Trying out my new Kindle

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

Last semester, I made the Dean's List at my university (which is for people who manage to pull a GPA of 3.5 and above) and to reward myself I decided to splurge on a Kindle. It's awesome so far. Anyway, I still refuse to shell out even one cent for LKH's books since her blogs make her sound so obnoxious and vile, but I can still get the free samples from all her books.

I almost feel tempted to buy A Lick of Frost but I know I'll only be able to stomach about 100 pages or so. I know the quality of the book is bound to be shit, but I actually liked Frost way back when I started reading the books. I remember specifically why I liked him too. Sure, he started out as a dick, but then Andais forced him to attend the fairy dance party in the absolutely horrid outfit and he was humiliated and I just felt bad for him. I'm pretty sure that almost every woman in the world can empathize with how bad it feels to be treated like a piece of meat. And that outfit truly was horrifying.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows the basics of the "plot" (Taranis is accusing three of the dildoes of raping some girl from the Seelie Court. The book starts with Merrita babbling about the court room. Let's get the horrible descriptions of Doyle and Frost out of the way first.

Doyle: His clothes "glowed against the rich, perfect black of his skin, which was so black there were purple and blue highlights to his body in the right light.'"

While this a shitty description featuring the "X that was so X that it Ys", it's still fairly competent writing when you compare it to the train wreck that was the first chapter of Flirt. I bring it up because until this passage I thought Doyle was . . . well, black. Sort of like this guy or any other random black male model, except with stupid hair. I used to think it was cool that LKH had included a black character in her books back then. It was actually the first book I ever picked up with a black character and I suddenly realized that there appeared to be no black people on fiction land.  I was too young to realize that having one black dude in the cast and then babbling on about his blackness was also problematic.

This "purple and blue highlights" makes me think that he's not black though. I mean, how many black people are sooooo black that they reflect purple and blue. What the shit? And why does LKH think this is in any way attractive.

Frost: lol at Frost. Seriously, just lol.  "Frost's skin was as white as Doyle's was black."' So he's transparent? And his hair "'silver, like metal beaten into his hair.'' And get this, it ''gleamed like something you could have melted down and made into jewelry.'' I just can't make shit like that up. But either way, this writing is almost . . . okay, which is evidence of how far down my expectations of LKH's writing have fallen.

More blah blah blah happens in which LKH describes all the people in the courtroom. And then she gets to the part where she describes some woman who's going gaga over Doyle and Frost. Basically, this woman has to look "manish" and Merita feels so so superior to her because she doesn't have to try to be like the menz. merita knows this because '''it was as if she were hiding her beauty and drawing attention to it at the same time.''

This sort of crap, in addition to being condescending also makes me think that LKH is a little out of touch with reality. Women in the corporate world don't try to dress "mannish." True, they struggle to be taken seriously but, if anything, some of them feel that they need to try as hard as they can to professionally reach the beauty standard to the best of their ability. Does LKH really think that there are millions of women currently trying to hide their femininity in the modern world?

Some crap happens with the USA ambassador to the fairies, who apparently has been put under some sort of spell by Taranis. Why do the fairies even need to be diplomatic towards the humans anyway? The way LKH writes them, humans would be crushed by fairies. They're beautiful, powerful, and have gigantic life spans. Why is magic dying again? Why don't the fairies just enslave humans since they find them so inferior? Is this ever addressed?

Also ''Though in Galen's case, he hadn't been exiled because he'd been born and raised in the Unseele Court; you can't be exiled from what you've never been a part of.'' Lol, LKH. We know what exiled means. Also, why are fairies living separately again? Why are the Seelie and Unseelie Courts so against each other?


Anyway, that's as much of the book I got in the sample and I really don't want to buy the whole thing. Can anyone tell me what exactly happens in this book?

Comments

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure that Doyle isn't supposed to be black as in person-of-colour black. He is black as in Crayola-black. I'm pretty sure the impression is meant to be that of a guy with Caucasian features who just happens to be . . . well, black.

[missingvolume.livejournal.com]

For a while the first book in the series was a free download but that ended in November.

[amiedoll.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the Kindle! I love mine. It has really got me back into reading regularly, its a lot easier to find books online then it is to get them ordered in here and having to wait weeks for them. My local stores don't carry a large selection of the types of books that I like, and if they do have them, its not for long. Before the Kindle I'd been reading on my computer, and I tried a home brew program on my Nintendo ds, but the Kindle is so much easier to read, and I like curling up in bed with it lol.

I downloaded a program called Calibre and it lets me convert pretty much any document to one that will work on Kindle (I use txt, mobi also works fine though).
Its great because if you have any e-books, from anywhere, they can be put on your Kindle, and there are heaps of public domain books available, and even some books that the authors have put up for free download.

Link to calibre - http://calibre-ebook.com/

I've been sitting here for a moment trying to remember the actual plot of A Lick of Frost, and from memory it wasn't that bad a plot, pretty much standard for lkh, it does tend to get hard to remember what is actually supposed to be going on when these people are having sex every 5 mins, and then talking about sex, and even talking randomly in the middle of sex. I think Kindle has a return policy on e-books (I'm not a hundred percent sure, but check it out), that way you might be able to get a refund or partial credit if you really can't get past the first 200 pages :0)

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

So far, I love mine too. I just bought The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I'm enjoying it.

Do you know of any way I can convert PDF files to go on the Kindle? I'm a college student, that would be incredibly useful.

[amiedoll.livejournal.com]

A few days after I got my kindle it did a software update that allows it to read unconverted pdfs :0). I read about it on the amazon forums and left my wireless on for a few days till it updated, I did a search for the link but I can't find it sorry :0(.
The same patch will also allow you to turn the text sideways, which is how I view pdf's otherwise it tends to be very small and harder to read because it fits the whole page on the kindle screen, I heard you can zoom it in, but I haven't played with it myself. Viewing the document side ways will break the page in half and make it larger.
If your kindle can view text in any direction (its in the AA menu, along with font sizes etc.), then it will be able to read pdf's.

If your pdf documents are just text with no maps/pics/graphs then you can convert them using Calibre (most of my library is in pdf format, and I converted it to txt), so that the text sizing, text to speech and other features work like they are supposed to.

Sometimes the formatting from a converted pdf is a little weird, but still readable once you get used to the occasional break half way thru a sentence, I heard that it does this because pdf is essentially comprised of text boxes and when it is converted the breaks are where one box ends and the next begins.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

The thing that always got me about Frost was his Christmas tinsel hair. That description alone is worth the lulz, because I just...cannot visualise it. At least, not without having childhood flashbacks to Christmas, and how the tinsle we had would moult all over everything. The thing I liked most about tinsel was that it was springy and shimmery and just...this stuff does not hair make. I keep expecting Frost to have permanent bedhead or looking like he's stuck his finger in an electric socket, and then bitching about how there's a kink on the left and he can't smooth it out.

As far as I know, the Seelie and Unseelie are against each other because the Seelie are elitist snobs that are so focused on their own beautiful perfection that they sneer in disdain at the Unseelie and their "acceptance" of all kinds. I put that in quotation marks because the Unseelie are just as bad with the Sidhe still exalted over as the beautiful perfect beings while everyone else is ugly and lesser and treated as such. At least until Merry comes along and shows YOU CAN LOVE EACH OTHER AND YOURSELVES or some shit. Most of my bitterness about this can be summed up in the character of Sholto. He's the freaking king of the Sluagh, but noes all the Sidhe won't let him in their club because he has tentacles.

I don't get the ambassador thing either, but then I don't agree with the set up of the world where the faeries are exiled from Europe and were given amnesty in the US so long as they don't try to take over the world. Mostly, I don't agree that the US would be the only country that would accept interdimensional refugees, as there are plenty of other nations/countries in this crazy little planet. I mean, they could have gone to Canada. Or settled in the wilds of Mongolia, gone into the Amazon, bought Borneo, taken over New Zealand. Or I'm sure Australia could have sold them Tasmania. There's so many alternatives that could have been used. But, if the existing scenario has to be used then...it could have been handled so much better.

I know if I were at the helm of the series, I'd have faeres all "you know, it might have been a good idea at the time, but given the state of things now, maybe it wasn't the best decision to make." And since the magic is fading, they could get all cranky at how humans have been fucking things up for everyone since...always, and then try to take back their former glory or die trying. Mostly, I'm just really fond of the idea of a faerie war where tanks and guns count for naught when there's a freaking war goddess that can kill your troops just by blowing them a kiss.

[amiedoll.livejournal.com]

Your description of the clumping tinsel hair made my day! lol. I gotta find a pic of one of those tinsel wigs they used to sell at fairs.

On the subject of Faerie settlement,surely other countries would allow faeries to settle in an out of the way place. For one thing they are powerful, and power attracts politicians like nothing else. For another it would seem diplomatic and tolerant of other nations to allow them to settle where ever they liked.

I can't see Australia giving Tasmania over, but if they like the heat we have ample space in the center of our little country lol. After the white Australia policy (Google it if for some reason your short on your racism quota for the day, it is truly horrific) I'm sure we would love to have some Fay stay with us.

Also I can't imagine other superpowers being comfortable with America having something so powerful, and not want a part of the action, especially Russia (just had a flash back to a star gate episode where Russia finds out about the gate and hits the roof lol).

It seems a little retconned,it makes the Fay seem stronger by multitudes then humans, and gives a reason why they are not at war with humankind, or ruling as they like.
Seriously how could Europe expel them if they didn't want to go, they essentially crippled themselves to move to America, rather then stay strong and just say "No, not going, now what?"
Even after their last war, when they were weakened and recovering they were still strong enough to pull a few humans into line. It just seems a little convenient, rather then show how having fay in the open influenced the world, it seems like nothing has changed, history, the economy, the world's power structure, everything is as it is now, just that there are Faeries living among us. It makes me wonder how another writer would have changed the world to accommodate all these new species and abilities.

[amiedoll.livejournal.com]

Link to Tinsel wigs :0P

http://www.makebelievecostume.com/detail/RB-50777/Silver_Tinsel_Wig.html

[dwg.livejournal.com]

(I can't really judge Tasmania, I'm from Adelaide and my mum's Taswegian -- anyways, hi fellow Aussie! Hi!)

I honestly considered the middle of the continent, but figured Tasmania would appeal more to faeries because of all the wilderness and clean air. But they could have SA if they wanted, for the wineries and...well, there's still plenty of room. However, they'd probably make frowny faces over the state of the Murray River.

I think the whole "faeries in the US" thing is another example of the worldbuilding going not quite right -- it's like our current world + monsters = AB:VH, here it's current world + faeries = MG-verse, and the full repercussions of changing something that significant are completely overlooked. I was mulling it over, and I'm pretty sure that if AB:VH were worked properly with vampires and other monsters out in the open and well-known to everyone, there's actually no need for the titular character to exist. I'm sure with enough contemplation, I can figure out a way to write out Merry, or at least diminish her Sue status Obvious Importance to the world too.

[amiedoll.livejournal.com]

Hi :0D (waves from Sydney) I was thinking with all their nature magic they could fix a few environmental problems (and maybe make it rain lol).

I agree with your ideas on LKH's world building not going really right, history should be significantly different, it should have more of an impact on the world.

I also just can't wrap my head around the idea that the fey are just happy to sit in their mound and do what? (I actually can't think of anything that they really do lol).

Surely they would be out and about working with humans, being diverse individuals, and having careers/hobbies/friends, and basically integrating with society. In the Merry books it seems that besides a few out casts and exiles, all of faerie reside and spend all their time (and since they are immortal its a fair bit of it) at home. Sounds like a delightful way to spend eternity.

To avoid wilting or whatever fey do away from faerie it would have been easy to say that in every fey household is a link to the mounds, or they can just transport them selves back of a night, or even ride those cool winged steeds everywhere, lol anything to give them a purpose (which I thought was to tend the land, and to be mischievous and stuff). It just seems like they were all in a void doing nothing but waiting for Merry to come along, and take them away from their dreary lives (lol).

[briarwood.livejournal.com]

Can anyone tell me what exactly happens in this book?

This one actually has parts resembling plot. Though only parts. And this is from memory, so please forgive any errors.

After the meeting with the lawyers and the ambassador, where the ambassador goes bonkers because he's been magicked by Taranis, they troop into a different room to talk to the bad guy himself on the mirror. There follows much repetitive info-dumping while Taranis tries to get Merry to come to him by yet more magic. All the poor humans in the room go bonkers, the guards make a belated attempt to actually guard and then it's Taranis' turn to go bonkers and he starts throwing fireballs through the mirror. Galen drags Merry out of the room, but she insists on going back to fight. They argue about that for so long that by the time she gets back it's all over (naturally) and the casualties include Doyle.

There is more talk on the mirror with a Seelie lord who basically admits the king is bug-nuts and offers Merry the Seelie throne because she's so awesome of something to do with swans and a green dog, which I'm sure made some kind of sense to LKH. Merry ums and ahs about this offer until the paramedics arrive and everyone leaves for the hospital.

There follows a whole bunch of utterly irrelevant stuff at the hospital with Merry using her super-love-prophecy magic on the doctor to distract him so her healer can fix Doyle. After which they go home.

At home, Andais calls via the mirror very pissed off because Merry's been offered another throne and hasn't told her. Merry protests innocence, but Andais is crazy so that does little good. There's lots of purple description of the dude Andais has been torturing and then Andais threatens to order Rhys back to court. Merry refuses to release Rhys because she needs to have sex with him. Then they talk to the goblin twins on the mirror about the big meeting that's planned where Merry will finally have sex with them thereby ending the longest foreplay in the history of the universe and giving them sparkly sidhe powers. The orgy meeting is tonight.

After this, Merry is supposed to have sex with Rhys, but she's too tired from all the talking so she goes to bed with Frost instead. [Note: if you're a fan of Frost, this is the one part that may make the book worth buying.] They have a long conversation about how Merry is mortal and doesn't believe her immortal beauties will still love her when she's old and grey. Frost relates the tale of his first love - who was mortal girl called Rose - and how he became sidhe to save her life and they married and he still loved her even when she was old. Merry is convinced he loves her too.

What follows is a kind of cat-and-mouse thing with Andais popping into mirrors all over trying to catch Merry screwing Rhys, but finding Merry with other men and getting pissed because Merry lied about her urgent need to be serviced by Rhys. This includes another long conversation, this time with Kitto about how abused he was and how he's happy to be her dog now.

Eventually she and Rhys do have sex and he makes a big deal about wanting her pregnant and how he can't stand that she's going to screw the goblin bros. Although it's pretty clear that what he really can't stand is that she's going to enjoy it.

[briarwood.livejournal.com]

(Continued)


Finally the big event arrives and Merry goes to greet Holly and Ash, who have brought all the red-caps with them. I never did get straight exactly what's supposed to have happened next, but Merry talks to Jonty, who cries, which sets of big magic and Holly and Ash get their power-boost but no sex and Merry discovers she's pregnant by six different men (though she's only carrying twins) and Frost turns into a white stag and runs away. A heartbroken Merry runs out into the garden where Taranis finds her, disguised as one of her men, and knocks her out just like a caveman to carry her away.

Merry wakes up in bed with Taranis. There's a lot of irrelevant crap about Merry having a concussion and the Seelie not having any decent healers, then Merry mentions the pregnancy and the bug-nuts king immediately assumes the kids are his. Merry is rescued by some of the Seelie nobles (who once again offer her the throne) and Doyle, then Merry finds out the press are nearby because Taranis has been telling them how he rescued Merry from the evil unseelie. Merry goes before the press all weak and injured and publicly accuses him of raping her, and then lets slip the whole pregnancy thing so the press go bonkers. Finally she heads off to the hospital, reflecting that since she's pregnant she's won the race but she doesn't care any more because Frost is gone.

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

Lol what? Don't think want to buy it.

[denelian.livejournal.com]

i always figured LKH modeled the way Doyle look on the character "Driztz" from Forgotten Realms (dungeons and dragons)

that's just me...

[sehkmetschild.livejournal.com]

If you care you can download the book from http://www.wattpad.com/ (free) and convert it into a PDF via Openoffice (free). It would probably take anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour, but it could be done. Like I said, if you care :). Also I think Google bought them out so the books might be harder to find.... Hmmm. *to bed with me*

[gator-grrrl.livejournal.com]

Human skin that is so black it reflects purple does exist. In Cape Cod, I have seen people of Portuguese descent whose skin is so black it actually does have purple highlights in the sun. I thought they were beautiful.

[six.livejournal.com]

I remember LKH describing Doyle's blackness as not the same type of blackness that human beings could have, so I've always had Doyle look like Anti-Sora in Kingdom Hearts.

Black, like darkness, that's why he's nicknamed Darkness.





The fairies need to be diplomatic towards the humans because despite their magic and immortality, humans overwhelm them in numbers and can kill them with techology now. Americans and in American soil in particular, because America is the last country that would tolerate them for what they are. The "fey in Europe were forced to die out or breed with the humans" and "America is the only country that would take us in now" spiel in the Gentry books gets old.

What I don't get is why the humans let Taranis get away with what he did to that Ambassador. I expected him to get chewed out or worse.

Their magic is dying because they thought they were true gods before, but they're really not. Their powers actually come from the Goddess and God, and as they lost faith or became too arrogant, their powers gradually diminished.

So when the humans started outbreeding them, invented dangerous things that could kill them like guns and nukes, they've performed lessening rituals to get rid of their most frightening magics (Book 1's Nameless was a product of one of three - I think it's the third, but i'm not quite sure because it's been a while since I've read it). They'd had to do it so they don't have fights that blow Grand Canyon-sized craters (I forgot which book mentions a huge crater in Europe) or end the world accidentally.

Fairies live separately because Seelies are snobbish elitists who think they're better than everybody else. The Unseelie court isn't much better, but they accept anyone who isn't horribly deformed/monster-like like the sluagh/goblin/etc as long as they're powerful.

[amiedoll.livejournal.com]

Lol I also remember her saying that they emulated humans and their monogamous relationships and that's why faerie was dying off, I almost fell out of my chair laughing that time, trust LKH to kill off a race of people for adopting monogamy.

Anywho I guess I would have liked to have seen what a different author could have done with faeries being a fact, and out in the open, and how that would influence history, culture, and even on everyday living, a lot of faeries had a major impact on humans according to their old stories, and that would have been fascinating.

As it is I don't mind the Merry series, I do tend to skip some of the boring stuff to get to the plot, and I hate the way they keep having a break in the middle of sex to chat about plot related stuff, it makes skimming thru the sex harder lol.

[six.livejournal.com]

I remember that part of them emulating humans and their monogamy, but I don't remember that being a part of why faerie was dying off. I do remember a jab at the Seelies about looking like prudes when compared to the Unseelies because they try to ape human views about sex; I think it was when they were talking to lawyers about that rape charge against Galen, Rhys and... Abe? I also remember another jab about the Seelies being stuck in the 1500-1700s (can't remember the exact date, arg!) with their fashion as well as their views on sex.

lolol yeah, I hate the way they keep taking breaks in the middle of sexy tiems to chat about plot, too. I can't remember which book exactly, but I missed some plot points the first time I read it and had to backtrack to find it because I skipped the sex with Kitto. XD

I've found faerie books/series that I've liked, but none that have them open like Merry's. D: I'm hoping there's more out there and I just have to find them. ^_^

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

I always pictured Doyle as that incredibly dark black, like he has no white ancestors plus he works in the sun all day color black. I have seen some black people whose skin picks up blue highlights, so that part didn't bother me. The rest I attribute to them being fairies, so they all end up with Pushing Daisies color schemes.

If you find yourself looking for black action heroines, you should try LA Banks Vampire Huntress Legend. The dialogue is a bit repetitive, but it has a great Hell set up, and the hero/anti-hero is very entertaining. You will still have to deal with the heroine being the queen of sex appeal, but at least there's a reason for it.