Book #78

Danse Macabre
by Laurell K. Hamilton

I have to admit, I'm getting a little tired of some parts of these books. But then, I've now read, what, fourteen of them? I have to think there would be elements of any series that would get tiresome after that many books. I know I got sick of the Aes Sedai in the Wheel of Time, and of Rand trying to make himself hard as stone, and of the regular theme of the battle of the sexes, and several other themes that Robert Jordan kept coming back to -- and those books are my all-time favorites.

In these books, it isn't that I'm tired of the sex scenes. I enjoy the visceral, no-holds-barred writing in these books, in both the violent scenes and the sexual scenes; I don't get many chances to read this sort of writing, and if I did move more into reading erotica, I'd end up with far more graphic sex and far less plot elements unrelated to the sex, so this is a good compromise for me. No, what I'm getting a little tired of is the necessity of sex, and all the discussion of the meaning of the sex or the lack of meaning of the sex. I don't mind that Anita needs to feed the ardeur, but I do mind that she needs to feed herself, and then Jean-Claude, and then Nathaniel and Damian, and then herself again, and then she needs to have sex with Asher because he feels left out, and so on and so forth. It's basically me having trouble with the same thing that Anita is having trouble with: there are just too many freaking men in her life. As a brief side note on that, Anita's greatest value to Jean-Claude, in terms of being his human servant and increasing his power, is that she can give him energy when she feeds; she can act as a power source. So how come Damian is nothing but a drain? I get that her power keeps him alive, but shouldn't he be able to maintain that power level, and even add to it for Anita, when he feeds? Is it just that he doesn't feed enough?

The other problem I had with this book was that I couldn't relate to the main tension: the idea that Anita might be pregnant. When I read that, and read the moment when she thought to herself that a child simply could not fit into her life and her relationships, I nodded; so when Richard confronted her and demanded to know if she could kill their child (Which, as a pro-choice person who believes in science over souls, irritated me right there, because it's a hunk of cells, not a child) and she said no, she couldn't, I was just annoyed. I realize that people feel that way about children, but I don't, so it was tough for me to be sympathetic; instead, I was just vastly annoyed by Richard's smug assumption that now he'd get Anita to move behind his white picket fence and dump everybody else that she loves. Every time Richard said, "But when you get someone pregnant, you marry them. It's just what you do," I wanted to slap him. So that whole plotline got on my nerves terribly -- though I loved how it ended up.

On the plus side, I liked the new City-Masters who were introduced, both Auggie and Samuel, and their separate concerns; I liked that Hamilton managed to write Auggie as this stunningly obnoxious overbearing male, and yet managed to keep him from being that and nothing more. As bad as Auggie behaves, he has his sympathetic moments and his good side, and so I liked him as a character and hope he recurs. I really like the mermaid connection, both the pushy bitch of a mother and the shy-but-eager virginal boys -- though I'm annoyed that numeric age keeps coming up as an issue; okay, Nathaniel is only 20, and the mermaid twins are only 17, but why does that mean anything? Age is not an indicator of maturity, and it annoys me that they act as if it is. Though I do, of course, understand the objection to having sex with minors, or taking the one boy's virginity. And I wonder how an ancient vampire like Samuel managed to father children, something that wasn't explained . . .

I liked the dance element, but wanted more information, and hope they come back, since there is the connection to the Mother Of All Darkness through Merlin -- who's a great character. I don't think much of London, or of his apparent role as the deus ex machina for dealing with the ardeur -- but since he may solve the problem I was complaining about at the beginning of this review, I guess I'll just take him as a blessing for now and hope a better solution presents itself.

Still enjoying the books, still excited about reading the next one.