"I didn't so much wake, as come to the surface of sleep..."
I don't mean to tear down every effort to use figurative or embellished language here. For awhile there was an Internet backlash against Mary Sue characters to the point where it became the same issue through a mirror darkly; suddenly everyone's main fanfic character was a pimpled slightly overweight girl with brown hair and brown eyes, all described in about the manner I just employed. But I can't help but nitpick because "coming to the surface of sleep" is just another way of saying waking up.
Micah and Cherry are here. You might remember Cherry from Narcissus in Chains. She's the wereleopard who used to be a nurse until she was outed. Anita always makes comments about how silly and slutty she looks. So, she pretty much gets the same treatment every female who isn't Anita gets. She was also one of the people being tortured by Chimera during Anita's big battle scene, a scene full of wasted potential and gratuitous torture.
Two things. I hate seeing a good action scene wasted. Writing these types of things is something I really enjoy (I really like to write fighting and fucking and honestly they are not that dissimilar). Seeing and/or imagining things so epic that they make my heart beat faster is awesome. The first twenty minutes of The Dark Knight Rises comes instantly to mind. The "ride out to meet them" scene from the Lord of the Rings trilogy (hell, most scenes from the LOTR trilogy). The scene from Game of Thrones (which I ultimately don't like, yes I know) where Dany takes control of the Unsullied. That's the good shit right there.
And if LKH's fight scenes were just straight up terrible this would be so much easier on me. But the last scene in Narcissus in Chains had all the right elements. A bad guy that, given proper development, could have been amazing. He had relatable motivations buried in there somewhere. A pitch black room. The sound and smell of torture. Him and Anita stalking each other, Anita with a big fuck off machete as her only weapon. FUCK YEAH. But much the way an unskilled baker (such as myself) can put together the right ingredients yet come out with an inedible end product, the scene merely turned in to a clumsy vehicle for showcasing Anita's supposed badassery. Do you see the worst part? It could have been amazing.
Second thing. Adding gratuitous torture, molestation, and rape for the sole purpose of darkening up your world in the biggest, clumsiest strokes possible is gross.
Anyway Cherry is here. Micah asks her what Gregory said. Gregory is the wereleopard the wolves tortured in one of the novels preceding this. Now his child molester father has tried to contact him and his brother, Stephen.
Okay so...what is the plot of Cerulean Sins? Let's see what I can recall.
1) A guy who unwisely tells Anita he's a hit man within minutes of meeting her wants someone raised via her animator powers. Turns out it's his ancestor, and he needs this for family line purposes. Anita reminds us she's the evil doer for Richard's pack, a leopard queen, and part of the shapeshifter coalition.
2). After tons of build up the first animating she does is at a scene completely unrelated to the first guy. Asher turns up at this scene and communicates to Anita that something is very wrong.
3). Musette, Belle Morte's vampire liaison, shows up. She dicks over Asher and J.C. because Belle Morte is trying to assert her dominance.
4) Anita does a lot of whining about how she's a good girl and dating two people (Micah and J.C.) is soooo weird. Anita moans and bitches about how Richard is such a meany head and like, soooo stupid you guys because he wants different things from her in life. She never mentions having assaulted him, either; rather his rejection of her is all to do with how badly he wants to be normal.
5) They meet Musette. Rather than allow Asher to be tortured, Anita intervenes. Only after a whole lot of nothing, of course. And it turns in to another metaphysical slap fight that I don't care about. A bunch of random characters turn up, including Damien, Anita's vampire servant. In case you were wondering, it is now many chapters in the future and Damien hasn't reappeared. Anita takes like FOUR FUCKING CHAPTERS to have pity sex with Asher that will keep him from being Musette's chew toy for the rest of the book . There is unfulfilling dry humping and Asher feeds on her, causing basically no reaction from her even though being fed from has been her hard limit for like ELEVEN BOOKS NOW. Jason has to rescue her because dawn comes and both Asher and J.C. become unresponsive, trapping her.
6). Jason and Anita go to a random series of crime scenes where we meet Tammy Reynolds (who randomly accuses Anita of being pregnant), Anita is manhandled by Dolph, and nothing new is learned or resolved. Anita faints approximately eleventy billion times.
7). Anita wakes up from one of her many fainting spells to find herself in a tub with Micah. Their beasts rise and somehow this enables Anita to see Belle Morte's shadow trying to feed from J.C. She casts it out with her ill defined sex powers.
And now Anita wakes up only to find that three characters who haven't been in this book at all so far are here with another sharp turn in to Nonsensical, U.S.A.
Fuck it, pass the gin.
So this is the twenty third chapter and there's nothing to work with except for a long series of unrelated threads. We haven't even heard from Musette in several chapters, who apparently just waits around until Anita is done fucking and fainting and doing whatever else. My, Musette is awfully considerate for a murderous pedophile vampire sent by their greatest enemy.
Anita didn't know about Gregory and Stephen's abuse history. I could swear she did given the events of Narcissus in Chains, but I'll be damned if I'll go wading through that crapsack of a book to find out. I hope they don't mind their extremely personal business being revealed to everyone in this room, because too late now.
Zane, Cherry's lover, comes in with Nathaniel in his arms. Anita thinks about how stupidly long Nate's hair is. Zane immediately reassures her that Nate has undies on, because the rule is no one can sleep naked in Anita's bed. Nate is Anita's pomme de sang! She literally feeds on his energy to keep herself alive, but he can't have his dong out in her bed? Of course on the surface of the issue Anita has the right to ask for what makes her comfortable, but her rules are so arbitrary and weird that I can only conclude that Anita is not only a narcissist and a sociopath, but that she is suffering from obsessive personality disorder too. Other people must be controlled down to the slightest detail and when they're not, she freaks out and everyone she's abusing crowds in to smooth her moods and peace keep.
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Micah gets out of bed but hides his dangly bits. Anita is grateful because "I think I was too tired to be tempted, but I knew I was too tired to want to be tempted."
I had to read that three times before it started to make any kind of sense.
Micah's hair is "dark, dark"
Cherry and Zane tease Anita about her admiring Micah, which Anita refers to as an inside joke despite it being really fucking obvious what the joke is.
Anita realizes she is naked and asks for clothes. Micah grabs one of his shirts from the chest of drawers nearby. Anita tries to convince me that this shirt fits both her and Micah. Does Micah have watermelon sized tits all of a sudden? Because even if their shoulders are the same dimensions, that shirt will definitely not fit them both properly.
Anita wants to do something for Gregory because he's hers--ugh--but Micah assures her he'll take care of it. He suggests bringing Gregory over so Gregory's father can't "find him through the phone book." If you have an abusive father why the fuck do you have a listed number?
Nathaniel gets in to bed with her and she falls asleep again. Her last thought after all of that is about how she's getting more comfortable being nude, and how it's due to the werelopard's bad influence. Sorry Gregory, I guess your awful family situation is only a mild annoyance.
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