kippurcritiquesbadbooks | I never needed it anyway.

Anita Blake Drinking Game

Take a drink every time...

*she has sex (shush)
*someone is jealous of her
*the eyes are described in ridiculous Sue Terms.
*Richard objects to something and Anita shoots him down.
*a male is described in horrible 1980s clothes.
*one of Anita's special powers is mentioned.
*someone mentions the term "lion king."
*the phrase "tight" or "wet" shows up.
*long hair is mentioned on males. Two if it's Nathaniel.
*the word "ardeur" or "arduer" appears
*Anita mentions how much she loves oral sex.
*she mentions her homophobia.
*Jean-Claude infodumps
*Jean-Claude somehow manages to pull off that look
*Ruffles are mentioned on Jean-Claude
*someone changes from human to animal form
*she focuses on the size of a guy's cock
*someone calls her The Executioner
*Richard threatens to kill Jean-Claude
*there's bondage.
*Anita acts like a dominatrix but says she's not into it.
*she shags more than one man at once (one drink for each participant over two).
*the plot makes absolutely no sense.
*you could swear a male character acts like a flaming gay, but they STILL want Anita.
*a female character is made to look bad in comparison to Anita
* Excessive description of what someone is wearing.
*the word "metaphysical" appears.
\~/ Right then. Drinks at the ready?

Chapter Three

This is an interesting chapter. It tries to show Anita's position in the were-world, but fails utterly. Mostly because I have no idea what she's talking about!

The trio show up at the Circus of the Damned in the employee parking lot. Nathaniel helped Anita with her eyeshadow. And we get a nice description of what she's wearing. \~/. It's black and she has a gun and a knife on her. But not her cross. The two boys also get a long description of their clothing. \~/\~/, both of which match their eyes. \~/\~/. Nathaniel's hair is braided, "so that it gave the illusion that his hair was short, until you saw the braid waving around his ankles" \~/\~/. I'm not really sure how that works. I mean if it was in a bun (which would look terribly silly) I could see that, but not in a braid. And it's down to his ankles, again. Still, why hasn't anyone stepped on it or something. I really want to yank it and tie him up to something with it. There's some blather about Anita's heels which is just.. I mean, who really cares about her heels. It's trying to show that she's a no nonsense, practical sort of girl but this isn't the time nor the place for it. And it's just annoying to have to read an entire paragraph about her heels.

They use a key to get in and then a werewolf stops them.

Graham was tall and muscular enough to make it impossible to move through the door without brushing him. He stood for a moment looking down at me, at us, I guess, though it felt more personal than that. His perfectly straight black hair managed to fall decoratively over his brown eyes, and still be very short on the bottom, so the strong line of his neck was left bare and strangely tempting.

I've got this picture now of the hair tastefully done by some interior designer like a pair of curtains. \~/ Also I'm not really sure what she means by being short on the bottom and still able to fall over his eyes. The neck this is weird as well. Does she want to kiss it, bite it, sauté it? What? \~/ I don't know. She'll probably end up having sex with him.

What happens next is Anita proving how special she is by putting Graham in his place. Graham doesn't want to let them in and says that Micah has no authority over him because Micah is a cat and he's a wolf. He completely ignores Anita which for some reason makes her comment, "There were so many reasons Graham had not made the leap from bodyguard to breakfast snack for me". And that gets a drink for being utterly incomprehensible\~/ Wouldn't be a snack worse than being a bodyguard? Or am I missing something here. I probably am. Again, this is probably Hamilton figuring that since she knows why, other people do too. \~/

And then we get the first hint of one of Anita's powers. OoooOooo. Hint as in being bludgeon on the head with a grand piano. Preferably not my mom's but it's the only one I have handy.

His ignoring pissed me off, and the first thread of anger brought my own version of the beast. That warm, prickling thread of power breathed over my skin and danced around the men around me. I was not a true shapeshifter, because I couldn't shift, but I carried four strains of lycanthropy in my bloodstream. If you catch one type of lycanthropy, it protects from any other strain. You can't carry more than one disease at a time, but I did. A medical impossibility, but blood tests don't lie. I carried wolf, leopard, lion, and one mysterious strain that the doctors couldn't identify running through my veins. That, and some metaphysical impossibilities, meant I had power to call. Power to use, up to a point.

\~/\~/\~/\~/\~/

Let us look at that paragraph carefully now. First of all she doesn't have a regular beast, but a special one. She can't shapeshift, even though she has the "conditions" needed to shapeshift. She's not a true shapeshifter, but has the power of one. Not only that, but to continue this specialness of hers, she right out contradicts her world rules. She says that normally people can only have one strain of lycanthropy but she has four. I'm sure this was explained in earlier books in some sort of ridiculous terms, but she ADMITS that it's an impossibility and yet still there she is. Why? Because she's Just That Special. As the Mary Sue, or lead character, she doesn't have to follow the rules that others do. Also, notice she only had the cool kind of weres. No rat there, nope. Or snake, I remember there being a snake. Just really cool powerful Suey sort. Every Sue has wolves and lions and leopards as special companion animals. No one has rats. And blood tests can totally lie. That's why they have false positives and things like that. But here they can't because otherwise science can't prove that she's a medical impossibility, which only pounds into our heads (with aforementioned grand piano) that she's special and science proves it. And that's not even special enough. She has one mystery strain.

I hope it's slug. She can call on the power to ooze at her enemies and instead of silver, she'd be threatened by salt.

It'll probably be something horribly... sparkley though. Like a dragon-unicorn-fairy-something or another. Or... something.

Finally, her explanation for this all is basically "It's Magic" which is basically a lazy excuse to say, I can do whatever I want so Damn Be everything else. The least she could have done is set up some sort of precedent that it has happened at LEAST once before. Even if it happened hundreds of years ago. Then it wouldn't be breaking the rules so much.

Anita continues to push her authority over Graham. I think Hamilton made him so big so that we'll be impressed that little Anita can stomp all over him because she doesn't take shit from anyone. But currently, combined with her other behavior with Ronnie, this is just making her look like a bully. Also, I need a drink \~/ for Anita calling herself the Executioner. "I am the executioner of bad little werewolves who don't remember their place".

The smack down is followed by a random infodump \~/ about Anita's eating habits. Which involves sex and the ardeur which is why she needs to have sex with all these men. Also things about triumvirates of power which also has to do with the feedings... and um... a sweetie.. and um... mention of homophobia of sorts... and um... right... \~/\~/\~/\~/\~/\~/\~/

To put this in more coherent terms, Hamilton randomly infodumps us about Anita's sex needs and the fact that she doesn't have a pomme de sang any more. Really that was the only thing that needed to be mentioned in the entire paragraph from what comes next.

\~/ What happens is that Graham was in the running to be Anita's next Pomegranate because Nathaniel no longer worked as one. He got pushy so she didn't want him, but he still does. There's a couple of more mentions of the aurderous \~/\~/\~/ which is described as "The ardeur is the greatest orgasmic experience that any of the vampire lines can gives to a mortal." And it goes back to being all about sex. It's not because it can grant a power or something like that. It's just a great orgasm. Because that's all what matters. And that, apparently, is all that Anita is good for, great orgasms.

Following this, Graham leads them down into the where ever they're supposed to be going and a discussion of one particular vampire, Meng Die is had. It starts out about her and her being powerful and wanting to take control over things and then degrades into her sex life and who she's sleeping with. It's like some sort of horrible soap opera. Where someone is sleeping with someone else because they can't sleep with the third person and the second person stopped sleeping with the first person because she's upset that she's only being slept with because the first one is using her as second best...

Or something. It took me three reads to figure out what was going on, but I still didn't get it.

The upshot of it is though, Anita doesn't like sharing her men. Even though she expects her men to share her. Yup. Double Standards here. \~/.

Drink Count: 29