Open letter to LKH regarding Hit List

Disclaimer: This is not exactly spoiler-y since there’s not, like, a plot to spoil, but there are some details of Hit List ranted about below that you may want to avoid if you haven’t read it and are planning on it; though god help you if you honestly care that much.

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Dear Laurel K Hamilton,

I’m not a fan. Let’s be honest. While the following is a fact that I’m extremely pained to admit – a pain, like, you have no idea, fucking tears my soul asunder -- I have read every single one of the books in your Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. I just finished your most recent installment, Hit List. I need to assure you that I have never paid for one of your books. I cannot bear the thought that any of my hard earned dollars would be filling your coffers, and possibly contributing to your false assumption that there is one more person in the world that wants you to continue to do what it is that you do …  which summarily is reduced to poisoning the universe with the shittiest characters every fucking dreamed of by man or beast.

Back to Hit List. The book took me about four hours to read, cover to cover. Its brevity was undoubtedly the best thing about it. Said brevity, however, had mild surface value at best, as you have somehow managed to work some kind of black magic on the space/time continuum, insofar as that four hours was hands down the longest fucking stretch of time I have ever and possibly will ever experience. Great cities fell in that four hours. I saw the face of Lovecraftian madness and the world was fucking consumed by tentacled Old Ones in that four hours. Your book made me age, Laurel K Hamilton.

The title, first of all – what the fuck? At this point I’m longing for the times when each book was dumbly named after a location of indeterminable import in the story. It was fucking lame, but at least it made sense. There was no hit list in this book. Like, not even a haphazard one. I can see, sort of, where you maybe named the book before you wrote it. That seems very You. I mean, things are murdered? Sort of? But things are fucking murdered in all of your books, so I feel like that’s hardly a plot point relevant enough to use as the title.

And who, seriously, was asking for more of Olaf? HE IS A TERRIBLE CHARACTER. And every time you talk about him, why do you feel the need to spend THIRTY FUCKING PAGES vomiting the same shit over and over again about how he’s a serial killer and how Blake is his victim type (because Blake is everyone’s type in some way or another, amirite?) and HOMIGOD SOMEDAY HE MUST DIE? You are clearly never going to fucking kill him off, because you never fucking kill ANYONE off. You just keep inventing more and more characters whose sole purpose is to be obsessed with Anita Blake, and no one she “cares” about in return ever . fucking . dies; despite the fact that there is laughable, hyperbolic, ridiculous violence and death basically every goddamn day of these people’s miserable fucking lives.

AND WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE POINT OF THIS BOOK, ULTIMATELY? The Harlequin! Are killing clanless weretigers! That is the premise. But at some point, YOU FORGOT TO FUCKING EXPLAIN THE PREMISE. The Harlequin work for Marmee Noir, so I’m guessing this is her bag. Her goal, you know, overall, is to inhabit Blake’s body so she can, whatever, fucking rule the world with her magical vagina – I couldn’t/can’t ever actually justify, in my head, why the MOTHER OF ALL DARKNESS would give two fucks about Blake, despite how illogically amazing she is, like, who could POSSIBLY trump what is explained to me as The End All Be All of every scary fucking thing ever invented, but OK, you win, this is what happens, this omnipotent/omnipresent being is endlessly thwarted by a stupid bitch with guns and an effervescent hoohaa.

Anyway, her goal as mentioned is to take over Blake’s body. How, exactly, is sending The Harlequin out to kill clanless weretigers all crazy style like a logical conduit to that end? It’s a lure? Apparently? Is what you’re telling me? That is the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard. I reiterate: mother of all darkness! Should not need a VERY half-baked plan with absolutely no relevance to her goal to lure Anita Blake to fucking Tacoma, Washington (and WHY THE FUCK Washington?!) and UM WHOOPS it doesn’t work anyway, because of course it doesn’t work, because of course Blake wins every time, but usually you have the decency to at least give me a believable reason why whatever fight is happening is actually happening and not just 200 pages of “I AM ANITA AND I AM AMAZING AND COPS ARE ASSHOLES AND I AM AMAZING AND SEX WITH ME IS GREAT AND I AM AMAZING AND SOMETIMES PEOPLE HATE ME AND I DON’T CARE AS LONG AS THEY ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT ME”

So I guess congratulations are in order, because you have managed to keep me sufficiently full of blinding rage for an entire 20 books. Perhaps it is YOUR vagina that is magical (I’m assuming you write your books with your vagina.) Under other circumstances, I would also consider thanking you for giving me a book that is entirely free of Richard, but if given the choice between 200 pages of his existential angst and 200 pages of THE WORST DIALOGUE EVER* with angry misogynist cops (because there are no other kinds), I think I almost prefer Richard. I mean, the devil you know, right?

Can’t wait for the next installment. Honestly. I can’t wait to round up every copy in publication and throw them off a fucking bridge. No. No. Set fire to them, THEN throw them off a fucking bridge. I think it might now be my personal crusade to destroy all evidence that your terrible books every existed. And by crusade, I mean I’m not actually going to do anything because I’m pretty lazy, but I will fantasize the fuck out of a world that is free of Anita fucking Blake.

*No seriously, your dialogue sucks. It is physically painful to me to even skim through the 10 page conversations about nothing that always take place in parking lots. You’ve been doing this for a while. It’s time to take a course or get some kind of professional help in this area. There are books on the subject. Like, lots of them.

The Lunatic Cafe (AB:VH Book 4)

I hope the fact that it took me over a month to write this is indicative of how little I want to write this. Honestly, I would have done it sooner, but, like, I have a life, a busy one, and it’s hard to write about shitty books when you spend most of your time juggling forty thousand spreadsheets and being elbows deep in forcemeat.* And as shitty books go, HOOBOY, this one is a doozy. I’m going to preemptively apologize for the amount of parenthetical comments I will be making. I cannae help myself, captain. I simply cannae.

On to it, then!

Upon reflection, this book is where the cast of characters begins to get absolutely ridic. Note the use of of “begins” – because it gets worse. Like, stick-my-fucking-tongue-on-the-business-end-of-a-9-volt worse. We are introduced to – count ‘em – seven reoccurring characters in this book. That’s reoccurring! That is NOT counting the periphery, characters who are introduced and then die by the end, or the already-established characters (twelve, at this point, yes, twelve). So, by the end of book FOUR OF TWENTY, there are already NINE-FUCKING-TEEN characters you mostly need to keep track of. I don’t even know how many altogether. More. A lot more. I mean, seriously? Why is that big a cast necessary, when at the end of the day, all of them are reduced to barely sentient beings who’s only real thoughts involve “I love Anita,” “I hate Anita,” “I want to have sex with Anita,” or any combination thereof. LKH’s characters are like Ikea furniture: cheap, barely functional, generically pretty, and named something stupid.

Anyway. We kick off like we do with most of her books; introduced to some dude who wants Anita to do something – professional or other, who cares. Only this dude doesn’t want zombies raised like, you know, she does -  he wants his missing werewolf wife found. There is no explanation for why this dude would go to Blake’s office with such a request at this point in the storyline, so I can only imagine it’s because her amazing magnetism is like a bug zapper for whackjobs. She’s all, fuck off, and sends him to her BFF Ronnie – let’s call her Filler, because that’s all she is, ever – who is a private dick (heh) and handles problems like missing werewolf wives (werewives?)

Later, Blake and blossoming boyfriend Richard (whom, you will be told half a million times, is HOT and ACTS LIKE A BIG BOYSCOUT and WEARS HIS HAIR BACK TO FOOL PEOPLE INTO THINKING IT’S SHORT because lord knows a ponytail is the ultimate mindfuck) take in a rousing performance of Guys And Dolls (um, really, LKH?). Richard is all “I love musicals and wear tight shirts but I’m seriously not gay,**” and Anita is all “OMG stop looking at the crowds like you’re high and they’re Funions” and at some point Jean-Claude (JC!) shows up and says JC-type stuff in Frenglish about Richard being an alpha wolf *** who needs to stop being all meh and start fighting for control of the local wolfpack, or … I don’t fucking know, the scene is so haphazardly written that it’s difficult to relay anything.

At some point during that hot mess, and following the patented LKH formula, DOLPH calls Blake and is all “I have called 20% into the novel as required with a request for you to come to this grisly crime scene and check out some shit, and I will not say goodbye before I hang up” – so she jettisons off to go wade in gore. En route, some crazy vampire bitch kicks Blake’s ass for no actual reason other than adding another unnecessary character into the fray for the later books (where she remains as useless), but I’d rather not spend any more time on that bullshit than I just did.

Crime scene, dead things, 20 pages of Blake asserting herself as a powerful woman who will persevere despite the fact that all men hate strong woman and all cops hate women in general and blah blah. Dead thing. Killed by shapeshifter. Homigod.

And because this day (yes, day, this is one day) apparently has 94 hours ****, Blake goes home and runs into a sniveling reporter werewolf (whom in my head is the nerdy pharmacist from Family Guy) that Richard The Boyfriend was all throwing down with the leader werewolf, but because of his inherent boyscout nature (see) wouldn’t kill him and now shit is hitting the fan, or something, and leader werewolf is all GET ME ANITA BLAKE BECAUSE SHE IS SOMEHOW RELEVANT TO THIS.

You know what? I can’t finish this recap in this vein. Too much happens, and none of it is actually interesting. It’s all, like, foundation work for things that matter (as much as anything ever matters) later.

Here are some key points:

-          We meet the werewolf pack and its cast of MANY characters. We find out that many of them are completely fucked up in a BDSM-Goes-Ultra-And-Lands-In-A-Pile-Of-Snuff way, and many are not. Jason & Raina show up, who are kind of relevant later, in the patented LKH way of making someone relevant but still totally unnecessary.

-          We are continuously treated to Richard whining about how much his life sucks

-          Anita is still a prude and is not putting out.

-          Edward/Robocop kills stuff. And enjoys it.

-          There’s a fucking traitorous wereswan. That’s right. I said WERESWAN. As in, A DUDE WHO TURNS INTO A SWAN.

-          Blake decides that she will just have to start dating JC along with Richard, because JC threatened to kill Richard otherwise. Which? Really? This is the premise of your relationship? And you’re not spending every moment of your dates in sheer fucking terror? To say nothing of how agreeing to this ultimatum is essentially against every single character trait we have been made to believe to this point? What’s that you say, LKH? Oh! THAT’S HOW YOU ROLL.

Anyway, the story ends with some nasty jerk cops (see above, you know, the ones that hate women) who hired the wereswan to send them shapeshifters to hunt, and because the wereswan is a dick (wouldn’t you be?), he was all “sure” and proceeded to be the ringleader of some bizarre were-poaching ring. And all the REALLY bad guys die at the end and all the kind-of bad guys live to see another shitty book.

Ta da!

I’m not linking this trash. If you want it badly enough, you know how to search Amazon.

*I am taking EVERY opportunity to say “elbows deep in forcemeat”  - how do you NOT?

** "No seriously, wait til later when gay stuff happens and I turn into CRAZY BIGOT RAGE RICHARD"

*** My thoughts: if you can change into a wolf at will and kill things, it is implied you are about as alpha as you are ever going to get

**** Or it exists in a tardis, and is larger on the inside than it is on the outside (snare drum, and there, I just won a bet about not being able to knowledgably reference TV shows I don’t watch; in your face, pal)

On finding the crux, or why I hate AB:VH in 5000 words or less

Official Kindle ownership sorted; celebrated by spending 3.5 of the four days I had off absolutely cut off from all communication with the entire world apart from occasional nods to my husband and occasionally feeding my cats. Nice fuh me.

Over the long weekend, I finished books five through most-of-nine of the AB:VH series, treating this task as something to be endured and put behind me as quickly as possible. I am not savoring these books, you guys. I am speeding through them with frequent twitching and very frequent mutterings of “seriously?” and “what the bleeding fuck” to my empty living room.

Before I unleash my recap/review of Book 2, I wanted to try and put out there exactly why I have a barely-love/mostly-hate relationship with this series. Bear with me on this one, it could get messy.

Let’s start with the character of Anita Blake, whom as I get further and further along have realized is not so much a real character but simply a projection of what the author’s, like, fantasy life would be. LKH didn’t really invent Anita Blake – Blake is just a super-maxed version of everything LKH wants to be, and it is obvious enough to be embarrassing; especially since the character is so ridiculously flawed in both personality AND execution. It’s narcissistic, but kind of pathetically so.

Like, I get that this character is the center of the story. I understand that these are tales spun to me in that glorious First Person voice (more on that later) of this character, so yes, of course it is going to be All Her All The Time, and of course she (as a character) is going to feel that it certainly should be that way. What bothers me is that every other character, great or small, seems to feel the exact same way. I can believe in this alternate universe of vampires and were-fucking-everythings. I can believe in the completely-not-real details of this world, of these people in it, their politics and laws. It is called suspension of disbelief, and it is what you expect out of any piece of fiction. What strains my suspension is not the zombie raising or the black magic or the unnecessary overuse of fake words – it’s the concept that not one single inhabitant of this story has mild or neutral feelings towards the main character. Every person or –thing that crosses her path is either hopelessly in love/lust with her, thinks she’s the second coming of Bad Ass Murder Christ, or hates her with a passion … that burns in their loins. It doesn’t make sense. She has not been fleshed out enough as character to be remotely that compelling, even just to other characters. She wears polo shirts, like, a lot! No one who wears that many polo shirts is that fucking attractive!

And she continues to get more and more ridiculous as the series goes on. Now she’s a necromancer! Now she’s a witch!  Now she controls the shapeshifters with nothing but her unmitigated powers of SHEER AWESOMENESS. It feels like a cop-out. It feels like LKH has made this woman some kind of preternatural (yet human! Still human! LEST WE FORGET) superwoman because she’s too goddamn lazy to figure out a way to explain how Anita Blake could possibly A) still be alive, and more importantly B) why anyone should actually give a shit.

[to be continued ... ]