Musette, the representative of Belle Morte, her vessel,
is in town as an ambassador. And she’s three months early.
Normally such an unexpected, uninvited visit would be met
with hostility and a quick boot outside the territory. But Belle Morte is their
Soudre de Sang the head of
Jean-Claude’s line, he owes her fealty and loyalty. It’s a tricky maze of
vampire politics to navigate, especially since Belle is bitter about
Jean-Claude and Asher leaving her and her embassy is determined to be as
difficult and provocative as possible.
Anita also has a police case, a brutal serial killer is
stalking St. Louis. But investigation is stymied by Dolph who is increasingly
losing himself in his hatred of vampires – and anything not entirely human,
including Anita herself.
The international terrorists looking to recruit Anita don’t
exactly simplify matters.
And behind them all is something bigger and darker. The
Mother of All Darkness, the founder of the vampires, their council, their laws,
the oldest and greatest of them is waking up. And she has noticed Anita.
There is quite simply too much going on in this book. Too
many threads, too many fragments of storylines that don’t go anywhere, don’t do
anything which leave the actual 3 storylines: the serial killer, Belle Morte’s
visit and the Mother of All Darkness raising her ugly head.
And they were completely lost by the endless mini-storylines, exposition, excessively long descriptions, unnecessary elements and navel gazing.
Take the plot fragments – I’m actually going to cheat
here since this is a catch up review and I’ve already read all the books to
Book 21 so I’m also going to say which plot fragments never become relevant.
Stephen and Gregory’s abusive father is in town. Relevance?
None. As far as I know he’s still
hanging around in book 21, kicking his heels. It doesn’t even develop
characters because these 2 increasingly fall off the radar.
International terrorists want to recruit Anita for
nefarious schemes. Relevance? None. No, really. Set up this massively juicy
plot point, bring in her FBI guy and all and it’s used in a short story later.
That’s it. There are entire chapters devoted to tracking these guys!
Valentina and Bartolomé have their back stories explained
(at length) and are then hang around forever more. Role the play in future
books? A brief, irrelevant guest appearance by Valentina!
Another major distraction was people losing their shit,
then everyone having to shovel it afterwards. Anita goes to the crime scenes?
ARRGLE RAARGLE! Dolph loses his shit! RAAAWWWRR!!!
Anita having sex?
AARGLE RAARGLE! Asher loses his shit! RAAAWWWRR!!!
Confronting the big bad guys in a scene that could mean
the difference between Belle taking over the city and crushing them under her
thumb?
AARGLE RAARGLE! Richard loses his shit! RAAAWWWRR!!!
Guys, triage. Seriously. If you can’t deal with your
ridiculous shit at least learn to put your shit on hold until after the big bad
has left town. This isn’t even comic. Richard actually confronted the big bad
and asked her to wait until he’d finished his relationship drama. They had a whole damn argument while
Musette/Belle stood and watched.
The only people who we know will never lose their shit in
this series is Jean-Claude, who is constantly clearing up shit, and Micah, who
has no shit to lose because he’s an ambulatory penis. I love how everyone’s so
surprised and impressed at how accommodating he is – of course he is! He’s a
blank slate! A blank slate with a huge wang! That’s all this character is!
Even when points are relevant to the books we have
massive, ridiculous descriptions and conversations about them in absurd, irrelevant
detail. They spend pages discussing which of their people are safe from Musette
demanding her team have sex with them – and it never becomes relevant because
she never does. Not only are all their plans rendered pointless, but they were
ridiculous to begin with because they didn’t know half of Musette’s party. They
even make a big production about how Faust is safe from demands because he’s
gay and none of Musette’s party is gay so they can’t force him to have sex (oh
yes, the wonderful logic here? “Forcing someone to have sex with someone they
find repugnant is rape”. So forcing a gay man to have sex with a woman or
forcing a woman to have sex with a child. Except, forcing someone to have sex
is rape – repugnant or otherwise – it doesn’t matter if it’s Quasimodo covered
in sheep dip or Ian Somerhalder covered in chocolate). Then they turn round and introduce Paolo, a
gay vampire and a sex predator! Who they also spend a gazillion pages talking
about so they can justify putting Micah in eye make up. Ye gods above who
cares! He’s wearing eye make up. It’s pretty. Move the story on for crying out
loud!
Or we have Anita’s sickness after being fed on by Asher
and his orgasmic flashbacks (no, really, he causes sex flashbacks with the
added amusement of Anita being capable of causing grievous bodily harm during
her orgasm flailings). It adds nothing to the story except Asher’s angst.
We constantly get these delays, these exposition for no
damn purpose. Asher panickingly summons Anita to come quick, Musette has
arrived early. So off they hurry and spend pages describing a feudal system to
Anita, pages describing how Jason is scared, pages worrying about the Ardeur,
pages describing how Asher is scared, pages describing Damian’s bond to Anita,
pages describing how Damian keeps her calm and why and… what was the emergency
again? I’ve forgotten?
And the descriptions? It’s constantly over the top but at
one point Anita spends four pages describing Asher and Jean-Claude’s clothes.
Four pages.
There were so many distractions in this book that I
actually forgot there was a serial killer running around. I found the
introduction of the Mother of All Darkness fell flat because we spent so long
describing the whole situation, which had already followed a similar,
intangible, psychic attack from Belle and all those descriptions and, nestled
among it, is a psychic link with Richard – oh and the terrorists following in a
car – that the whole thing is just lost. This is supposed to be the biggest,
baddest enemy Anita will ever face and she’s kind of lost in the distractions.
Inclusionwise we have some background POC, some
animalistic Black vampire/weres, predatory gay men, Belle having weird rules
about not being jealous of men only women, Anita’s and Richard’s uckies with
bisexuality and Asher being dramatic as usual.
Anita adds two new lovers to her stable this book: Asher,
who she sleeps with to keep him safe from Musette and she’s still not sure how
much she loves him is based on jean-Claude’s memories/Asher’s sexy powers (and
orgasm flashbacks). And Jason, who she sleeps with because the ardeur hits and
she has to – as an added bonus she starts by trying to feed the ardeur without
full intercourse (as she prefers with Nathanial, as Jason knows) but Jason
decides that if this is his only chance he’s going all the way. She begins to
protest but doesn’t have chance. Uh-huh – yet again,
this is not sexual agency.
Claudia makes a brief appearance so Anita can point out
(at length) how ridiculous it is to treat her as harmless with all her muscles
just because she’s female, which is good. We then have visits from Detective
Arnet who is jealous of Anita because she has Nathanial. Detective Tammy, who
is fainting and pregnant – and spitefully tells the whole force Anita is
pregnant as well. And we have another police detective, O’Brien, who tries to
play glory hound because she’s afraid Anita will steal her thunder (making
it the second time female police detectives have been jealous of Anita’s “success”).
Of course, we also have Musette and Belle Morte – the evil evil seductive sexy
women who want Anita’s men. This
isn’t a great showing.
This could have been a good book. It could have been a
great book. But the excellent plot lines are buried and utterly overwhelmed in irrelevant
rubbish, drama, angst, sex and melodramatic writing. You don’t read this book,
you mine through it.
