lkh_lashouts | Lust Paint, And So On.

There are a number of books I consider to be "bad" that I nevertheless re-read regularly: many of them have the immediate effect of inspiring me to try to write something better. Most of the recent additions to Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series are not on that list, but nevertheless, I keep re-reading the damn things because I can't remember what the hell happens in them. Obviously something must have, if there were four or five hundred pages written about it, but the actual details of the latter-day Anitas just leak immediately out of my head if I put the book down and turn around too fast. (Perhaps it's a coping mechanism.)

So, in effect, every time I read the books, it's like reading them the first time. The upside is that I always have a vaguely entertaining (if in a rather twisted lulz-y way) fallback once I've read everything else in my house that sounds decent and need a book in a hurry. The downside, of course, is that I forget the best (worst?) lines.

In addition to the usual misuse of poor "spilled", the unfortunate fashion sense, and the overpowering fear of explicit anatomical reference, Laurell Hamilton has, shall we say, a "unique" touch with the figurative language. It'd be a shame to lose track of the bits of Danse Macabre that made me laugh out loud. [Page references in brackets are to the first U.S. paperback printing.]

Passion like something touchable, solid, spilled [aaaargh!] up through my body and over his. Lust like some thick, heavy paint flowed over us, covering us, trapping us. [p. 76]

. . . like helpless lust-mosquitoes stuck to wet Autumn Gold? Heh heh heh. Lust paint.

I could feel the two different ardeurs like two different flavors of fire, and Auggie was our only wood. We'd burn him up, and he wanted us to do it. [p. 94]

Not only is this a mixed metaphor that verges on painful (fire has flavors? Ow), there's a really unfortunate pun to be made there about Augustine's wood.

"I'm dating three men, sleeping with two more, and having occasional sex with two others. That's seven men. I'm like a pornographic Snow White." [p. 102]

Which would actually give Anita points for an accurate and succinct observation, if my mind's eye hadn't immediately supplied the outfits to go with it. (Go on, you try! It's surprisingly easy. Happy, Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy . . .)

I looked around at the other vampires. I looked at Elinore still gripping the back of her chair. I felt her. Felt her as if she were a flavor of ice cream that I could have put into a cone and licked. Mostly vanilla, with chocolate chips. I looked at London. Not vanilla, no, something darker, chunkier, full of hard crunchy bits. Wicked filled my mind like icing, chocolate icing to spread on skin and lick clean. I shook my head at the imagery, and looked for Truth, still huddling by the fireplace. Something fresh and clean, strawberries, maybe, strawberry ice cream to melt down the skin and be licked away, so you could suck the cold around the nipples . . . [p. 275-6]

*sporfle* Look, there's nothing I can add to that passage; it's just fine on its own, perhaps as a warning to writers to just go out for ice cream if you're obsessing about Baskin Robbins that badly and finish the chapter with cone in hand. The less said about London's hard crunchy bits, the better.

"Do you need to ask how I feel about your human servant?" he asked.
Jean-Claude nodded.
"It is all I can do to stay here on this seat. If my heart could beat, it would break." [p. 362]

Why does Auggie suddenly look like Spike? And more importantly, why is he singing? Hmm.

"I trapped you. I trapped you both; it's worse than what Auggie did to us. It's not fake, it's like real love. I made you both fall in love with me, that's like evil." [p. 409]

Now, this is an irritating speech habit that I fall into occasionally, so perhaps I'm hyper-aware, but the verbal tic of using "like" for nervous emphasis doesn't translate into print. In fact, it has the opposite effect: Anita here is undercutting the seriousness of what she has to say. It reads as "x is like y" instead of "x is very y", which is what she probably meant.

Well, that, or all the "I love St. Louis, I could never live anywhere else!" is a smokescreen to disguise the fact that Anita Blake, Vampire Executioner is a Valley girl.

I didn't expect Noel to answer, but he did. "Anita may hurt me by accident, but you'd hurt me just to see me bleed." Damn perceptive for walking food. [p. 423]

I realize this isn't a misuse of figurative language per se, but it is a pretty good example of the cringe-worthy undercurrent to every lycanthrope encounter. "Sexually submissive" is not the same as "socially submissive", and neither of those things adds equates to "born victim". It Just Bugs Me.

Lust at first sight. They say it doesn't last, but we were six months and counting. [p. 13]

Really? People have relationships that last that long? Six whole months? *eyeroll, eyeroll* Anita, you're almost thirty. Stop sounding fourteen.