Another off question . . .

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

We've all had that moment of literary enlightenment, where we realized that writing like LKH's current "style" is made of godawful and suck and that her blog entries are about as factually grounded as they are grammatically sound. Unfortunately, a large number of others haven't.

So what do you think she'd have to say or do to startle some/any of her current followers out of such placid acceptance? Or would this enlightenment just require exposure to better writing?


Or better yet, what did it for you? I had the AB:VH series recommended to me at about the time Incubus Dreams came out. I opened ID and . . . Well, you can guess what I found. Not once, not twice, not three times--but twelve times in a row, I opened the book to a random page and found either godawful sex scenes or people talking about sex.

But then again, my sense of snark was already well-developed, and I had nothing to hold me back from running screaming in the opposite direction. It's gotta be a hundred times harder for anyone who's actually devoted time to that series. :(

Comments

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

I think that if telling her fans to their faces that "my sales figures > your opinions" didn't rattle her die-hard fans, nothing ever will. Lord knows that gives a hint of where her heart is.

[frabjously.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. Your icon is awesome :D

Things were already getting dodgy by the time Blue Moon came out. Obsidian Butterfly was difficult for me - so much Edward, while killing so much Edward's character.

But these were nothing compared to the soul-destroying NiC. LKH introduced ANOTHER pack of weres (not to mention Micah), pulled a nonsensical plot out of her ass, gave Anita bajillion powarz, and to top it off put Anita in a pointless is she a were or not position that was solved only in the Epilogue with a short "No she's not."

[alorarose.livejournal.com]

I read NiC twice cause I didn't think I read it correctly the first time.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Lolz, you interrogated it from the wrong perspective. XD

[alorarose.livejournal.com]

I needed a wee little Boo to tell me to think better of it.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Obsidian Butterfly killed everything for me - I can't even go back and reread because Oh lord, poor Edward.

I started referring to the series as "supernatural smut" back in Blue Moon. I can't remember what really set me off, but I think it was the constant obsession with clothes.

I got PISSED with the series in Burnt Offerings. Is that the one with the firebug and the butterflies? God, I stomped around for days after that one, because there was, in my mind, no way to solve the mystery in advance, like one could with Guilty Pleasures.

A well.

[iamtheeviltwin.livejournal.com]

I started at Guilty Pleasures and worked my way through the series. In hindsight, I held on far longer than I should have. Narcissus in Chains just resulted in a mental burp. I was left with a sort of an "uh..?" feeling, and somehow blocked it out of my memory (to this day, I recall only the vaguest details of that book). Cerulean Sins had much the same effect. When I hit Incubus Dreams, I had a sort of epiphany about the rapid nosedive the Anitaverse was suffering ("So, are they going to do anything but have sex?"), but resolved to give LKH one last shot at salvaging it. And then Danse Macabre came out. I was rightfully wary, but an acquaintance told me it was better than Incubus Dreams. That acquaintance is lucky he lives nowhere near me, because he is a no-good liar.

This all happened, of course, before I'd read her blog or seen this community. Thus, I had no idea how completely off her rocker LKH had gone. Had I known, I would probably given up at Cerulean Sins at the absolute latest.

The worst part is, it's wrecked the whole Anitaverse for me. I tried to read Guilty Pleasures again, and all I could think of every time Jean-Claude came in was where Anita was going to end up in a few years. Oh, for a time machine, so Then!Anita could see Now!Anita and have Edward off her so she never turns into Now!Anita at all.

[cassildra.livejournal.com]

We've talked about this before, I think.

I feel horribly guilty that I could never get through Obsidian Butterfly, because I genuinely love Edward--but I think I stopped because I didn't want to see her destroy my favorite character in the series in the same way she destroyed Richard.

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

I think it was maturity for me. I started when I was 14, five years ago with Narcissus in Chains. Teenage hormones - and lack of knowledge of the rest of the series - enabled me to enjoy the sex. Then I went back and read the rest, but still didn't have much of an issue. CS irritated me, but I could stand it. By the time ID came out, I was sick of Anita's MarySue ways. But DM.... I had to forcibly put it down by chapter 20 because I literally feared for my sanity if I let it be the last thing I read before bed.

But after months, I started to regret not reading it, no matter how terrible it was, so I ordered a used copy from Amazon, and while I waited for it to arrive, I decided to check out websites that I used to visit. On the Pomme de Sang forum, I discovered the Negative Reader blog.

And that was it for me. I'll continue reading the books - not buying, unless on the $2 table at the library book sale - but I'm mostly in it for the snarking now.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

NiC

I loved Obsidian Butterfly. It was shaky. Some parts didn't quite make sense. And while I bought Edward's cover as an aspect of his personality that he in reality was no longer connected to. It needed fleshing out for me - no matter my private kink about sociopath/anti-heros raising children. (Randomly, if that's your kink too and you don't read comics so you've not already read Batman; Read Darkly Dreaming Dexter: A Novel by Jeff Lindsay)

NiC made no sense to me. I couldn't read past the first chapter, or perhaps it was the first two chapters. There was a club and sex, were those swan people? Nathaniel? Why are you? What the fuck? A club? Huh?

More-over, NiC came out right around the time I was sticking a hesitant toe into the world of BDSM. And so the shit she was writing raised all sorts of alarms and confusion to me. It all seemed wrong.

Realizing I was 'interrogating the text from the wrong perspective' I just put the damn book down. I figured I'd wait for word of mouth to reach me to tell me if I'd just turned stupid.

But then I didn't hear about her next book from the usual channels or the book after that. Then I moved in with my now current roommate. And even though she read them. She spends a lot of time going 'WTF' while she does.

Eventually I found this place, while cruising the net, I think, to see if there were any good reviews of her stuff at all.

I haven't even tried re-reading the books. Granted my personal situation right now is one where I'm living out of boxes and waiting eagerly to get out of a house of fucking doom. But still, I could borrow them from the library. And I haven't. I think I'm scared to discover just how far I've grown up and away from them, when I do have fond memories of the first couple.

I remember finding Bloody Bones in a B.Dalton and writing down the series name with a pen on the skin of my arm. Because I was so intrigued. And I knew I had to find it again.

I have to admit she (LKH) does piss me off a lot now. Mostly because she's a prime example of how the writing business if all about luck and timing. Once you hook into the right thing at the right time you can milk a career long after it's turn sour and curdled.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

For me, I actually think it was finding this community. I'd been reading the last couple of books up to ID the same way I read Mills&Boon - not really analysing or taking in anything.
Actually, the first trigger was getting to the point in ID where the cops call and say they've found another dead stripper, and I honestly couldn't remember the first dead stripper, there'd been so much pointless sex. Then I found this community, and my third eye was squeegee'd open.

I think Laurell herself would have to realise how crap her writing has become. Then the soulless fanthings would have no other choice than to agree with her.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Heh, my next post should ask who else should be recommended and why. I don't get into the Horror genre much and thus can't give thorough breakdowns of things--other than "OH GOD, THE FURRY PORN! THE LACK OF PLOT! THE SPELLING!" and so on.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

That's what I figured--that the prevalence of vampires and were-whatevers were what had "earned" it that genre.

[thaliablooming.livejournal.com]

Vampires and werewolves are now more "fantasy" stock than horror anymore...which is just as well. Though you could probably justify putting LKH's books in the "Horror" section as a nod to the terror her vapid style and prose and massive grammatical errors inspire.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

I started reading the books when they were first published. I bought 'Guilty Pleasures' via the bookstore where I worked. I used to help with the horror buying, so I saw the advance blurbs. It looked interesting, I got it, and I really liked it. I would even say 'loved' it. Anita was awkward and angry, I liked how stubborn she was, and how she fought every inch, even if the battle couldn't be won.

I continued reading. Some of the questions the early books posed intrigued me. I think it was Blue Moon which set me off down the 'negative reader' path. I would say it was the annoying 'fluffy bunny' Wicca creeping in, as I don't really like all that New Age BS. It didn't really gel with the Christian mythology LKH had been using before. Also, the scene where she challenges for lupa, and has to fuck Richard or be fucked by the other wolves? Erm, Nancy Collins did something very, very similar in 'Wild Blood' and as a result this scene came across as less than original, and once again, Anita was forced into having sex. For a little while in the books, when Anita had gotten together with Jean-Claude, and they were an exclusive couple, Anita seemed to be in control of her body and her sex life, and things were good.

Of course, Narcissus in Chains. I can't tell you how much of a bad taste that book left in my mouth. I mean, I shelled out around £20 for the first ed. I hadn't enjoyed OB as much as I thought I would, I can never quite put my finger on why. Anyway, the 'rape' scene (shower, soap as lube, Anita saying no and Micah having sex with her anyway) disturbed me, and her reactions afterwards were classic 'rape victim' behaviour, where she refused to talk about what had happened and tried to move on. I was just beginning to think "I can't believe she has actually done this, this is so brave." when the 'Nimir-Rah, Nimir-Raj' crap started. I was furious. It's okay that this man sexually abused the main character in the book, because they were destined to be together? What a cop-out! Instead of Anita surviving something really terrible, and giving the reader the justice they wanted (a bullet between his f*cking 'kitty kat' eyes) we have to endure them shacking up and abusing yet another character (the very damaged Nathaniel).

At about this point, I seriously considered not buying any more. But no, the lure was too strong. I still held out hope that Anita would wake up and smell the coffee. Instead, the further 'treats' in store were just awful. I can't believe LKH took a highly moral, extremely motivated, likeably flawed character and turned her into a pRoN star. There are not words for how disappointed I am.

I would write more, but I haven't had my caffeine this morning and as a result it would mostly be incoherent swearing and ranting, so I will spare you that, and go and have some more tea instead :)

[tylergrrls.livejournal.com]

I remember the exact moment I gave up forever.

It was when Anita "You Don't Sleep With the Monsters" Blake decided to get jiggy with a partially changed wereanimal.

That was the end for me. The point of no return. I'd been pretty uninterested in the books before that, but that was a sign that the Anita of the previous books had checked out, and wasn't coming back.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Cerulean Sins was when I got really pissed off.

I know OB left me feeling a bit cold, but I was sorta glad that Anita left the boys and relative crap behind to go hunt skinless people. Then NiC came along and I'd heard that things were finally going to be settled with the triumvirate (you have no idea how long I'd been praying for a Richard/JC/Anita threesome) and like, stuff was going to conclude and get awesome.

Wow, was I dumb. And this was while I was at uni, getting edumacated.

I tried to convince myself that NiC was just a one-off -- I know that it was touted as being a more 'introspective' book and I'd just hoped that CS was where everything got back on track.

And then it totally didn't.

And thus my campaign of Margaret Bishop: Plot Hunter began. Established 2002 and this will be by fifth year of hunting to no avail.

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

Pretty much me too. I WTF???d over a few things in OB, was heavily disappointed by NIC, but figured, well, maybe it'll get better, then came CS, and I knew it wasn't going to do that.

It was just going to get worse. And keep getting worse, and then, I saw the author's massive tudey, and knew it would not ever change. I held out hope for a bit, but haven't even bothered buying the books anymore...because it's clear where the series has gone.

-Dira-

[jerel.livejournal.com]

(btw, I adore your icon.)

Wow, I gave up a lot sooner than the rest of you. I didn't even get through Circus of the Damned [which I just had to go look up, because I couldn't remember the title of the book]. Part of it was because it was towards the end of my grad school career, when anything that was not on the master's exam reading list didn't get read.

Another part of it was my dislike of what LKH was doing with Merry. I started on the AB series when it was already about 6 books in, but was reading MG as it was being released. I was bored with the style of MG; "okay, fine, there's pretty men and sex. And sex with pretty men. Where's the damn plot?"* It just turned me off to LKH as a whole.



*I don't mind PWPs, and have written a few myself, but I prefer to read those online, because they're free.

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

*I don't mind PWPs, and have written a few myself, but I prefer to read those online, because they're free.

And most are written much better.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Heheh, thankies. As with vampires, Anne Rice is the original queen of wanky grandstanding.


Yeah, I'm thinking that Laurell is like, what people read if they don't know what aff.net is.

[missamii.livejournal.com]

Hi, been lurking for about a month. Delurking now.

I thought things started going downhill rapidly after the Killing Dance. Burnt Offerings was a really hard read for me because I hate those darn useless wereleopards with the heat of a thousand suns. I also think that this is really the book when Anita begins to cut her ties to the human world, and when the misogyny starts to creep in slowly but surely what with no more human female friends, and the only female characters who escape death or torture are the co-dependent were-leopard women.
Then came Blue Moon and that WTF moment when Anita gets possessed by the ghost of Raina or something and has to have sex with Richard. It was like proto-arduer, a contrived reason to have Anita side-step around her sexual mores.
Most people like Obsidian Butterfly, but at this point I was already sliding into anti-fan territory. I thought it was a boated book, full of lots of unnecessary narration, and Anita's constant need to prove to everyone that she had bigger testicles was really grating.
NiC was like everything that I couldn't stand about the previous three books melded together at the subatomic level and crashed into Micah, equaling an atomic explosion of suck. Disregarding all the noxious stuff he did in that one book, just for trying to use soap as a vaginal lube he deserved to be shot. When you consider that he got off scot free between raping Anita and all the crap he did to the other were-beasties, I knew the love affair with this series was over, permanently.
Now I just read them or parts of them because of the lurid train wreck value. Anyone who can write turns of phrase like 'evil chocolate' and scenes where magical orgasms nearly cause traffic accidents with dead seriousness is worth reading, no matter how painful it is, just so I can keep up my snarking skills.

[safrialailo.livejournal.com]

Well I didn't read burnt offerings. I liked blue moon, felt that it was really quite interesting, loved the whole trolls thing and really LOVED the moment when richard was the one to draw the moral line in the stand and everyone else upheld it. I felt it was one of the greatest moments for his character. I had a few warning bells, in that it was a bit "hurried" and rushed at some points, and being annoyed by how large the cast was by this point. Then came obsidian butterflies, contrary to some people I loved it. I didn't think edward suffered from donna and the kids all that much (Well donna...I liked the kids, hated donna). I loved the setting, I loved that anita was seperated from the overly large cast of vampires, I also ADORED detective ramirez and we got to spend the entire book with edward...how was this not cool? Again I had the feeling that some points of the plot were dealt with overly quickly.

Then came NArcisus.
Where the plot didn't make sense because there wasn't REALLY a plot...and then i read the scene...with the soap lube....

and threw the book away in disgust.

I have not gone back, although I do ocassionally skim read through some of the earlier books. (BTW I haven't read bloody bones or burnt offerings, either of them any good?)

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Bloody Bones has evil faeries :D and a master vamp who totally pwns Anita. Burnt Offerings has a triumvirate which DOESN'T run on sex, a vampire who used to be a Crusading knight, and those vampires that rot at will.

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

I can't quite articulate why I liked Bloody Bones. I barely remember it, but thinking back on it, it really was one of the better books. Change of scenery, and finding out more about Jean-Claude, not to mention Jason and Larry time - and no sex - were probably what made it so enjoyable.

Burnt Offerings was fun because I've always enjoyed the vampire politics. And that's the book in which we met Asher, who is still my favorite character.

[found-then-lost.livejournal.com]

Bloody Bones was so good because, in one scene, Jean-Claude was ...like...fucking stoned!

[deire.livejournal.com]

I think for me it was Narcissus in Chains. I read the book, and it fried my poor neurons so badly that I couldn't remember any of it that same week. I remember reading it, but I can't remember any details. Seriously. All I know about NiC is what other people say, aside from that it was godawful. Anything of LKH I've read since has been the flogging things.

[dinsedaledarby.livejournal.com]

it's funny, well i don't know if that's exactly what you'd call it but anyway, an older male librarian recommended LKH to me. i think it was when Obsidian butterfly had just come out so i ended up reading that first. He just knew she was a vampire writer and I had asked if they could recommend any vampire books. silly me. :)

[jadelioness.livejournal.com]

When I started reading the series, I was TAing in the library and my older male librarian decided to start reading them since he saw me reading them. I guess he had his doubts that they were school appropriate due to the cover art. I am only grateful that he stopped after Guilty Pleasures.

[jadelioness.livejournal.com]

I started reading at Cerulean Sins and was in a horny vampiresex mood, so I decided I liked it and started back at the beginning. Then I realized how mistaken I was. I kept on reading all the way through Incubus Dreams even though around Burnt Offerings or Blue Moon or Killing Dance (those three all blurred into one for me) they got...bad and plotless. I just kept hoping they would get better. And now I know that was just silly of me.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I don't think some of her fans can be enlightened, nor that exposure to better writing would do the trick.


I'd started reading the series when Guilty Pleasures first came out. Blue Moon was the first book I didn't buy because I'd gotten annoyed with the JC/AB/Richard threesome-ish stuff and the were-sex. It felt like things were getting away from her doing a job and more like a sexed-up "kinky" soap opera. I bought Obsidian Butterfly for Edward only to see a character who wasn't really Edward.

Thus, LKH chased me off even before the ardeur crap started.

[relmneiko.livejournal.com]

I started with Guilty Pleasures and read on through, but skipped Blue Moon for Richard's dickishness. Obsidian Butterfly was kinda like, "Ooookay," once I hit Narcissus in Chains I started having loud, mocking conversations with my friends over lunch about how the entire thing was porno.

THEN, for a lark and the nostalgia, I started reading Danse Macabre. I actually thought it was hysterically funny, but I couldn't make it past halfway. It wasn't even the Alpine Skiing double-whackjob orgy that made me stop (though that was bad enough) it was all the goddamn 'we support you, Anita' talks from all the men about her pregnancy. YAWN.

Back in the day I remember LIKING Jean-Claude and how he would try to woo Anita, but she would never put out. Then Asher showed up and I'm like, "WHOO!" I wanted to get more of a backstory on JC, Asher and Julianna. But LKH never really said jack except to introduce Augustine and yet more meaningless sex. Bye-bye, plot.

[catskin.livejournal.com]

I didn't particularly enjoy Blue Moon because of that whole "rape-tag" scene, and because I really started to notice Anita's Mary-Sue characteristics in that one. But I'd already got Obsidian Butterfly at that point, so I read it anyway.

It went straight over my head. I didn't like the mutilated babies, hated what LKH did to Edward and didn't have a fucking clue what happened at the end. For some reason I stuck with LKH, since I'd loved the earlier books, and bought NiC when it came out.

It sat on my bookshelf for about six months before I read it and I totally hated it. I hated the crappy ending where it all gets summarised as "I'm not a were, everyone loves me especially Micah and btw Narcissus is a hermaphrodite." Suck to the max.

And yet, because I'm a masochist, I put my faith in LKH once more and bought CS. Hate, hate, hate, hated it. Hated all the characters, hated the piss-poor attempt at plot, hated every last thing about it and immediately forgot everything that happened in it once I'd finished. I honestly couldn't tell you what CS is about. I get it mixed up in my head with NiC and BO.

But still... I was intrigued by the blurbs on ID and picked it up second hand. Got a third of the way through, read the godawful rainmaker scene and threw the book across the room. I resolved never to spend any money on LKH books again and found this community.

Please pardon my bad spelling and gramar

[ctrl-issue.livejournal.com]

For me, I gave up the ghost with OB. But my love for the series started to die right before that with Blue Moon. For me, that book had... issues. Serious issues. But Obsidian Butterfly killed it, completely. It was the last book I ever bought of hers. The rest I've either downloaded or rented from the library for shits and giggles; I imagine it's for the same reason that some people read bad!fic.

Now, I will say that as far as the series development goes, I'm okay with the way the Merry series is going. Why? Because readers knew from the get-go that it was going to be nothing but bad porn. Bad fairy porn, with little to no sense. And sure, there's a 'little' bit of plot thrown in, but nothing major, just bad sex scene after bad sex scene.

As for what it would take for her readers to wise up? Oh, more life experiences; better education; finding out the difference between good sex, bad sex, and comfortable sex within their personal lives and then finding books that better explore real sexual situations; access to better stories; willingness and ability to do their own research on various topics; and maybe LKH waking up and smelling the goddamn-coffee.