Birthday wishes and an open letter to Laurell K. Hamilton

[rivkat]

Happy birthday, MustangSally! May the geckos be with you.

Also, no spoilers for Cerulean Sins, just a rant. Review to follow shortly.

Dear Ms. Hamilton,

I hear you're a New York Times-bestselling author. I think that's nifty. I've always liked Anita, though she is despite all protestations a bit of a clotheshorse. But please, for the love of God --

Use a spellchecker. Taking someone to the hopsital? I'm embarrassed for you. And that's by no means the only typo. I thought the preview chapters I read online were unedited, and that's apparently true, except that they never did get edited. Also, punctuation is your friend. Okay, the comma apparently isn't, but most of the other little fellas are. I know there are pot-kettle issues here given what MS and I have perpetrated, but that just gives me the experience to tell you: the readers notice.

Yours sincerely,
RivkaT

A clotheshorse and a sociopath: sounds like a pretty good match for Lex, actually. But Anita already has more hot men than she knows what to do with.

Comments

[chase820.livejournal.com]

See, I can deal with the spelling and punctuation issues. What I can't deal with is the recycled plot issues. I mean, this was almost a complete retread of Narcissus in Chains. Very unhappy I spent $25 on a book I already owned.

I think Laurell's out of ideas for her heroine. If you ask me, it's time for Anita to work out her issues with Richard and form the cozy little menage a trois that they and Jean Claude are apparently meant to be, and tie the whole series off. The other 147 characters in love with Anita will just have to sort themselves out.

And why is it that the hottest character, Edward, never got his shot with Anita? She had more chemistry with him during their occasional death-threat exchanges, than she ever had during all her schmoopy interactions with JC and Richard.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Oh, but it would be so bad for Edward to have a sexuality. (Even his "relationship" in Arizona isn't really sexual, especially given how explicit Hamilton is when she does talk about sex; the fact that we don't see/overhear/whatever anything sexual between Edward and whatsername is evidence that we're not supposed to see it as sex so much as weird, familial love.) That was one of the problems I had with the ending of Hannibal -- Lecter was so much creepier before he had a history and a sexuality, when he was just a terror without a cause, a bad thing doing bad because he could. I can totally see why Anita ought to be drawn to Edward, but I'd consider it bad for the character for there to be any reciprocation.

As for the rest -- well, I will post a longer review later. I agree that she seems to be out of ideas, though I wish the sociopathy issue had a better resolution and I'd read one more, no matter how much sex and clothing there is, to see that done.

Re:

[chase820.livejournal.com]

Yes, if LH actually sets out to tie up all of Anita's emotional and relationship issues in the next installment, that would certainly give her enough fodder for one more book. But only one more.

Hmmm--Anita having a bit of an unrequited crush on Edward would have been sort of cool. It would have been nice to know that there's one character in the universe who finds her resistable.

Totally with you on Hannibal. Finding out that all of Hannibal's quirks came from his traumatic childhood and an unresolved incestuous attraction to his sister really, really deflated the character for me. Also undid his very interesting remark in Silence, something to the effect that his monstrous acts can't be psychoanalyzed or quantified into something understandable--he simply is, in all his evil glory. A much neater take on him than "soldiers ate my sister and I'm pissed at the world". I won't even get started on the hatchet job Harris did on Clarice.

Overall, Hannibal is one of the few instances where I actually like the ending of the movie better than the book.