Dead Ice (Anita Blake Series #24) by Laurell K Hamilton

  

Let me get a drink. No, a bigger drink. Right, let’s dive into this one

When this book started I actually felt hope. Actual, real hope. Because we had a storyline – an actual storyline that drew on previous world building and involved Anita working with the police and solving crime and even *gasp* actually doing zombie stuff. It was the same kind of false hope Affliction gave me. Alas, hope is a cruel, fickle mistress

We opened with Anita helping to track down a zombie sex trafficking ring, a ring that has zombies with souls being used as sex slaves which is something that she’s seen before. It could have been interesting, involved lots of police work and woo-woo…. Except after that introduction we then put that entire storyline on hold for over 300 pages, it barely comes up again for the rest of the book. Whyyy? You had a plot here! There was plot! Why ignore it?

So what did we have instead? Endless humping? Actually no, the last few Anita Blake books have actually managed to escape the trap of being porn. Rather than have endless sex we tend to have endless talking about who Anita should have sex with

This is not better.

Part of what consumes the book is the sheer longwindedness of distractions which I’ve said over and over. Anita is investigating a crime, so why are we spending this much time talking about her engagement with one of the FBI agents? Before they even play the tape (they have tapes? Actual tapes? Who has tapes? I’m sure there’s a whole generation of actual adults now who don’t even know what a tape is) with the terribad zombie porn on it, we have 2 solid pages of them discussing how terrible it will be and how the site will bother them. 2 pages. Just play the damn tape already – mooooove.

This is the writing throughout the book. That same scene with them waiting to play the tape comes with an aside about the ethics/morality/opinions of Anita marrying a vampire (why are you discussing it with these people? Is no-one here going to pretend to be a professional?). The entire first chapter is literally “we need you to look at these tapes” which they don’t watch until chapter 2! And even then they start discussing the police force’s acronym before playing the tape. The acronym.

Again I have to say how this continues through the book with lots of pointless moments like super-excessive description of the gym/showers under the Circus of the Damned or just endless recaps of her many many many many relationships or her spending like 5 pages deciding which shifters can share a bed with her so she can heal.

So other than long windedness, what else fills the space?

Stuff

That’s the problem – there’s less a plot here but more a series of events that don’t really add anything or help in anyway to advance the story or expand anything – they’re just random encounters. Like there’s a painfully long diversion in a book where Anita raises a zombie and it all goes a little wrong so they have to fix it. There’s some ghouls in there as well. And the whole thing could have been cut and made into a short story because it wasn’t even slightly relevant to the main plot, the storyline or add anything to the character or the world building or anything else

There’s some random woo-woo going on which changes Micah’s shapeshiftyness. There’s Jean-Claude and Anita’s wedding. There’s Asher again screwing everything up just because. There’s Narcissus screwing everying up just because.

But there’s also a lot of mini scenes that just bemuse me. Like a scene where Anita has to spend a painfully long time putting an uppity werewolf in his place for sexualising her (more on that later). Or another scene where Anita has to. Oh and one of the werelions is beating up another werelion and Meng Die is being all nasty about it and Rafael is facing fights for leadership oh and the jeweller Jean-Claude has chosen to design their wedding rings is actually secretly in love with… OH MY GODS WHO CARES?! WHY IS THIS HERE! WHY? WHY AM I READING PAGES ABOUT THE DAMN JEWELLER YOU HIRED?! WHY?!

Dancing (Anita Blake #22.5) by Laurell K Hamilton

Anita, Micah and Nathaniel go to a BBQ at Zerbrowski’s house. People are mean to them. Anita explains the error of their ways.

And that’s not a euphemism for her shooting them.

There are a lot of major prejudices displayed in this book. The homophobia of forcing affection between two men to be hidden. The sexism, homophobia and rigid gender roles in declaring certain activities for girls or boys.  The treatment of sex workers as objects, not as people and of assuming all strippers are prostitutes. The idea that women are inherently weaker than men.

There’s a lot that are addressed here, all lined up and knocked down.

So what is my problem?

My first problem is the simplicity of it. People were mean prejudiced arseholes, Anita & co responded with some awkward PSAs to which everyone reacted with almost magical understanding. The bad prejudiced people either left having received their full comeuppance or were duly shamed and contrite.

The kids bullying the boy who dances for being gay all gather together and dance ballet by the end of the BBQ.

The parent who was happy with his son throwing gay as an insult has Anita say all sexualities are valid to him and then decides to be all ashamed and back down.

The women who were treating Nathaniel like meat all feel duly ashamed when Anita kisses him and make their apologies.

The one spreading lies about Nathaniel gets her comeuppance and goes home in a blazing row while everyone lines up to say how mean she is.

Anita even gets to tell a little girl that women can defend themselves as well, just randomly shoe-horned in there by a passing comment.

Nathaniel and Micah kiss – but keep it in the kitchen so as not to shock anyone while Zerbrowski says they’re cute together – the fact Zerbrowski isn’t offended is supposed to be a resolve here and there’s not even an attempt to address the fact that they need to confine themselves to the kitchen or any negative feelings or shame or anger – hey they get the kitchen and 2 out of the dozens of guests aren’t angry! YAY!