules that they probably should have talked about on the car ride there instead of being all weird and shit.  She shouldn’t leave the main room with anyone but him.  They’re going to use the whole dating thing again.

I have a problem here.  Aren’t they going to know what the fuck the Executioner looks like?!  How is this not a thing?!

Anyway, Phillips looking forward to playing her boyfriend all night.  Of course.  Play the damn girlfriend and try not to get them killed, AB.  You have one job.

Blah blah blah, leave the cross in the car.  We get ti, you wear a cross.  All.  The.  Time.

They finally go to the house, weird half naked lady is standing in the yard, waiting for them.  Sure.  Anita is obviously over dressed.  Duh.

Anita quotes some obvious poetry, but Phillip is probably too stupid to get ti anyway, so she blows him off.  They follow the lady into the house and that’s where the chapter ends.

So I think what bothers me the most about this chapter is really, just how shitty she treats Phillip.  He’s literally going out of his way to help her.  He doesn’t have to, in fact, it’s hurting him more to do it.  Whether or not she thinks he’s setting her up, she could at least be not so bitchy until she knows.

And Phillip is really just the first version of half of her harem later down the line.  She literally falls for this kind of guy all the damn time.  I’m going to be interested to see where exactly her shift in thinking happens.  Because it’s going to be messy and sloppy and probably just gross if memory serves me correctly.

I really hadn’t thought I was going to find so much shit I hated this early in the books.  Really.

Halfway through.

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Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 23 – Just Girly Things

So, let’s have a totally rad post about shopping and boys and puppies.

Or not.

Let’s have a talk about finding clothes that hide weapons.  And sweaty thighs with gun holsters that make you walk like a duck with a wet diaper.

Basically, Anita has done her shopping and she’s on her way back to her apartment.  There’s a lot of mechanical talk about how to carry a weapon to keep from getting tangled in your shopping bags and whatnot.  Actually good advice.  Even if you’re not being chased by daytime lackeys or trained assassins.

Anita talks about the tiny spot of paranoia she’s had while shopping.  Wondering if she’s being followed.  Is she worrying about the vampire murderer coming after her while she’s in the middle of a busy shopping mall?  It’s sort of unclear exactly what she thinks the threat is, so she’s just being paranoid of everything until she knows.

But amid all of that, the most frightening thing she had seen had been the price on the designer clothing.  Come on girl, you just cashed a check from the vampires, raised a couple zombies and are on retainer with the cops.  Money ain’t something you’re hurting for.  Go fucking nuts.

I got one piece of pizza with just cheese, the way I like it, but one piece with everything.  I hate mushrooms and green peppers.  Sausage belongs on the breakfast table, not on pizza.  I didn’t know what bothered me more; that I ordered it in the first place, or that I had eaten half of it before I realized what I was doing.  I was craving food that I normally hated.  Why?  One more question without an answer.  Why did this one scare me?

Well.  You’re either pregnant or there’s some weird shit going on.  And since this is before AB decided (oh, sorry ardeur) to fuck everything that moved, I think it’s more metaphysical weirdness.

If you haven’t figured it out before this point, or at least have had an idea, then I don’t know what to say about it.  Other than, duh, it’s JC fucking doing his thing on her.  If she hasn’t figured it out yet, and she has a fucking degree in this shit, then she’s in bigger trouble than we all thought.

On her way inside, she meets Mrs. Pringle and her pomeranian, Custard.  Mrs. Pringle is just as much of a trope as Luther is.  Old white lady who gives her relationship advice and has concern for her.  Whatever.  She gives it away that someone let himself into her apartment and Anita plays it off as though she knew about it.  It could either be Phillip or Edward.  Let’s cut the shit, we already know who it is.

Let’s stop right there for a minute.  Edward.  Let me tell you all the ways I love Edward.  There’s a million.  He’s the one character that isn’t forced into doing anything he doesn’t want to do.  We’ll get into Donna later, but right now, this Edward, he’s a character that has potential.  He’s never been swayed by Anita in the slightest and just rolls with whatever happens.  If LKH fucks it up and makes them cross a line, that, that my friends will be the day I give up completely.

More gun shuffling in the hallway and she’s decided she’s just going to shoot through the bag like Stephanie Plum if anything weird happened.  She gets in the door and looks around and it was just Edward, dropping off a shotgun like he said he would and leaving her a deadline to give him the information he wants.  And let me say right here, I doubt Edward would have let himself be seen by a neighbor, let alone chat with her in the hallway if he was bringing her a shotgun.  It just doesn’t fit, but whatever.  It’s not that big a deal.

I told Ronnie we were professionals, but if Edward was a professional, then I was an amateur.  And so was Ronnie.

I don’t even think this is a sexist thing.  There’s Manny, who taught her everything she knows, but Edward is just that badass.  I like it.

She checks her answering machine and there’s a message from Phillip.  He knows the location of the party and she’s supposed to pick him up from in front of Guilty Pleasures at six-thirty.

That gives her two hours to get ready, and if there’s one thing AB hates more than shopping, it’s getting ready for a party.  Ok, lady, I hear you.  I hate getting ready too.  But you want these people to believe you want to be there, you better do a bit more than run a brush through your hair.  And base is not the consistency of cake if you apply it correctly.

I do love a decent flowy black skirt with pockets.  It actually sounds adorable.  If the excessive paragraphs about hiding weapons is tedious now, just wait.  Oh fuck it all, just wait.  I’m going to whistle past the sweaty thigh and duck diaper shit.  I worked in a kitchen for years and weird sweat is totally a thing.  Slap some Gold Bond on them gams and get to work girl.

All set and dressed to go, she gets her shit together and packs up the shotgun.  Last lingering thought of Edward’s threat as she is about to head out for the freak partyyy..

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Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 10 – I’ve Never Seen a Blonde Rat Before!

Christ, I forgot how much of this book there was.  We’re only at the %18 mark.  So much to do.

Anyway.  AB’s locked in a room, so she does the standard checking of the door, rattling, what have you.  The best way to get out of a locked room?  Not be put there in the first damn place.

I’m going to skip describing much of the bulk of this chapter.  If there’s a scene in a book that can be utterly erased and not affect the story in the slightest, why the fuck is it in the book.  We get it, the bad guys are bad.  They’re REALLY bad.  all villains are.  We got it.

Basically JC leaves her in the dungeon to be raped by wererats.  A few of them.  In a book that is already heavy with coercion and manipulation, here we have an entire scene where AB is left in the dungeon to be brutally raped by a bunch of rat men.

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?  (Here’s some cool stuff to get your mind off of giant-rat-rape)

But Antifan, she’s there so she can meet Raphael at the end of the scene.

Fuck that.

I like that the Rat King is a man of choice and chooses not to take part of the raping and whatever the hell else they were going to do to Anita, seriously, that’s great.  Raphael seems to fall in the middle of the villain/good guy arch.  He’s got bad people working for him, he may or may not have to answer to some bad people, but he’s got his own moral compass.  I’m cool with that.

I really can say how much I hate the almost rape scene in this book.  I think I had head cannoned it out when I read it before.  It’s just not needed.  She could have met the Rat King without all the groin rubbing and sexual talk.  That could have happened.  Not all villains have to use the threat of sexual violence to be considered the big bad.  Seriously, they don’t.

Ugh, let me try to work through this chapter and get some actual analysis shit on this page.

She sees the rats, she calls for JC, there’s four big rats and a swarm of smaller ones.  JC is not coming to get her.  The rats want her to come down the stairs, she’s so not going to.  There’s a page of “Come down and play or we’ll fetch you.”  and “No, come and get me.” and “Fetch her.”

So she asks them what they want, and they reveal that Nikolaos told them to keep her entertained while she waited.  The whole point of JC leaving her in the dungeon was for her to be raped.  Come on.

So she insults the size of the rapists package, making him mad.  She gets them both to come up there to her and she knocks them both down off the edge of whatever she’s on.  So they send the little rats at her, she only gets one bite.  She goads the other rat man into coming up to her by telling him all the little rats are going to lose respect for him.

It works, because you know, the bad guy always gives a shit what his victim and smaller rats think of him.  Ugh.

AB puts her hand behind her back and pretends she has a knife there.  She’s bluffing to things that can small her lying.  Are you fucking kidding me?  By the dialogue and AB’s thoughts, I don’t know if the rat is going to eat her or have sex with her or both.

In the middle of all this.

“I’ve never seen a blonde rat before.”

SHUT THE FUCK UP!  Deal with the situation at hand lady!  Talk to him and find out of there’s another way out.  See where the tunnel leads.  Get him talking about pertinent shit, yeah, talking is good.  But giving a shit about his mother and father’s genetics and their effect on wererat shifting!?!?  Come on!?!

Whatever, she starts laughing, thinking about the vampires coming to save her.  If I were a villain, laugh all you want, stupid, I’m still going to come after you.  Not stop in my tracks and ask you to explain in detail what is so funny.

“Better dead than furry.”

Quit playing.  I just don’t have words for this line.  I don’t.  But I felt like I had to mark it for posterity.

She knocks the blonde rat out and in comes another one.  But this one has jean cutoffs, is jet black and is walking through the crowd of rats.  There’s a lot of hissing.

I think this is the only time, ever that there’s a wereanimal wearing clothes.

We find out that this new guy is the King and he’s not happy that they’re in the dungeon.  He’s not there to save AB, he’s just there because he told his people not to go there.  They talk about his burn scar for a minute.  Scars.  Everyone has one.

He leaves and Theresa opens the door, upset that the rats aren’t there.  She’s asking Anita a whole bunch of questions and AB isn’t telling her shit.

Theresa leads her out of the dungeon and tells her that before the night is out, Nikolaos will be everyone’s master.

“I would rather die than be a vampire’s flunky.”

Again.  Posterity.

There’s a lot of eyefucking as they walk down a  corridor or something on their way to meet Nikolaos.  Pretty ominous stuff.

I really hate this chapter.  It’s stupid, posturing and unneeded.  The scene with the Rat King could still have happened, but all the rape stuff, it’s unnecessary evil.  And stupid.

Anyway, that’s Chapter 10.  Onward.

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Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 9 – I don’t understand?! X3!!

AB has been knocked the fuck out by Aubrey and is being taken to go see Nikolaos.  Jean Claude holds her hair back for her as she looses her lunch all over the place.  Girl needs a hospital.  Remember the days when she got knocked around like the rest of us?  Anyway, Nikolaos wants her whole and well for her visit, though she should have known that sending Aubrey was going to maybe not work out so well.  He’s crazy, if you hadn’t noticed.

Jean Claude takes some of her nausea and vomityness away and she can finally open her eyes to see that they’re in a dungeon.  I know, a dungeon in the heart of St. Louis.  Complete with torches, stone walls and a barred wooden door.  Come on vampires, dungeons are so passe.  But whatever, onward.

So here we go with more of JC’s manipulations.  Anita’s all like, oh, how am I healing so fast?  And Theresa’s like, JC, tell her, she’s going to be totally stoked for it.

“You are badly hurt, a concussion.  But Nikolaos will not let us take you to a hospital until this… interview is over with.  I feared you would die or be unable to… function.”  I had never heard his voice so uncertain.  “So I shared my life force with you.”

I started to shake my head.  I pressed my hands to my forehead.  “I don’t understand.”

Of course.  The chick with the degrees in this shit has no idea what it means when a vampire shares his life force with her.  And Jean-Claude, dammit, for real?  To function?  Creepy ass.

Basically JC has taken the first step in making AB his human servant.  Again, when she is in a moment of weakness, exploiting her lack of ability to consent.  He’s just gone and done it for something as minor as a concussion.  Dummy, all you had to do was keep her awake for a might and she would have been right as rain.  You didn’t have to be all dramatic and try to make her your slave.  I forgot all about this side to JC and I really hate him.

“I don’t mean one of those pathetic half-creatures that have a few bites and do our bidding.  I mean a permanent human servant, one that will never be bitten, never be hurt.  One that will age almost as slowly as we do.”

I still didn’t understand.

Of course you don’t.  She only explained it in detail.

JC fluffs it off in a good way, I’ve just taken your pain and given you my stamina.  It’s a pretty D&D trade off, you shouldn’t think too hard about the who servant part.

I still wasn’t taking it all in, or maybe it was just beyond me.  “I don’t understand.”

“Listen woman, he has shared with you what we consider a great gift to be given only to people that have proven themselves invaluable.”

Godammit, Anita, get it together.

Basically, this first step has given her some level of control.  She can look into his eyes without any ill effects, also any other vampire.  Their voices can’t do shit to her anymore.

Buut, this puts her in a pretty shitty spot because Nikolaos isn’t going to be happy that she’s got a bit of immunity.  Theresa’s exposition of the whole situation complete, she exits the scene, boots clacking against the gaudy stone tile on her way out.

Of course, instead of just accepting it, Anita wants to know why.  And it has to be explained in detail.  Not only does she benefit from this, but JC does too.  He’s not getting his ass kicked by the big bad for her dying, though, I’m pretty sure she would have been out of it but just fine later.

He tells her she’s going to sit in the dungeon until Nikolaos decides it’s time for her to come out.  JC locks her in there and adds over his shoulder that he maybe had done it because he likes her.

Man, I think JC more than likes her.  I think he LIKES LIKES her.  But I won’t know until he passes a note under the door and waits for her to check a box and send it back.

Anita, you need to get the fuck out of there.  I don’t know much about stories, but there’s this moment, the one when the main character has a choice.  Anita Blake does not want to become Jean-Claude’s human servant.  And once she does that, there’s either two things that can happen.  She can drop out of character so far that she can’t come back from it.  Or she can realize that this was a place she never wanted to be in and get out from it, maintaining her character.

We know which way AB goes.  If we’ve read farther in the series, we know.  And from these pages, it seems her character has gone so far off the tracks, accepting it as normal is the only thing anyone can do as they watch helplessly from the sidelines.  AB from the beginning didn’t want to be tied to the vampires anymore than she should be, not at all.  She works with the police, solving their crimes.  Being part of them should have been death to her career.  Even this thing she’s doing right now, this isn’t police procedure.  She should never have let herself be in this position to begin with.

But, Anita’s going to do whatever the fuck she wants.  So there’s that.

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Guilty Pleasures – Chapter 8 – No Means No, NOT Convince Me.

Well, things are starting to get interesting.

Chapter 8 starts with sending Catherine off in a cab to get home, her mind messed with so that all she’ll remember is a night out with the girls.

Aubrey is going out of his way to be a Bela Lugosi knock off again and AB calls him out on it.  This guy has the power to do terrible things to your friend and you’re going to taunt him?  Come on, girl, get it together.  Jean Claude apparently found his leash and sends him off into the night.  If it was me, I’d be keeping that leash tighter.

“I thought your job was to keep me alive for this Nikolaos.”

He frowned.  “It is, but I will not die to defend you.  Do you understand that?”

“I do now.”

So maybe JC could be a little nicer to her since he did just coerce her into helping him.  Maybe AB could stop being petulant and leave Aubrey alone (I’m playin, I would have laughed at him too).  Ether way, this tempo is weird and if I was her, I’d be packing my purse to go home.

Instead, they’re going to go for a walk and JC wants to hold hands with her now.  If eye contact is a no-no, then why the hell does she agree to hold his hand?  I would think that contact would make for a way easier conduit.

“This night must remain a secret from the police, Anita.  Hold my hand, play the besotted human with ehr vampire lover.  It will explain the blood on your blouse.  It will explain where we are going and why.”

I hate when dudes try to hold my hand.  Seriously.  And more coercion.  I suppose I didn’t see it before, but it’s pretty heavy handed.  There are few things AB does of her own accord.  Everything she does is reactive to something someone says or does or the consequences of some action.  It starts with this, but later, everything is pushed on her and she just takes it.  It gets really old.

There’s a whole conversation about is JC fed that night and apparently he didn’t.  The dialogue is heavy and could be pared down a little.  Bottom line, he didn’t eat and apparently, he doesn’t know why.

There’s a break in the chapter and they end up at a hotel.

Hold the fuck up JC, we’re just at the hand-holding stage.  Don’t try to get out of the friendzone yet..

They’re interrupted  by a passing police car that’s creeping pretty slow.  JC seizes the opportunity and goes for it.

He was going to kiss me.  I didn’t want him to.  But I didn’t want the police to stop and question us.  I didn’t want to explain the blood stains, the torn blouse.  His lips hesitated over my mouth.  His heartbeat was loud in my head, is pulse was racing, and my breathing was ragged with his need.

Here’s a prime example of what I’m talking about!  I had completely forgotten that the very first kiss Anita gets in the series is one she doesn’t want, one that’s forced on her or there’s severe consequences for the people around her.

This is a terrible theme, and one that needs to be addressed!  Anita is working with the police, she could have easily explained why she was out with JC.  And her blouse was red and it was raining.  I doubt they would have even seen the blood.

I tried to pull back and found his hand at the back of my neck, pressing my mouth against his.

The police spotlight swept over us.  I relaxed against Jean-Claude, letting him kiss me.  Our mouths pressed together.  My tongue found the smooth hardness of fangs.  I pulled away and he let me.

Then he has this weird wash of hunger he passes to her and I hope she’s suddenly wondering why she’s out in the middle of the night with a hungry vampire molester.  They collect themselves and he takes her inside to meet Nikolaos.

Apparently Nikolaos is hiding behind a younger vampire, Theresa.  Anita isn’t fooled for a second, and insults Aubrey yet again, not wanting to play stupid little games.

JC intercepts Aubrey before he can get her, but a blow to the shoulder sends her reeling into a wall where she is knocked unconscious.

Unconscious in a room containing an annoyed vampire in two hundred dollar boots, a hungry vampire and an extremely unhinged angry vampire.  Great.  Great move there.

The chapter end there with a blackout and that’s fine because there is a lot to digest.

I don’t understand Anita’s views on romance and intimacy at all.  Up to this point in the book, there hasn’t been a whole lot to go on.  She’s not a fan of strip clubs, that’s fine, whatever.  I can even understand not wanting to hold someone’s hand.  I fucking hate holding hands.  I totally get that.  But the kiss throws me off.  And this is something LKH does a LOT.  There’s always the initial NO.  Always.  No, I do not want this, no, I will not do this.  And then she does.  It’s almost a token no, just so later she can say that she didn’t want to, but here, we can clear see that she was kissing him back for a moment there.  Should he have pressed it when she said no?  Hell the fuck no.  I can understand throwing off the cops, but wouldn’t it have been more embarrassing for her to have been picked up on a prostitution charge?  Come on.  The cops aren’t just going to whistle past two people making out in front of a hotel.  Especially in the Blood District, where murders are happening.  Come on.

I ride the fence about Anita’s behavior a lot.  I don’t care if she’s making out with JC.  I don’t give a shit.  But her doing it even because she doesn’t want to, that pisses me off.  And I’d like to think that she abandons this routine as she gets stronger, but that’s not the case.  If she had pulled JC to her when the cop rolled around, I might have respected the kiss a little more.  But it just seems like JC is taking everything that he wants by coercion.  And I ain’t about that life.

This chapter pissed me off.  They walked a block, kissed, got duped by a vampire and then AB got laid out.

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