What was THE MOMENT for you?

[bluesimplicity.livejournal.com]

Hey Fellow Lashers. 

I've got a question I've been wondering about for you all. Consider it a survey of sorts.

What was THE MOMENT when you knew that you were done with AB:VH (Or even Merry?) I'm not talking about the bad grammer, the endless, bore me to death sex scenes, or LKH not even remembering how to spell her own character names. (We've all plodded along with those in the hopes that it would someday get better.) I mean the moment when it FINALLY happened. When you threw whatever book you were reading across the room and just KNEW you were never going to pick it up again?

For me, it had to be in Incubus Dreams. I almost did it when we found out Richard was now a rape victim (WHAT?? A-fucking-NOTHER one?? Can you not have a dick in the AB world and not get raped?) But I held on. Then it was almost the sex scene were Anita goes on and on in great detail about barfing and blowjobs, followed by the 18 thousand fuckmefuckmefuckmes at the end. But not quite - I was plodding along until....

The bad guys leave a note. 

After all this drama, all this tension (well, no not really, but let's pretend), said bad guys don't even show up and do a "Whoops! Our bad! So sorry. Gotta-go-bye!" 

For me, that was IT! I was never ever EVER going to pay good money to read this woman's crap again. And I feel so much freer for it!

What was everyone's else THAT'S IT moment of clarity? 

Just curious.

Blue

P.S. For Merry, it was in the last book, which I didn't even bother to read, when my friend mentioned to me that is was 384 pages and they STILL hadn't made it to the Seelie Court. But they sure as hell did fuck alot. BAH!!

Comments

[alorarose.livejournal.com]

I think, for me, it was the shower scene with Micah. I read Narcissus in Chains twice because I couldn't believe what I was reading. I was determined though! The next one will suck less, right?

Well, I don't even remember what Cerulean Sins was about..and I READ that one. UGH. I also don't remember much from Incubus Dreams. That one took me a while to read....I had to keep throwing the book in the trash.

My mom bought Micah cause it was on sale in BJs. I read that recently on the train. Yea...I have no comment on that book. None at all...

I'll probably poke Danse Macabre when it comes out in paperback. I am SO not paying 25 bucks for that book. Maybe I'll read it in the aisle at Borders. Though I might get worried people will look over my shoulder.

I don't actually remember reading Mistral's Kiss......::checks bookshelf::
Ah..last one I read was A Stroke of Midnight.

Curiosity will be what's going to keep me reading these books. For those few and far between moments of awesome paragraphs.

[pith]

Blue Moon, probably, though I did read a bit beyond. The whole "Jean-Claude gave me permission to fuck you" thing just pissed me off. Any sense of agency Anita had remaining was dashed for me then.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

That's the one where they're out in the woods and Richard was accused of raping a woman, right?

That was when I started rolling my eyes a lot and started describing Anita as "a supernatural slut".

[ladymina.livejournal.com]

NIC
But I still tried the next ones, because I loved OB
bt ID was teh end

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

My moment of shrieking horror and sobs of anguish came from that preview of Mistral's Kiss that's up on the website. I started wobbling when I heard the title (dear god, of all the Fairy Skittles... she's titling something after MISTRAL??! The ageless faerie with all the pick-up line panache of a drunken frat boy??!), but the preview in all it's mis-spelled acid trippy glory is what did it for me. White pig, black pig, little pig, dead pig. And one to have beastiality with.

I forgive the Merry series its wonky times when they're in the Sithen- Fairyland and time don't mix well according to legend anyway. You go in for a night and come out 50 years later in the stories, so it would figure that they might have all that crap happen and it's really only been one night. It's iffy but at least she creates iffy canon for the iffy reasoning. Whereas in Anita she set up one canon and then blew it all to Penthouse Hell.

But now the typos and acid trips have eaten Merry's little bit of questionable plot and I am sad. That could have been a helluva cool idea, you know. Actual dangerous bad-ass faeries and sex and mingling with the real world and politics. Yeah, it could have been really fun. Sigh. Stupid Laurell, going all insane just when she finally had a heroine I could stand.

No. I had no moment of revelation of the horror with Anita... well, okay, maybe Micah's pages o' unloveable penile angst might be a leading cause of squick. But reading Cerulean Sins and then reading Guilty Pleasures didn't help. Because I could swear those two were in no way related aside from character names. And I never did like Anita herself. Not too fond of Merry but I could live with her... until the last book or so when she's completely become Anita 2.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I know I was wondering what happened to the series with NiC. I clung on through the WTFery of CS, but ID had to be it. It took me four attempts to start the book because every time I got to page eight, I declared it the worst. book. ever. stopped reading and put it back in my locker.

For MG it was definitely Seduced By Moonlight and the first sentence put me right off - but I struggled through. When it got to Merry dying and getting resurrected by TEH DIETY, I was ready to set things on fire. Then again, MG books never sat right with me because they hold your hand and explain everything that doesn't need the exposition and then skims over all the WTF parts. Also, I am not a political idiot - my little finger can create a better court intrigue than what's going on there right now. I'm only hanging in there for my fucking Sholto porn that was promised back in book one! A Stroke of Midnight sits unread after over a year on my bookshelf.

Given how painful Danse Macabre is, I don't know if I'll continue with AB:VH. I keep telling myself that I will, but dude - the previews and other people's snarks have been painful enough. The real thing? OMG. This should be banned under the Geneva Convention as a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Goodness knows, I do not want to pay for these books any more.

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

Are there any good political intrigue-y faeryland books? Because Merry Gentry made me want to find some.

Danse Macabre is atrocious. And I'm not sure 'atrocious' covers it. Atrocious books back away from Danse Macabre in awe and horror. I skimmed through it in the bookstore and nearly choked. There's someone named Merlin. He does ballet. I think. And Mommy Darkest goes all Buffy First Slayer. Or something. And Anita pwns all. Even the Rat King. Because she's Teh Ebill Dark And Twisty Mega Sue. And there is sex. Really, really, badly written screaming almost-death sex.

[mariakatarina.livejournal.com]

I think that was NiC. Two pages in and Micah's fucking Anita from behind and she's... not slaughtering him.

That character was so the beginning of the end.

[morlayne.livejournal.com]

It was Seduced by Moonlight. I had bought a Caress of Twilight, read it through in a day, and spent months and months foaming at the mouth to find out what happens when Merry visits the Seelie Court. When Seduced by Moonlight came out, I was broke, but wait! I have a library card. I put it on hold, but I'm 18th in line, or something. So I have to foam at the mouth some more. Finally, it comes in, I race to the library and grab it. And race home to shut myself in my room and FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS!!!

And they never even get there. I could have cried.

Absolutely...

[bluesimplicity.livejournal.com]

Not getting to the Seelie Court was a breaker for me too. I had liked Merry even better than Anita up until that point (she just seemed mellower and more mature), but after Caress of Twilight, when the entire book was "We've got to get to the Seelie Court....HOH BOY, the Seelie Court...Oh man, what is going to happen once we get to the Seelie Court" and then for them to not get there I was perturbed, to put it mildly. (I remember reading that book and going, hmm, 100 pages left, they better get to the Seelie Court....Hmm, only 50 pages left, when are they going to get to the Seelie court...Wait, only 5 pages left, they better hurry their asses up!" I felt completely cheated by the end.)

And then, as I said, to hear that there was another FOUR HUNDRED bloody pages and they STILL couldn't get to the damn Seelie Court, and I was done with Merry. My friend, who passed this info on to me, said they spend a good three chapters debating the logistics of a blow job, but not getting to the Seelie Court. WTF??

[mariakatarina.livejournal.com]

It was finishing NiC and going "WTF was that?!" The stupid hyena nonsense, and Anita's uberbitch finally sticking around for the majority of the book, and absolutely no continuity from previous books. I almost threw that book (hardcover!) across the room. But I didn't want to hurt the new paintjob I did on the walls.

OB was much better, still squick worthy in some spots, but better. It had plot! and I liked CS if only for the mild JC/Asher romance and reconsiliation going on. Other than that, I don't remember much about it except Belle not nearly being badass enough.

ID was the end. And now that I've heard DM is just as bad, haven't bothered to read it.

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

It was Incubus Dreams that finished it for because I couldn't find anything in the whole book that I would have been willing to reread even once. NiC was bad but I kept going on there theory that everybody has a bad day and OB was pretty good then CS oozed on the shelves and I read it and it had some good parts, but then ID appeared and it just a time waster nothing happened, silly characters appears at random and Anita monologued for ever.

[thesaneminority.livejournal.com]

For me, it was Cerulean Sins. I already knew that the series was devolving into port, and after not reading for so long after Obsidian Butterfly, I finally struggled through Narcissus in Chains, and got maybe ten pages into CS before I got fed up. I was so excited that Anita was actually doing a zombie raising, and then Asher showed up to whisk her away to the Circus and I just put the damn thing down and took it back to the library.

[thesaneminority.livejournal.com]

Er, porn. Not port.

[dinsedaledarby.livejournal.com]

the moment when I really, really considered throwing in the towel was kind of late. I kind of knew in the back of my head that the book was terrible but the moment that defined it for me was when I was in trig class in my senior year of high school and my incredibly awesome math teacher Mrs. Barber wanted to look at Incubus dreams which was "the new book" at the time. I let her look at it. It was taking me forever to read it and she commented that she couldn't believe i hadn't finished it earlier.
she was on bloody bones at the time.
I smiled.

that was also the time when she suggested that Johnny Depp would make an excellant Jean-claude if they ever made a movie of the book, god forbid. needless to say i couldn't consentrate for the rest of the class.

I had hated the two books before but I don't really know why it didn't occur to me that I should stop reading this crap....
unless the next book has Edward in the summary I'm pretty sure I will rely on this community for teh snarkage.

:)

[catskin.livejournal.com]

Incubus Dreams, after the sex scene with Nathanial in the office. And I can't remember anything that happened in the book prior to that.

I knew things were on a downwards slope after NiC, but I loved the series enough to give CS a try. I've read it twice and still have no idea what happens in it. I couldn't tell you anything about it beyond "Anita shags a lot of people." I bought ID second-hand from a market thinking it sounded slightly more promising. Dear God, was I ever disappointed. It's the only book I've ever been unable to finish. Anita had become a totally unsypathetic, selfish, patronising bitch (moreso), the men were all carbon copies of each other and the plot... wait... there was no plot. That's why I stopped.

A Stroke of Midnight will probably be the last Merry book I buy. It was glacially slow and I learned nothing except that Merry is Anita in a wig. Like dwg I'm kinda tempted to hold out for my Sholto sex, but unless it's a guarantee I shall abstain from Mistral's Kiss.

[withered-spring.livejournal.com]

You know, I had no ideas of LKH's worth as an author (or the lack thereof) when I picked up Incubus Dreams. I should have known by the title alone that it was going to be one big suckfest, but I thought, 'What harm can come of one book?' and I paid for the damned thing.

I had never read any published work which was so unrelentingly awful as Incubus Dreams. (That includes anything I've read by Clive Cussler or Anne Rice.) But yes, by the time she was in the parking lot after the wedding in the beginning of the book, I realized I had picked out a true stonker of the first magnitude.

However, I sometimes get a kick out of reading crap simply for the hilarity of it and I decided I would read on. I was not fazed by LKH's preoccupation with what everyone was wearing, nor was I frightened off by Nathaniel's ankle-length hair.

However, once things began to heat up (?) with her vampire uke and Micah... they're rolling around on the floor and Anita's having her 'to fuck or not to fuck' dilemma, I began to seriously lose my temper. I was skimming through it waiting for Laurell to get to the point already. I've known people half Laurell's age who could write steamier scenes. Between the angst and whathisbucket's 'deep, green pools', I realized that Laurell was just incoherently confusing masturbating and writing. I think what did it for me was finally, after that whole scene with Anita's vampire uke going apeshit--after Anita fucks him into submission--he's suddenly drop dead gorgeous and sunlight doesn't hurt him anymore?

By that time I could have given a shit less what the explanation was, because I'd had it up to my eyebrows with Anita's generally pissy, unlikeable demeanor and her harem of whinging, angsty men.

I had to smack my paperback against my footboard a few times before launching it across my bedroom, in the hopes returning some of the pain.

Of course, afterwards I read a friend's Merry Gentry books, which were awful and rife with WTFness throughout, but still not as bad as Incubus Dreams.

Gawd it felt good to pitch that fucker.

[kidkai.livejournal.com]

I think I skimmed whatever the one before Danse Macabre was. Incubus Dreams? Narcicus? Come to think of it, I probably skimmed them both; I couldn't tell you a single thing that happened in either.

I stayed away from Micah entirely and had planned to stay away from Danse Macabre, but for some reason I picked it up at the library. I suffered the excessive clothing description. I suffered the kitchen description. I wobbled through Ronnie's inexplicable weirdness and damn near put it through the window at the whole "I'm just so jeallous of you!" But the "I just cannot do this anymore" moment came with the Richard not being comfortable with his beast and not liking that Anita being more comfortable with his beast than he was. Really a mundane thing given what there is to chose from, but after hearing that exact description for so many books (honestly, I think it is almost word forword the same damn paragraph) I just snapped and could not bring myself to read another word.

Actually?

[wonderbink.livejournal.com]

I was doing sort of a mental count and realized that I haven't paid for a single book by LKH. Ever. The first two Merry Gentry books I got as Advance Copies from my sister who used to work for the publisher. (The advance copy of A Caress of Twilight was a big ol' mess--I checked out the actual book from the library and noticed some significant improvements, which indicates that at least SOME editing is being done.)

All the AB books I have read were either borrowed from my roommate or from the library.

Right now, I'm waiting a bit before attempting to check out Dance Macabre from the library, since it seems a lot of people are doing what I'm doing--borrowing instead of buying.

When I do get it (I may wait until after my NaNovel is done) I plan on reading it for the sheer amusement value of the ridiculousness of it. Kinda like the way I rent out bad movies for fun.

Re: Actually?

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

(The advance copy of A Caress of Twilight was a big ol' mess--I checked out the actual book from the library and noticed some significant improvements, which indicates that at least SOME editing is being done.)

Really? Wow. Like, grammatical errors and typos corrected, or scenes rewritten? Because it'd be fascinating to know the changes made.

[world-of-eos.livejournal.com]

Well . . . I didn't finish Blue Moon because I couldn't figure out what the hell that ancestral werewolf spirit shit was all about (also I hate Richard and there was an awful lot of Richard in that book). So, I skipped to Obsidian Butterfly because I, too, love me some Edward and I figured this would be a good one - South American mythos! Awesome! Fantastic! I'm excited!

I got past the part where the Mayan (or Incan? Eh.) vampires were blowing werewolves for blood, but just barely (couldn't get past how inefficient, dumb and OMGOTH it was). I don't remember how much farther I read after that, since it was a long time ago, but I do remember why I stopped. After about the 300th time Anita had taken a break to internally agonize over what a monster she'd become, it suddenly dawned on me that. . . that was it. I couldn't read anymore.

She'd been getting progressively whinier in the last couple of books, and I just had enough. That wasn't the Anita I knew. The Anita I knew would have either accepted the fact that she was a monster, or worked to fix it - even if it meant killing herself. She wouldn't whine about it like a little bitch.

So I stopped, and thank god for that! If I'd actually read NiC or farther, I think my head would have exploded from sheer rage.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

Incubus Dreams, but I think it would have been NiC if I'd actually paid attention rather than skim-reading my way through. Was it ID in which they fuck a lot, then the cops call and say, "We have another dead stripper"? Because that was it. When I realised I actually could not remember the supposed "plot" of the book because they'd just spent hundreds of pages in bed. I honestly thought they were referencing an earlier book in the series, because dead strippers seemed familiar, but I just couldn't figure out when they'd been mentioned previously.

[colddaye.livejournal.com]

I used to buy all the books (ABVH, anyway, I won't touch Merry Gentry) in paperback, but now I won't even accept them as gifts. Harsh, but still.

I read Incubus Dreams in the bookstore in hardcover because I was thinking about buying it in paperback if it was better than whatever came before, but then the Byron/Requeium scene happened. About a paragraph after introducing TWO MORE POINTLESS CHARACTERS, she fucks one. And it's the gay one.

Even if rocks fall and everyone dies, or it turns out that the whole fuck crisis of both series are the result of a tragic brain parasite that is miraculously removed and she suddenly returns to a semi-decent series, there is no way I'll ever give LKH my money again. But if it is a brain parasite, I will happily donate toward the brain parasite miraculous cure foundation.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

I heard a recommendation of Hamilton's early works from a friend at about the same time I ran into the Anita Blake thread on godawful.net. Then I got my first bookstore job, at about the time Incubus Dreams came out.
I opened Incubus Dreams and found porn. I opened it again at random and found porn. Lather, rinse, repeat, about a dozen times. Porn, porn, porn. And from what I saw of the porn...that's when I first knew it was shit.

[ladyravana.livejournal.com]

I would say Narcissus in Chains was the beginning of the end for me, when the books really began backsliding for me. I was like "Uhhhh, I don't like where this is going." I lived in a state of denial and hoped that the aderuerarer would "fade away" like JC had indicated that it might. Cerulean Sins was kind of the last ditch effort to me, and I HOPED it would be better. I mean...it was squicky, but at least there weren't that many spelling errors that I noticed.

ID was pretty much the final straw for me. I couldn't get past the first fifty pages and I skimmed through a bit more here and there, and when I got to the part about Damian walking in sunlight and being "prettified", I was left full of serious WTF-ness. I thought that was SUCH a cheap Mary-Sue trick. And of course, Anita being made prettier by the "vampire glamor." I just gagged when I read that.

And I skipped over Micah because I didn't want to read it and I didn't think I would miss much of anything. Glad I did, in hindsight.

I held out a last, desperate hope that Danse Macabre would be better and that LKH would snap out of it. But when I heard about how bad and utterly ridiculous it was, that was the deal breaker. I read a "preview" in this community and ended up joining so I could vent my anger and frustration along with everyone else.

I'm glad I stopped at ID before my brain melted completely...and even more glad I didn't finish reading it. I probably would have shattered my fragile lil psyche.

Still...I'm left very bitter that I rushed out and bought it without thinking.

*sighs mournfully and shoots ID to smithereens with Alucard's Jackal*

There, I feel better now. :)

[kethryvis.livejournal.com]

I'm new but I'll dive in.

What made me stop reading? Was when she yanked down the first set of forums (aka the guest book) because people were being mean. I was willing to keep putting up with the shlock in the hopes it would get better but when she pulled that I said "yanno what? I'm done." If an author can't respect their readers, how can we respect the author?

This also coincided with two incidents:

1) Getting hooked on Jacqueline Carey and saying to myself "WOW! Now *Here's* an author who can write some steamy sex and have it be good. Some of it isn't even my kinda thing but I can read it and ENJOY it nonetheless."

2) Reading 7 chapters of ID and realizing that LKH isn't a tenth of the writer JC is.

I thought OB was the best of the series. She went away from the boys and... the book had a PLOT. I was amazed and I wish LKH would reread that book and see what she's capable of.

But that takes work. Sigh.

so anyways.. Hi, I'm new here, glad to find more people who share my feelings on LKH. :)

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

I think The Moment for me was in the end of... the one with the fire and the vampire who had butterflies for his animal to call. Burnt Offerings, I think? I'd already been having issues with the stories, but I had read the books initially because I liked the mysteries as well as the rest. I liked that I had figured out who was killing the Vampires in Guilty Pleasures and all that, and even the later books had some aspects of being able to put the clues together.

We didn't *get* all the clues in that one, at all, and just had everything revealed in a nice package.

At that point, I was done even pretending to enjoy the books.

The last one I read was OB, and I read it because I had a long bus ride ahead of me. It confirmed everything I didn't like. I haven't looked back.

[logansrogue.livejournal.com]

You'll laugh - but the first Merry book. I just knew it could be so much cooler but it kept coming back to Merry fucking people. And I got mad that this woman made so much money and wrote such trash.

[jperceval.livejournal.com]

Narcissus in Chains. After still smarting from the soap-as-lubricant squickiness, I encountered plot hole after dropped plot line in favor of sex. We needed to spackle the wall when I finished hurling the book against it.

[onyx-noir.livejournal.com]

Call me an optomist. I started falling out of love with the Anita Blake series after NiC. But I read ID and CS anyway, just on the off chance there might be an improvement. Stupid, I know.

My 'moment'? When I decided not to spend money on her latest book.