Swallowing the damn moon

So I'm pissed. I was pissed about this last night, and I still am, so I thought I would let everyone know.

Confession time: I read the Anita Blake and Merry Gentry books. It took me a really long time to work up the guts to buy the first Anita Blake book, what with the scandalous cover art and the reviews on the back. But finally I figured, "Well, these other people seem really interested...why not?" It helped that I was not in my regular bookstore. So I bought it, and I was pleasantly surprised: the narrator was moral and highly involved in helping to solve crimes. She had neat, but flawed, powers, and the tension between being a vampire executioner and being attracted to the vampires was interesting. The general world was neat.

As the relationships evolved and got more complex, I devoured the books. It was like crack. Schoolwork, family obligations, sleep, everything fell by the wayside until the book was done. And my absolute favorite part was Edward: intelligent, resourceful, violent, psychotic. His nickname is "Death." I would be Edward's bitch. We could compare weaponry.

But then...oh, then. The sensuality and flirting and tension went away, in favor of...porn. And bad porn, at that. The sex scenes became repetitive and boring, not really advancing the plot. And they became more complex...more partners, near-beastiality (which happens with were-animals, I guess, but still...), and a magically insatiable sex drive for Anita, who used to be strictly monogamous. Any internal conflict about these developments was either settled through a bout of whining or received a mention, but was put aside when an improbably endowed stranger cornered Anita in a shower and...well, anyway. (As a side note: all the men in the ever-increasing stable are gorgeous, well-endowed, and emotionally damaged in some way that can only be solved through the miracle of Anita-sex) Also, Anita is gaining so much power in such odd areas (i.e., she is now almost as powerful, if not more so, than a master vampire AND she can control were-animals) that there doesn't seem to be much external conflict possible anymore.

So the books become banal sex scenes, strung together with the unresolved remnants of a fairly decent idea for a plot.

The Merry Gentry books hooked me in before Anita became the most powerful supernatural nympho ever. The series is based around Celtic mythology ("sex, death, and religion in an interesting, night-time telly type of way"), so I was willing to give Merry more leeway as far as the sex and beautiful men went (they are faeries, after all). The lack of significant plot movement started to bother me, as I was skipping over the sex scenes, which left about...10 pages of story to a $23 book. Not worth the money, especially since less overt elements of courtship are more interesting to me than the repeated statement that the heroine swallowed the moon ('cause, you know, she's pale, and the faeries glow when they do it. More than you wanted to know, huh?)

As much as it kills me to quit on books, I decided I just couldn't take it anymore. I stopped buying them.

Now, there's a new twist. I was investigating the newest Anita book on Amazon (it's actually called The Harlequin, which made me laugh), and I came across discussion of a post on the author's blog. In said post, she addresses people like me...her "negative fans." This post is evidently in response to people telling her that they hate the books and hate her for changing them, but keep reading the hopes that the books will go back to the old form (a delusion I so wanted to share).

I fully understand the impulse to defend your writing, especially when subject to personal attacks. She says if people don't like the books, they should not read them. This is fine. However, the letter doesn't stop there. She implies that people who do not enjoy the books as currently written are prudes and do not enjoy challenging their minds. They are, in not appreciating the reduction of plot and the increase of poorly imagined sex, in fact small-minded bigots who are just not smart enough or brave enough to understand the directions in which she wishes to take the characters.

In the same letter where she accuses "negative fans" of refusing to expand and challenge their horizons, she claims they are heartless for expressing the wish that she "thin the herd" of Anita's sex partners by killing off some of them ( a little hypocritical, I feel). She expands on this theme by claiming that her characters are real to her...in the sense that she talks to them and is disappointed when she sees a perfect Christmas present for them...because she can't give it to them...because they are FICTIONAL!!!!!!

I do not believe myself to be a small-minded bigot. Nor do I think I am lacking in the intelligence necessary to render her basic themes and character development comprehensible. This is, in fact, my area of expertise. I resent the broad implications and insults to her fan base...not a smart move on behalf of an author dependent on public approval and willingness to spend money on increasingly worthless prose. Based on the sense of indignation the not-at-all subtle insults in the open letter engendered, I would stop buying her works, even if I hadn't already decided to do so.

But I'm in a quandary. The new book has EDWARD in it. I LOVE Edward. I just can't rid myself of a horrid foreboding. If Edward joins the ranks of those enslaved by Anita-sex, I might just rip out my own eyes.

Internal conflict galore.