Book #80

The Harlequin
by Laurell K. Hamilton

The second to last book we have at present -- though she's still writing more, I'm happy to say, plus I still have that whole Merry Gentry series to read, woot! -- and one of the best so far. The Harlequin starts off like Burnt Offerings, with a harbinger of vampiric doom; this time it isn't the Council itself coming to visit, but rather the long arm of vampire law: the Harlequin. These are the silent assassins of vampiredom -- the Justicars, for those who know White Wolf, and that was immediately how I thought of them -- who enforce the Council's law, observing and eliminating vampires who break the rules. I read another book not long ago that used Harlequins as a name for a group; in that book, the use of the name was, well, lame, because the Harlequins were hardcore killing machines, trained from birth to feel nothing and to kill everything (It wasn't a very good book, as you might surmise) in pursuit of their mission (Though why you'd continue on with a mission when you don't have any feelings and thus no real motivation to do anything is beyond me -- but then, there's that bad writing again), but in this book, the use of Harlequin worked, mainly because the name itself was not supposed to project their badassness: it was more a reflection of the vampire love for melodrama, and for that, the references to Commedia dell'Arte worked just fine. They use masks to communicate -- if you get a white mask they are observing, a red mask means they're going to hurt you, and a black mask means they're going to bake you brownies. No, not really. -- and they wear costumes and use the names of the original characters of the Commedia, Columbine and Pantaleon and so on. And since these vamps come from the founder of the council, the MOAD, it seems very likely that the characters came from these folk, not the other way around, and that makes them much more interesting than a bunch of people who use single names like Cher and live in hiding from the Vast Machine.

Anyway, the Harlequin come to town (and ruin Anita and Nathaniel's anniversary date night, which is too bad because the date has implications for their future relationship, and also too bad because the thread of Nathaniel and Anita's relationship gets lost in the events that follow, which probably has further implications for their relationship) and then immediately start screwing with Jean-Claude's power base, by going after the weak link in the St. Louis vampire world: Malcolm and all of the un-blood-oathed vampires of the Church. Anita is understandably freaked out by these things, and she calls in the big guns: Edward. Who brings not only Olaf, but also his newest back-up: Peter.

So here's the thing with these books. The characters are so real, and so honestly multi-layered, that they do unpredictable things, and they do things that have serious repercussions, repercussions that may very well keep on echoing again and again and again. What's more, since the series is as long as it is, there have come to be many characters who are multi-layered and thus unpredictable but always fascinating. Peter and Olaf are prime examples of that. When Edward brings these two, all Hamilton has to do is write down their names, have Anita see them just once; we immediately understand several things about this. We know that Olaf is going to cause real problems for Anita, since he wants to hunt her and kill her, and we know that Peter's coming is not only dangerous for Peter, but also for Edward, and for Donna, Peter's mother (who we remember as a character in her own right), and we have ideas and opinions on all of these things. We also wonder if this means that Edward has gone soft, since he had to have given in to sentiment in bringing his 16-year-old semi-adopted son, and the old Edward didn't have that sentiment; then we have to wonder if his softening will be a strength, as it is for Anita, or a weakness. Then we just have to wonder what will happen when a 16-year-old assassin-in-training is brought into this world. And then, when Edward reveals a few things about how Peter has been affected by his experiences -- mainly his sexual abuse from two years before, in Obsidian Butterfly -- we have to wonder about the implications of those factors, and how they will affect Anita, and Edward, and Peter, and Donna, and so on, so on.

The complexities just keep multiplying until it's almost dizzying. It was getting hard for me to remember all of the characters I was supposed to remember -- there's a moment at the end of this book when something is revealed about one of the bodyguards, and when it was revealed, I couldn't remember any details about that bodyguard's character in the first place, so I was confused -- but that's been taken care of: two of the bodyguards have died, and one other person, Sampson, the would-be siren, has gone back where he came from. The issue with Malcolm's church has been mostly resolved, and we've seen what stunning badasses Wicked and Truth are -- which was totally sweet -- and Haven, aka Cookie Monster, has returned to take over the lion pride, which will probably be helpful in the long run but will certainly add complications to Anita's life. Along with a new character for us to try to fathom.

And, I was glad to see, Richard may just have broken his last straw. Oh, happy day. But whether this ends the Richard saga or not, there were several threads that got taken care of, either by weaving them solidly into place in the overall story, or just by cutting them off. This book definitely made up for the problems of the last one, which focused a bit too much on the ardeur, to the detriment of the plot; although there are ardeur issues in this one, they offer new insights, not just repetitions, and the final revelation about the ardeur and its uses for Anita and Jean-Claude was truly excellent. Maybe I liked it more than others would because it ends up flipping the bird to Richard, in a way -- but it was cool, no matter what. Great book.