Narcissus in Chains Chapter Four

"The club was over the river on the Illinois side, along with most of the other questionable clubs."

So a little known fact about me is that I am absolute shit with geography, and I am certainly not in the know about St. Louis in general. However, I have learned that it is the ninth most segregated city in the U.S. So I have a sneaking suspicion that LKH is talking about the scaaaaary black neighborhood here. If anyone can confirm this, please let me know.

There are some resonances regarding minority discrimination as well; Anita tells us that if the people in power don't want a vampire or shifter club in their area, they will manipulate the law in order to force these businesses out over archaic zoning guidelines. This could be very interesting in the hands of someone else. Since it is LKH, to say I am worried about where this is going is an understatement.

Some irritating stuff about finding parking, and how a normal woman would be oh so scared to walk in this area alone at night but Anita isn't because as usual she's packing a ridiculous arsenal. I am not sure why Anita needs to be in opposition to the 'average' woman in order to be an effective character, but I am willing to overlook a certain amount of this if only because again, I feel the main character of an urban fantasy almost needs to experience Othering to be effective.

However, I question why this Othering has to come at the expense of typical feminine expectations and gender performance. Being feminine is not a bad thing. Enjoying makeup and skirts and socializing in clubs and whatever else are perfectly acceptable things to enjoy. I think I would find this more effective if it were shown that Anita is different from the mainstream human, as opposed to being different (and somehow better) than the average cis woman.

Speaking of Anita's arsenal: "A gun doesn't cure all ills, but it's a start. I also had a knife sheath around each calf, very high up, so that the hilts came up on the sides of my knees." How in the hell she is going to draw those when she has a skirt on, I don't know. Also I'd think every time you took a step, the handles would push forward and distort the line of her clothing. Not very subtle. 

Okay so apparently Anita does know some hand to hand, including Judo and Kenpo. So again I question this almost pathological reliance on guns and knives.

Oh my god, fuck you Anita. Why? Check out this gem: "Of course, I don't usually walk around looking like bait." WALKING AROUND IN A SHORT SKIRT IS ASKING FOR IT, YOU GUYS. 

Now, I should say that I don't think main characters need to be or even should be perfect. Oftentimes they're carrying around the same baggage we are in terms of sexism, racism etc. Hell, one of my MCs thinks appearance/behavior on the part of the victim and sexual assault are linked, because that's what his own ongoing sexual assault has taught him. Once you've had someone you should be able to trust tell you repeatedly that you were asking for it, well, you're going to start to believe it. But why does Anita buy in to this? Do they not have sensitivity training at her job? They sure as hell should since they're often dealing with those who are grieving and fragile. As far as I know she hasn't undergone any personal experiences that would instill this notion in her, aside from being raised in a society with a thriving rape culture. It bothers me that someone still holding on to this attitude is in charge of people like Nate, who need to internalize the notion that they weren't asking for it, that no matter what they were wearing, or doing, they didn't deserve their assault(s). 

She goes on about her clothes too much. She gets in to explaining how magical shielding works in her world, which is perfectly fine. But then she says, "Talking about shielding always made me feel like I was having a psychotic break and sharing my delusions." I can relate. This is how I feel whenever I talk about polytheism and that, yes, I do believe in the gods as real beings and not just thought forms. But I don't understand why Anita has this hang up in a world where magic has always been present. Shouldn't it be as unremarkable as any discipline? Math, science, magic? More inconsistencies in world building. Either magic and supernatural beings have always been present, or they haven't. 

"It had only been in the last two weeks that Marianne had discovered that I hadn't really understood shielding at all. I'd just thought it was a matter of how powerful your aura was and how you could reinforce it. She said the only reason I'd been able to get by with that for as long as I had was that I was simply that powerful." 

Again I am being told that Anita is massively powerful, but I have yet to see anything that justifies such an assertion. 

The walk to the club is two blocks but this is at least six blocks worth of thinking. 

Jason turns up in a ridiculous club outfit. This is one of the things that I think could be really awesome. Go for a dark, twisted world, one that's overtly sexual and almost cartoonish. You could even justify the crazy penis sizes that way. Distort the surroundings, the people. But instead this book hovers between wanting to take itself seriously and wanting to go overboard, and we're left with something fairly bland and silly as a result.

Anyway, Jason is one of Jean-Claude's werewolf servants, otherwise known as an animal to call. This by the way is one of my favorite ideas in the AB world. Of course it's underutilized and often the abuses done to these wereanimals is hand waved and ignored. Wait till I get to Harlequin. I am going to have some shit to say then. 

We go through Jason's outfit for a couple of pages. The text reminds me that at this point Anita is supposed to be lupa, werewolf queen, and that buggering off left the entire werewolf population of St. Louis at loose ends. Oh Anita, you're such a wonderful, powerful, dominant leader. Not. 

Jason exists to get Anita in to the club so she doesn't have to wait in line. Not a good way to stay inconspicuous considering Jason is dressed in an outfit about as subtle as a disco ball. That, and she's going to irritate everyone in line by cutting ahead, ensuring that some people are now going to remember the thoughtless bitch who got a personal escort inside. 

Anita tells us over and over that Jason is wearing a tiny little thong and she can see the outline of his balls and ass. Woop de doo. It's a fetish club. People are showing off. This is not news. 

"The music hit me at the door like a giant's slap." We've already had a variation on this theme what with J.C.'s voice being a "velvet slap." Vary your analogies, lady! 

"I hadn't expected Narcissus in Chains to be a dance club." Why not? My local bondage club has several dance nights. ..."it looked like a lot of other clubs." Well yes. What were you expecting? 

LKH wants the club to be like this:

But really it's like this:

Blah blah Jason takes Anita to J.C., who is standing off to the side watching people dance. J.C. is wearing another one of those "poured on" outfits. I don't know why Anita and LKH both seem so obsessed with androgyny, only to assure me in the same paragraph of J.C.'s masculinity. Is this like nineteenth century novels where the heroine could only have grand adventurers if she married someone at the end? DON'T WORRY GUYS, WE ALMOST HAD A NON-BINARY STANDARD OF BEAUTY BUT REALLY IT'S CIS MASCULINE. GLAD WE CLEARED THAT UP. 

"The first time I saw the blue-green roil of the Caribbean, I cried, because it was so beautiful. Jean-Claude made me feel like that, like I should weep at his beauty." I actually like this, though I question the word roil here. I thought that meant whipping the water up so that all the grit and mud darkened it, and I've always imagined the Caribbean as quite clear. 

I like this too: "It was like being offered an original da Vinci, not just to hang on your wall and admire, but to roll around on top of." I think that does a good job of conveying how decadent Jean-Claude is, how being around him feels somehow outside the bounds of what's normal, but in a pleasurable, forbidden way. 

I don't want to be too nitpicky but I can't figure out how JC's eyelashes are supposed to be like lace. Lace has patterns in it. 

Narcissus makes an appearance as Anita and J.C. stand around staring at each other. Narcissus self-describes as a hermaphrodite and is physically intersex. He uses male pronouns. Yay! Except, he's dressed in a way that makes me oddly uneasy. He's wearing a dress and a ton of makeup, spike heels and lace stockings. It's not that I protest his gender presentation--that would be pretty damn weird coming from me--it's just that I question LKH's need to feminize him. Since LKH seems to have a very serious vendetta against traditional femininity I can't help but think that dressing him up like this is part of that agenda. 

Anita is desperately confused by Narcissus' gender presentation and consequently doesn't know how to treat him. This does happen in real life so I'm not going to jump all over her for it. There are some good things about Narcissus. He's an alpha, and secure in himself and in his gender performance. I think it's kind of funny that Narcissus has a bunch of hunky male hyenas around that flex for him on command. You do you, honey. Who wouldn't. 

One thing I do NOT get about werehyenas is that they've modeled themselves on Greek myth. Because of the hermaphrodite story? That seems like an odd thing to base your society on. It's quite possible that Narcissus has just decided to order his hyenas in such a way, which if that's the case tells me he lives up to his name. 

Anita says, "Greek myths, nice naming convention." Apparently this is supposed to be funny somehow. The attempts at humor in these books never really seem to grow legs. It's usually Anita saying some random nonsense and then being confused about why people don't laugh. 

Anita is wearing Oscar de la Renta perfume, which Narcissus can smell quite clearly. He also smells Anita's gun. I find it very weird that Anita is wearing that type of perfume given her general contempt for anything even the slightest bit womanly, but I don't know, maybe J.C. gave it to her or something. Narcissus tells her she can't have her gun in a neutral space (which is what the club is) and surprisingly she hands the gun over.

BUT we need to have more ridiculous Anita is a sociopath stuff when Narcissus tells her whether or not she's happy about surrendering her weapon is not his problem: "I met his eyes and felt my face slip into that look that could make a good cop flinch--my monster peeking out." Good lord this is insufferable. Being the equivalent to a dangerous criminal or a dirty cop is a bad thing. I can't believe I have to keep saying this. Dirty cops are disgusting. They are perverting the role of a service professional, and there are few things I find less defensible than that. If you're going in to a field that is supposed to help people and you abuse your power within that field, you have zero integrity and your worth as a person is in serious jeopardy. Taking advantage of people in a power differential situation where they are in a position of relative powerlessness to you is sick. Anita, you are sick, and again it's pathetic and gross instead of making you cool. I hate this so much.

"I nodded, but I said, if my people get hurt because I don't have my gun, I can make it your problem." It's hard for me to come up with another main character as completely unpleasant as Anita is. I was once assaulted by a woman who had a very similar attitude. She was hands down the most aggressive person I have ever met, and nasty to boot. That is what Anita reminds me of. I can completely see Anita being willing to spit on me while throwing punches. She doesn't like or enjoy anything. She's overly reliant on violence to solve all of her problems. She views diplomacy as a weakness instead of a skill. Of course main characters can be difficult to like and still be effective, but there's nothing about Anita that a reader can feel sympathetic towards. Even anti-heroes usually have something that humanizes them. 

Also once again I have to harp on the fact that guns do not solve problems. Oftentimes, they create problems. Anita also has magic, knives, and martial arts training to rely on. Why antagonize Narcissus about this? She knew going in that his club was a neutral space, and that she wasn't going to get special treatment. Sigh. She follows up this initial insult by saying, "Personally I think neutral is just another way of saving your own ass at the expense of someone else's." What? The hyenas aren't saving their own asses per se by setting up a neutral night club. Certainly it might mean they have to fight less and have fewer enemies, but mostly they saw a niche and filled it. A society like this needs neutral ground to function. I am a firm believer that sometimes people do need to take sides, but it's not weird for a place as conflict heavy as supernatural St. Louis to need a gathering place where they won't have to get in to a dominance battle or fend off being turned by vampires. 

Narcissus is a creep and there's a lot of shifter-y magic going on between him and Anita. At this point I think Anita has a couple of beasts inside her--that's what she said--but she isn't a shifter. I also really like this concept. Unfortunately I feel like it never goes anywhere because Anita never shifts and very little comes of this metaphysical zoo beyond giving her a grab bag of convenient power. 

Narcissus wins most reasonable character award with this: "If you cannot protect your people without guns, then you should step down as their Nimir-Ra and let someone else do the job." 

Now I see why people love these reaction gifs.

Again, I think NiC might be the best Anita Blake book, not the worst. The flashes of insight are shocking, considering how utterly awful she is by the time Harlequin rolls around. She admits she doesn't have the power to be Nimir-Ra (presumably partly because she can't shift). Of course I've read this book before and I know this is here just to set up Micah being introduced, so my excitement is dulled slightly. 

Anita and Narcissus have a snippy little argument about how shifters are so species conscious they won't help each other, which again I don't get. A lot of these animals would never interact in the wild and have no reason to be biased against each other. They're also partly human, with a human's ability to reason and make long term plans. Why wouldn't they ally themselves with other groups if it would do them good to do so? One thing I don't like about this series is how everyone acts the same. If you're a shifter, no matter what type, you conform to a certain set of beliefs and expectations. So a werehyena and a wereswan have very similar ways of organizing themselves, despite having literally nothing else in common. It gives the text a very D&D feel, which in my mind is not a good thing.

"I couldn't arm wrestle them, and I would lose a fair fight. The gun was my equalizer." Another really great reason to learn shifter politics and diplomacy. Also a fight between a human and a shifter is inherently an unfair fight, and I don't see how a gun is going to truly help against a creature that can react in mere seconds. They have instincts Anita doesn't, gun or no gun. 

She goes on about how Nathaniel has no boundaries and won't protect himself even in the face of death. Elizabeth (another wereleopard, as yet sight unseen) is terrible! evil! bad! because she abandoned Nathaniel in this highly charged sexual environment. Which is true. BUT why did Anita pick Elizabeth to do this incredibly important job when Elizabeth has a history of defying her? That forces me to put another checkmark in the Anita is too stupid to live column. Elizabeth is an asshole, but Anita is a shit leader. She's responsible in some part for what Elizabeth does. 

Blah blah blah Anita hates being Nimir-Ra and hates having to go out of her way for anyone else. Is this world so cynical and is she so jaded that she can legit think about her dependents being horribly tortured and not do much more than shrug? "I hated the fact that I didn't care whether I killed [Elizabeth] her." Ugh. Look, Anita. You work in a dangerous field and you're a human among shapeshifters. Sometimes, you're going to have to kill people. That doesn't require you to give up your humanity to this extreme. 

Narcissus has to comment on how little Anita is wearing, and how it must be hard to carry a gun under that. WHY DO I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ANITA'S ITTY BITTY SHIRT? Narcissus says "now enter and enjoy the delights, and the terrors, of my world." Anita refers to this as cryptic. How is that cryptic? He runs a fucking BDSM club. His entire business revolves around delights and terrors. 

Anita mentions giving up her gun, them taking her gun, them them walking off with the gun like a million times. It's like the gun is a baby blanket or a stuffed animal. Ick. I'm also not sure why you can have knives but not guns. 

J.C. suggests that he and Anita close the mark before Anita goes to rescue "her cats." I get that she's their leader but this sounds horribly objectifying to me. In true personality disorder fashion, Anita views the leopards as objects to possess, trade, or destroy as she sees fit. She asks why they ought to do that and again I am confused because I thought they already covered this on the phone. He takes her to a table and I boggle because well, if you were being tortured would you want it to go on for one more minute than strictly necessary? I am guessing no, yet Anita insists on dragging this rescue out for PAGES and PAGES.

Anita finds bondage disturbing, tee hee.

J.C. explains that once the "marks are married" Anita will acquire yet more powers, like being able to sense all the vampires under J.C.'s control. What is the deal with giving Anita all of these powers if she never uses them effectively? More nattering about shielding. OMG RESCUE YOUR FUCKING LEOPARDS, YOU HEARTLESS SOCIOPATH.

J.C. acts like a reasonable person and informs Anita that the deal with the marks will probably turn sexual. Good job, J.C. Trying to treat her in keeping with informed consent is surprisingly evolved of you. Anita finally realizes maybe she should be thinking about her leopards and tells him she doesn't have time to bump uglies. "If you want to do this afterwards, that's fine with me, but the leopards are the priority." You goddamn liar. Its been hours since you got the first phone call and you're still trotting around in your oh so short skirt and tittering about how you fit guns under your shirt and blah blah J.C. This forces me to conclude that Anita doesn't want to have sex and is using the leopards as a convenient way to get out of it, rather than behaving like an adult and just saying that she doesn't want to.

This book is actively killing my brain cells. J.C. explains to her for what? the third time? The fourth time? That it's important to marry the marks and strengthen her aura before she goes to confront a largely unknown enemy. Then she says, "Will this marriage of the marks give me more...abilities?" YES. WE HAVE ALREADY COVERED THIS. She should really see a doctor, because I suspect this short term memory loss is related to all those blows to the head. This just tells me that LKH turns in her first drafts.

"You are like no power to come before you." This is more or less a requirement for protagonists in supernatural worlds, but why? Why Anita? Why is she so special? What makes her different and how? I don't think this has ever been even remotely answered. There's some nattering about how old school necromancers sometimes had extraordinary powers but that's it.

Anita wants to go somewhere more romantic than the dance floor. J.C. tells her she picked the setting, so deal with it. Except she didn't. She just came to where her leopards were being held.

Oh hey, here's Asher randomly. He's J.C.'s former lover and later there will be some truly offensive bullshit about how J.C. and Asher aren't allowed to fuck without Anita there. They used to be part of a triad with a woman named Julianna, who was burned as a witch. This makes me wonder if the movie Underworld was already out at this point. Her awful double standard 'polyamory' will rear its ugly head later. Suffice to say, I hate it.

Asher has long hair like every other man in this book. OMG A NAKED WOMAN IS ABOUT TO BE DISROBED ON STAGE, HOW ICKY, ANITA MUST FLEE BEFORE SHE SEES ANYTHING WOMANLY.

J.C. might be a creep but he's more reasonable than Anita. He and Narcissus did some planning so that the marks thing wouldn't intrude on the planned bondage shows for the night. This indeed would be a huge faux pas in the BDSM world; BDSM is in essence about power exchange, and having one power exchange take away from another could easily be perceived as quite rude. Yet Anita treats J.C. as if he's being unreasonable and manipulative. Well, he is manipulative, but the guy is the Master of St. Louis. Being manipulative is part of the job, unless J.C. feels like getting staked immediately.

"I don't mean to rush you," Asher said, "but you will use up your time in talking if you are not quick about it."

Clearly this is a point in the series where earth logic is still creeping in despite Anita's every attempt to ignore it.

J.C. asks Anita to drop her shields. Anita doesn't want to. What the hell did Anita think marrying the marks would require? Obviously if you have holes in your aura that need to be, ahem, plugged, you have to open up. In order to um, introduce the plug. To your hole.

Heh.

J.C. keeps having to explain things to Anita like she's six years old. Now, I am not sure how Anita acquired these marks in the first place so I can't really comment on the consent or lack thereof in this scene. I think she has a right to be frightened, and she doesn't have to want this, but she can't go back. She can't unmake her decisions thus far. Sometimes we have choices, but none of them are good. That's how life works, fair or not.

"Once I drop my shields, then what?" OMG HE ALREADY TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES THAT HE DOESN'T KNOW. HE'S NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE.

So big question. If she doesn't want to be with J.C. and doesn't want the marks, why doesn't she kill him? She's already established she can kill him despite her feelings. Dare I say, why doesn't she execute him? Or is she the Have a Pleasant Cup of Tea-er instead?

She tries to get away from J.C. She obviously does not want him touch her. Asher holds her in place. ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE TERRIBLE. Now, Anita has consented to this as much as she's able and sometimes fear is not a deal breaker, especially in BDSM. That said, I don't think her and J.C. have a safeword which would be really fucking useful right about now.

"I knew with a sudden clarity that it wasn't his power or lust that had called his eyes, it was mine. He could feel how my body tightened, moistened, as he moved towards me. It wasn't him I didn't trust. It was me." 

This reads as though Anita inherently mistrusts her sexuality. Why would this be so? As far as I know, she's never been assaulted, she's never had to come out in an LGBT-phobic society, she's never been singled out and punished for her gender or femininity beyond what the average woman endures, plus she's surrounded by sycophants at all times who constantly tell her how beautiful and hot she is. Where is this attitude coming from? I think this must play in to LKH's notion that Anita can't be good if she wants sex. It also puts the blame on Anita, as if J.C. isn't capable of hurting her and she's just being unreasonable. It reminds me of Twilight in the sense that Bella is also a hideous woman-child who can't be trusted with her own desires, such that Edward needs to withhold sex in order to keep her pure.

Anita falls down in her efforts to get away from J.C., only to have Randomly Arriving Richard pick her up off of her feet.

WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED. You know, I had this idea that I would do a Harmful Idea count for each chapter, but I don't think I can even count them all.