The Loinfire Club reads... Night Play

Night Play, by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Bride McTierney has had it with men. They're cheating, self-centered, and never love her for who sheis. But though she prides herself on being independent, deep down she still yearns for a knight inshining armor.

She just never expected her knight in shining armor to have a shiny coat of fur.

Deadly and tortured, Vane Kattalakis isn't what he seems. Most women lament that their boyfriends aredogs. In Bride's case, hers is a wolf. A Were-Hunter wolf. Wanted dead by his enemies, Vane isn'tlooking for a mate. But the Fates have marked Bride as his. Now he has three weeks to either convince Bride that the supernatural is real or he will spend the rest of his life neutered... something no self-respecting wolf can accept.

But how does a wolf convince a human to trust him with her life when his enemies are out to end his? In the world of the Were-Hunters, it really is dog-eat-dog. And only one alpha male can win.

The room is a bit more crowded than usual, despite the absence of Sordan and other Valued Members, who are no doubt spending their evening being debauched elsewhere instead of partaking in the good, wholesome activity that is reading romance novels. The huddle of drinks has moved onto the floor, making way for a profusion of snacks and nibbles brought by Lhadhi Mhirhiam, the Yorrkhshiremhan and the Ahrtisté, the latter two being enthusiastic new initiates into the Club. Bowls of mostly-eaten stew, a white plastic bag of prawn crackers and various remains of dinner still clutter the room. Lounging is commencing.

The Following are added to our number:

The Yorrkhshiremhan, who is loquacious as the rest of his kin.

The Ahrtisté, who is quietly scribbling away.

Pihllywihggin, who is from the land of the green shamrocks (as opposed to the purple shamrocks over on the moon.)

The Outsider, who comes from far, far away.

The Chronicler also apologises to Lhadhi Mhirhiam for mispelling her name.

There was much talk over which book the Loinfire Club should read. The Chronicler and Cathed appear to have spent the solstice holiday searching for books to present to the Club. Choices included Christina Feehan’s "Night Melody", Nina Bangs’ "Original Sin", Jenna McKnight’s "A Greek God at the Ladies Club" and the increasingly commented upon "Virgin Slave, Barbarian King."

But it was "Night Play" that the Club finally decided upon after two whole rounds of voting (let it never be said that we are not a democratic society).

And so we begin:

The Pillywiggin reads out the list of things the Loinfire Club drinks for. It is discussed whether new categories should be added now or later. The exact definition of a "medical complication" is debated as drinks are poured.

The Lady Miriam objects to the lack of "h"s in her name, a most grievous sin for which the Chronicler apologises profusely. (See above)

Another tangent is sought in the list of many things that the Outsider is unable to purchase in America. American chocolate is summarily panned. Faces are made at the prospect of living off Hershey’s. Various persons recommend that the Outsider should never eat any chocolate from Thornton's.
The Chronicler: "Thornton's is worth the pain, even if you have to live with the knowledge you'll never get to eat it again."

The Yorkshireman: "Is it? Is it really? It’s like the whole having loved and lost being better than having never loved at all..."

Lady Miriam: "Yes, but time dulls the pain."

The Outsider clears her throat and bids everyone refocus on the novel at hand. She is reading tonight.

The Outsider: "Is everybody ready for the Terrible?"
The Club is evidently not as they are all soon distracted.

Lady Miriam offers advice on how to survive reading the chore of actually reading the book: "Best not to pay attention to what you’re actually saying. Just drink when everyone else is screaming."

The Ousider: "'Genocide'..."
The room bursts into confusion and laughter
The Outsider: "Gennisi."
There is mild confusion over the term and what it means. We soon settle for it being a more pretentious version of 'Genesis.'
The Outsider: "Come with me, modern traveller..."

To look with caution into the darkest alleys. Not in fear of human predators, but in fear of something else. Something dark. Dangerous. Something even deadlier than our human counterparts.
The Anthropologist: "Oh! I know, Eskimos!"

Lady Miriam: "They're called Inuits now."

Indeed, there was a time once, long ago, when humans were humans and animals were animals.
The Anthropologist: "Back when men were men, women were women..."

Cathed: "When single-celled organisms were single-celled organisms..."

They say the birth of the Were-Hunters, like most great evils, started out with only the best of intentions.
Cathed: "I like how it implies that they're not men when they’re hunters since the 'were' means 'man' in Germanic languages. Man-hunter, eh?"

Azrael: "So every full moon they morph into plaid-wearing, gun-toting, pipe-smoking hunter... and it's 'Oh no! There’s a plaid shirt growing out of my chest!'"

She was born to the cursed Apollite race and was destined to die in the heart of her youth at age twenty-seven. [...]And so he set about experimenting with his magic to prolong the lives of his wife's people. Capturing them, he magically spliced their essence with various animals who were known for their strength: bears, panthers, leopards, hawks, lions, tigers, jackals, wolves, and even dragons.
The Anthropologist: "All of which have a lifespan shorter than twenty seven."

The Yorkshireman: "But half-man half-giant tortoise just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it."

Azrael: "There is the half-man half-orca romance."

The Anthropologist: "They could be half-human half-bristlecone pine. That would be a lot longer lived than half-human half-panther."

Lady Miriam: "They could spend most of their lifetimes sitting in a glade trying hard not to look like a book."

Blending them with a dragon and a wolf, the strongest of the animals he had experimented with, he imbued them with more strength and magic than any of the others.
Cathed: "Why not just dragon since that's clearly where the strength and magic is coming from? I'm not seeing wolves being extra-strong."

Pillywiggin: "Wikipedia says no."

With their magical abilities and animal strength, they now lived ten to twelve times longer than any human.
Lady Miriam: "But far less than a quarter of the bristlecone pine lifespan."

Azrael: "Wait, how did he work that out? Surely you can't tell until start they dying..."

"There will never be peace among your children," Clotho, the Fate who spins the threads of life,
Cathed: "Sounds like a really cheap children’s tv series desperate for a puppet... 'hello, children! Meet Clotho! And Bottle-o!'"

The Anthropologist: "Sounds like a marvel supervillian back when everyone was on crack and no one had any good ideas... back when they made X-Men and Astaroids with arms and legs."
The Chronicler can almost forgive the author as it is after all, the name of an actual fate in actual Greek mythology. Almost.

The Katagaria were born as animals and lived as animals, yet once they reached puberty, when the magical powers were unlocked by their hormones, they would be able to become human at least externally.
The Yorkshireman: "When they hit puberty they lose hair?! That can't be right."

Azrael: "You were a really cool dragon before, but then suddenly... Your burnerating days are over!"

The Anthropologist: "It would really suck if you’re being chased a lot of villagers when suddenly puberty hits you..."

Cathed: "And suddenly you’re a spotty teenager."

Instead, the goddesses sent Discordia to plant mistrust between them.
The Outsider breaks off reading and beats the book against a hard surface shouting, "Bad, bad names!"
Lady Miriam suggests the category of "Didn’t bother look it up on Wikipedia!" for drinking.

It is an endless war. And as with all wars, there has never been a true victor. There have only been casualties who still suffer from the prejudice and unfounded hatred.
The Anthropologist: "But it’s not unfounded! They actually are animals."

More?

Night Play, contines, part two...

The Outsider has had quite enough and Cathed takes over reading.

For those who haven't been following the commentary, the pre-prologue section of the book just covered the origin of two species Katagaria (animals with human hearts) and Arcadians (humans with animal hearts) both of which are very magical and live for hundreds of years. The specific definition of what "heart" means is vague at best.

His arms ached from the strain of lifting two hundred pounds of lean muscle up by nothing more than the bones of his wrists.

Everyone takes a drink for medical complications.
Azrael protests: "It's not a medical complication if he's actually being crucified..."
The Anthropologist: "Are there nails through his wrist or is he tied..."

as he hung precariously from an ancient cypress tree over some of the darkest, nastiest looking swamp water he'd ever seen.

Azrael: "It's idiotic to use a Cyprus tree. They're spindly and..."
Of Aragon: "Do Cyprus trees even grow near swamps?"

Vane goes on a bit about how terrible swamps are.
There was something seriously wrong with anyone who wanted to live out here in this swamp.

Cathed: "He's about to die and he's worrying about real estate?!"
Lady Miriam: "Is he related to Anthony [of Cupid's Melody]?"
The Outsider: "Is he related to Brad?"
Lady Miriam: "No, Brad's too cool for that."

His brother, Fang, was tied to an equally thin limb on the opposite side of the tree where they dangled eerily amid swamp gas, snakes, insects, and gators.
The exact mechanics of how this is orchestrated is discussed. The possibility of boats and pulleys are explored.

With every movement Vane made, the cord cut into the flesh of his wrists. If he didn't get them freed soon, that cord would cut all the way through his tendons and bones, and sever his hands completely.

Pillywiggin: "That's some sharp cord."
Azrael: "Sharpened cord... How do you sharpen cord?"

Katagaria were animals who could take human form and they followed one basic law of nature: kill or be killed.

Yorkshireman: "We know already!"
The Chronicler: "Perhaps some readers skip pre-prologues."
Anthropologist: "It's not really a fundamental law of nature if you're a swamp rat, for example, it's probably more like run away or be killed. Or even hide lots..."
Azrael, sometime biologist, nods in agreement.

Both of them were in human form and trapped by the thin, silver metriazo collars they wore around their necks that sent tiny ionic impulses into their bodies.

Luca, fulltime physicist, writhes in pain: "Ionic impulses?!"
Azrael, sometime chemist, sympathises.
The Pillywiggen declares that the book has hit new levels of bullshittery.

Like Fang, Vane was dressed only in a pair of bloodied jeans. His shirt had been ripped off for his beating and his boots taken just for spite.

Azrael: "Spiteful boot-theft, eh?"
Lady Miriam: "But it's traditional for the executioner to get the boots!"

Gators who were just waiting for them to fall into the swamp and provide the gators with one tasty wolf meal.

Pillywiggin: "Okay, we get it! They're a bit fucked. On with the story."

"Fury was right. You should never trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die. I should have listened to you. You told me Petra was a three-wolf humping bitch, but did I listen?"

The Loinfire Club pauses to speculate how "a three-wolf humping bitch" is physically possible.
Azrael: "Is she humping all three at the same time? Or are they humping her?"
Cathed: "Well, there is one for every major hole..."
The Anthropologist: "But wolves really aren't as flexible."
The Chronicler: "And the teeth..."

Vane tried to manage a few powers even through the painful electrical shocks of the collar.

Azrael: "Oh! It's a dog-training collar! I didn't know those things worked by magic."
The Yorkshireman: "No, they work against magic..."

"I swear I'm never going to tell you to bite my ass again."
Everyone takes a sip for the dodgy comment.

Fang keeps bitching.

The Yorkshireman: "Note to self: leave brother in tree"

"Yeah, well, how was I to know Petra would run to Father and tell him you were with Sunshine and that that was why the Daimons attacked us?"
The Yorkshireman: "Does she have sisters called Lollypop, Rainbow and Unicorn?"

"They all want to mate with you, dickhead, it's the nature of our species."
The Anthropologist: "I don't think it is, you know."
The Yorkshireman: "I think it's because he has a really big car."

There is something of an action scene as Vane and Fang bitch and the branch cracks and pain is everywhere.

Vane growled in relief as the weight was mostly removed from his throbbing, bloodied wrists
Childish sniggering ensues.

Vane held his breath again, terrified of moving lest he cause the branch to snap in two and send him plummeting into the putrid, green swamp water below.
The Yorkshireman: "We know it's putrid!"
The Chronicler ponders why the state of the swamp water merits more description than the pain of having one's hands torn off by cord.

But since Talon was off in the French Quarter saving the world and not in the swamp tonight that seemed highly unlikely.
The room explodes into a loud "What?!"
The Anthropologist: "That's the story we'd rather hear."

The other, far less appealing option was Daimons those who were the walking dead, damned to kill in order to sustain their artificially prolonged lives.
The Anthropologist: "As if demons are ever the attractive option."
Lady Miriam: "I think she means zombies, somehow."
The Chronicler speculates that the author is just randomly picking words out of her book of Greek mythology and assigning new and completely unrelated meanings to them.

Even more impressive, once a Were-Hunter's soul was claimed, his or her magical abilities were absorbed into the Daimons' bodies where they could use those powers against others.
It was a special gift to be a "nubby" treat for the undead.
The Anthropologist: "That's a broken system."

"Damn you!" Vane snarled out into the darkness, knowing his father couldn't hear him. But he needed to vent anyway.
The Outsider: "Like a 14yr old girl on livejournal!"
Cathed: "OMG I'm totally unfriending you, dad!"

The Daimon laughed.
Cathed: "Zombies have a sense of humour."

Something leaped up from the swamp into the tree above him.
The Yorkshire: "And can jump."
Azrael: "Ninja zombies!"

He didn't know how to fight them in human form without his magical powers, which he couldn't use so long as Fang wore his collar.
The Loinfire Club give an exasperated shout of "We know!" and feel insulted that the author should feel that we'd be so drunk as to not remember about the magic-inhibiting collars.

The limb broke instantly, sending him straight into the stagnant water below.
Vane held his breath as the putrid, slimy taste of it invaded his head.
Cathed: "Oh no, his shirt!"
The Outsider: "Oh no, his jeans!"
Cathed: "You can totally get blood out with the right detergent... but swamp water, on the other hand stains like nothing else."

Vane kicked her legs out from under her before she could grab him. He used her bobbing body as a springboard to get out of the water.

The Yorkshireman: "What?! Physics!"
Luca is on the verge of curling up and crying.
Pillywiggin: "Wikipedia says no!"
Arzael: "Well, obviously he took two levels in synchronised swimming!"

His dark wet hair hung in his face while his body throbbed from the fight and from the beating his pack had given him. Moonlight glinted off his wet, muscled body as he crouched with one hand on the old wooden knee that was silhouetted against the backdrop of the swamp.
Azrael: "This is while he's covered in putrid swamp water."
The Chronicler could but point out that books have no sense of smell.
Cathed: "Sexy swamp water."

Dark Spanish moss hung from the trees as the full moon, draped in clouds, reflected eerily in the black velvet waves of the water.

Azrael: "Whilst pausing to contemplate the scenery..."
The Chronicler is intrigued how the putrid swamp water that he has rather recently been intimately acquainted has transformed into "Dark velvet" for the purposes of the shirtless scene.

The Yorkshireman: "Well all the crap's on him, so the water is clean."
Azrael: "Or the water was clear all along, but he didn't notice whilst on the tree, since it's very far away and he's short sighted or something."
Cathed: "I can make curtains out of it?"
The Outsider: "Curtains of darkness!"
Cathed: "Like my soul!"

Lifting his hands to his mouth, Vane used his teeth to bite through the cord around his wrists and free his hands.
The Anthropologist: "But it's sharpened cord? Isn't it going to cut his lips first?"

He dove deep into the murky depths until he could break a piece of wood from a fallen tree that was buried there.
The Outsider: "Soggy wood doesn't just crack!"
The Yorkshireman: "But Cyprus trees might."

He kicked one back, seized another by the neck and plunged his makeshift stake into the Daimon's heart. The creature disintegrated immediately.
Cathed: "So, they're vampires now..."
The Anthropologist: "It's handy body disposal, though. We can't have our hero sitting on a pile of corpses at the end of the day."

Used to fighting humans, the Daimon didn't take into account that Vane was physically able to leap ten times as far.

The Yorkshireman declares the physics engine officially broken.
Azrael: "Obviously those experiments Lycaon did also involved fleas. The dragons were there for magnitude. The wolves were there for coolness..."
Luca: "The wolves he used had fleas."

Vane didn't need his psychic powers.
Cathed: "He has psychic powers too."
Azrael: "Not just any psychic powers, ion-based psychic powers."

Calmness was the only way to win a fight.
Pillywiggin: "That and violence."

Unsurprisingly, Vane wins the fight, hands down with all his Uber Were-Hunter powers and Animal strength. The Chronicler wonders how he could have imagined himself loosing in the first place. However, Fang, Vane's brother, is heavily injured.

Inhuman and baleful, it was the kind of sound that would send even the voodoo mavens scurrying for cover.

The Anthropologist: "WHAT?!"
The Yorkshireman: "She's mixing her mythologies again."

Over and over in his mind, he saw his sister's lifeless body. Felt her coldness against his skin. He couldn't lose them both. He couldn't.
The Yorkshireman: "Incest necrophilia!"

Images flashed through his mind as he remembered his sister's death just the day before at the hands of the Daimons. Unimaginable pain tore through him.
Lady Miriam: "She meant unimaginative..."

Fang's eyes were open, staring unseeingly up at the full moon, which would have allowed them to time-jump out of this swamp had they not both been wearing the collars.
The Yorkshireman: "Whatever that is..."
Cathed: "She means teleport."
Pillywiggen: "We have a section for 'tarded flangepowers."

Shallow and raspy, the hollow sound of Fang's breaths was a symphony to Vane's ears.
Cathed: "Thought we left that all in Cupid's Melody"

With his rage unleashed, he did the impossible, he tore Fang's collar from his throat with his bare hands.
Pillywiggin: "More flangepowers!"

Vane swallowed the painful lump in his throat and fought the tears that stung his eyes.
Azrael: "Maybe he swallowed his own larynx. That would be amusing."

On that note, the prologue ends.

More?

Night Play, contines, part three...

Chapter One proper finally begins. The Club is a bit disappointed that the heroine and hawt sex has yet to make an appearance. There have been a great deal too many ridiculous things that didn't qualify for drinks.

It's eight months later and we're in the French Quarter (we're all hopeful for the world-saving plotline to come up)...

Stunned, Bride McTierney stared at the letter in her hand and blinked.

The Pillywiggen dies a little inside at the name of the heroine. Her Irish blood calls for revenge. Or something.

The author feels compelled to keep us in the dark about this blink-worthy matter for a whole five lines, albeit not very long lines.

The rotten, cowardly SOB had actually broken up with her via her own FedEx account.

The Anthropologist: "Clearly Anthony is back."

Sorry, Bride,
But I need a woman more in keeping with my celebrity image.
The Yorkshireman: "That's a good degree of asshole"
The Anthropology: "Clearly, it's actually a bet. He was with some friends, probably playing pool after a few pints and they start talk about the most insensitive way to dump someone. 'I'm sorry, honey, but there's just too much money involved.'"

"You sorry, sycophantic, scum-sucking dog," she snarled
The Club is genuinely impressed by her alliteration, though the Chronicler has some reservations over whether or not she knows the meaning of the word 'sycophantic'.

Her boyfriend of five years was breaking up with her...
Normally Bride would sooner cut her own head off than cuss, but this... this warranted serious language.
The Anthropologist: "That's a good form of self censorship."
The Yorkshireman: "How many people in the world can actually do that without complex head-cutting devices?"
The Club speculates over a subplot involving her Amnish parents.

And an ax to her ex-boyfriend's head.
Cathed: "She's a bit obsessed with decapitation."
The Anthropologist: "It might not be decapitation. She might just be slicing bits off."

And the need she felt to get into her SUV, go over to his television station, and pound him into itty-bitty bloody pieces.
The Anthropologist: "Who uses itty bitty in a death threat?"
The Yorkshireman: "It surely depends on whether or not he cheated with a woman in an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow bikini."
Lady Miriam: "Maybe she's secretly a My Little Pony."

Damn him!
The Anthropologist: "Well done."

Not to mention the important dinner party two weeks ago at the Aquarium where he had told her that he didn't want her to join him.

The Chronicler is waiting for Bride to come up with some good memories to lament over.
The Anthropologist: "She has just been broken up with so she's allowed to be illogically emotional..."
Cathed: "She might really like fish."
Azrael: "This is where we discover the hero is also a quarter fish?"

Like this! she thought angrily as she waved the letter around like a lunatic in the middle of her store.
The Anthropologist: "I don't have an axe but..."

Bride reflects on how Taylor was only using her to get a job at the TV station and she let him. She has some serious self-confidence issues.

Throwing the letter away, she seized her vacuum cleaner with a vengeance.
Azrael: "Being murdered with a sharpened vacuum cleaner would be quite unpleasant..."

You just vacuumed.
The Outsider: "Who said that?"
The Anthropologist: "The vacuum cleaner."

She could just vacuum again until the damned carpet was threadbare.
The Anthropologist: "Yeah! That'll show him! He loved his carpet!"

Vane Kattalakis…

He'd just left Grace Alexander's office where the good and he used the word with full rancor psychologist had told him there was nothing in the world that could heal his brother until his brother was willing to heal.

The Yorkshireman: "You sure she doesn't mean a psychiatrist..."
The Anthropologist: "Clearly that's the mistake he's making. He keeps wandering into a university office and knocking at the door of a psychologist who keeps politely telling him to leave. 'I'm really sorry, but I've got a lot of undergraduate essays to grade and a tutorial at four... I really wish I could help you, say if you want to know about the research I'm doing... why can't you just go talk to a psychiatrist?'"

Psychobabble was for humans, it wasn't for wolves who needed to get their stupid asses out of Dodge before they lost them.
Lady Miriam: "Tie a string to it."

Ever since Vane had crawled out of the swamp with his brother on Mardi Gras night, they had been lying tow at Sanctuary, a bar owned by a clan of Katagaria bears who welcomed in all strays, no matter where they came from: human, Daimon, Apollite, Dark-Hunter, Dream-Hunter, or Were-Hunter. So long as you Kept the peace and threatened no one, the bears allowed you to stay. And live.

Pillywiggin: "New levels of Bullshittery!"
The Yorkshireman: "Why does everything on that list sound more interesting than what we're reading about?"
The Chronicler: "What are Dream-Hunters?"
Azrael: "It's the BFG! Who else can it be?"
The Anthropologist: "She's just taunting you with hints of plotlines that are infinitely more interesting."
The Chronicler: "She could just be setting up the next books."
The Anthropologist: "But that implies that she's actually going to deliver."

The minute he did, a team of assassins would be sent for them. Vane could take them on, but not if he had to drag a hundred-and-twenty-pound comatose wolf behind him.
Cathed: "But wait! It's been eight months?"
Azrael: "Their father's really slow."
The Anthropologist: "But they haven't even left the state."

The Yorkshireman: "Maybe they're wearing collars that bleep really loudly when he goes outside of Louisiana."
Azrael: "Or better, maybe it blows up your neck as well."

He wanted his brother and sister back so badly that he would gladly sell his soul for it.
The Anthropologist: "Someone should take him up on that."
Cathed: "But who would want an animal soul?"

But they were both gone now. There was no one left for him. No one.
Lady Miriam: "There's always hookers. They do the whole girlfriend thing as well."

But Vane had spent the whole of his life fighting. It was all he knew or understood.
The Club later realised that this actually means about three hundred years which is a really, really long time to spend being this dense.

He couldn't do as Fang and just lie down and wait for death. There had to be something out there that could reach his brother.
Something out there that could make both of them want to live again.
The Chronicler: "It's called the heroine."
Pillywiggin: "Or heroin."

...one of those women's shops...
The Club ponders on what exactly a "women's whop" is.

It was a large redbrick building trimmed in black and burgundy.
Lady Miriam: "Oh! An undertaker's!"

It was her.
The woman he'd thought he would never see again.
Bride.
He'd seen her only once and then only briefly as he guarded Sunshine Runningwolf...
Cathed: "I'm drinking for that!"
Azrael: "I'm getting a mental image of a pink and yellow wolf with a pastel rainbow on her ass."
Lady Miriam: "A My Little Pony wolf."

So he'd sat idly by even while every molecule of his body had screamed out for him to go after her.
Pillywiggin: "Screaming molecules. That's a bad medical complication."
Lady Miriam: "A million tiny voices all screaming away in his head to screw her."
Azrael: "Listen very carefully to all the molecules."
The Anthropologist: "I bet you, it's lupus."
Pillywiggin: "But there're werewolves."

Her long auburn hair was pulled up into a messy bun on top of her head that left curls of it to caress her porcelain face. She wore a long, black dress that flowed around her body as she jerked a vacuum cleaner across the carpet.
Laughter over the word 'jerked' ensues.
Pillywiggin: "It could have been sensuous."
The Outsider: "She's vacuuming!"
The Yorkshireman: "That carpet is threadbare..."
The Anthropologist: "Your carpet is dirty you say... dirty..."

Vane notices that Bride is crying and he gets all protective over the stranger. Point of view switches to Bride...

Bride paused her vacuuming and looked up as she heard someone entering her shop. […] Never in her life had she seen a more handsome man.

At first glance his hair was dark brown, but in reality it was made up of all colors: ash, auburn, black, brown, mahogany, even some blond.

Lady Miriam: "I think that confirms that the characters are My Little Ponys."
The Anthropologist: "Or MarySues."
She'd never seen hair like that on anyone.
The Anthropologist: "Because it doesn't exist."

Long and wavy, it was pulled back into a sexy ponytail.
The Anthropologist: "Not just a ponytail, but a sexy ponytail, you know."

Better yet, his white T-shirt was pulled tight over a body that most women only saw in the best magazine ads.
The Yorkshireman: "What magazines have ads..."
The Chronicler: "Not just any magazine ad, the best."

It was a body that was meant for sex.
Azrael: "Not for vacuuming..."

Tall and lean, that body begged a woman to caress it
Azrael: "It's the molecules again! 'Caress us! Caress us!'"

It was the face of a rebel...
Cathed: "He stole Brad's face!"
Lady Miriam: "It's a face of a tramp."

... who didn't cater to current fashions one who lived his life solely on his own terms.
The Chronicler notes how it must be very convenient to conform without trying. After all, magazine ads have to be the epitome of the lowest common denominator.

Why would someone like this be in a shop that specialized in women's accessories?
The Chronicler: "Buying something for his grandmother."

Surely he wasn't going to rob her?
The Anthropologist: "She's perceptive."
Cathed: "Which is why she stayed with a scumbag of five years."

The vacuum, which she hadn't moved a single millimeter since he'd entered her store, started to whine and smoke in protest.
The Anthropologist: "It's not a very good vacuum cleaner."
Cathed: "She's just waiting for the point where she needs to suck all the swamp dirt away."

Drawing her breath in sharply, Bride quickly turned it off and fanned the motor with her hand.
Lady Miriam: "It's practically a character by now. It's a medical complication. Drink."
Pillywiggin: "It has more personality than anyone else so far."

It added a not-so-pleasant odor of burning dust to the potpourri-scented candles she used.The Chronicler: "Why would you scent candles with potpourri?! Isn't a bowl of potpourri good enough for you?"

He was swollen with need and desire.
Everyone drinks for the hard cock.

Swollen with a feral urge to take what he wanted, damn all consequences. [...]
Worse, the intense, feral look of that languid hazel-green gaze made her shivery and hot.
Pillywiggin: "She likes the word feral, doesn't she?"

But she was scared of him. His animal half sensed it.
The Chronicler notes the overtones of rape.

Never in her life had she seen a man even one-tenth as good-looking as this one.
The Anthropologist: "Everything must be quantified."

"Hi," she said back, feeling like nine kinds of stupid.
Azrael: "Is the author mathematically working all this out?"

His gaze finally left her and went around the store to her various displays.
The Yorkshireman: "When does he actually have his gaze with him?"
Azrael: "Can you please stop your gaze from fondling all the merchandise?"
The Chronicler: "It's a separate character?"

The Club decides that Vane clearly has a vacuuming housewife fetish.

If her cute ex couldn't stomach her looks, why would a god like this one give a rat's bottom about her?
The Anthropologist: "She really does have a problem with swearing."

Vane claims to be buying a present. Bride is helpful. Vane answers his questions in a stilted way.

His gaze came back to hers and made her tremble even more.
The Yorkshireman: "Will his gaze just stay still!"
Cathed: "She's being shaken by the gaze."
The Outsider: "Or throttled."

On second thought, she hoped she never met a woman that attractive. If she did, she would be morally obligated to run her over in her car.
Cathed: "She is quite scary."
Azrael: "At least she has a clear moral compass."

...a multitude of beaded chokers and earrings that were on cardboard stands around it.
The Yorkshireman: "Well that's the epitome of cheap."

The scent of her made him hard and hot.
Azrael: "Don't sweat next to the cardboard displays!"

It was all he could do not to dip his head down to her shoulder and just inhale her scent until he was drunk with it.
The Anthropologist: "But don't because it's really creepy!"
Cathed: "It's probably supposed to be romantic."
He focused his gaze on the bare, pale skin of her neck.
The Yorkshireman: "He's focusing his gaze now."

To have her lips swollen from his kisses, her eyes dark and dreamy from passion as she looked up at him while he took her.
The Chronicler: "Any category for passive females?"

There was a black Victorian choker that had her scent all over it. It was obvious she had tried it on recently.
The Yorkshireman: "She really shouldn't be trying things on in a lingerie shop."
The Anthropologist: "We reserve the right to not serve customers who sniff the merchandise."

His cock hardened even more as her fingers brushed the black onyx stones.
Azrael: "Why is this erotic? Is he imagining it as some kind of cockring?"
The Yorkshireman: "It's gone from rat's bottom to hard cock. This book has some interesting ideas about modesty."

She looked in the mirror, catching sight of those hazel-green eyes that stared at her with a heat that made her both shiver and burn.
Pillywiggin: "Medical complication!"

He was without a doubt the best-looking man to ever live and breathe and here he was touching her.
The Chronicler: "We know! He's a god amongst men. Really, fucking good looking. Most good looking man in the goddamn universe. Move on."

His fingers lingered at her neck for a minute before he met her gaze in the mirror and stepped back.
Azrael: "He's finally met her gaze."
The Yorkshireman: "My people talk to your people."
Cathed: "Is this where their respective gazes go find a room?"

[the necklace] was a six-hundred-dollar handmade work of art.
Cathed: "Displayed on cardboard?"
The Anthropologist: "The Company is cutting back."

She didn't have anywhere to wear it. It would be a waste, and the pragmatic Irishwoman in her wouldn't allow her to be so foolish.
Pillywiggin, a true Irishwoman: Die bitch!

Pulling it off, she swallowed the new lump in her throat and headed for the register.
Azrael: "More larynx swallowing."

She-wolves didn't really smile, not like humans did. Their smiles were more devious, seductive. Inviting. His people didn't smile when they were happy.

The Chronicler: "The Sluts!"
The Anthropologist: "Cultural stereotypes."
The Chronicler: "Of a culture he's spent three hundred fucking years in!"

They had sex when they were happy and that, to him, was the biggest benefit to being an animal rather than a human.
The Anthropologist: "I think you'll find that most animals don't have sex when they're happy."
[As the Chronicler writes this she consults the Biologist, who screams: "You're ascribing human emotions to animals. Go screw yourself."]

Humans had rules about intimacy that he had never fully understood.
The Anthropologist: "Like rape."

Carefully, she removed the price tag, set it next to the register, then pulled out a small piece of paper that had been pre-cut to the size of the box. Without looking up at him, she quickly wrapped the box and rang up his sale.
"Six hundred and twenty-three dollars and eighty-four cents, please."
Cathed: "This is thrilling stuff."

Instead her gaze was focused on the ground near his feet.
The Anthropologist: "If this was a play, their gazes would be represented with puppets with semaphore messages. Or ballerinas."

...his American Express card.
It was laughable, really, that a wolf had a human credit card. But then, this was the twenty-first century and those who didn't blend quickly found themselves exterminated.
Azrael: "Those without American Express are exterminated? What's in your wallet?"
The Chronicler notes the obvious product placement.

Hell, he even had a personal banker.
The Chronicler: "But he's in hiding."
The Anthropologist: "Maybe his father doesn't understand credit cards."

He nodded and headed for the door, his heart even heavier than before, because he had failed to make her happy.
The Chronicler marvels at his inability to ask her why she's sad: "They're wolves, so obviously they can't talk."

"Wait!" she said as he touched the knob. "You left your necklace."
Cathed: "He doesn't understand buying."
The Anthropologist: "He's a wolf, don't you know."

Vane looked back at her one last time, knowing he would never see her again.
The Anthropologist: "Clearly she won't let him in again since he's too creepy."

She was so beautiful there with large, amber eyes set in the pale face of a goddess. There was something about her that reminded him of a Rubens angel.
Lady Miriam: "A what?"
The Chronicler explains the concept of Rubenesque beauty and the artist, Rubens' paintings. The pictures are quickly summoned from Wikipedia.
The Chronicler also notes that whilst Rubens drew a great many very sexy, non-skinny women (which I could but presume the author is referring to) in his Classical paintings of goddesses and nymphs, most of his angels are of the chubby, cherubic toddler mode. Compare Christ and John the Baptist as children and two angels and The Crowning of Mary with Venus at her Mirror and The Judgment of Paris. All in all, no one should be turned on by the angels of Rubens. The sexy goddesses and nymphs of Rubens, on the other hand...

She was ethereal and lovely.
And far too fragile for an animal.
Whilst the Chronicler does not question her beauty, the Chronicler must object to the heroine's etherealness. There is nothing ethereal about Rubens angels. They tend to be quite solid. Realist, you know.

She took hold of his arm, amazed at the tautness of his biceps as she pulled him to a stop.
Pillywiggin: "Like male boobies."
Lady Miriam: "On their arms."

Breathless, she looked up at him and those beguiling hazel-green eyes.
Pillywiggin: "Isn't hazel and green two different colours?"

There was so much unfathomable sincerity in those words that she couldn't do anything more than gape at him.
The Anthropologist: "So how is she fathoming it?"

"Because beautiful women deserve beautiful things."
No one unrelated to her had ever said anything so kind.
The Yorkshireman: "Ewww! Why are people related to her hitting on her?"

She'd never thought any man would ever think of her that way.
The Outsider: "She's a size 18 girl..."

Vane stood there feeling completely at a loss. What was this? Wolves didn't cry. A she-wolf might tear out a man's throat for pissing her off, but she never cried and especially not when someone had complimented her.
[...]
What was he supposed to do now? He looked around him, but there was no one to ask.

The Anthropologist: "Leave a half-mangled deer carcass on her porch as a token of your affection."
The Chronicler marvels at how the narrative is again generalising wolf chicks as the sassy, independent, slutty types.

Screw the human in him.
The Anthropologist: "And his molecules."

Instead, he listened to the animal part that only knew instinctively how to take care of someone when they were hurt.
The Anthropologist: "Rip out her throat quickly and eat her."

He scooped her up into his arms and carried her back toward her store.
The Chronicler: "The author doesn't really watch many animal documentaries, does she?"

Animals always did better in their native environment so it only stood to reason that a human might, as well.
Azrael: "Because the shop is her habitat."

Carrying her! And he wasn't complaining that she was fat and heavy, or grunting from the strain of it.
The Anthropologist: "He is an uber-strong Were-thing."

She'd jokingly asked Taylor to carry her over the threshold when they had moved in together and he had laughed, then asked her if she was trying to give him a hernia.
Later that night, Taylor had agreed to do it only if she bought him a forklift for it.
Cathed: "This fucker is worse than Anthony!"

For the first time in her life, she almost felt petite.
The Chronicler: "Because feeling thin is more important than feeling beautiful. Why does the author insist on describing her in terms of a skinny heroine?"

But she wasn't that delusional. Bride McTierney hadn't been petite since she was six months old.
Azrael: "She's delusional the wrong way it seems."

"Ow!" she said as he almost poked her right eye out. It was a good thing she didn't wear contacts or she'd be blind.
Cathed: "Sexy."
The Anthropologist: "Clearly only sluts wear contacts so it's the ultimate heroine test."

He offered her a small, seductive grin.
Azrael: "Would you like a small seductive grin?"
The Anthropologist: "We have quite a large selection."

They talk about the necklace again. She doesn't believe he just bought it for her. And he can't explain himself.

He laced his fingers through the tendrils of her hair while gazing at her like she was some delectable dessert that he was dying to taste.
The Anthropologist: "Tendrils, ey? She's related to Medusa."

Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back before he called the psycho ward on her. The heat of his hand against her neck was searing. "What? Did you lose a bet or something?"
The Anthropologist: "Do people make bets like that?"
Azrael: "They do in bad teen movies."

Vane was completely baffled. Humans needed a reason to be nice to each other? No wonder his kind avoided them.
The Chronicler: "A few pages ago he was on about female wolves not smiling and being viscous sluts..."
[The Biologist points out that even chimps groom each other for tasty protein snacks.]

"Keep the necklace, please. It looks good on you, and I have no one else to give it to. I'm sure my brother wouldn't want it. He'd probably shove it someplace real uncomfortable if I gave it to him...
The Loinfire Club erupts into giggles: "Dodgy!"
Azrael: "Oh no! It's made of beads!"

She nodded and sniffed delicately before she laughed again.
All members of the Loinfire Club present attempt 'sniffing delicately'.

Before he could stop himself, he leaned down and kissed the tears from her lashes.
Cathed: "Ewww!"
The Chronicler: "We're not very good with bodily functions, are we?"
Azrael: "There are creatures that live there."
Lady Miriam: "He's trying to steal her gaze."
Pillywiggin: "So that was why he was trying to poke them out earlier."

No man had ever treated her like this. Not even Taylor, whom she had hoped to marry.
The Chronicler: "Explain again why you loved him? This is really not making you seem clever..."

He leaned down and placed a chaste kiss on the top of her head.
Cathed: "As opposed to a slut kiss?"
The Anthropologist: "That's not possible since he has a raging hard on."

Heat flooded her.
Cathed: "It was so a slut kiss."

In all her life, Bride McTierney had never done anything other than what she was supposed to. She'd graduated high school and lived at home with her parents while she went to Tulane, where she had seldom dated and had spent more nights than not in the library.
The Loinfire Club muses on Bride's university experiences and wonder if she has ever heard about cottaging and wonder if others who spent more nights than not in the library had more fun. The Outsider is pleased with all the things she's learning in the UK.

After graduation, she'd gotten a job as a manager at the mall until her grandmother had died and left her the building that now housed her shop.
Cathed: "Clearly she's not very smart. When you work more nights than not at the library, you really shouldn't be working at the local mall."

She squelched the voice of reason, reached up and pulled the band from his hair.
Azrael: "Squelching is really unpleasant a sound."
The Anthropologist vocalises her train of thought: "Wait a minute! I've only just met this guy and he's kinda creepy... Squelch!"

The heat of his hazel-green eyes scorched her.
Cathed: "Ow!"

He dipped his head down until his lips hovered dangerously close to hers, as if he were asking her permission.
The Anthropologist: "I'm quite sure the permission-asking is negated by the dangerous hovering. It's really more of a threat."

He growled deep in his throat like some animal before his kiss turned hungry, passionate.
The Chronicler: "Now he's going to rip her throat out and eat her for being weak."

Bride was thrilled and amazed by his reaction. No man had ever seemed to enjoy kissing her as much as this one did.
The Chronicler: "Erm... Tayler... Or is really that shit?"
Cathed: "Has anyone warned her about rebound sex?"

His strong hands cupped her head as he ravished her mouth as if he were starving for
her and her alone.
The Yorkshireman: "Isn't ravishing her mouth something else entirely?"

In his world, sex had no emotional meaning. It was a biological act between two creatures to ease a female's fertile time and a male's urges.
The Chronicler notes how the world setting later conclusively contradicts this with the ridiculous ideas about fate, mates and funny tattoos.
The Chronicler also notes that happiness is still an emotion (see above).

If the two wolves weren't mates, then there was no chance of pregnancy, nor was there any form of sexually transmitted diseases between them.
[The Biologist asserts that this isn't inherently maladaptive, provided that the super-special-tattoo mate is the Best Mate.]

Lady Miriam: "Absolutely bollocks! There is canine everything else."

If Bride were one of his people, he'd already have her naked on the floor.
The Yorkshireman: "Would already be! After all they're quadruped. And don't wear clothes."

Human females were different. He'd never made love to one of them and he wasn't sure how she would react if he took her the way he would one of their females.
The Anthropologist: "By pressing charges..."

In all honesty, he didn't know why he was so hot for her now. It wasn't normal. Not once in all the centuries he had lived had he ever even contemplated taking a human lover.
The Anthropologist: "If he's centuries old surely he'd be more clever than this."

He couldn't stop himself. Every instinct he possessed demanded he take her.
[The Biologist: "Female mate selection! Yay!"]

Just for one moment, he wanted to feel unalone again.
The Yorkshireman: "Unalone. Good word!"

His whiskers gently scraped her skin, making her burn even more as her breasts tightened with need.
The Anthropologist: "Odd side effect of her breasts. It's probably the opposite condition to Stacy's [from Cupid's Melody] whose breasts swelled every time she was in a sex scene."

And every lick he delivered to her skin made her stomach contract.
The Anthropologist: "Her organs are rearranging. She's going into battle mode now!"
The Yorkshireman: "Go Go gadget man chest!"

She didn't usually neck with men she knew like this.
The Chronicler questions the use of the verb since she's not really doing anything other than be kissed so far.

Terrified of what she was about to do, she took a deep breath and braced herself for his rejection.
"Would you make love to me?"
Instead of the laughter she expected, he pulled back from nibbling her throat to look at the open windows of her shop. "You don't mind?"
The Anthropologist: "I apologise I didn't finish vacuuming?"
Cathed: "My vacuum cleaner isn't fulfilling me anymore"
The Outsider: "It doesn't suck hard enough."

Heat exploded across her face as she realized it was dark outside and anyone passing by on the street had a perfect view of the two of them necking like horny teenagers.
The Chronicler: "Because no one could look in if it's light outside."

Bride couldn't breathe as she got her first look at his bared chest.
The Yorkshireman: "She's allergic to his chest."
Pillywiggin: "It gives off asbestos."
The Yorkshireman: "Like all wolves."

It exceeded anything from her dreams. His broad shoulders tapered to a washboard stomach that could do enough laundry for an entire nation. Forget six-pack, this man had eight, and they rippled with every breath he took.

The Loinfire Club is also having trouble breathing. They're laughing too hard.

His entire torso was lightly covered by hair, making him look even more masculine and
raw.
The Yorkshireman: "Analogous to dog fur."

There were several deep scars that curved around his left shoulder and biceps, and one that looked strangely like an animal bite of some kind.
It was all she could do not to drool.
Pillywiggin: "Brain damage?"
The Anthropologist: "She secretly wants to give herself rabies."

Really, no mere mortal woman should be in the presence of someone this fine and not need oxygen.
The Chronicler: "But everyone needs oxygen, all the time."

"Don't be afraid," he whispered. "I'll be gentle."
The Anthropologist: "He's projecting his true intentions."
[The Chronicler could but reference Mistress Matisse when she says, "If the caller says something like, 'Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you,' that’s bad. That’s very bad. Do not see anyone who says something like that. Dangerous guys will very often telegraph their intentions in this way, so if you pay attention, it’s not so hard to weed out the problem people. "]

Good grief, he didn't have an ounce of fat on him and here she was a good, solid size
eighteen.
He was going to run screaming for the door any minute.

There is no need for further comment on this girl's serious self esteem issues.

Running his hands through it, he pulled her lips to his so that he could ravage her mouth again.
The Yorkshireman: "More mouth rape!"

Running his hands through it, he pulled her lips to his so that he could ravage her mouth again.
The Outsider confesses hating nipples. And zombies.
Cathed concludes that her worst fear must be zombies with nipples.
Azrael: "But if you cut off nipples from zombies, they'll keep moving."
Pillywiggin: "Zombie nipples!"
The Anthropologist: "They're smaller so can hide under you bed."
Azrael: "So they'll be hiding in your house and secretly lactating into your cereal in the morning."
Lady Miriam: "No that's a Connie Mason book."
Azrael, who has already written songs about a whelk and chicken wing allergies: "There's a song there. Zombie nipples..."

Ever since he'd hit puberty, he'd heard stories of wolves who had killed human partners accidentally while mating with them.
Human bones lacked the density of his kind. Their skin bruised much more easily.

The Chronicler: "Not to mention they're uberstrong, uberfast and..."

He nibbled his way from her delicate mouth, down her jaw, while he reached behind her and unhooked her bra.
The Yorkshireman: "It's not that easy!"

They were a lush bounty. Pale and swollen, they overflowed his hands.
The Loinfire Club questions the concept of overflowing breasts.

She laced her hands in his hair while he dipped his head down to suckle her.
The Anthropologist: "Why does it always have to be suckled? It's possibly the least sexy word ever. I mean, it's understandable if it's Connie Mason and her lactating fetish, but for everyone else..."

He hadn't touched a female in almost a year, a record for him. But since the night his sister had died…
The Yorkshireman: "Why is he thinking of his sister now of all times? Right when he's groping her breasts?"
The Outsider: "Maybe he took his sister's nipples instead of her hand."
The Yorkshireman: "Or virginity."
The Anthropologist: "Or her abs, which is why he has eight."

Midnight fantasies of him taking her in every position known.
The Chronicler likes the ret-conning of his background to write her in.

No good deed goes unpunished.
It was Fury's favorite saying.

Azrael: "That's a song from Wicked!"

It didn't erase the pain he felt at the loss of his siblings, but it lightened it.
The Yorkshireman: "Fang's not dead yet!"

His eyes were hooded and dark She stared at his back in the mirror and wondered at the scars that marred his smooth, tanned flesh. [...]Some of the scars were obviously claw and bite marks that looked like he had been mauled by some kind of wild animal.
One in particular was deep and large. It went down his shoulder blade, up under his arm.

Pillywiggin: "How are these really deep scars causing no movement problems?"
The Yorkshireman: "Lots of exercise and supernaturally fast healing."
Pillywiggin: "Surely he needs his tendons sometime!"

She should be embarrassed and yet she wasn't. She didn't even feel self-conscious. If anything, she felt strangely empowered by it.
A man like this so hungry for her.
Cathed: "Wolf rape makes women feel empowered."

Moving his hand, he actually pulled her underwear off with his teeth.
The Yorkshireman: "That is also really hard."

He wanted to pull her to him roughly and take her like the animal he was. He wanted to show her how his people mated, forcefully and with dominance.
[The Chronicler: "But the female mate selection..."]

A she-wolf would take human form for the mating. She would walk seductively around the available males, making them crazy with lust until they were ready to kill each other to have her.
Sometimes they did.
There was always a battle for the female. Then she would pick whichever male had impressed her most with his beauty and skill. Usually it was the victor who mated with her, but not always. Vane's first lover had claimed him even though he had lost the fight because she had liked the passion he had shown while trying to win her.

Lady Miriam: "So werewolves are a Lekking species..."
The Anthropologist: "Maybe they're getting it from the dragon side of the experiments, because wolves aren't."

She would try to throw him off or out of
her and it was his duty to make sure she didn't. If he tired before morning or before she was fully sated, another male would be brought in.
Azrael: "So wolves practice Swedish rodeo."
The Yorkshire: "And that's after the fight! That has to be so unproductive."

And he had never taken a woman like Bride. One who wasn't biting and clawing at him as she demanded he please her. Something inside him relished the rarity of this.
The Chronicler is getting really sick of the hammering home of what demanding bitches she-wolves were.

In a life where violence and territory and blood wars reigned, it was nice to have a reprieve. A tender lover's touch.
The Chronicler wonders where he's getting this desire from when he has never left his culture in any way or interacted with humans in his centuries of existence.

He nipped her fingers playfully.
The Anthropologist: "Like a puppy."
Pillywiggin: "Or a gerbil..."

Bride hissed in pleasure as her legs went weak.
Azrael: "She's half snake!"

He devoured her.
Cathed: "Ow!"
Azrael: "And so she dies. The end."

Bride cried out as her body was turned inside out by his touch.
Pillywiggin: "Medical complications!"
The Anthropologist: "Is this why they don't have sex with humans normally?"
Cathed: "The Vacuum cleaner is feeling left out!"

Like all males of his kind, he took pride in her orgasm. There was nothing sweeter than hearing the screams of a lover climaxing.
Cathed: "Unlike those inconsiderate human males who don't care about their partner's pleasure."

Bride swallowed as she sank her hand deep into the denim. His short, crisp hairs teased her fingers as she found what she sought.
Pillywiggin: "I question the use of crisp."
Lady Miriam: "He hasn't washed for ages. It's the grime."

The man was huge and he was already wet and straining.
The Yorkshireman: "Wet? That sounds as though he's been a bit overenthusiastic."
Lady Miriam: "Was he ten times the size of any other man?"

He pulled away from her, then quickly jerked his boots off.
Lady Miriam: "They were feeling left out."

She watched in a passion-numbed daze as he slid his pants down and she caught her first sight of him in all his glory.
Commando!
The Anthropologist: "Because wolves never wear underwear..."

There was nothing sexier than a man who dared to wear nothing under his clothes.
The Anthropologist: "I dare say that you'll find there is. Such as not being a creepy fuck."
Azrael: "There's nothing more manly than bravely facing down the chafing."

He was bold and commanding. Wild. And he made her shiver uncontrollably.
Pillywiggin: "She's having an epileptic fit, but hey, that's fine."

Bride was thankful her dressing room was larger than most. It had been designed to accommodate women with baby strollers or toddlers. And it gave them plenty of room to maneuver.
The Yorkshireman: "There has to be something wrong in fucking there."

She'd never felt that way. Normally, she avoided looking at herself in mirrors.
The Chronicler: "Not an arrogant slut. We get it already!"

"He slid his tongue around the beads of the necklace."
The Yorkshireman: "Well, we know where they're going now."

Someone remarks on how interminable this sex scene is.

The man was incredibly strong. She leaned back against him where his body was hot
and prickly.
Pillywiggin: "He's a hedgehog now!"
Lady Miriam: "Sonic the hedgehog."

A she-wolf would be trying to bite him. She would be clawing his arm, demanding he give her more satisfaction. Demanding he move faster and harder until she came again.
But not Bride.
She didn't make any demands as he took his time, with slow and easy strokes.
The Chronicler: "Demanding women, bad. Submissive women who lie there and take it, good. Point made."
One can't help but think he's wanting to have sex with all these she-wolves now that he's constantly comparing them.

She completely surrendered herself to him.
[...]
He'd spent so many months dreaming of what she would be like in his arms. Now he knew.
The Outsider gave an outburst of: "Wow! That's creepy! That's so creepy!"

He felt his powers growing as he kissed her cheek [...] Sex always charged his species, making them stronger.
Azrael: "So his powers are linked to hormones... that makes some sense given that they manifest at puberty..."
The Anthropologist: "That's a broken mechanic!"

He was so thick and hard inside her. So commanding.
The Yorkshireman: "I'm almost disappointed. We've not had a number yet!"

Her body shook uncontrollably as he continued to give her even more.
The Chronicler: "So werewolves like it when women don't do anything..."
The Anthropologist: "She did play with his nipples right at the beginning. We can conclude from this that it's okay to ask for sex, but..."
Pillywiggin: "It reminds them of when they were fucking dead animals."

And she did. In a way she had never orgasmed before. It was so primal and powerful she wasn't even sure how she survived it. [...]Every stroke he continued to give her only made her orgasm more. Made her entire body sensitive. This had to be the longest climax of her life!

Some complicated jokes about reversing polarity and Star Trekk ensued.

Bride turned her face into his and laid the sweetest kiss imaginable on his lips. It sent him careening over the edge.
He wrapped her in his arms as he released himself deep inside her body. Unlike a human, he wouldn't be finished quickly with this. His orgasm would last for several minutes.

At this point the Chronicler feels her own call of nature. The Outsider takes up the narrative:

The Chronicler exits the room for a moment right when the hero climaxes, then bursts back through the door dramatically: "Condoms! They forgot condoms!"

The discussion that ensues is about how Werewolves don't need condoms because they can just shape-shift violently. As detailed in the D&D sourcebook.

The Loinfire Club doesn't read... The Misted Cliffs

The Misted Cliffs by Catherine Asaro

Every now and again, The Chronicler reads a book she hates. One that she hates a lot. In her other incarnations, she reviews books too... here is one such...

"In the hour of dawn, he made love to his wife. He died in the circle of her embrace and came alive again, and his life would never be the same, for he had let this woman topple his defences and so he had given her the power to hurt him. Why that terrible deed created such joy within him, he would never understand." ~Catherine Asaro, "The Misted Cliffs"

I profess I was rather shallowly seduced by the cover of this book. Whilst the snark continues over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books on crappy covers on romance novels, the publishers have managed to cajole the unequalled and unmistakable Stephanie Pui-Mun Law to clothe this volume is swirly pastel colours. It is gorgeous. Though that said, I am still mildly irked by the fact that Stephanie's name doesn't feature in appropriate enormity on the spine and cover. After all, she is main selling point. Too stingy to buy prints of her work, I resort to buying books sporting her art.



(Incidentally, I officially hate the person who changed the covers of the Second Son Trilogy from Law's to the current atrocity of foil and colour. Arguably the gentle, flowing lines and watercolour shades would less appeal to a male audience. Still, it's less pretty. And they've lost a reader in me.)

Firstly, the adjective-noun adjective-noun names. Fundamentally very silly, but acceptable, if random people aren't suddenly called Matthew and Muller. For no apparent reason. And there's a Leo somewhere, too. There's no rhyme or reason to the names of Aronsdale. Most of its population, hero included, but have silly adjective-noun names. Which is fine, truth be told, if the naming convention was ever justified or made anything other than a rehash of an ancient fantasy cliché. Still, the novelty of being able to pronounce the names of most of the cast isn't wearing thin just yet. I could easily live with it if it were consistent (that is, everyone having such names.) It's not even a class or cultural divide, as the distribution is utterly random, from warlord of the Misted Cliffs to the farmer in Aronsdale. Some parents saw it fit to name their children after random object and colours and abstracts, and some don't.

After Darkmane Ebonheart (aka Dark Dame Ebontart) I really can't take it too seriously. But then again, this is despite its pretensions at epic narrative, anything but a serious (or even decent) fantasy.

That Cobalt sounds decidedly like "kobold" really doesn't help his case.

The Misted Cliffs does no sport a particularly interesting or original plot. It is one familiar to readers of romance: an arranged marriage and resulting mess. Unsurprisingly, the unwilling bride and groom find themselves in love. And we go from there.

Specifically, their marriage is one of political importance. Princess Melody Headwind Dawnfield is to marry Kobold... sorry, Cobolt the Dark in order to prevent an invasion. Cobolt is the son of the deposed king of Harsdown, and arguably the rightful heir. He has great imperial ambitions and apparently a legendary cruelty.

The first thing I learnt about Princess Melody was that she didn't like her name for unspecified reasons (which is why I refuse to call her "Mel".) Woe is wished upon me, but I really don't care. Instead of an insight to her character, the statement came off has a petulant childish whim. Does she not like the association of music? Or is it the idea that her voice is melodic? Does she feel it's a poor summary of her personality? We never find out and what could have helped define a character comes off merely as a brat's bad habit. Denying sovereignty can be as irritating as revelling in it.

After that false start, she was so promising. She could fight and despite her alleged talent, felt magic was pointless. She liked swords and horses. Despite being rather hastily drawn of the tomboy stereotype, the orchard-wandering tree-climbing horse-riding little runaway, I found her reasonably likable. But a few chapters in, she needed to be saved by her husband (that scene would have been so much better if he found her meticulously cleaning her sword after she's killed all the bandits) and goes down the whole fluffy-nurturing-healer shtick, which we've all seen before. She abandons her swords and horses and becomes a happy wife who uses her art to stop people killing each other on the battlefield.

Her childishness and naivety about the world was annoying, but I was hoping the world would soon teach her a few harsh much overdue lessons. Yet instead of her learning that the world is more harsh and complex than her farmhouse upbringing would suggest, she inflicts her perception of the world onto everyone else. Her power allowing her to realise the ridiculous vision, manipulating people's emotions through violet-coloured magic. Sorry, if I'm not being clear enough: she mind-rapes and brainwashes people and imposes her happy-fluffy world view on them.

Incidentally, I've yet to see the titular cliffs. There are quite a few mountains, but no cliffs. The Misted Cliffs is the most inanely named country ever.

All the characters all have very modern views, in fact, modern colloquialisms seems to drift in every now and again. The façade of "fantasy" on the novel seems rather fragile, imperfectly grafted on. Too often it feels like I'm reading a badly written medieval novel with some magic thrown it. The whole point of fantasy is immersing yourself into a foreign and alien world. Different ideologies, systems of thought, ways of looking at life. That I meet all-too-familiar faces who speak all-too-familiar platitudes is an insult to the genre. Fantasy Romance (as opposed to Romantic Fantasy, a very different sub-genre) was to me a promise of a strange and savage world where romance seems unlikely, even impossible, yet it blossoms still. I was hoping for richly textured cultures and civilisations, empires built on a foreign logic and a far-reaching history, yet all of it still understandably human. They still bleed and die, wars are still fought. Fantasy is to me an endeavour to rebuild civilisation on different assumptions, that magic exists, that gods can intervene directly...

Asaro took the most trite of the two genres, Romance and Fantasy, and created a monster. It's not bad, exactly, just not particularly good. (Not to mention Romantic Fantasy, which is possibly the very antithesis of this new monstrosity.) The romance between Cobolt and Melody tread the tired tracks of most Regency and Medieval romances out there, exploring little new ground. Cobolt angsts and feels that he's unworthy of Melody and her angelic beauty. Melody doesn't know how to deal with her passion, her love for a man whom she sees as evil, though capable of good. They dance the very familiar dance that has dance so many times before and ultimately danced much more eloquently before. Their romance was never difficult. Their world conspires for the two to fall in love and even when it throws obstacles in their way, there is never a sense that that there is any true struggle. In this I always felt Romance has hobbled itself, by deciding to focus solely on the relationship between two characters, all too often the world around them is underdeveloped. To fully evoke love, a character and the world around them must be fully real because of all emotions, love is something that does not exist in abstract.

The rather heavy-handed divide between Light and Darkness, good and evil got to me a bit. I can almost tolerate otherworldly sources of Evil, dark lords and such, but from a human? For all it's pretences at a more humanist stance, the book doesn't deal properly with the touted ideals. Towards the end, it had sank to the depths of a monochromatic world. The hero isn't of ambiguous morality. He is Good, merely mislead or misunderstood. The villain, however, is Evil.

Evil as well as good is hereditary in Asaro-world. Dancer, Cobolt's mother, shagged the stable-hand and therefore the evilness was crossbred with gentleness and then everything was okay.

The world Asaro created is very boring. It's generically medieval with books thrown in for good measure. For no apparent reason. Each nation exists with its culture in abstract, with no rhyme or reason. And it's people, utterly colourless, existing as only generically "good" or "evil". I couldn't care for all these nations that are rising and falling, conquering and conquered. When Melody talks of the common people that will suffer and Colbalt of his great ambitions for uniting the shattered empire of the Misted Cliffs, I feel nothing. They both speak of things they do not understand, Melody more than Colbalt, but one fails to care.

The whole business of the thousand-year family and the two-hundred-year occupations is senseless. That she has spanned such complex history and fluctuating of borders in less that fifty years should have made Asaro realise that societies are so much more mercurial, so why do her nations stagnate for so long. It's not even a matter of war, but sheer stagnation.

Cobalt might have read a lot of history (not difficult when it seems to be nothing happens until you came along, sire), but Asaro doesn't seem to have. Medieval warfare is mostly about people avoiding a fight. Armies will circle, insult, impress, antagonise and intimidate. Rulers, even generals, will do all they to avoid fighting in an open field. Losses are just too high, the fight too chaotic, the outcome too variable.

There's also that great pretence at being "good". The heir should always marry the woman of greatest mage talent and produce children is effectively a eugenics programme. Slightly glorified, granted, but that Asaro tries so hard to justify its existence and make it seem more romanticised is painful. It is perhaps slightly more enlightened, but it is really no different from saying my child shall only marry one of noble birth. It's merely that one values slightly different qualities. (And people of proper magical qualifications always miraculously and conveniently fall in love with each other, no matter how much they initially despise one another.)

Equally Melody's parents rule their kingdom from a manor of a farmhouse. This is hailed as a great thing, but at no point does find out how in actuality it works. I want to know how this court is run. Where are all the courtiers? The nobility? The advisors and the bureaucrats? They're touted as being very liberal with their encouragement of education and new farming methods, which is jarringly anachronistic enough, but what and how can they make it possible with no system or institution to do their bidding? What would a nation of farmers do with books anyway?

There are a lot of ideas that I like, but they flash by too quickly. Too much emphasis is placed on the couple and ultimately, most of the cast is merely Nice in a very bland way. The scene where Cobolt waits for his bride at the altar is rather charming as he mistakes each woman who comes through the door as his future wife (always preceed the bride with an ugly bridesmaid, works every time.)

One such idea is the interesting magic system. The idea of light and geometry coming together to create magic has potential. Though the first thing that irritated me is that there are no such thing as offensive spells (no blasty-blasty death for you!) and most mages are women (go healy-healy-nurture-nurture!) However, in the previous book The Charmed Sphere, which this one harks back to in various places, it appears that the very powerful mage woman must marry a more powerful man (Die, feminism! Die!).

Someone should so write fanfic where a topologist falls into their universe, thinks up 5th dimensional shapes and rules the world.

In a world where marriages are a way of transferring property and creating political ties, where does the idea that you should abandon your mistress and devote yourself to your wife come from? If a man has had a mistress for many years, marries a woman for political and dynastic gain, he is apparently wrong to go back to his mistress. Or so says this book at least. Cobolt rowed extensively with his father when he found out Varqelle had a mistress. In a world that should be viewing women as possessions and peace-weavers and political tools, Cobolt has distinctly anachronistic ideals. What are these modern minds doing playing dress up? To watch love flourish despite of political ties and marriages and cultural expectations is interesting. To watch love flourish in a convenient place, that well-nurtured plant-pot in the glass house is frankly boring.

One of the things that did intrigue me was Varqelle's relationship with his estranged wife, Dancer. What had they done? Why does Dancer find her father, Stonebreaker's court and his abusive behaviour preferable to her husband? How is Stonebreaker the lesser evil? What hold does her father have on her? Why can they never exchange words? Why is she so damn spineless?

I had hoped for something complicated and dark. My guess was that Stonebreaker sexually abused her as a child and she's so utterly screwed up that she has to back to him because it's been ingrained into her that she can't shag anyone else. The level of spineless behaviour she displayed and years of enduring her father's hellish company has to mean source from something more complicated and fundamentally fucked up than just an "evil mistress."

Why is it that the king's mistress is evil when the queen's lover is a nice gentle man? Why is the king seeking solace in his mistress bad and wrong and evil when the queen loving her stable-hand utterly okay and right? But that's better, right? Since in most romance novels it's the other way around.

And the sex. I'll try to keep this short. Simply said, Asaro wrote as though she was ticking the obligatory romance scenes off a list. Sex doesn't happen to compliment or complicate emotional matters. It happens when it is most convenient. The intimate doesn't illuminate the relationship between Cobolt and Melody. It just happens as the infernal wheel of the story turns.

That Cobalt wasn't obsessed with Melody's virginity is a pleasant surprise. Though I'm really getting sick of how well the Heroine's innocence compares oh-so-favourably to an experienced courtesan. Perhaps it's just me, but sex gets better the more you practice. Additionally, Melody's energetic youth should have robbed her of a hymen. Swords and horses would do that to you. She also seems most confused about the exact mechanics of sex, something which is never clarified to her.

Suffice to say the book began likable, but soon fell prey to all I hated about the two genres instead of combining the strengths of both. Fantasy and Sci-fi can oddly be devoid of emotion at times, concentrating instead on plot and general scenery. Romance often lacks the plot and situation to support the deep vein of feeling it tries to open in its readers. I had hoped the marrying of the two genres can create something brilliant. But no, not this time. Decidedly not this time.

Oh, and Asaro, you should be ashamed of yourself. You won a bloody Nebula.