The opposite of up

[mhalachai]

Allow me to clarify my rabidness about the Anita Blake books:

They're books. I tend to focus on the positive and the things I like in them, as I dislike to the extreme the crap that comes off a lot of the AB forums on the Internet, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the books faults. These days, all that I read goes through the "Anita Blake fanfic" filter, so it's likely I'm looking at the books in a different way than you lot.

So here it is: As opposed to the normal sunshine and cheer that goes around here, take the opportunity to nitpick, to say what you don't like about the Anita Blake books/characters/cover art etc. Thing is, if you say you don't like something, you need to say why.

Also, feel free to comment anonymously.

ETA PS: There are now spoilers for Micah and the Danse Macabre teaser in this thread. FYI KTHNX.

Comments

[maeglinyedi.livejournal.com]

Yes, Anita was having sex with JC and with Richard before the ardeur.

Yep, and I loved that in the earlier books, that whole love-triangle, because it was made up of Anita's choices. LKH showed us how Anita came to those choices and how she tried dealing with the consequences. And that makes for interesting material to read, methinks.

What she would *not* have done is sleep with stranger-Micah.

God, yes. That whole scene in NiC freaked me out. Micah practically raped her in the shower (and I don't mind non-con in fiction. I read and write it), but the aftermath just sucked. Here some guy she'd never met before fucked her though she'd told him no a few times, and what does Anita do? She opens her arms, her legs and her house to him, though she knows nothing about him other than that he has a big cock and claims to be mated to her or whatever.

Please. The Anita I got to know in earlier books would have blown his head off. She wouldn't have blown him. *g*

That's what I really dislike about the whole ardeur plot. Anita is forced into doing things she'd normally not do, but her responses to it just don't make any sense compared to the Anita from earlier books.

[penyn-1600.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Requiem, Jason, Asher, and Damien. It seems like she's had a real problem with becoming physical with them-Requiem because she didn't really know him that well, Jason because she considered him as just a friend, Asher same as Jason, and Damien felt too much (to her) like an abuse of power.

[(Anonymous)]

What i really disliked, was that Incubus dreams seemed as if it had no plot at all! It was just one long story about Anita having sex again. Also I don't like that Micah has center stage and that Jean-Claude (and Asher) have been pushed to the background

[cissasghost.livejournal.com]

Huh - interesting, because I sort of hope she is. Doubt it, as that's not really what LKH writes (as you've said), but I would like it for exactly the reasons you would hate it - that it'd be real. I like the juxtaposition of the fantastical with real-life, real-world human issues, it's one of my favorite things to read (and write). It also seems somewhat like the next logical step in Anita's development as a character, the ultimate test of how much she's really willing to accept herself and her lifestyle as okay - i.e. would she raise a child that way?

And, along the same lines, what the doctor in NM, and more recently the older cop on the serial killer case, told her, was right - she's not the only one in the world who can do her job (well, maybe the zombies, but not the policework), and if you go around nearly getting killed every other week, sooner or later somebody's gonna just get luck. Have their one good day. Anita's a walking suicide, IMO - has been since she was 9, really. She's come a long way towards accepting every other aspect of her life - her necromancy, her sexuality, the reality of her moral code (as opposed to the one she'd like to think she has) and her ability to do violence. What she hasn't accepted yet, at least that I can see, is that she deserves to be alive.

Knowing that her death would kill Jean-Claude and Richard and Nathaniel and Damian, hasn't really grounded her yet. It hasn't made her careful, it hasn't even made her more likely to think before leaping. I think that's because a.) they're all grown-ups, b.) they're all "monsters", and c.) to some degree she blames them for their mutual situation and the not-normal-ness of her life, and figures they can just deal with the consequences. She'd never consciously think that in regards to Nathaniel, at least, though she thinks it about JC all the time - but IMO it's there, at the back of her head. I think it'd be different with a baby - and that maybe 9 months of *having* to care what happens to her, might not be a bad thing.

Wow, I'm wordy and opinionated. /soapbox *blushes*

-Sonya

[houses7177.livejournal.com]

I see where you're coming from, but I still think that having her deal with a pregnancy would not make for entertaining reading for me. Just personally, I don't find that appealing as a story line. I, too, like the juxtapositon of realism and magic, but there are other ways to express the conflict. And I agree that Anita is a walking suicide, more or less. She has no personal regard, despite not wanting to kill those attached to her. While she would indeed have to take care of herself if she were pregnant, she'd still be doing it for someone else, not herself. Having a baby doesn't make her learn how to care for herself for herself, it's still the situation where she's having to care for herself for her child. She can still put off dealing with her own issues. I'd rather read about her learing to love herself for herself, not because she's got an other issue to deal with.

[cissasghost.livejournal.com]

Having a baby doesn't make her learn how to care for herself for herself, it's still the situation where she's having to care for herself for her child.

Point.

I'd hope . . and here I'm really talking about her like she's a real person rather than a character, but bear with me . . I'd hope that it would, at the least, be an educational experience. It wouldn't automatically solve her issues, but it might give her a bit of enforced distance from which to view them - i.e. she won't be out there putting her ass on the line all the time, and yet the world will keep spinning. For the first little while I'd expect it would drive her nuts and turn her into the psychotic bitch from hell because of the stress of it, but after a couple months she'd have to adapt at least a little. I don't think she's an adrenaline junky, I don't think she actually *likes* being in danger, I think it's compulsive. A period of enforced safety and carefulness would be like . . detox. At this point, I don't think it's occurred to her that there's any other way she could live.

But, regardless, I suspect you're going to get your wish - I doubt LKH would write Anita pregnant. It may be a direction I'd like to see her take, but what I read in that little blurb at the end of 'Micah' didn't suggest that direction at all.

-Sonya

[nessataleweaver.livejournal.com]

that's why I stopped buying the books and started getting them from the library instead, I think. I don't have anything against sex scenes or mystical sex at all, but I wish she'd get back to writing plot instead. I started reading these for a strong character and strong plots. Not lots of gorgeous men swarming around Anita like a queen bee, having sex I'm never going to get (granted, that's one of the reasons I read the Eve Dallas books - I'm certainly never going to find a guy like Roarke in real life!), for what seems to be the flimsiest and most deus ex machina of reasons. Stopping only to kill things. The books started off as a prose version of really good horror movies - the last few would really only appeal to guys on screen, with being nothing but sex and violence.

[nessataleweaver.livejournal.com]

uh, sorry, just thought of another few things!
Yeah, what the hell happened to Dolph? I think LKH actually did come up with a good reason for his change-of-pace (considering the monsters as people is one thing, having your son convert because his girl isn't willing to take him as is, is another, and his attitude towards Anita always struck me as mentorish/father-like. Transference of issues), but Dolph's too fair-minded (especially after Anita arranged that summit between the family members) to keep holding this grudge.

And totally - we can NEVER have enough Zebrowski! Heck, him and Jason are the only people in the books who have a sense of humour anymore!

And yes, I think the worst mistake LKH made in the entire series was giving Anita the ardeur. (I can't help but wonder if Anita ever would have, if LKH had gotten the contract for the Merry Gentry books sooner.) Shouldn't she be getting it under control already or what? And how did she get it in the first place, really? 'Catching' it from Jean-Claude doesn't track for me - why didn't she get it sooner? And how? - because as manipulative as JC can be, I can't see him giving it to her deliberately. For no other reason that she'd blow his nuts off with a silver dum-dum bullet.

There's a lot of non-con implications to the ardeur that really bother me - what's going to happen if she's in a situation where she CAN'T have one of the harem - or someone who's willing to fill in (like Jason) with her and the ardeur hits, and the only guy around says no? What'll she do then? There's a couple of answers to that; most of them are extremely out of character, and even more of them give me the icks.

But mostly? Like I said above. She needs to tone down the porn and start writing plot again. And dealing with some missing threads from the earlier books would be great (I still want an actual appearance from her brother Josh, seeing as he's the only family member who really seems to like her.) Hell, what about that psycho with a crush on her from OB?