lkh_lashouts | LKH Is Everywhere... (Reply)

I’m not sure if this particular author has been discussed already, so please excuse me if I’m bringing up an old point. Also, this rant is a bit long, so please forgive me. I just couldn’t sum up the horrible badness of this author within a short space...she’s just so bad....

Sunny.

One name, a whole world of pain and utter trash. I can’t begin to describe how horrendous her story was. Only that I spent the entire thinking to myself, “Is this LKH in disguise?”

Warning Spoilers:

I was introduced to Sunny via a short story collection, On The Prowl. A slim paperback with half dressed woman in leopard print on the front (my God, why?), and the tagline ‘inhuman passions’. Of course I’d be surprised if a urban paranormal book could be described without the words ‘dark’, ‘passions’, ‘dark passions,’ ‘inhuman passions/lusts’, or ‘dark orgasmic mayhem.’ The ‘inhuman’ part is a bit ridiculous. As a human, I really would be more interested in human passions, as oppose to inhuman ones. ‘Inhuman passions’ makes me think of dogs getting it on, or cats. Yeah, not my cup of tea.

The only reason I bought this book, was because Patricia Briggs had contributed one story (and a very fine story it was). Keep in mind, this was a slim book containing four short stories. Briggs managed to write a good story about love without the obligatory sex scene. The other two writers restrained themselves to one fairly short sex scene. While Sunny had to fit in not one, but two incredibly long and horribly drawn out sex scenes.

I am convinced that if Sunny is not merely a bad writer copying LKH, then she is LKH in disguise. The writing was reminiscent of LKH’s abysmally florid and adjective packed prose. Why, she can make anything into a descriptive adjective. Verbs, nouns, none are safe. The very title of her short story, Mona Lisa Betwining, shows Sunny’s special word skills. I can only assume that ‘betwining’ is supposed to refer to Mona Lisa’s need to ‘twine’ herself around every man in that story.

Mona Lisa is the Anita Blake of the story, only she doesn’t have big breasts so it isn’t outright plagiarism (such a clever ploy.) Having Mona Lisa bemoan the fact that she isn’t big breasted, is also some failed attempt to try and diminish the epic Mary Sue’ness of the character. Sort of a “she’s not perfect, since she doesn’t have big breasts.” Of course she is pale like Anita, since pale is the new tan. She has dark hair like Anita, doesn’t like to wear ‘girly’ clothes like Anita. She is the Queen of the Monere (I have no clue what those things are, other then Moon people/shape-shifter/Sues), but is of Mixed Blood so she gets even more awesome powers, another Anita trait. She has a harem of attractive men falling over themselves for a chance to fuck her...like Anita. Sunny herself even describes the Mona Lisa series with this very LKH sentence:

For more on Mona Lisa and her beautiful men, indulge your senses....

Wow, LKH and Dove chocolate combine into one glorious whole.

Now that Sunny has given the world another Anita Blake, she also proceeds to skip over the plot in her story and just write awkwardly bad sex scenes, standard LKH procedure of course. However instead of long drawn out conversations, we get a scene where Mona Lisa runs around the forest half-naked, until her sexy man Amber catches her and proceeds to have sex with her in one of the most disturbingly rape-like sex scenes I have ever read.

He filled my soft emptiness with his hard fullness. Crammingly so.

Crammingly so...that...oh God, I think my brain just shorted out. Crammingly, yes, Sunny has invented yet another word, a painful word that I think is supposed to be erotic.

He was a big man, everywhere. And his sudden invasion stretched me almost unbearably, caught me between the prongs of acute pain and acute pleasure, blurring the lines between them.

If this isn’t LKH in disguise, then Sunny is doing a disturbingly accurate job of channeling LKH. Pain and pleasure become one, as that is erotic. Mona Lisa/Anita certainly loves the painful sex.

Swallowed my cry.

Another LKH treasure is presented to us via Sunny.

Called forth the lunar lightness that dwelt within us, so that our glow illuminated our skin and filled the night air with building incandescence, growing brighter and brighter as I wound tighter and tighter.

More of a Merry moment here. Mona Lisa can glow ‘like she swallowed the moon.’ She can also describe it with more words.

So we move on with this halting and barely there plot. I have no idea what is going on, since nothing is going on. Except sex. Mona Lisa ends up in the woods again, with a different man, Dontaine. Now she has some sort of ‘bloodlust’ going on (Anita moment). Of course she solves the problem with an Anita solution. Channel the bloodlust into sex, very logical.

...leading me to where he pointed straight up like a giant tree towering over thick brush.

Sunny and LKH have shown us all that sex just isn’t worth it, if they’re not hung like a horse. And really, how hard is it to say ‘penis?’ Sunny and LKH are very apt at dancing around the word and using ‘male hardness’, ‘throbbing hardness’, ‘maleness’, ‘manhood’, ‘throbbing/pulsing/bursting/magical member.’ Sunny, LKH, it’s time to use grown-up words.

As I realized that what filled that supple hardness in my mouth was not muscle, but blood. Blood that called so strongly to me, so suddenly, that I ripped myself away from him...

Too bad for Mona Lisa, she can’t indulge Anita’s great love of oral. She can’t get pregnant as well, so it limits her options and gives Sunny the opportunity to write more ridiculously bad phrases.

...as the golden fall of his hair brushed the sensitive skin of my belly, my thighs, like a thousand whispering kisses.

???

...his forefinger feathering lightly over my plump and swollen pearl that he had plucked free from the outer folds.

It can’t get worse....but it does.

...a pinching pluck of my swollen nub. A deep plunge of his thick tongue spearing into me, as if he were driving a blade home.

After the orgasmic climax of that atrocity, Mona Lisa realizes that she loves him. Because they had sex...or something. Yeah, I don’t get it either. So then Mona Lisa has to see to his pleasure, because that’s just the kind of gal she is. Like Anita, giving her man an orgasm shows that she loves him, and cares of for him...instead of giving actual love and care. But since Mona Lisa can’t get pregnant, Sunny dares to write something that not even LKH has done. One of the most horrifying moments in literature...a painfully written anal sex scene...painful in more ways then one.

I will spare you all the horror of that, needless to say that I scrubbed out my eyes with bleach after that. Of course since Mona Lisa is Anita, the pain and tightness was enjoyable. Leading to yet another LKH moment:

Until that fine line of pleasure and pain became blurred, and then it became one...

After that, Sunny writes the standard LKH epilogue. Where Mona Lisa/Anita talks about what she has learned in the midst of her orgies. Mona Lisa has become a succubus...and I am seriously considering the possibility that Sunny is LKH in disguise.

The descriptive tagline under Sunny’s name sums it all up.

Fans of Laurell K. Hamilton will love Sunny.

They would be the only ones who could appreciate something like this.

Sunny ends her story with a short message to her readers (does she even have any?).

But for every pain, my darlings, I promise there will be pleasure...

I can certainly guarantee the pain.