Early Anita

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

One of my friends is still a fan of LKH so she lent me Circus of the Damned. While there was a decent plot (interrupted by Anita's JC wangst), I feel the need to pint out that I hated Anita anyway. Also, LKH fucked up sexual ideas are not as recent as we would like to think. I fear that Jon is not that much of a factor when it comes LKH's mania. Anyway, beware of spoilers.

In this novel, there is apparently a group of vampires brutally murdering humans by literally sucking all their blood and leaving them for the cops to find. Dolph and Zebrowsky call Anita so she can offer her expertise. As far as I can tell, her expertise is telling them what I assume should be basic knowledge for police officers in a world were vampires are a simple fact of life. Why would policemen need to be told how a vampire is "created?" Wouldn't the police train their cops on supernatural affairs if wereanimals, zombies, ghouls, demons, and vampires were real? 

Trasnlation, Anita never had any business in any crime scene if she was never a cop. LKH should have decided what she wanted---a cop or an animator. The whole "humans are too close minded to actually learn about the supernatural" that Anita keeps spouting is ridiculous. I'd understand it a lot better if one day monsters just revealed themselves to be real, but if monsters are part of the "normal" world, you'de bet that humans would be a lot more willing to open their minds. If she wanted the rejected by those EBOl sexist pigs angle, why not make Anita a PI? Was LKH afraid of the extra work it would mean not to habe the help of the EBOL, sexists cops?

Anita is also a sucky detective. I don't know if it's just LKH's inability to write crime drama (it gets in the way of the relationship angst) or if she just doesn't know any better (gods forbid she actually did research and, I don't know, ask policemen about investigating crimes) but the "mysteries" in LKH's book never get solved by Anita's intelligence. It's almost coincidence or luck. In this novel, Anita speneds 75% of the time angsting about JC and being confused about Richard. Only at the end does the bad guy actually show up and gives a giant Mojo Jojo speech about his evil plan. Anita doesn't figure it out. 

I guess a good way to explain it is to compare Anita to another popular fictional investigator. I don't know how many of you have read J. D, Robb's In Death series, but if you have you know that Eve Dallas spends the whole book speculating, going over crime scenes (gasp more than once), looking into the backgrounds of not only the victim, but the victim's friends, familes, and enemies. What does Anita do in this book? Wangst about JC and and Richard. There were moments that I felt like asking LKHAnita if she remembered the murderer. There is no sex here, but there is all the rambling about Anita's feelings.

LKH's wanky sex philosophies also rear their ugly heads. It's no where as irritating as it was in the later books or MG series, but it's there nonetheless. For example, the lesbian couple that JC uses to trick Anita into doing . . . something I forgot about is just hateful. I'm pretty sure I would not have been as annoyed by it if I hadn't read that odious Maeve Reed fiasco in MG 2, but I had. Also, there's a point in the book where one of Aniota's old boyfriends acts all sexist because of Anita's dangerous job. I guess it's a valid complaint for a female cop/investigator/etc. but I can't shake the feeling that LKH was painting it a little balck and white. Would it have been so bad for a dude to be worried because his girlfriend had a dangerous job? Don't women get scare if their husbands have a dangerous job?

I know I sound whiny, but compred to the latest Anita crap, this book is gold. There is even some actual police business going on. Anita actually has standards when it came to sex. I just can't stand Anita's "I know better, you just don't understand me attitude."

Comments

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I'll admit, Circus of the Damned will forever hold a soft spot in my heart because it was the first AB:VH book I ever read, wayyy back in high school. I didn't pay as much attention to what the hell was going on then, but I've grown up and become a real girl! and I'm a hell of a lot more fussy, critical and cynical than before.

And really...all this book does is fuel my addiction to very bad pulp horror novels. It's a shining example of something that's nowhere near brilliant, well written or understandable in places - and yet, I love reading it to death.

I've been stuck on re-reading the damned thing for about a year now (um, I keep getting distracted by shiny things), and honestly? It doesn't make much sense. It's just a bunch of random things that just so happen in our heroine's week that don't really get connected by anything other than she happened to be there at the time. Oh, and something to do with bad guys.

And yet, this book is the pivotal point for the next few books and sets up a major series of character arcs. WTF?

Not to mention, MELANIE! OH GOD, I LOVE HER SO MUCH! She's the original she-bitch with a harem and Anita totally goes to steal her schtick. And Mel? Never heard from again! You'd think that if you had one of the last true immortals on your side (for the time being) with intimate council knowledge, and what the Bad Guys are up to, you'd use that person as much as possible, maybe even try to sway them over to Team Good.

Instead, she's like...locked in a broom closet and left to hibernate for the rest of all time, or something. *stabs LKH* MELANIE IS AWESOME!!!

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

See, I assumed Melanie had died in one of the seven books or so I haven't read.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Naw, she's mentioned like once in passing in the next book during a wangsty infodump about vampire marks and how Anita only took the third one with JC after she was bitten by a lamia.

That's it. After that, no more Mel. *sadface*

I really think she'd have a trillion and one things to say to Anita right now, not to mention, she did swear death upon our heroine. DEAAATH! I refuse to believe she'd just let that go - when you're immortal, you've got all the time in the world to harbour a grudge.

But woe, she's disappeared, or her post-it's been eaten by Jon the dog and LKH doesn't remember who Melanie is.

[salveo-opes.livejournal.com]

I know I sound whiny, but compred to the latest Anita crap, this book is gold. There is even some actual police business going on. Anita actually has standards when it came to sex. I just can't stand Anita's "I know better, you just don't understand me attitude."

Nicely said!

[nightspiritnyx.livejournal.com]

I agree.. I’ve never been very impressed with LKH's world building either. In my mind it was never great, amusing at best. She created a world where everyone knew vampires and other nasty things were real, but she didn't seem to consider the consequences of this. Why shouldn't the police be completely prepared for supernatural crime? Why isn't executor of vampires a full-time job?

[albinowolf.livejournal.com]

Plus you'd think there would be a hell of a lot more Vampire Executioners trained for the job than the few that LKH keeps bringing up. And I'm sure there are a LOT of people who'd really want the job.

[lovedstrangely.livejournal.com]

I also have a special place in my heart for CoTD.

you've got some valid points on the whole cops not knowing a goddamn thing, but you do have to remember that in the beginning books of the series, vampires were only recently made legal, same for lycanthropes as well. so, you're basically switching from some sort of martial law, shoot em when ya see em type dealie to legal procedure. cops may not have been up on a few things, but others, i agree with you, they should know.


♥

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

But if the vampires were only recently made legal, isn;t it even more reason for the cops to know exactly how to kill them?

Plus, since very book is about 2-3 days, I doubt a year has passed since book one.

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

Plus, since very book is about 2-3 days, I doubt a year has passed since book one.

That unfortunate lack of pace is only characteristic of LKH's later books. Her first ones moved more briskly. Anita is 24 in book one, and 27 as of Danse Macabre (though she's been that age since... NiC, I think). So three years or so have passed since Guilty Pleasures.

[ladymina.livejournal.com]

I might have screwed up the timeline in my head, but I always thought they needed the preternatural experts because the fact that vampires were citizens with rights was so new ...
because before that point they would have just shot them, put the whole house on fire or something like that.
I always thought the cause for preternatural experts was that just burning the next vampire nest if there were kills was just not doing it anymore - hell point, shoot, burn isn't that much of a hard thing, - do not point at the wrong one, learn hierarchy, learn habits and find evidence is much harder

- like we have specialists for the csi work, profiling etc - I always saw her as some kind of preternatural profiler, with the added bonus of 'the vampires can't roll her that fast'

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the cops in LKH's world are totally clueless. They didn't even know how to tell if a vampire victim was going to turn or not. Besides, profilers aren't actually called to crime scenes, they write their reports on the detective's report. Or at least that what I was taught on my criminal justice class.

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

The cop thing made sense to me. Mostly because they're part of a beaurocracy -- and an under-funded one at that. LKH herself draws attention (or used to) to this in her books, with Anita having to gift Dolph and Zebrowski with silver bullets because their department can't afford them.

Since vampires hunters used to be the ones called in to deal with vamps, it makes sense that cops would have been left out of the information loop. Now that vamps are citizens, I don't think it's out of the ordinary it's taking years for the government to catch up to the legislature. They'd have to figure out how to train their cops, or what even counted as sufficient training, who could actually train them, how to incorporate the new information into their regular schedules of, you know, policework...

Add to the fact that they were still having vampire problems that needed solving, only now with the legalities strictly observed, it's no surprise they tried to turn vampire executioners into Federal Marshals. And again, Anita bitches about this briefly because she acertains that most vampire executioners don't work closely enough with police on a regular basis to carry a Mashal badge with impunity. Which again, is an interesting point. *sigh* Back when those actually occured in the books...

I'm not saying her logic is flawless, or even provides complete coverage for some of LKH's leaps... but she actually did used to run her books by a police officer. She thanks him in a lot of the acknowledgements. She did say in an interview she was writing and publishing in such quick succession, by NiC, that she didn't have time to incorporate his feedback for that book or any books following.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I remember liking the reality of a newly conscripted task force that didn't really know what the hell it was doing and was woefully under funded. Kind of like how some bright higher up could decide that police distrcts need a Hate Crimes Task Force, but no one had enough information about what they were supposed to do or which crimes were theirs etc. And because they weren't properly defined they couldn't get the money.

I bring it up this way only because I remember a case a couple years ago where paramedics got called to the scene of a crime and discovered the victim was transgendered and one of them was publically noted to call her a she-male and to not want to touch her, gloves or not. There were a couple other points involving police response to the crime as well.

But through that I could see someone high up saying 'Damn, the spooks are legal now. We'll have to have special task teams of the boys in blue'. But no one knows exactly what kind of training they'll need. If all that was needed before was gasoline.

I got the sense from the first few books that the spook department was /so/ new that the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. Like when she told them to take a vampire victim to the heavy duty morgue instead of the regular one. And that they should have had a 'So You're Undead' counselor on hand.

I loved the bit when she was explaining about vampires of different faiths reacting differently to objects of faith. And the point was -belief- etc. It made me think she got a time of apprenticeship, hand on the job training. And the cops were getting stuff from manuals that needed serious real life updating.

I think at one point she may have said being part of 'the spook squad' was originally where cops went before retirement or something, because there'd been nothing for them to do and then the government decided to really use them - there were some losses and rather than -train- them, the government sent the liscenced executors to be like on the job mentors.

Only all she's mentoring now is some porn factory in the back alleys of St. Lois.

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

RE the cop thing: exactly. I liked that the human world was slow to grapple with the realities of the new legistlation. It certainly fits many of the situations today -- you mentioned a few examples yourself. I mean, there's still a problem of where to place the transgendered in jails -- men's or women's.

I'm not saying it's the only way to approach a supernatural task force, but it was a nice, realistic way to integrate the knots of a bureaucracy. And the RIPT team was always one of my favorite aspects of the series. I was really enjoying the way it evolved through the series... until it was left for dead in a ditch around NiC.

All in all, I beg to differ with the OP. AB did not suck back then. Was the series melodramatic and pulpy? Yes. But it was fun and interesting.

I mean, if it wasn't, why would any of us be here? If LKH was a lousy author from day one, I wouldn't have given a damn when her books disintegrated into sub-par porn.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I think you hit the nail on the head with 'pulpy'. It was pure pulpy fun with enough reality in regards bureaucratic red tape that it could feel real.

I think the worse thing she's done is gotten Anita so caught up in paranormal politics. The Anita I liked and remebered would have set a firm line on being law enforcement. Don't talk in front of her about things you don't want the cops to eventually find out, etc.

RIPT and Animation Inc (?) were the coolest parts - a gun toting woman with a jack ass boss, trying to jostle shoulders with police offers while teaching them and learning from them (because I loved the fact that she didn't know police procedure because she'd never had to use it) etc.

The LKH who said Anita would never fall for JC - as much as it annoyed me that she didn't damn well have them both - was at least keeping the thrill alive.

Now I honestly don't know the difference between Anita and Merry other than JC can't make with the babies cause he's dead.

[klmorgan.livejournal.com]

I think you hit it with the emphasis on Anita's allegiance and how it propelled the series forward. It provided the main conflict -- the idea of her existing between two world, able to understand the "monsters" but have the same goals as the police and the humans making the rules. I mean, no wonder the early books were so much fun, that's a universally interesting theme: conflict between empathy with the minority and a place with the majority. (Servant in heaven, anyone? ;))

And here's for another game of Wouldn't It Have Been Cool -- hurts so good -- if the relationship with JC had continued in that environment. The conflict would have just ratcheted up that much higher. I feel like Burnt Offerings gave a taste of that, but it was still too heavy on vamp stuff and Richard acting like a big baby.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

Dude!

Imagine if Anita did dump Richard for her being unable to deal with his monster side. But did it honestly and said it was because JC was human once and through her he was remembering what it was like to be human again. But that Richard was really something other and she could never be with him living the white picket lie knowing what was under the surface or worse forgetting sometimes. That would have made strategic sense.

And then, if Anita discovered that sex with JC was wonderful, but that the downside of being with him was being pulled further and further into supernatural politics (vampire politics)- which made her work situation iffy because she found herself confused about her loyalties. And then it was played out that she found herself continually turning to Richard. Not because she couldn't leave him alone. But becaue the grass is always greener. And the wolves are discrete and the fact that she wasn't a wolf would be a buffer, whereas being a necromancer just pulls her closer to the walking, talking corpses....

Le effing sigh.

[ravenhaley.livejournal.com]

LKH makes the cops look stupid so Anita can look "oh so wonderful". In a world where things go bump in public's eye, the city would hire those who known what the hell was going on.

Heck, why isn't there werewolves or were-other-creatures on the force? You would think the government would want to hire those "creatures" and make a "powerful" weapon. The most powerful solider.

Grandfathering Anita to be a Federal Marshall was a WTF. Just LKH giving Anita more Powerful without any holds to keep her back.

Like the Genie says in Aladdin
"Phenomenal cosmic powers! Itty bitty living space."

[dwg.livejournal.com]

See, i saw the whole Marshall thing as LKH's way of getting Anita to not deal with so much of the, "Hey, you're a GIRL and in OUR CRIME SCENE! GRRR!!" *manly manliness of manhoodlidom* "NO GIRLS ALLOWED!" thing that LKH seems to have. Jesus Christ, I know that the police have been a boys club in the past, but there are plenty of tough female officers out there that do their jobs and such without all this crap.

But of course, this thing backfires horribly becsaue now all the cops (and Feds) are like, "GRR! A GIRL WHO CAN TELL US WHAT TO DO! NUUU!!!"

Not to mention the whole, "I'm a fed now, I can carry a gun on a plane if I want!" is just...no. NO, Laurell, NO.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Not to mention, Anita's "expertise" isn't exactly...rocket science. I mean, she's calling herself a preternatural expert and getting to examine bodies and such when...she fan find most of this shit out from the coroner. Like, really - she doesn't need to visit the crime scenes - that's what photos and tape are for. If she needs to visit the scene, then she can wait until the body's gone. If she needs to see the body, go to the coroner's office - where they can have all the proper tools on hand for examining things such as bite wounds. (omfg, I will never forgive LKH for having Anita measure bite wounds with a tapemeasure - CALIPERS, WOMAN!!!)

Honestly, all she's doing is trampling around over evidence and mucking things up for everyone else, who are probably better trained at their work than she is. Really - all she's got going for her is a science degree and a gun licence. The forensics people have a science degree, specialty training and police procedural training. Gun licence is optional.

[hellfire82.livejournal.com]

But! But! Anita must be in charge and hands on at ALL TIMES! Relying on the work of others would mean that she is not completely in control of everything at all times!

Um hi. I'm hellfire82, I despair LKH ever writing anything decent ever again, and I'm so totally butting in on your commentary. ^_^

[dwg.livejournal.com]

HIIII! *waves*

Butt away. I can multitask. XD

[dracoliciousss.livejournal.com]

We haven't really seen a positive portrayal of a cop in any of LKH's books..they're either pissed because Anita's sleeping with vamps, or hitting on her, or think she shouldn't be at a crime scene, or misogynistic, or completely corrupt. The only noteable exception is Zerbrowski, and he's married to a strong woman from what we can gather. The message seems to be, unless you've got a tough lady to keep you in line, you're going to be a jerk of a cop.

One thing that consistantly bothered me about the early AB:VH series was the amount of preachiness. Any opinion differing from Anita's (re: LKH's) wasn't just different, it was WRONG. And no plot progression occured unless everyone was firmly on board with Anita's expertise. I really did love the earlier books, especially the potential they held, but they really do make me sad now. You see a vivid, imaginative world that was completely destroyed by an ego and an agenda so large and shameless that it swallowed the talent and replaced it with a grizzled stump of pride.

[catskin.livejournal.com]

I never really got the cops in LKH books, even the books I loved. No matter how many preternatural crimes they experienced, they seemed to gain no knowledge of preternatural creatures. I'm sure this was only done so Anita could keep waltzing in and going "Vampire! Kiss of vampires! Zombie! Uber-zombie! Arduer! Whatever!" But it was annoying.

I think I find it annoying because it ties in with something I find annoying about a lot of urban fantasy, and LKH in particular, as much as I love the genre: I'm not mad on having my monsters out in the open. I much prefer the books where it's a few lone figures fighting undercover and the rest of the world is ignorant to the vampires, werewolves, demons, etc out there.

St Louis, according to Anita, has like, what, 900 werehyenas? An even bigger werewolf population, an even bigger again vampire population... Are there even any humans left in the city? And as far as I can remember (though I may be wrong) the weres are still "undercover." How do 800 werewolves get away with meeting in parks every full moon without anyone noticing?

Also: do any vampires/wereanythings NOT own nightclubs?

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

Somebody should write to LKH with all these questions. If only there was a way to make sure that Darla and co. didn't intercept it . . .

[catskin.livejournal.com]

We can but dream. I expect even if LKH did read such a letter herself, her only response would be a series of looooooong rants on her blog about the petty, jealous people who hate on her and imply wickedevil stuff about her sex life.

[darksongtrilogy.livejournal.com]

I have yet to find a series in urban fantasy that I can declare adequate. Dresden is the nearest thing to it, and that's just because some of Harry's expressions grate on my nerves, and some of it's a little too ridiculous to be believable. Butcher does it best, but in that genre, that bar's still set pretty low. I've read Rachel Caine, Lilith St. Crow, Patricia Briggs, Sookie, Gilman, and a few others, and ALL of them have some serious issues. I don't mind the supernatural world being made public and therefore common to the world. I do mind that no one's written it well yet. Whether it's plotting, characterization, believability, world-building...it's always something and that something is major.

LKH was one of the first into this genre on a large scale, and her books are and always have been pure popcorny fluff. Her research is just surface research. She was good at action, suspense, sexual tension, creating unique and intriguing characters (ahem, Edward?) and a good alternative world. I think that her surface research and really superficial writing/plotting/worldbuilding skills just caught up with her. She's not thorough enough to run a fifteen book series. Her new obsession with sex is a large part of the problem, Micah is (and therefore her inability to move beyond her own personal experience with the main characters) another big problem, but it takes a lot of work to really make a solid world that doesn't break its own rules after fifteen books. For one thing, it requires more organization than Post-It notes. For another, she needed long ago to learn to work with a few, established characters and beasties, to build their character arcs thoroughly and believably, rather than just introducing a new werecritter or character when she gets stuck. She did all right with that up through OB. It wasn't wonderful, but I rarely had to stop to figure out who was who. Now it's just a free-for-all and confusing as hell.

Lastly, she only had so many wisecracks and jokes in her. Now they've been repeated to the point of not being funny anymore if they're there at all. Anita really needed that humor to make her likable. Now it just rings false and she's coming off more and more as a hypocritical, selfish bitch.

[criada.livejournal.com]

>> I have yet to find a series in urban fantasy that I can declare adequate.
I agree. I did it myself recently just for fun, and while I love what I wrote, I know that if I look too closely, my world will fall apart and I'll want to toss myself out a window. (In mine, Hell opened up about fifty years ago and opened diplomatic relations with the world. Hilarity and tentacle sex ensue.) I think the problem comes from the fact that we're raping the real world to fit our fantasies. I suspect that the truth of the matter is that if vampires/faeries/werethings/demons existed at all, openly or otherwise, the world would be a very, very different place, so writing about vampires ini the "real world" becomes impossible. Inevitably, certain things are focused on for the sake of our indulgences at the expense of other things. It's like eating chocolate for breakfast.

[darksongtrilogy.livejournal.com]

If we can create entirely new worlds in fantasy, why can't we successfully meld it with the real world for urban fantasy/horror? Lilith Saintcrow in particular has some great ideas for an original, believable world where the supernatural is almost commonplace, but her failure in execution gets in the way. Really, IMO, the reason we don't have a solid series in this genre yet is because we don't have any authors with the talent, discipline, or skill to write it yet. Someone will eventually, but for the present, it's just disappointing.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

(In mine, Hell opened up about fifty years ago and opened diplomatic relations with the world. Hilarity and tentacle sex ensue.)

...Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. :D Is it online anywhere?

[criada.livejournal.com]

Alas, no. But I'm working on getting published, and one of the goals I just set for myself is to have a self-promotional website up soon.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Ohhh. Of course, that's even better, if you do get it published.