![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
People, I used to love LKH's Anita Blake books. They were delightfully cheesy popcorn, clearly not great but not all that bad either and with occasional flashes of Really Cool Stuff. The books were like Cheetos for the brain. You knew you weren't getting any healthy benefits from them, but it was hard to stop devouring the whole bag.
For me, it all ended around Obsidian Butterfly. The books past that one amped up the sex to make it the focus of the story, whatever plot there may have been was pushed to the sides in order for increasingly elaborate sex to take center-stage. LKH's weaknesses as a writer showed up more and more clearly, and things like correct punctuation and appropriate word usage nearly disappeared. I got tired of the extensive descriptions of cervix-bumping sex. I hadn't touched an Anita Blake book (let alone any of the Merry Gentry books, which I was never into much anyway) in years. Every once in a while, I would hear things from people who were still, unaccountably, slogging through the books, and what I heard was enough to keep me far away.
So the other day, I'm browsing through our local public library, and spot an LKH hardback sitting on the "new releases shelf." I may have said something out loud to myself, like "oooh noooo" or "aieee." But I picked it up, and discovered that Edward was in it.
People, I love Edward. I have a weird thing for ruthlessly pragmatic assassin characters, and Edward was a good example. The book was there for me to read for free, and hey - everybody needs a little brain candy. I doubted I'd make it through the whole book...or if I did, it would be with some heavy skimming.
Reader, I read it. No skimming, either, although towards the end it was tempting. And lord knows, it wasn't a great book, or even one that quite captured the heady rush of the earlier books. But here's the funny thing. A quarter of the way through the book, and Anita hadn't had sex with anybody yet. Halfway through the book, and still no sex. Three quarters of the way through, no sex. Of course, with all this restraint, we get a...you should pardon the words...bit of a sex blowout in the last quarter of the book, in between the resolution, killing of all bad guys, etc etc. But up until that point, there was some plot. Some. Enough to keep me going.
Mind you, it wasn't great plot. LKH has a strange thing about Anita being made to test her power/will/ability/self against everybody she meets in strange power games that started out being just a sort of vampire thing, but which quickly spread. So Anita has to prove her status and position to her fellow US Marshals, all of whom she already knew. Then to the Vegas sheriff's office (the book is set in Vegas). Then to Vegas SWAT. Then to the outer ring of weretiger security. Then to the inner weretiger sanctum. The book was 90% foreplay, to borrow a metaphor. But at least it was...mostly readable. I could snark at the book but I kept going. Edward seemed much watered down to me, but I kept on with it. It became a fun bad read, instead of a bad read I had to put down.
So. I never thought I'd pick up a new LKH and actually go cover-to-cover with it, but there you have it. And I don't even feel like I need to go get ritually cleansed! Amazing!
For me, it all ended around Obsidian Butterfly. The books past that one amped up the sex to make it the focus of the story, whatever plot there may have been was pushed to the sides in order for increasingly elaborate sex to take center-stage. LKH's weaknesses as a writer showed up more and more clearly, and things like correct punctuation and appropriate word usage nearly disappeared. I got tired of the extensive descriptions of cervix-bumping sex. I hadn't touched an Anita Blake book (let alone any of the Merry Gentry books, which I was never into much anyway) in years. Every once in a while, I would hear things from people who were still, unaccountably, slogging through the books, and what I heard was enough to keep me far away.
So the other day, I'm browsing through our local public library, and spot an LKH hardback sitting on the "new releases shelf." I may have said something out loud to myself, like "oooh noooo" or "aieee." But I picked it up, and discovered that Edward was in it.
People, I love Edward. I have a weird thing for ruthlessly pragmatic assassin characters, and Edward was a good example. The book was there for me to read for free, and hey - everybody needs a little brain candy. I doubted I'd make it through the whole book...or if I did, it would be with some heavy skimming.
Reader, I read it. No skimming, either, although towards the end it was tempting. And lord knows, it wasn't a great book, or even one that quite captured the heady rush of the earlier books. But here's the funny thing. A quarter of the way through the book, and Anita hadn't had sex with anybody yet. Halfway through the book, and still no sex. Three quarters of the way through, no sex. Of course, with all this restraint, we get a...you should pardon the words...bit of a sex blowout in the last quarter of the book, in between the resolution, killing of all bad guys, etc etc. But up until that point, there was some plot. Some. Enough to keep me going.
Mind you, it wasn't great plot. LKH has a strange thing about Anita being made to test her power/will/ability/self against everybody she meets in strange power games that started out being just a sort of vampire thing, but which quickly spread. So Anita has to prove her status and position to her fellow US Marshals, all of whom she already knew. Then to the Vegas sheriff's office (the book is set in Vegas). Then to Vegas SWAT. Then to the outer ring of weretiger security. Then to the inner weretiger sanctum. The book was 90% foreplay, to borrow a metaphor. But at least it was...mostly readable. I could snark at the book but I kept going. Edward seemed much watered down to me, but I kept on with it. It became a fun bad read, instead of a bad read I had to put down.
So. I never thought I'd pick up a new LKH and actually go cover-to-cover with it, but there you have it. And I don't even feel like I need to go get ritually cleansed! Amazing!
