BookFlog: Mistral's Kiss Chapter 7-8

[darksongtrilogy.livejournal.com]

OHNOES! What happened to the tree monkeys? 

Chapter Seven

Short Summary: Short chapter. In which Merry ponders obedience and the color gold.

Long Summary: It's raining. Because Mistral cried, as you may recall. Just to break my brain, I'm reminding myself that everyone in this scene is naked. The men all gave up their clothes so Merry wouldn't have to lie on the dead sticks and those same clothes have now been ground into the dirt, soon to be mud, and as near I can tell, there they will stay. Forever.

So the men are naked, unarmed, and prowling the suddenly much-less-hospitable dead gardens that aren't quite so dead as they once were. There are clouds and the hint of a moon in the sky, and there hasn't been a sky in the sithen for quite some time. Upon standing up (naked) and remarking on the possible moon in the sky, Merry notices that they're missing quite a few people. Some of them were just left behind in the first room with Barinthus, but half the alphabet came with her and some of them have gone missing.

I bet wherever they are, they're naked.

And I just can't summon much worry over them, because I don't know who the hell most of them are.

Merry asks where they went and Rhys tells her that they've joined the Cirque du Soleil and are using their glamour power to look like midget contortionists the garden took them. "What does that mean?" She asks, proving that Mistral's language skills are contagious. Why does three-quarters of every conversation require endless defining-and-redefining-and-specifying? Shouldn't these men know by now that they have to spell out every explanation as if they were talking to Forrest Gump?

Doyle starts moving "as if he expected the ground itself to attack," and given that Rhys just said "the garden took them," does Merry really have to wonder internally for a lengthy paragraph as to why that might be? Something's wrong, she thinks, something's badly wrong. Our heroine has an IQ slightly above room temperature, that's what the hell is wrong. Doyle tells Mistral, Abe, and Frost to stay with Merry and Rhys to follow him, and the men all obey without question.

Merry realizes (again) at this point that this is the reason why Andais and Doyle never made sweet love down by the fire. She doesn't share power and Doyle is a natural leader that other men just follow instinctively. So, as it turns out, is Frost. And Mistral. And Kitto. Really, everyone but Merry. Sociologically speaking, I wonder why that might be? Hmmmm? Watching your potential girlfriend hump everything with a pulse generally doesn't inspire loyalty.

That aside, the tree monkeys shouldn't've ought've climbed the tree. In the midst of his (naked) wandering, Doyle looks up and sees Aisling in one of the trees, and he ain't hanging by his hands for fun like a proper monkey would. Frost and Mistral see Aisling too, and it starts to rain harder (meaning, I guess, that Mistral is now very sad). Abe tells Merry she probably doesn't want to see this, but Merry isn't having it.

"I am Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hand of flesh and blood. You are royal guards, but not royal. Don't let the sex go to your heads, gentlemen--move!"

I am Princess Onomatopoeia, wielder of the screaming orgasm. I like it doggie-style and love Rocky Road ice cream. My turn-offs are...

Ever notice how both Merry and Anita occasionally have to remind the men in their lives of every single one of their titles, powers, favorite positions, and toenail polish color preferences? Could be a reflection on the whole not-a-natural-leader issue. Frost pipes up and tells the other men to get the hell out of Merry's way so she can see Aisling in the tree, and they obey him. Frost may be naked, but at least he doesn't have to be dogpiled during every orgasm. Merry thinks she'll deal with the obedience problem later.

Aisling's been impaled by a branch through his chest. There aren't many things that will kill a high court sidhe--turning them inside out won't do it, starving them won't do it, decapitation's iffy, but forget everything you learned in the previous books, because Aisling has had it. Dead as a doornail.

Or is he?

This is one time I'm actually grateful for the infodump known as Aisling Shish Kebab, This Was Your Life, because with a new cast of dozens I need the refresher on who Aisling is/was. He was the sidhe so pretty that it was dangerous to look at him, because even gods and goddesses had been known to fall in love. So he kept his clothes on better than most sidhe.

*tear*

Damn, now I really miss him.

And in the last book Merry used Aisling to torture the woman who'd try to kill Galen (rather than awarding her a medal, which was my vote), because the woman looked at him, fell in love, and then clawed her own eyes out as a cure. And now the pretty man is impaled, dead or dying, dangling in the tree. And Merry remembers him. Remembers "...his skin, golden, golden as if someone had shaken gold dust across his pale, perfect body." Golden like a goldfinch, like Golden Grahams, like the most golden gold thing that ever was.

And now he's lying dead.

In the rain.

Chapter Eight

Short Summary: Wait, Merry worked as a private investigator?

Long Summary: By the second paragraph Merry is "distancing herself from the body, it, not he, 'the body,' not Aisling." This was how she dealt with bloody death when she was a private investigator in Los Angelos for twenty minutes. It must've taken a lot of force for the branch to pierce the chest of the almost-but-not-quite immortal Aisling, and Merry didn't even hear him scream. Had he screamed? Had it just been her own shrieking, thrashing, spine-cracking orgasm that deafened everyone to his bellowed, "I've been skewered!"?

No, no, thinks Scarlet O'Hara, I'll think about that tomorrow. Sex is life-affirming and no bad thing ever comes of it.

Mistral is hanging in the dead tree like a dead puppet, utterly limp and still, but somehow, someway, the men still wait for Merry to make the formal pronouncement.

"Is he...," Abe began.

A) WTFtrilobite? I did not make up that punctuation. Yes, you are seeing an ellipsis. Followed by a comma. Thine eyes do not deceive thee.

B) Yes, Abe really asked, out loud, if the man impaled by a branch through the middle of his chest is dead. If LKH hadn't just spent the last two pages driving home the point that sidhe can be killed and a branch through the chest just might do it, this wouldn't seem like such a stupid question. As it is...

"Dead."

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

"How? Why?" Abe asked.

Three stupid questions in a row. Give the man a prize. I'm betting it was the butler in the conservatory with the big pointy branch, what do you think?

Merry looks away to see if there are any other men in the branches, hanging "...dead or dying in the dimness? (WITNESS MY MAD ALLITERATION SKILLZ!!!!!1!!) Who else was pierced through by some magical tree?"

*snort*

There are times when LKH betrays that she really doesn't do high diction well. This would be one of those times.

Merry's a little sorry about Aisling, but he'd only been her guard for a day, so she's more worried about her other guards. Frost confirms that at least no one else was pierced through by some magical tree, but Galen was swallowed up by the ground and promptly spat out again on the grounds that he's the Micah of the Merryverse and even a dead garden wouldn't want him. Amatheon (IIRC, the sidhe with the eyes like daisy petals, which makes my brain hurt) went willingly into the mud, and we're not yet clear on where Nicca went. When Merry tells Frost that Amatheon went willingly, Frost takes that as criticism and goes sulky and takes his hand back from Merry. I totally buy this as a believable action and reflection on Frost's character.

Really it makes the fangirl in me want to scream at LKH, bitch I will cut you! because Frost is totally the Richard of the Merryverse and I'm sick of her fucking up my men.

"That was vision," Mistral said. [Regarding Amatheon going willingly.] "Sometimes on this side of the veil, it's not so gentle."

"What's not so gentle?" I asked.

"Being consumed by your power," he said.

Captain Obvious, meet Lieutenant Obscure. It makes no sense in greater context, either. On what side of what veil? I can reason it to mean that it might have looked to Merry like he went willingly but to Amatheon, it was violent, or vice versa, but how would Mistral know if he didn't get snapped up by the Powah too? But...what the hell? *brain explodes*

That's the last time I try to decipher LKH's gobbledygook logic.

Merry, irritated, wishes aloud that it would stop raining because the rain is the only thing she can be mad at without hurting its feelings. Well Je-sus, maybe if all of LKH's men had greater emotional depth that a wading pool it wouldn't be a concern. The sithen promptly slows down the rain so yes, we're still on that whole the-sithen-does-everything-Merry-says dealy, which was just such a great idea in the last book, it begged repetition in this one. Merry, for the second time in three pages, swallows so hard it hurts her, but sadly doesn't kill her, and tells the sithen she doesn't want the rain to stop.

Turns out Nicca vanished into the air, so Mistral hypothesizes that he and Galen were taken by their "spheres of influence." Air, earth. Galen is the earth--thus the Green Man issue--and Nicca, having butterfly wings, would logically be the air. Do you think Merry will put two and two together?

Of course not.

"What does that mean?" she asks. Well, here's another clue, says Mistral, hoping to kick-start her private investigator brain. (Will not make joke about investigating privates, will not make joke about...) Hawthorne--yes, that was a sidhe's name--was standing over by that tree and walked into it and became a tree. What kind of tree do you think he is?

I was betting if we looked it would be a hawthorne tree.

Once again her deductive prowess leaves me in slack-jawed awe.

Abe announces that once upon a time he didn't just make queens, he made goddesses. In LKH-world, this constitutes "foreshadowing." In the rest of the world, it's called bludgeoning your reader to death with incredibly obvious plot points that, due to their obviousness, don't even qualify as a plot "twist." And once his mead could make people truly immortal if they drank it, but it was a metaphorical-type drinking, more like slipping on it and ending up by fucking Merry than actually drinking, per se, the mead. And Rhys now has two fish tattoos.

The God of Death has powered up to level thirty nine hundred and six. Can he save Aisling? Doyle, who "...stood in the middle of the disarray like some dark rock I might cling to," (original verb tenses) thinks so. Surely it can't be that easy?

The men were all exchanging some knowledge from look to look. I didn't understand.

That's the most eye-searingly bad sentence I've ever read. I don't understand either.

Rhys apparently can not only kill, he can also, when he has the Two Magic Fish that bring him up to level thirty nine hundred and six, bring the dead back to life. AND WE STOP HERE FOR AN UNNECESSARY INFODUMP that Merry just knows without being told, because if LKH is trying to paraphrase Rhys telling Merry this information she never knew before, she's doing a suck-ass job of it. Rhys's followers used to mutilate themselves to show their devotion, and Rhys would heal them. Then he lost his fish and his followers thought he was displeased and started sacrificing humans, so he had to kill his followers to save everyone else.

*emo tear*

So to sum up:

1) The followers of all sidhe used to tattoo the sidhe's symbols on themselves in lieu of actual armor in battle, believing the tattoos were better protection, and were subsequently slaughtered, and 

2) Rhys's followers mutilated themselves to win his favor, and when that stopped working, they started sacrificing people, and were subsequently slaughtered by Rhys.

And we wonder why humans stopped worshipping these people?

Merry asks Rhys if it's safe for him to try to save Aisling and Rhys doesn't know, which leads to Yet Another Long Discussion of how Rhys wouldn't risk this if he thought Merry really loved him, but she really loves Doyle or Frost or Galen or Mistral so he's willing to take his life in his hands because hey, nothing to live for. Merry doesn't love him. :(

And he's about to touch Aisling when magic crawls across Merry's skin and Doyle yells wait! Rhys starts to shimmy down the tree and just in time because BIRDS! Aisling's body explodes into a flock of birds that peck Merry to death fly off to the other side of the enlarged forest, but only after Frost has dramatically thrown himself (naked, remember everyone's still naked) on top of Merry. Which, for once, does not end in sex.

And the forest is liek woah. Huge. It hasn't been that big since Mistral was just a puddle and static electrictity. Doyle takes all this as a sign that Mistral, not he, is the One True King because that's the priority right now--figuring out the pecking order in case the birds come back and talking about how everyone loves Merry. And Doyle's tattoo, bright red and very faint, is back on his chest. Here is where Doyle Proves His Nobility, because he will give up the wonder that is Merry if Mistral is supposed to be her king (because the master of storms is the best possible king for the Unseelie Sidhe, not the "Darkness," <insert eyeroll>) in service to his people. Well, I'm convinced. Mistral shall be king.

At this most interesting moment (read: struggling to keep my eyes open) Andais returns and comments that she's glad to see the trees and the birdies, but she could've done without the mud. Abe, having just called the Queen cruel, drops down into the mud on his knees and Mistral does the same, with their long hair getting all muddy too, and yes--they're still naked. Doyle's tattoos, according to Andais, are of puppy dogs (which makes for an interesting mental image), Frost has a tree, and yes, again, Rhys has fish. But Merry has an extra-speshul tattoo of a very vivid moth which means not only is she marked, but she can mark others.

And Andais bites her, giving LKH the opportunity yet again to remind us that Merry likes pain, but not "right out of the box." That makes five times so far this book. I'm going to keep count.

They confess that the garden took a bunch of the men and Andais wants to know if they're dead or just missing. Apparently Amatheon "grew out of the dirt," which, with his flower-petal eyes, just makes me die laughing. He popped out of the ground! Like daisies! And I somehow doubt they're all dead, but this cast desperately needs to be weeded out. (<-----intentional pun)

And a bird sings, which makes everyone except Andais suddenly feel better. More foreshadowing. Just brilliant.

Of course, Andais' real problem is that this is Seelie magic, and if Merry brings it to the Unseelie court, they'll all die. To which Abe replies that once they didn't divide themselves into dark and light like the Christians do; they were all things to all people. But Andais promises not to "Pixie on her promise," and I am already so sick of that phrase, which LKH obviously thinks is clever, so Merry can go rescue Nerys' people from the hall of torture when she gets around to it, because we know that Merry's not going to do anything so straight forward as to actually just go there and tell Ezekiel to get his mitts off. No, the book would be over far too quickly if they don't discuss it to death first. Because Rhys can bring more than just bring dead people to life. He resurrects the ghost of every dead conversation that's ever been flogged enough to kill it five times over.

You see, the Hall of Torture was once more than just the null place it is now, where magic doesn't work...

"...once, Meredith, it was more."

I looked at the men. "More how?"

"Things that were older than faerie, older than us, were imprisoned there. Remnants of power from the peoples we had defeated."

"I'm not sure I understand, Mistral."

He looked at Doyle. "Help me explain this."

EXPLAIN WHAT?????!!!!!!!!!!! JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

The whole. fucking. book. is like this.

Once upon a time there were Great Bad Things in the Hall that could kill a sidhe. Things that would drive a mortal mad, like the big pointy sticks that killed Aisling. But maybe Merry is going to bring back the Big Pointy Sticks and repopulate the Hall with terrible, terrible things. If she becomes Queen, that is, because a lot of the sidhe are still hung up on her mortality, and even Nerys' people that she's about to rescue aren't likely to be grateful.

There. I just summarized a page and a half in four sentences. *kicks LKH* <

Comments

[salveo-opes.livejournal.com]

You are to be commended for this. Really.

It looks like it's torture.

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these "more than fairy things" the NAMELESS?

The Nameless, another idea that LKH has beat to the ground and raped it's remains. Who wants to bet we'll have a gorgeous guy be part of the Nameless.

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

I initially assumed the "remnants of power from the peoples we had defeated" were the original inhabitants of the mounds. (Remember, from book one, a passing reference to the court being given their choice of land in America and choosing the mounds at somewhere-or-other, and having to go in and exterminate the previous residents?

But then I read the next sentences and it sounded more like creatures the Unseelie brought with them from Europe. Maybe LKH intends to identify them with earlier waves of Irish mythology like the Fomorians?

Either way, you wouldn't catch me keeping in the house creatures that could kill me dead.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Uh, IIRC, the fey chose Cahokia because the things that left the monoliths/monuments were already dead and they were like, "OOOH, SHINY POWERZ!" and respect for the now deadz0red race whose house they were totally taking over.

I don't remember anything about having to kill the old residents like cockroaches before setting up shop. Though, that mental image is just so tragically funny. There's the fey, armed with straw brooms, swatting at circus midgets the former occupants of Cahokia, "Shoo! We're moving in now! Go on, GIT! Larry, quick, shut the door before they get back in!"

[dwg.livejournal.com]

See, while I totally agree that this is where she's getting it from, my brain refuses to acknowledge this tidbit and is flailing with explanations like, "No, she totally DID NOT DO THAT, she's just being herself and is trying to use something already in the area of Cahokia and thought it'd be a good place to park the fairies."

And I'm so bracing myself for this to be wanked over in the books with sheer terror and unbridled fury. Also, a blank word doc, bookmarked sites from my massive fairy google-fu a few years ago, and the outline of, "Real Unseelie come back to court, boot Merry out."

I can't sit idle while a concept like this gets contaminated. I have to help it fight back. *capslocks & loads*

[morlayne.livejournal.com]

Because Rhys can bring more than just bring dead people to life. He resurrects the ghost of every dead conversation that's ever been flogged enough to kill it five times over.

*giggle*

Bless you, for taking the hit for the team.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

*hugs you*

Y'know - You can stop. This isn't penence. You're not in jail. This is not your punishment. Seriously. You can stop. And hopefully you can also let yourself get drunk and forget it all.

*more hugs*

[darksongtrilogy.livejournal.com]

Noooooo, can't stop, made deal. Free book=flogging and review. :( It's really all right, the snark potential makes up for the suck factor.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

That whole Aisling-in-the-tree thing just cracked me up because I was having flashbacks to Day of the Triffids meets Brothers Grimm.

OMG SHIFTY TREES! *stabs Aisling, eats*

Meanwhile, in the forest...

PAN: Merry whut? Oh gods. *headtree*
DRYAD: Ow, hey, watch it!
PAN: Sorry. *headrock*

And the amazing thing is, LKH expects us to believe that Merry is going to be a queen! I boggle at this! Merry's supposed to be the guiding light of the Unseelie with all her wisdom, and yet she can't go half a page without getting something explained to her ad nauseum! Even her "advisors" are stupid beyond belief.

Like there's not enough room in the sithen for a library?

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

It just gets more and more awful. I love how you render the infodumps. Poor old Merry seems to have the memory of a psychotic gnat on crack.

[ladyravana.livejournal.com]

Doyle starts moving "as if he expected the ground itself to attack," and given that Rhys just said "the garden took them," does Merry really have to wonder internally for a lengthy paragraph as to why that might be? Something's wrong, she thinks, something's badly wrong. Our heroine has an IQ slightly above room temperature, that's what the hell is wrong. Doyle tells Mistral, Abe, and Frost to stay with Merry and Rhys to follow him, and the men all obey without question.

This whole flog was funny, but that right there made me crack up. This whole book is so...painfully bad. But also, chokingly funny.

And of course, this lovely little passage.
Of course not.

"What does that mean?" she asks. Well, here's another clue, says Mistral, hoping to kick-start her private investigator brain. (Will not make joke about investigating privates, will not make joke about...) Hawthorne--yes, that was a sidhe's name--was standing over by that tree and walked into it and became a tree. What kind of tree do you think he is?

I was betting if we looked it would be a hawthorne tree.


Well...gee. That is SO hard to figure out. Well, he's a Hawthorne tree! Merry'd deductive skill never cease to amaze.

Seriously, the stupidity of LKH's heroines when they have to have Every. Single. Little. Thing. Explained. Over and over again.

The only thing worse than constant infodumps are regurgitated and thrice REHASHED infodumps.

...It makes me want to bang my head against something repeatedly. The wall. My computer desk. Really, any hard surface will do.

My poor brain cells are screaming in agony at being subjected to this torture. :p I should reward them with some Gaiman.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

I could not make it through all the snark.

But one hilarious point:
Merry never gets to see dead bodies. ANITA sees dead bodies, and she's the one who thinks of bodies as "it" so as to distance herself from the carnage.

But hey, maybe LKH lost the Post-It note about differences between her protagonists.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

New editor and all? WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING?

Probably something like, "AHHH MY EYES! THESE GOGGLES DO NOTHING! SO MANY COMMAS!" *sporks self*

At this rate, the publishing house is probably going through editors at the same rate as Wall Street did brokers during the Great Depression.

[catskin.livejournal.com]

Ah, the pointy stick. Killer of aliens and fairies alike. Is there anything you can't kill with a pointy stick? If there is, I hope it comes along and eats Merry soon.

Also, how can Doyle's tattoos be bright red and faint at the same time? I call foul!

[knomey.livejournal.com]

It's... it's faintly... bright... red? So from a distance, it's dim, but up close it's.... bright? OR. The color is bright red, but from a distance, the tattoo is glowing faintly? It's - I - OH GOD MY BRAIN IS LEAKING.

[catskin.livejournal.com]

OR, it's bright red, red like the red neon lights of a traffic light just before it turns amber, yet dim, dim like the dim lights of a red traffic light in the fog.

Or something.

[knomey.livejournal.com]

Truly, you are doing us a service! I... I don't think I could have slogged through the whole thing myself! And considering that I bought the first few Merry books in hardcover, thats really saying something.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

There aren't many things that will kill a high court sidhe--turning them inside out won't do it, starving them won't do it, decapitation's iffy, but forget everything you learned in the previous books, because Aisling has had it. Dead as a doornail.

Wait, turning them inside out? Did that happen? Because I remember reading a turning-inside-out scene somewhere but... *flails* I've been looking for it, but if it was in one of the MG books I'm not sure it's worth rereading them to look for it.

These are awesome summaries, by the way. XD