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kippurcritiquesbadbooksChapter thirty four.
OHMIGAWD PLOT!! And it only took us three hundred and twenty one pages to get there. Wow.
Right. So, they go to the hospital for the maternity tests. She's brought two submissive lions with her because Joseph the Rex of the city's lions doesn't like Haven and he's hoping she'll pick less dominant lions. Which was fine by her, but "How do you choose from relative strangers? How do you choose the ones who will at the very least let you change them, violently, no their animal forms. How do you trust that they won't fight you?"
Isn't she doing the same thing with all the other random people that are being brought for her to taste? Isn't it also better that she's getting recommendation from someone she knows and trusts as opposed to complete and utter strangers who are making power plays? But that's just me.
Anyway, the two lions are about twenty and in college. Obligatory paragraph of description:
Now, I'm not certain as to why we need to know these things about Travis and Noel, but I immediately like them better than any of the other characters introduced. She actually shows us something about who they are besides what they look like and how they move. Their descriptions are brief and we know that they're college age. Their choices of majors also gives a bit more description of their personalities as well as the fact that Noel brought his books to study. This is interesting and I wish she would do this for the other characters in her book.
She has four body guards: Claudia, Graham, Lisandro and Ixion. Ixion (who hates his name) was named by Narcissus the leader of the were-hyenas. Apparently he names his new men and has far to much fun doing it. What I don't get is why Narcissus names his men. What's the matter with just letting them keep their names? It seems silly and well... perhaps he's saying that this is your new life and you must shed your old name to embrace your new life. Sounds rather cultish to me.
Anita is nervous, and once again, rightly so. After all, she's having a maternity test and may have something horribly wrong with her child -the two previously mentioned conditions. She's bitchy when Richard tries to comfort her, but this time I think she's justified somewhat. However, she does wonder "Why couldn't understand that I just wanted to be left the fuck alone? Micah understood it." My thought is that he really wants some comfort of his own and/or thinks that maybe this is another way for her to get a hold of her nervousness. I mean previously, group hugs helped tremendously.
Richard tells her that she needs to calm down or she might call her beast. She says that doing that would solve their problem. She's having another one of her flip flops on the abortion policies because this time she says "the Hell I don't" when Richard says "you don't mean that." I really wish she would make up her mind. Though now that I'm thinking about it, I imagine that a pregnant woman with an unwanted pregnancy may actually go through such flip-flops. The choice of maybe ending a life. In Judaism, a fetus is not considered a life until I think until after the first trimester of pregnancy. Until then it's okay to abort the baby because it's not real. But from what I know about Christianity, it's not like that, and since Anita is Catholic (in theory) it is something that she would have issues with. Of course, a Jewish woman would also have issues with it, but tradition says that it's okay.
Not being able to comfort Anita, Richard steps outside. And then the Doctor, Dr. North, shows up. He asks for the other body guards to come in because they're making the staff nervous. Claudia directs Ixion to the window because "not everything that hunts us comes through doors." I'm thinking Anita is being paranoid now. And it reminds of some of the stuff I read on Hamilton's journal where she's afraid of being swarmed and has a bodyguard for protection. I would think that she would be less conspicuous if she didn't have the four guys dressed in black following her around. But that's just me.
Richard comes back in and offers Anita his hand. She takes it and then takes Micah's hand. Again perfectly reasonable as she would want as much comfort as possible when listening to the doctor.
The Doctor tells her that as far as the tests can tell, she's got Mowgli and Vald's syndrome. As this is considered impossible according to science, the only conclusion is that she must be carrying twins. She nearly faints. This chapter is another one of the better chapters where people's and Anita's reactions are well within human norms.
To make things even more fun, Anita tested negative for being pregnant despite the fact that the only way for her to show up as having those syndromes is if she's pregnant.
She's being special again.
Still as they have no idea if she's pregnant or not they decide, reasonably, the only way to make sure, is to have an ultrasound.
This chapter scares me in the fact that it's so well written, despite the occasional lapses into specialness.
Chapter thirty five:
So begins the ultrasound. There is suddenly a group of interns and nurses who Dr. North didn't say in the previous chapter, but Anita says he said. Minor continuity problem, have done that myself too. Hamilton probably stopped writing between these two chapters. The doctor kicks out most of the interns and nurses and Anita kicks out her people except Micah and Richard.
Somehow she managed to get a gun into the hospital. In any case, it comes off. She wonders if a vasectomy on a lycanthrope was a sure thing and mentions it. Micah's vasectomy included silver clips and getting the ends burned off. For some reason this makes me think that his balls got cut off. Literally. We already know that his balls have been cut off metaphorically with the way he does whatever Anita tells him to do. Dr. North says that Micah should check for silver poisoning because of the use of the silver clips. An interesting note of the world.
And finally we learn that Anita is NOT pregnant.
Who here saw that coming? After all why would Anita need to fuck up her life with trying to raise a child. She needs to have massive amounts of sex, which is really hard to do when you need to breast feed a baby. She's had a very rare case of false positive. The reasoning why she came back with the Mowgli's syndrome is because she's a lycanthrope (of sorts). The tests aren't designed for them.
I'm suddenly seeing a whole new market opening up here.
One of the interns ask about the bites. The intern is going into preternatural obstetrics. Again a nice bit of world building here. After all if lycanthropes and vampires and other such creatures are being accepted as natural parts of society then they would need specialized care. I think this would be more interesting to investigate that the sex. And Anita explains that to her. It's pointless and has nothing to do with the story.
A cute bit happens here, when she's all done and repeats to her men that she's not pregnant. It actually works.
This is my favorite part in the book. It's actually shows some character of Anita in a way that isn't all Tell. It's a shame that it doesn't happen all the time.
The thing, however, that really bugs me is that this plot? Is resolved in TWO consecutive chapters. Two! The plot could have been not put into the novel and it wouldn't have effected the overall story. If you're going to put in a subplot, you should have effect the main story line in some way that if you removed it, it wouldn't hold together. So, while these two chapters were good, and much better than the rest of the book, I would have, if I were the editor and not the goldfish, have them cut.
OHMIGAWD PLOT!! And it only took us three hundred and twenty one pages to get there. Wow.
Right. So, they go to the hospital for the maternity tests. She's brought two submissive lions with her because Joseph the Rex of the city's lions doesn't like Haven and he's hoping she'll pick less dominant lions. Which was fine by her, but "How do you choose from relative strangers? How do you choose the ones who will at the very least let you change them, violently, no their animal forms. How do you trust that they won't fight you?"
Isn't she doing the same thing with all the other random people that are being brought for her to taste? Isn't it also better that she's getting recommendation from someone she knows and trusts as opposed to complete and utter strangers who are making power plays? But that's just me.
Anyway, the two lions are about twenty and in college. Obligatory paragraph of description:
The all seemed soft and unfinished and too fragile for my life, but I chose two of them. Travis and Noel; blondish and brunette respectively. Travis was a business major and Noel an English major. Noel wore glasses and had a test on Monday. He'd brought books to study. Travis just brought himself.
Now, I'm not certain as to why we need to know these things about Travis and Noel, but I immediately like them better than any of the other characters introduced. She actually shows us something about who they are besides what they look like and how they move. Their descriptions are brief and we know that they're college age. Their choices of majors also gives a bit more description of their personalities as well as the fact that Noel brought his books to study. This is interesting and I wish she would do this for the other characters in her book.
She has four body guards: Claudia, Graham, Lisandro and Ixion. Ixion (who hates his name) was named by Narcissus the leader of the were-hyenas. Apparently he names his new men and has far to much fun doing it. What I don't get is why Narcissus names his men. What's the matter with just letting them keep their names? It seems silly and well... perhaps he's saying that this is your new life and you must shed your old name to embrace your new life. Sounds rather cultish to me.
Anita is nervous, and once again, rightly so. After all, she's having a maternity test and may have something horribly wrong with her child -the two previously mentioned conditions. She's bitchy when Richard tries to comfort her, but this time I think she's justified somewhat. However, she does wonder "Why couldn't understand that I just wanted to be left the fuck alone? Micah understood it." My thought is that he really wants some comfort of his own and/or thinks that maybe this is another way for her to get a hold of her nervousness. I mean previously, group hugs helped tremendously.
Richard tells her that she needs to calm down or she might call her beast. She says that doing that would solve their problem. She's having another one of her flip flops on the abortion policies because this time she says "the Hell I don't" when Richard says "you don't mean that." I really wish she would make up her mind. Though now that I'm thinking about it, I imagine that a pregnant woman with an unwanted pregnancy may actually go through such flip-flops. The choice of maybe ending a life. In Judaism, a fetus is not considered a life until I think until after the first trimester of pregnancy. Until then it's okay to abort the baby because it's not real. But from what I know about Christianity, it's not like that, and since Anita is Catholic (in theory) it is something that she would have issues with. Of course, a Jewish woman would also have issues with it, but tradition says that it's okay.
Not being able to comfort Anita, Richard steps outside. And then the Doctor, Dr. North, shows up. He asks for the other body guards to come in because they're making the staff nervous. Claudia directs Ixion to the window because "not everything that hunts us comes through doors." I'm thinking Anita is being paranoid now. And it reminds of some of the stuff I read on Hamilton's journal where she's afraid of being swarmed and has a bodyguard for protection. I would think that she would be less conspicuous if she didn't have the four guys dressed in black following her around. But that's just me.
Richard comes back in and offers Anita his hand. She takes it and then takes Micah's hand. Again perfectly reasonable as she would want as much comfort as possible when listening to the doctor.
The Doctor tells her that as far as the tests can tell, she's got Mowgli and Vald's syndrome. As this is considered impossible according to science, the only conclusion is that she must be carrying twins. She nearly faints. This chapter is another one of the better chapters where people's and Anita's reactions are well within human norms.
To make things even more fun, Anita tested negative for being pregnant despite the fact that the only way for her to show up as having those syndromes is if she's pregnant.
She's being special again.
Still as they have no idea if she's pregnant or not they decide, reasonably, the only way to make sure, is to have an ultrasound.
This chapter scares me in the fact that it's so well written, despite the occasional lapses into specialness.
Chapter thirty five:
So begins the ultrasound. There is suddenly a group of interns and nurses who Dr. North didn't say in the previous chapter, but Anita says he said. Minor continuity problem, have done that myself too. Hamilton probably stopped writing between these two chapters. The doctor kicks out most of the interns and nurses and Anita kicks out her people except Micah and Richard.
Somehow she managed to get a gun into the hospital. In any case, it comes off. She wonders if a vasectomy on a lycanthrope was a sure thing and mentions it. Micah's vasectomy included silver clips and getting the ends burned off. For some reason this makes me think that his balls got cut off. Literally. We already know that his balls have been cut off metaphorically with the way he does whatever Anita tells him to do. Dr. North says that Micah should check for silver poisoning because of the use of the silver clips. An interesting note of the world.
And finally we learn that Anita is NOT pregnant.
Who here saw that coming? After all why would Anita need to fuck up her life with trying to raise a child. She needs to have massive amounts of sex, which is really hard to do when you need to breast feed a baby. She's had a very rare case of false positive. The reasoning why she came back with the Mowgli's syndrome is because she's a lycanthrope (of sorts). The tests aren't designed for them.
I'm suddenly seeing a whole new market opening up here.
One of the interns ask about the bites. The intern is going into preternatural obstetrics. Again a nice bit of world building here. After all if lycanthropes and vampires and other such creatures are being accepted as natural parts of society then they would need specialized care. I think this would be more interesting to investigate that the sex. And Anita explains that to her. It's pointless and has nothing to do with the story.
A cute bit happens here, when she's all done and repeats to her men that she's not pregnant. It actually works.
"I'm not pregnant"
"We heard," Micah said, smiling.
"Well, say something," I said.
Richard said, "What do you want us to say?"
"Are you disappointed? Happy? Relived?
"We're waiting for you to tell us which reaction won't piss you off," Micah said.
This is my favorite part in the book. It's actually shows some character of Anita in a way that isn't all Tell. It's a shame that it doesn't happen all the time.
The thing, however, that really bugs me is that this plot? Is resolved in TWO consecutive chapters. Two! The plot could have been not put into the novel and it wouldn't have effected the overall story. If you're going to put in a subplot, you should have effect the main story line in some way that if you removed it, it wouldn't hold together. So, while these two chapters were good, and much better than the rest of the book, I would have, if I were the editor and not the goldfish, have them cut.
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