Month: December 2006

Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton (2001)

Overall		Story
Re-Readability		Characters

The tenth installment in the Anita Blake novels is where the series really, truly, goes off the rails. This is as far as I’ve gotten, both in my original reading and in this current rereading of the series — though I’ve every attention of going on from here — but this book exemplifies what’s gone wrong with this series from its initial excellent start.

1. If things don’t seem complicated enough, through in another major, critical crisis.
2. Tell, don’t show. For a book supposedly chock-full of action (violence and sexual), people spend a lot of time talking. And explaining. And describing. And delving into mystical backstory. And stuff that’s not moving the tale forward (just complicating it).
3. If two people have talked about something, make sure that one of them talks about the same thing with someone else, preferably immediately following. Use some of the same phrases, too.
4. When in doubt, have Anita sleep with it. Or, if that’s too icky, shoot it. Or, if that’s inappropriate, get angsty about her desire to sleep with it and/or shoot it.
5. If last book’s menace was the most evil, perverted, nasty, unspeakable, powerful critter one could imagine in one’s nightmares, make sure that the menace in this book is at least twice as evil, perverted, nasty, unspeakable, and powerful.
6. Since Anita barely handled last book’s menace, make sure her powers get similarly escalated (in size, number, or both) this time. She is, after all, an Animator, Master Necromancer, Vampire Hunter, Vampire Servant, Triumvirate Member, Lupa of the Werewolves, Lover of the Master of the City, Nimir-Ra of the Wereleopards, Associate of the Cops, Bad-Ass, Smart-Ass, and, eventually, Were-Partridge of the Pear Tree.
7. If Anita seems to be reconciling with someone she loves, make sure they do something particularly repulsive or treacherous. If someone seems to be getting closer to Anita, make sure she does something ultra-violent to drive them away. Rinse, repeat.
8. Come up with another vampire power. Or two. Or three.
9. Come up with another were-species. Or two. Or five.

These tendencies had been in the series before, almost from the start. But they’re highlighted by the preceding volume, Obsidian Butterfly, that both gets Anita out of St Louis and manages to focus (more) on a single member of her supporting cast, Edward. Returning to her home city and its cast of zillions, Anita not only is ready to make the same mistakes, she has some
months of neglect to clean up after, too. Thus, everything gets longer and more complicated and overblown.

This book so badly needs an editor to cut out about 1/3 of what’s going on — cast, crises, and metaphysics. The book is bloated with them, all held together by Anita getting herself into a mess by either being too ruthless or too soft or both. Folks worried that there isn’t enough sex can rest assured that Anita’s being overcome by a lust curse, alongside yet another love/lust interest entering the game. Folks worried there’s not enough violence can rest assured that were-critters can be shot at and
tortured ad infinitum, and so they are.

There are about three books in this one, as well as about three weeks of action, but Hamilton mushes it all together into a volume still huge but still almost incoherent in its twisted knots. It’s little wonder the protagonist keeps forgetting the twenty impossible things she has to do before breakfast (or sunrise), because there are so many that the readers forget, too, and it’s a wonder the author doesn’t.

So why, with all of that, do I keep reading these books — in fact, rereading them?

Because there is some good stuff in here. The sex? Meh. Out-of-control (or all-about-control) passion leaves me cold here, as graphic as it is. The romance? Okay, if repetitive from every other previous installment.

But the action scenes are pretty good, too and the magic/supernatural stuff (aside from its ever-escalating and occasional deus ex machina natures) is rich and interesting. The cast, always metastisizing, is, individually, well-drawn. The overall theme of What is human? What is a monster? Is it what you are, or what you do? And which of those do you have any control over? remains throughout, profound in its implications, and paradoxically muddied yet enhanced by Anita’s ever-increasing stable
of associates, dependents, and powers.

It’s like eating that third piece of very sweet and rich dessert — I know I shouldn’t, I know it won’t taste as good as the first piece, and will likely give me a stomach-ache, but I just can’t help myself.

Now, if I can just find the next two volumes from wherever they got tidied to after our weekend away and the in-law visit, I can continue …

Been a while since I did many book reviews. And this one is actually an audiobook, but since I just finished it (after receiving it over a year ago), let me off my two cents:

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)

Overall		Story
Re-Readability		Audio

This audio adaptation (abridged, but still weighing in at a dozen discs or so) of Morris’ Pullitzer Prize-winning biography, is a solid and entertaining, if not overly-illuminating chronology of TR’s childhood through his brief vice-presidency, leaving off just as McKinley dies from an assassination. It covers this broad and interesting subject with enthusiasm and extensive use of the diaries and letters of TR (and some of his family and associates), but in the end the subject remains a big-grinning bespectacled
icon of American history. I learned more about TR’s life, but not as much as I’d like about him.

Part of that is because TR was, for all his outgoing energy, a very private man. There were subjects (such as the death of his first wife) that he never talked or wrote about, even to acknowledge they had happened. He was zealous in building himself from a frail, distracted poindexter of a child into an ideal man, for both the public and his own self-image — rough and tumble as a westerner and “Rough Rider,” yet learned and of unimpeachable ethics. As a result, much of what can be gleaned, even from primary
sources, is that ideal image. It wasn’t just about reputation, though that was clearly of far more importance to TR than he would admit, but about how he saw himself, reflected in others’ eyes and his own.

TR, in this work, lives up to that ideal — a Man’s Man, a Man of Virtue — remarkably well. If still a man of his times — his description of the Indians, Cubans, Spaniards, and the glories of hunting and war, for example, would all be highly impolitic today — he also served as one of the key torchbearers of the progressive movement, serving on the cutting edge of civil service reform, financial reform, and caring for the working class and poor, as well as the early stirrings of his natural conservationism.
If there are plenty of areas he could be criticized for today for falling far short of modern sensibilities, at the time he was considered a radical, a loose cannon, someone who, even as a Republican, was a threat to the status quo.

If nothing else, we learn here the facts (if not always, the reasons) for Roosevelt’s ascent and shaping. I ended up knowing a lot more about TR — his youthful love of biology, his bouts of illness, his western ventures, his romantic entanglements, his service in Cuba, and his political career — than I had (which was part of the intent, after all).

The book is narrated by Harry Chase, who does a solid job of it. He gives accents and mannerisms to the written dialog in places that sometimes seem to jar, but never too much, and his diction is clear, his pace steady and solid.

Worth either reading or listening to. I have the presidential sequel, “Theodore Rex, on my wish list …