Kiss the Dead blurb

[dwg.livejournal.com]

When a fifteen-year-old girl is abducted by vampires, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Anita Blake to find her. And when she does, she’s faced with something she’s never seen before: a terrifyingly ordinary group of people—kids, grandparents, soccer moms—all recently turned and willing to die to avoid serving a master. And where there’s one martyr, there will be more…

But even vampires have monsters that they’re afraid of. And Anita is one of them…

[ source ]

All I can think is that I'm completely underestimating how bad the book will be, because the blurb makes it sound so much worse than whatever I can imagine. Not to mention, this seems to directly contradict a plot point that came up in a previous book - I want to say Incubus Dreams, where it was revealled that Malcolm wasn't binding the Church of Eternal Life vampires via blood to him because he thought it was barbaric, and this was screwing up the basic functions of vampires - so I'm guessing this is yet another case of LKH deciding to retcon whatever she feels like.

Anita vs SUBURBIA! seems like it's really scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of plot. Unless it's some sort of Stepford/Uncanny Valley mirror to Anita's own life choices, which would be funny and clever and interesting, but...yeah, I don't see that happening.

Comments

[c-l-craft.livejournal.com]

This might have been an interesting plot if it wasn't weighted down with LKH's personal issues. But, considering it is her and we've all seen how she treats ideas and life choices she doesn't agree with in her books it's a pretty sure bet this will be both insulting and horrifically bad.

I'm actually really curious to see what she dreams up to replace the Mother of the Night as the big bad, or if she's even going to bother. She sort of shot herself in the foot when she got rid of her. Anita is so over powered that at this point nothing is really going to stand a chance of being a real, believable threat.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. I'm still bewildered that LKH apparently thinks the opposite -- during her Hit List promo vids, she talked about writing herself into a corner because she'd created a villain that was 'too powerful' and how do you defeat that? But now that she's been defeated, just where the hell do you go from there? It'd be one thing if Anita took MOAD's place -- she's kinda already there with the ridiculous superpowers and all her actions being totally justified in her mind as heroic -- and having the Council rock up like "YOU, WITH US. NOW." and taking her back to Paris to force her into the role could be awesome and terrifying. But it will never happen unless Anita has some convoluted ruse that's ruined when she's knocked out and Edward just blows everything up.

The other thing is, LKH has so many loose ends in the series -- like, I'm still waiting for some kind of resolution to the original JC/Richard/Anita triumvirate, either get that shit together and have the fourth mark or break it completely and let everyone have their own fucking lives back -- and this is something that's been lingering since book five-ish. :\

[solarom.livejournal.com]

"... she'd created a villain that was 'too powerful' and how do you defeat that."

Yeah, I've seen that interview. It's kind of ironic that you can replace "villain" with "hero" and "defeat" with "write" or "relate to", and the phrase would make even more sense. =)

[c-l-craft.livejournal.com]

LKH has some really warped views on writing, and creativity in general, so I wasn't really surprised when I heard her say that. I'm not sure if it's worse that she apparently didn't have a plan on how to actually defeat the Mother of the Night when she brought her in, or the fact she wasn't creative enough to think of one in the several years since then. If this was any other series I would think that would be a really interesting plot, I love having the good guys forced to crossover to the dark side, but I can already see the sort of train wreck it would be if LKH did it and it almost physically hurts to think about it.

But then she couldn't write poorly written completely senseless angst. Besides, at this point we all know how it's going to end. Anita is perfect. Everyone loves Anita. Everyone wants to screw Anita. Anita must have all the power in a relationship. Blah blah blah.

[mizmalice.livejournal.com]

It manages to sound both interesting and boring at the same time. I think with a different heroine in the hands of a different writer it could be really good. I haven't read an Anita book in years (and I stopped four or five chapters into Obsidian Butterfly) but I don't understand how Anita is still a U.S. Marshall. How does she have the time to complete her Marshall duties as well as everything else she gets up to?

Also, I can't believe that there's twenty one books. Are they just going to continue on indefinitely or is there a proposed end at x amount of books?

*edited a spelling mistake*

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yep - LKH has said she's going to keep writing Anita pretty much as long as she lives. It's an open-ended, indefinite series. Merry Gentry, on the other hand, was only meant to be 8 books at best, and #9 is due for release in December this year.

[mizmalice.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I knew she'd said something about the amount of books I just couldn't remember.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

I actually think that Merry's storyline was only supposed to be 7 books. That's why she stuffed all the tying up things into Swallowing Darkness: Merry getting pregnant, assuming some throne of faerie and finding out who murdered her father. Consequently LKH had just about nothing to put into Divine Misdemeanors except a twelfth-rate mystery, some slams at women who aren't Merry and Hamilton's dream of being so famous that a picture of her buying pastrami is worth $100,000.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Divine Misdemeanors is where LKH declared she would never tie herself to a story arc again and now she was totally free to explore Merry's world and characters without any restrictions. That's...not how ending a series works, Laurell.

[aenrhien.livejournal.com]

Last time I remember hearing anything about the Church of Eternal Life, they were trying to force Malcolm to oath the vampires because having that many rogues around was a threat or something. But I pretty much just skim the books anymore, so I could have misabsorbed that info.

Probably won't even bother skimming this one. It sounds awful. :/

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

Wait, there's kid vampires? I thought that was a major no-no in this 'verse.

And yeah, this sounds like something that would be clever in the hands of the right writer, but I have strong doubts that LKH is that writer.

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

To me, this actually sounds interesting, if only to see Anita argue with other women.

I don't expect it to be pretty. But it will continue to give me information on Anita v. feminism.

[bookpire.livejournal.com]

This will be bad. Anita with kids, old people and other women? Christ if the nutbasket doesn't come off as a complete evil bitch who won't even try to relate to anyone but the super hot guys I'll be shocked. Does this kind of remind anyone of that little snippit of story in, I think it was the bloody bones book, where a 17 year old girl was turned by her boyfriend in the night? Anita promised the sisters younger brother she'd help, and the poor kid just ends up being killed at the end along with his sister in an after throught? Like I'm serious the last time we see the boy he's being held as a hostage. Then BOOM dead in a coffin and burnt to death along with the bad guys before he can rise.

Yeh I'm calling it now, the community of freshly turned vamps will be an after thought after Anita's own family issues. I can see her step mother being brought up alot, complete with pages of spiteful comments and looking down on suburban lifestyles (with soccer moms present? yeh that's happening). Unless they all turn out to be evil or some bullcrap, either way I can see them all characterized as either spineless cowards who can't look after themselves, people who had a 'humans first' mind set before being turned just so there's no chance to sympathize with them, or just outright evil. save for of course any males and random background extras who are not important. Ten bucks Anita will add a male vampire to her collection of pretty boys.

Oh but you know what WOULD be interesting? Seeing a long time human character become a vampire, then seeing how they cope.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I can see her step mother being brought up alot, complete with pages of spiteful comments and looking down on suburban lifestyles (with soccer moms present? yeh that's happening). Unless they all turn out to be evil or some bullcrap, either way I can see them all characterized as either spineless cowards who can't look after themselves, people who had a 'humans first' mind set before being turned just so there's no chance to sympathize with them, or just outright evil. save for of course any males and random background extras who are not important. Ten bucks Anita will add a male vampire to her collection of pretty boys.

Basically what I was going to say. There is going to be a LOT of waxing on about how NOT NORMAL Anita is and how much better and darker and edgier she is for it while also wangsting about how she didn't get to have this life cuz her mom died. Come to it, that sounds like the scariest thing that'll have happened for a while--having to read through that mess!

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Kinda OT... I saw LKH and Jon at the airport a couple weeks back. If I was actually a fan I might have stopped her, but I was just like, "eh, I need to get back to my gate" and wandered off.

First time I ever ran into her outside of a con, kind of surprising since we both go to the same Renaissance Faire. Oh well.

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

Oh this is going to be horrible, rotten, no good and very bad in every conceivable way.

Also, is it just me or do the abduction and Suburbia vamipres who would like everyone else to leave them alone seem to have no linkage or correlation to each other? In the post about the cover someone speculated that they were giving the cover design to the interns. I think maybe they're doing that with the back cover teasers as well. :P

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

I agree with pretty much all of the comments above. This means Anita will dive head first into "suburbia" only to whine about how everyone thinks she's a whore, how much better she is than other women because she's basically only a woman because she has a vagina and shares no other "feminine traits", and so she can impart her "feminist wisdom" on the poor women who'll be interacting with her. God, LKH is so bored with her own fucking series it's just painful.

This brings me back to the same question me and one of my friends have been asking since around Blood Noir or so: why won't she just end the series and start a new one? She's been writing this for over a decade and it's easy to tell she has nothing left to say about this world. She just recycles the same thing over and over and over. I can understand that she might be scared of losing readers, but if people will sit through her bullshit now, I'm pretty sure they'll sit through it under another name. [/end rant]

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I'm kinda running with an armchair psychology/purely speculative theory that I don't think LKH can end the Anita Blake series -- Anita is so strongly wrapped up as her own personal avatar for so long, she's going to keep writing stories no matter how good or bad just for the validation. People like Anita! People like her! So if push comes to shove with the contracts, she'd rather sacrifice Merry and just keep the Anita series going for as long as she can. Which is kinda why we haven't had a Merry book for three years, but we'll have four Anita books by the end of 2012. Interestingly, those four books are slightly less terrible than their predecessors. Only slightly.

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a pretty good point. She always claims that she and Anita are different people, but they're not. She clings to Anita as her means of validating her fucked up fantasies/beliefs so it'd be nigh impossible to get her to let go. And y'know the worst part? If LKH was just a misunderstood, sweet lady with a ton of personal problems, I'd forgive her. But no. She's a cunt. So that makes this entire situation ten times worse.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I know this topic is borderline casting aspersions on LKH as a person (even if I happen to agree with you that she's a less than stellar human being) but...can we refrain from outright insulting her?

[kyoko-minamino.livejournal.com]

Duly noted, sorry. I get worked up sometimes.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Feminine traits? At the beginning of the series, at least, part of the hot mess Anita presented as as was nothing but "feminine" tendencies taken to an absurd extreme.

Why, the cattyness about all other women alone is so stereotypical it's ridiculous.

[clio-1.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised Anita's never faced a group of ordinary people who don't want to serve a master before. "Serving a master" means being a slave in the LKH books. I'm sure all these people who don't want to be slaves will be shown to be wrong wrong wrongity-wrong, which is just... lovely.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

Well in Hamilton's view the only acceptable occupation for male vampires is stripper and she'd prefer there were no female vampires. So, yeah, the idea of vamps who don't want to be blood oathed to a master and sex toys for her avatar will be shown as being utterly perverse.

[graesea.livejournal.com]

But isn't Anita (in theory) supposed to be Jean Claude's human servant?

[mystoflare.livejournal.com]

Given what we've seen of the cover, am I the only one who thinks the whole kidnapping/vampire suburbia subplot (which will no doubt be TERRIBLE) is barely even going to be touched upon? It'll be Anita whining about how she can't NEVER EVER HAVE A NORMAL LIFE because of whatever, then sexing, then whining about how she's so awesome that the vampire suburbanites are jellus of her, then sexing, then the people being killed off, or getting saved by Edward/JC/Random New Penis #873 from this book, off-screen, with Anita crowing about how awesome she is, even though she didn't do crap.

Now I wonder what the plot *could* have been like, in the hands of a better writer. Anyone?
And I shall go hammer out a rough draft of a story idea in the meantime :)

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

It'll be Anita whining about how she can't NEVER EVER HAVE A NORMAL LIFE because of whatever, then sexing, then whining about how she's so awesome that the vampire suburbanites are jellus of her, then sexing, then the people being killed off, or getting saved by Edward/JC/Random New Penis #873 from this book, off-screen, with Anita crowing about how awesome she is, even though she didn't do crap.


Yuuuup. This is exactly what I am expecting.

[mystoflare.livejournal.com]

I think it's always sad how this series has (and still technically HAS) great storytelling potential in all those interesting subplots that LKH keeps tossing to the side.

Granted, I like to think that I secretly take a few of those subplots and adopted them to give them a chance to grow into something bigger. :)
've had a lot of story ideas lately spawned from abandoned vampire/fae/etc subplots she's pretty much abandoned in favor of stuffing Anita or Merry's vag with the newest sparkly penis. There's so much material for interesting, potentially awesome stories there, and she just doesn't seem to care.