Kim Harrison books
Dec. 18th, 2005 05:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI read 'Dead Witch Walking' and liked it enough to order two sequels. I read 'The Good, The Bad and the Undead' with a rising sense of unease at the personal relationships, but the plot was interesting. Now I'm on 'Every which way but dead' and the relationship thing just got to put the book down point.
I thought the central character was tough and smart and hooking up with a tough smart guy, and with a little flirtation with her lady vampire partner. That was fun.
Only the lady vampire relationship crossed way into abusive. The story keeps finding ways to make it not the vampire's fault, and the central character keeps finding ways to call it her own fault, and its just getting absolutely sick. I mean when a guy has to hit someone round the head with a cookpot to enforce that no means no, that isn't a relationship you want to keep. It just *isn't*. You don't stick around because the poor thing is oh so lonely and it isn't her fault its her instincts and she's so guilty and blah blah blah. She repeatedly attacks you, you get the hell out of there. Very simple.
But no, not simple, because she must stay and be her friend because she needs her.
She needs her because she's an addict using her as a lifeline, but hey, need is need, right?
So that's making me kind of sick.
The tough guy librarian boyfriend turned out to be stupid about making deals with demons, and wandered off out of the story. Which is annoying, because ratboy was interesting.
The new boyfriend is another vampire, a pretty one, and in the first book he was one of the scary bad guys, but by now of course he wouldn't *really* hurt her and he's using protection and it's just sex not blood and... it was pretty annoying. Danger! Lots of danger! Don't fancy danger just because it can kick ass!
Yes, as a Spike fan I can say this. Spike was about redemption.
This vampire, not about that. He was the right hand guy of the big scary vampire bad guy, and did many bad things. But now we find out it wasn't his *fault*, he's a good guy really, and okay, he helped torture a bunch of people to death, but it wasn't his idea! And now he's been dumped, the poor lonely thing! And he just blew up a boat load of people. But he didn't *mean* to! He just planted the bomb, it wasn't his fault there were people standing on it when it went boom!
Fuck that. He did it. His bad. He just killed a boat load of people.
But our heroine the witch shall forgive him, and love him, for he is teh sex in leather, and that makes it alright.
Oh, and also,
Maybe I need a dangerous man, I thought as a wild emotion rose in me. Only someone who had done wrong could understand that, yes, I did questionable things too, but that I was stil a good person. If Kisten could be both, then maybe that meant I could be, too.
And that was when I put the book down.
One, no Kisten isn't both, he's a charming psychopath who just *blew you up*.
Two, *what* questionable things? We've been in her head for three books so far and the worst she's done is steal a fish she thought was already stolen off people who hired her to get it back.
The character is just piling up these abusive relationships, and its getting absolutely sick. Seriously. The only person she knows that I wouldn't advise her to leave (and hopefully leave in a prison cell) is the pixie family who moved out several chapters ago. It is creepy, and getting steadily more so.
The plot twists and turns, but this idiot is at the center of it bringing most of the trouble down on herself through little things like not reading the textbook and working a spell she found in her attic unlabelled and in a language she can't read.
And she keeps on getting new and shiny abilities. In the first book she was just another working witch. Now she seems to be levelling every couple of chapters, and possibly to be some kind of chosen one, with abilities far beyond the norm for her species. And also, damn near everyone she meets tries to have sex with her, or bite her, or both. There's no one in the world that appealing! It's really winding me up.
The blurbs on these things keep on saying if you liked Anita Blake you'll like this. Well, yeah, but if you gave up in disgust on Anita Blake, these are liable to provoke similar reactions. Granted they haven't gone so far yet. There is sex. There is more sex in this one than the last, which had more than the first, and given the Anita Blake precedent that's a worrying trend. But they do still have plots. And the plots are pretty interesting.
But I've ceased to like the characters. There's only so many utterly stupid choices I can put up with from one character.
What I want to find are stories about smart, tough, independent, and above all *competent* characters. Let the drama come from the other guy being bad, not our heroine being obviously stupid. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but there's a difference between the kind of mistake that you make because all the choices look viable and the way you jump turns out wrong (Wesley style) and the kind of mistakes where you just can't be bothered to do the homework and accidentally sell yourself and your boyfriend to a demon. I'm utterly uninterested in incompetence. Accidents are just plain boring. I want stories to be about choices.
But choosing to live with and date addicts because they're so splendidly needy isn't one I personally am interested in seeing.
The other Kisten problem is the basic sympathetic character one. I know I read someone pointing this out on LJ lately. But the key to making a character sympathetic is to show them care about someone more than they care about themselves. Protect the heroine because they both get caught in the same trap, not adequate. Anything that can be basically down to self interest, trying to get money or blood or sex, not enough. Has to be putting someone else first. Like Spike for Dru, right from the first, or Buffy and Dawn later. Without that a 'bad boy' is just a self interested manipulative jerk who's role in the story should only be as complication before the True Love gets home, or friendship prevails. He's the bad guy in slightly better clothes. And having the girl get pouty over him just makes her look bloody stupid.
/rant
I'm up until five in the morning, reading this book, so now its going all wrong I'm very much annoyed.
Of course if anyone has actually read until the end and it all comes out right, do tell. I'm ranting on incomplete information. But I've really had enough of this.
I thought the central character was tough and smart and hooking up with a tough smart guy, and with a little flirtation with her lady vampire partner. That was fun.
Only the lady vampire relationship crossed way into abusive. The story keeps finding ways to make it not the vampire's fault, and the central character keeps finding ways to call it her own fault, and its just getting absolutely sick. I mean when a guy has to hit someone round the head with a cookpot to enforce that no means no, that isn't a relationship you want to keep. It just *isn't*. You don't stick around because the poor thing is oh so lonely and it isn't her fault its her instincts and she's so guilty and blah blah blah. She repeatedly attacks you, you get the hell out of there. Very simple.
But no, not simple, because she must stay and be her friend because she needs her.
She needs her because she's an addict using her as a lifeline, but hey, need is need, right?
So that's making me kind of sick.
The tough guy librarian boyfriend turned out to be stupid about making deals with demons, and wandered off out of the story. Which is annoying, because ratboy was interesting.
The new boyfriend is another vampire, a pretty one, and in the first book he was one of the scary bad guys, but by now of course he wouldn't *really* hurt her and he's using protection and it's just sex not blood and... it was pretty annoying. Danger! Lots of danger! Don't fancy danger just because it can kick ass!
Yes, as a Spike fan I can say this. Spike was about redemption.
This vampire, not about that. He was the right hand guy of the big scary vampire bad guy, and did many bad things. But now we find out it wasn't his *fault*, he's a good guy really, and okay, he helped torture a bunch of people to death, but it wasn't his idea! And now he's been dumped, the poor lonely thing! And he just blew up a boat load of people. But he didn't *mean* to! He just planted the bomb, it wasn't his fault there were people standing on it when it went boom!
Fuck that. He did it. His bad. He just killed a boat load of people.
But our heroine the witch shall forgive him, and love him, for he is teh sex in leather, and that makes it alright.
Oh, and also,
Maybe I need a dangerous man, I thought as a wild emotion rose in me. Only someone who had done wrong could understand that, yes, I did questionable things too, but that I was stil a good person. If Kisten could be both, then maybe that meant I could be, too.
And that was when I put the book down.
One, no Kisten isn't both, he's a charming psychopath who just *blew you up*.
Two, *what* questionable things? We've been in her head for three books so far and the worst she's done is steal a fish she thought was already stolen off people who hired her to get it back.
The character is just piling up these abusive relationships, and its getting absolutely sick. Seriously. The only person she knows that I wouldn't advise her to leave (and hopefully leave in a prison cell) is the pixie family who moved out several chapters ago. It is creepy, and getting steadily more so.
The plot twists and turns, but this idiot is at the center of it bringing most of the trouble down on herself through little things like not reading the textbook and working a spell she found in her attic unlabelled and in a language she can't read.
And she keeps on getting new and shiny abilities. In the first book she was just another working witch. Now she seems to be levelling every couple of chapters, and possibly to be some kind of chosen one, with abilities far beyond the norm for her species. And also, damn near everyone she meets tries to have sex with her, or bite her, or both. There's no one in the world that appealing! It's really winding me up.
The blurbs on these things keep on saying if you liked Anita Blake you'll like this. Well, yeah, but if you gave up in disgust on Anita Blake, these are liable to provoke similar reactions. Granted they haven't gone so far yet. There is sex. There is more sex in this one than the last, which had more than the first, and given the Anita Blake precedent that's a worrying trend. But they do still have plots. And the plots are pretty interesting.
But I've ceased to like the characters. There's only so many utterly stupid choices I can put up with from one character.
What I want to find are stories about smart, tough, independent, and above all *competent* characters. Let the drama come from the other guy being bad, not our heroine being obviously stupid. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but there's a difference between the kind of mistake that you make because all the choices look viable and the way you jump turns out wrong (Wesley style) and the kind of mistakes where you just can't be bothered to do the homework and accidentally sell yourself and your boyfriend to a demon. I'm utterly uninterested in incompetence. Accidents are just plain boring. I want stories to be about choices.
But choosing to live with and date addicts because they're so splendidly needy isn't one I personally am interested in seeing.
The other Kisten problem is the basic sympathetic character one. I know I read someone pointing this out on LJ lately. But the key to making a character sympathetic is to show them care about someone more than they care about themselves. Protect the heroine because they both get caught in the same trap, not adequate. Anything that can be basically down to self interest, trying to get money or blood or sex, not enough. Has to be putting someone else first. Like Spike for Dru, right from the first, or Buffy and Dawn later. Without that a 'bad boy' is just a self interested manipulative jerk who's role in the story should only be as complication before the True Love gets home, or friendship prevails. He's the bad guy in slightly better clothes. And having the girl get pouty over him just makes her look bloody stupid.
/rant
I'm up until five in the morning, reading this book, so now its going all wrong I'm very much annoyed.
Of course if anyone has actually read until the end and it all comes out right, do tell. I'm ranting on incomplete information. But I've really had enough of this.
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Date: 2005-12-18 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-18 05:31 pm (UTC)