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Random thoughts about LKH and AB:VH

- LKH is essentially a very mediocre writer who had the luck to find her niche in the marketplace in the mid-nineties when empowered, ass-kicking heroines and the hip, supernatural mystery genre were the new black in popular culture. I'm just sorry that a better writer didn't get there first with the same basic premise.

- Where the LKH books went wrong - and I mean so wrong you couldn't ignore the sheer wrongness anymore - was when the authorial presence went from a polite indoor voice to a hectoring, raging shriek. I just skimmed the sample chapters from Incubus Dreams and am quite sure now that not only do I know to the decimal point LKH's stance on abortion, I am also certain I can discern her, rather than Anita's, disdain for commitment-phobic women through the text. You could always smell the author in Anita through the details, but later on it got to the point where Anita had basically become nothing more than a shrill mouthpiece for LKH's opinions/issues/hang-ups/prejudices. It's the self-importance that seems to come with some authors when they achieve success and start believing that their message is more important than their craft.

- LKH's take on sexuality in AB:VH reeks of the Madonna/Whore complex. There's no middle ground regarding sex in the AB:VH series - one is either a frumpily-dressed, born-again virgin (early Anita) or a raging whore (late Anita) who'll do anyone at any time and dresses like the world is their gynocologist, or if male, out of the 'Do Me' section of the International Male catalogue. Of course, this being LKH, even the raging whores can't have good clean fun - we can neatly divide the shagsters into the ranks of Sexy, Irresistible, Empowered Whores (basically Anita and her lovemuffin du jour) with everyone else who so much as thinks about cock herded into the Pathetic, Needy, Out-of-Control Whores catagory, where they get sighed at and periodically worried about by the Sexy Irresistible Empowered Whores. It's such an immature version of sexuality it makes my teeth ache. Nobody in LK:VH has their sexuality integrated into their character to the point where it isn't a huge issue or a great, big, important lifestyle choice. It reads as the work of someone who discovered the pleasures of shagging late in life and has to squee publicly about it in the manner of all converts, whilst still retaining a core of Judeo-Christian-based sanctimony in regards to the subject.