The Great Grand List

It's been a little while and I've been neglecting this blog (but then the Club hasn't exactly been having dozens of meetings since the last update), but I was reading Let Them Eat and was having a good rummage around my brain as to why romance novels annoyed me so much and I though I'd have it out once and for all, before the individual nit-picking overtook any sensible discussion of why I'm continuously disappointed in the genre:

1) I want it to show the diversity of love.

I want cultural differences. I want to be shown all the different sorts of relationships build across time and space (and all those fantasy lands). I want to see people conducting relationships in a way different from my own.

But instead, it only shows the same Perfect relationship in all times, in all places, in all settings. Instead of showing me cultural and personal variation, the audience is shown that all cultures and all Perfect Couples conduct their relationship more-or-less the same way and the setting is only wallpaper.

2) I want it to revel in imperfect love.

It's what always warms my heart. A relationship in all its little, bittersweet (but mostly sweet) imperfections. It's the little irritations that make it seem real and solid and human.

But instead, it only shows me more-or-less the same flawless relationship, where the Perfect Couple are simply telepathically perfect in bed, flawlessly work together and never, ever disagree trivially. True Love is shown to be completely effortless. For example, the hero, once he's found the heroine, is incapable of finding anyone (male or female) attractive ever again.

3) I want them to be honest.

The rhetoric around romance novels annoys me. The way the novel is discussed, reviewed, presented. It's the way the novel is presented as an examplar of Perfect Love as opposed to simply an instance of love, however flawed but true. It's not even presented as a fantasy, as something that is decidedly undesirable in reality. Kresley Cole's A Hunger Like No Other begins with what is essentially a rape fantasy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having one and writing one, but it would be nice if she and the readers showed some self-awareness when it comes to discussing it. Perhaps I'm very used to the rhetoric of "safe, sane and consentual", but the framing of the relationship as desirable, as "true love" and the hero's actions as justified all repel me.

I am quite capable of saying that I like reading about imperfect, functioning but really-fucked-up relationships. Time Traveller's Wife is probably a prime example in which the narrative itself admits how really rather messed up the whole thing is. Though, to be fair, I'm not going to go read any reviews; It'll probably just annoy me.

4) I want the setting to do something more than just prop up and excuse the audience's desires for the same old configurations and the same old prejudices.

I want it to be well thought-out. I want it to not be built around the author's desire to write about a string of Alpha men in a series. And I really don't want to hear the same old about the Importance of Virginity.

Opinions, perceptions and manifestations of love and desire differ throughout the ages. I want to read about it. Really ties back into point-number-one.

But this feeds into a larger point about how work is gendered and the sheer invisibility of women in fantasy fiction doing anything else other than generically rebelling, being housewives or being "ladies." Though that said, this is slowly, slowly changing.

5) It seems to deny that people can have a complex sexuality.

It seems to deny that people can have quite a different sexuality than their regular selves. It seems to deny that nice, quiet people can be dominant in bed (or vice versa). The Hero's extreme Alpha personality is a sign of how dominant he is in bed. Less alpha men are shown to be less sexually capable and less dominant in the bedroom.

Perhaps I'm just rather too aware of how geeky the kinky community can be (being a regular reader of Mistress Matisse and Twisted Monk), but it irks me that as opposed to showing the complexities of human sexuality and how surprising it can be, romance novels are wont to confirm first impressions, as though we all wore our "bedroom face" on our sleeves. Equally, the paired trope in which the sexual self is seen as the True Self is highly problematic.

The Loinfire Club reads... Tempt Me with Darkness

Tempt me with Darkness, by Shayla Black

He’s an immortal knight hungering for satisfaction. . . .

As soon as Marrok sees Olivia Gray, he’s sure they met in eons past. He’s felt her soft, gentle curves writhing in pleasure beneath his own powerful body. . . Morganna! For centuries, towering Marrok, once the mightiest of King Arthur’s warriors, has endured a terrible curse the witch cast upon him when he spurned the witch.

She’s a modern woman about to discover ancient magic. . . .

Olivia shares a mystical—and irresistible—connection with brooding Marrok. Soon after the sexy warrior appears in her erotic dreams, he abducts her, demanding she uncurse him. Their intense passion is more powerful—and intimate—than either of them has ever known. Olivia may be the key to unlocking the diary that will break Morganna’s hold on his life. But in the wrong hands, the book also holds the power to destroy magickind. As they search for answers, a ruthless wizard returned from exile is building an army of evil. When he discovers Marrok and Olivia have the diary, only their love—with the help of a powerful group of magical Brethren—can save them.

After the Pillywiggen refreshes our memories with a grand declaiming of the rules of the drinking game and BoneGeek is reading:

PRESENT DAY
ENGLAND
BESIDE THE LUSH BANKS of a pond, a woman beckoned, familiar.
The Chronicler: "A pond is not sexy. Really."
Cathed: "Ponds make me think of ducks and I don't think there's an unsexier animal than a duck."
There follows a discussion about which is the unsexiest animal: ducks, slugs or frogs.

Yet Marrok of Cadbury had never seen her face in his life.
The Loinfire Club: "Cadbury?! "
The Anthropologist: "Did they just looked for something English? It ends in bury, so it must be quaint and English."
(The Chronicler wonders if this woman googles names before using them. Even if Black lives in a cardboard box in Texas surely she knows that naming her hero after the world's largest confectionery manufacturer is a mistake?)

 A cityscape towered in the background. None of that held his gaze rapt. Her bare-to-the-skin nakedness...
Cathed: "To the skin? What other kind of nakedness can you have?"
The Anthropologist: "Bare-to-the-cardigan nakedness?"
The Pedant: "Oh, those sexy bare-to-the-ligaments nakedness."

The woman’s sable hair swept over one pale shoulder, curling under the swell of a generous breast topped by a berry nipple
Cathed: "So, we've got the Cadbury guy and a berry nipple... this sounds like a desert."

...and framing a birthmark he knew well.
She no longer possessed the platinum tresses into which he’d once thrust his hands.
Azrael: "It sounds like he's torn out all her hair out accidentally..."

Her new face was delicate—higher cheekbones, pert nose, pillowy mouth...
Azrael poses with a pillow to demonstrate. He flips it around for the "unhappy" face. It's probably funnier if you were there.

Acid hatred mixed with clawing desire. He tried to look away, but his gaze caressed her small waist, her curved hips, the moist flesh between her thighs glistening...
Cathed: "Get in there, gaze!"

Morganna bewitched him more now than she had on their wind-drenched night of shared pleasure an eon ago.
The Chronicler: "Wind does not drench. You need moisture for that."

The strawberry mark low between her breasts brought back memories of pale moonlight surrounding them as he’d succumbed to temptation and tupped her senseless.
The Anthropologist: "Tupped? We'll need a category for Ye Olde Englishe."
There followed a brief description of the etymology of the word "tupped", its relation to goats and if could be used sexily in earnest.

For that mistake, he’d paid dearly.
With the last fifteen centuries.
The Pedant: "Everyone goes to sleep after sex."

Mist swirled around her like the mystical fog of legend, as if caressing her.
Luca: "Fog is legendary, now."
Pillywiggin: "What she means is, mist swirled like mist."
Azrael: "No, what she means is, mist swirled like cheap cinematic mist made of dry ice."

Though she was deadly, Morganna in this new form captivated him. Today, society had clinical terms for his obsession.
The Anthropologist: "He has some sort of medical problem.... I'd like to call it Evil."
Then followed a discussion about M. Scott Peck's  proposal to add Evil to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

 To yield would only mean further torture. But his body betrayed him, inching closer, his cock swelling painfully. Cursing, he closed his eyes.
The Anthropologist: "They do that a lot in these books. No one has reliable bodies, ever... wait, inching? Like a caterpillar?"
Bonegeek: "I was thinking that too."
Azrael pictured it more like an earthworm, but agreed that the caterpillars move in a more "inching" manner.

Perhaps due to an overdose of House-watching in the household, there occurred here something of a differential on Marrock's condition.
The Anthropologist: "I think he's got some kind of dissociative disorder."

Marrok opened his eyes as a fresh rush of desire slammed him.
The Anthropologist: "Again, like a battering ram? Or a line of invisible American Football players pummelling him repeatedly throughout the conversation?"

Want was a luxury; this woman he needed. The feeling was as new as a baby’s first breath…and as welcome as the plague.
Azrael: "A good bit of juxtaposition again. Neither are things you really want to think about when it comes to sex."

(The Chronicler later wonders if anyone could possibly compare anything – let alone sex – with the utter devastation of the Black Death if they had actually lived through it. After all, this man is fifteen hundred years old. Or maybe he's just completely sociopathic.)

 And likely illusory, merely one of Morganna’s tricks.
Cathed: "She's really good at that illusory breath play."

...then she waved her hand. Suddenly, she clutched to her naked breasts the ornate red book he knew meant the difference between his life and death...

The Anthropologist: "Oh no! She's a communist!"

Nay!
Bonegeek: "Nay has a line all to itself."
The Anthropologist: "Like an Ye Olde Version of the Darth Vader thing."
Cathed: "Doth not want!" 

Marrok launched himself at her. They fell to the ground in a tangle of breaths, arms, and legs.
Cathed (mishearing): "Entangling breasts, it can happen.

Her plea spiked his fevered lust.
The Anthropologist: "Medical complication."

He ached to sink deep into her.
The Anthropologist: "Medical complication."

But he had to resist this fatal woman.
The Chronicler: "Not sure that one counts."
The Anthropologist: "She has malaria."
Bonegeek: "Or plague. On her breath. That would make her fatal."

He was on fire for her. A heartbeat from explosion.
The Anthropologist: "Like that episode on House."
("A guy takes his heart rate, and the number he comes up with makes him either about to die or bad at math. They wait a bit, and since the guy doesn't die, House concludes that he sucks at math; he writes the patient a prescription for StickyBear Math Town." from Television without Pity)

As she wriggled under him, lightning chased across his skin.
Bonegeek: "The caterpillar metaphors haven't gone away yet..."
Pillywiggin (showing us all her picture): "We have the cock-a-pillar."
Cathed: "But what does it turn into afterwards?"
The Pedant is reminded of something creepy in Pan's Labyrinth.

Later, he’d remember all the reasons he could not.
Cathed: "I'll remember those later."
Pillywiggin: "Maybe he needs a mnemonic."
The Anthropologist: "Oh, yes, yes, she's actually a man.... how could I possibly forget!"
Cathed: "Maybe I should write it on my hand."
Pillywiggin has drawn the Fucker-fly, the next stage of the cock-a-piller.
The Anthropologist: "Is that what people mean when they say butterfly kisses?"

Marrok dropped his hands to her thighs and pried them wider.
The Chronicler: "As though she was resisting... how rape-like."
The Loinfire Club also makes a series of unoiled hinge noises.

“If you tempt me thus, you will take what I give you. All I give you.”
The Anthropologist: "I don't think that's how it works under the British legal system."

From one instant to the next, his clothes melted away and he poised himself at her entrance.
Pillywiggin: "What? His clothes melted?!"
The Pedant: "Well, he shouldn't have worn candyfloss then, should he?"

With a wave of her pale hand, Morganna unlocked the volume. The cover fell open, revealing a hint of its pages, as she faded away.
The Anthropologist: "Is it wrong that the book is described in more flirtatious terms than the woman?"

“Give it to me!”
He shouted at fog. She—and the book—were gone.
Again, she’d used her power against him. Desire sizzled deep but he was, as ever, cursed.
The Anthropologist: "Damn you, Mao!"

“I am the key.” Her soft entreaty swept through the wind. “Find me.”
Marrok dragged himself to his feet, suppressing a primal scream. He must hunt her. That cityscape behind the pond he recognized as London.
The Anthropologist (who is quite familiar with the city): "Oh, is this set in London then?"

Around him, something rattled. Marrok sat up with a startled gasp, his bed rumpled, eyes wide.
The Anthropologist: "Eyes wide... he's been eating flumps."
The Pedant: "He's been chomping down on Santa's North Pole..."

(The Pedant had bought some flump-knock-offs – essentially long thin marshmallows – that were called "Santa's North Poles." The innuendo was, of course, not missed and it became a theme for the rest of the evening. As Cathed was eating one, the Anthropologist remarked that her pupils were dilating, much to our alarm.)

Panting, he scanned his surroundings. Bare walls, carved bed. A sword beside his hand. Glock under his pillow.
Azrael: "A glock?!"
The Anthropologist: "Is that like a flump only more so?"

There is some discussion about whether or not the author means a gun, but then, the first things American gamers (or at least, in White Wolf setting documents) are told about England as a setting is that we have much, much stricter gun control over here.

His cottage, not a mist-draped clearing. No Morganna.
The Chronicler: "That'd be a very expensive cottage in London. That said, he could be a cotter and therefore his dwelling – no matter what it looked like – would be a cottage. But I'm quite sure the back of the book says he's a knight."

The book! Marrok whipped his gaze around. On his bedside table rested the leather-bound tome. The vehicle of his never-ending torment, the key to his freedom, was still here and still locked.
It had been but a dream.
Or perhaps a message? Though it had been centuries, Morganna had once enjoyed reaching from her exile to taunt him in sleep.
The Chronicler is utterly sick of modern portrayals of Morgan le Fay as a slutty evil woman and rants about it loudly. It's not even the evil that gets on her nerves, it's the combination of slutty, evil, beautiful and sex-centric plans. There will, no doubt, be a post itemizing her hatred in greater detail in the future.

Shadow and torment her he would...
Azrael: "Sounds almost Yoda-like."

A sharp rap against the cottage’s front window startled Marrok
Cathed: "Why is our Alpha Male hero who sleeps with swords and guns being startled by loud noises?"
The Anthropologist: "He just had a freaky dream about his cock turning into a caterpillar, cut him some slack."

He hadn’t had a visitor in a decade, and preferred it that way. Guests were both unexpected and unwelcome.
The Anthropologist: "In the middle of London, bloody hell!"
The Chronicler: "What? No door-to-door salesmen? No junk mail? Where does he live?"

As he slid around the corner, his heart raced with the anticipation of impending battle. [...] If someone had come to take the book from him, he would greet them with bloodshed.
Azrael: "Not the shedding of their blood, just bloodshed."
Cathed: "Maybe it's like Love Shack, but better."

Marrok crept forward, crouched for attack. The shadow disappeared.
The Chronicler: "I'm sure he's supposed to be all hardcore, but he only comes across as paranoid right now."

Heaving an annoyed sigh, Marrok yanked the door open to find a nightmare nearly as bad as the one that had awakened him. Golden hair spiked above sleek brows and wicked blue eyes. A glittery Hollywood smile...
The Anthropologist: "I'm still not convinced this man isn't batting for the flump team."

“If today is your day to conduct beheadings, count me out.” Bram flashed the million-dollar smile that had seduced magickind into seeing things his way for four hundred years.
Bonegeek attempts some sort of accent for this voice and there are many humorous attempts that the written medium simply cannot reproduce. We discovered in due course that the motherland of humanity is Pakistan due to it being where all accents drift to in the end. Bonegeek finally settled on a Welsh accent for this character, which gives him rather likable, laid back air which rather endears him to the Loinfire Club. That and Bram is only a letter off from Brad, the name of the Loinfire Club's favourite accountant non-hero. 

The Chronicler feels that the date of four hundred years ago may be significant and wonders if Bram was involved the Reformation. The Anthropologist is less optimistic and condemns it as simply a number Black picked out of thin air. 

Bram would not go away until he spilled his secret, though Marrok cared little what the wizard had to say. He must find Morganna in her new guise, then force, coerce, or beg her into unlocking that accursed book and setting him free.
Cathed: "So rape, rape again and ask nicely."

Marrok stared at his rumpled chinos.
The Anthropologist: "He wears chinos?!"
Bonegeek: "Sexy sexy old man chinos."

“Did you come all this way to be my mum?”
“If you need one…” Bram shrugged, mischief lurking in his eyes.
There is something about flump being the new euphemism of choice.

“To talk to you,” Bram said through the door. “You know that only something gravely important could bring me to the Creepified Forest.”
The Anthropologist makes a face at the stupidity of the name.
The Chronicler is reminded of the Creeping Brain for no good reason.

“All right, then. I am the only living being who knows of your immortality and still speaks to you.”
The Anthropologist: "Is that meant to be in a Gollum voice? Smeagols wills speaks to you..."

Marrok grunted and reached for his toothbrush. “I am not interested. I must hunt.”
“The local market too civilized for your Dark Ages upbringing?”
Azrael: "I'm going hunting with my toothbrush! I'm bored of hunting with this whole knives and guns thing!" 

Though the wizard loved to antagonize him, Marrok knew the darling of magickind would not visit without cause.
Pillywiggin: "Stop using the word magickind! It offends me!"
Bonegeek: "You don't have to say it." 
The Anthropologist: "I'm wondering if the darling of magickind is some kind of special title. Maybe elected."
Azrael: "No, more likely it's something that magazines would name every few years."

 Vision. Being in the same room with anything or anyone magical was enough to give him hives. Having Bram around was like a permanent case of leprosy.
The Anthropologist: "As opposed to those impermanent cases of leprosy that people get all the time."
Bonegeek: "I was out last night and my finger fell right off. Just a touch of leprosy."
The Chronicler again wonders at the flippant use of these diseases that in the middle ages was really rather serious.

The Chronicler reviews the rest of The Darkest Kiss

The Darkest Kiss, by Gena Showalter

After the Loinfire Club struggled through the first chapter of The Darkest Kiss, the Chronicler picked it up (always the masochist when it comes to terrible fiction

) and decided to finish it. Here follows a report for those who are curious about how the story about Anarchy and Death live happily ever after...

First of all, The Darkest Kiss is really quite a bad book, but it doesn't suffer from the stereotypical problems of normal romance novels. The heroine is more free of the classic I Am Not A Slut complex than most (with one or two incredibly annoying and notable exceptions, but I'll get to that.) The hero isn't full of rape and ravishment threats, doesn't stalk the heroine, invade her personal space and call it love.... And yet all this doesn't stop it from being really quite an annoying book.

The World Setting

The Chronicler is that most of The Darkest Kiss' readers probably don't care about the metaphysics of its fictional universe and exactly how it all operates. Given that it's the second book in the series, perhaps it should not be expected to lay down the setting with introductory simplicity. And yet it makes no effort to advertise it's Not-the-First-Book status.* That said, the Chronicler really doubts her problems with the setting are answered in the previous book.

The setting is riddled with sweeping statements and loopholes. For example, the origin story is mind-boggling:

Once upon a time, there was Pandora's Box (aka dimOuniak) and in it were lots of demons. These warriors, led by one who felt insulted he didn't get to guard it (?!), opened the box. As punishment, they were made into living prisons for the demons.

Now, this story seems simple. Or at least. Showalter thinks so. But it's not. She's vague as to how much our version applies. Was the pre-box-opening free from Death, Pain, Promiscuity, Lies and all that? Are these simply demons of the concepts as in they are the physical embodiment of them, free from personality and scheming or are they more sophisticated? Were they physical, as in, after release, did the demons personally kill/rape/torture/lie to everyone in their way or did they just possess people and make them do so?

The Chronicler really wants answers because it's actually relevant to the plot. Galen, the Keeper of Hope... wait, Hope is a good thing, right? It was in the original. So why was the demon of it imprisoned in the box along with the other demons? Was the pre-box-opening world also free from hope? And if it's a good thing, should he be allowed to go about and do his work, keeping people's spirits up despite all the death, promiscuity, lies, doubt, defeat (etc) that is happening all over the place?... Sorry, derailed myself there. Galen, who has demon of Hope imprisoned inside him, is running around being the leader of an organisation that busies itself tracking down the imprisoned demons** and killing them all, because the blame the demons for all the shitty things that happen.

The main characters are justified in not knowing what would happen if the imprisoned demons are killed, but they seem phenomenally uncurious about the effects of their death. Baden, Keeper of Distrust, has died and the world doesn't seem to be devoid of distrust, but you can't really fault the hopeful warriors of Galen to keep trying. I'm really okay with them being selfish about their own death versus the world being painless forever, but can they not at least consider the possibilities? What would answer my question is a description about the pre-box-opening world, but Showalter just doesn't want to share.

But then we get to other metaphysical problems. The Greek deities are real. Fair enough. And they differ somewhat from legend, which is again, fair enough. Though it would be better if Showalter actually acknowledges these differences and addressed them, since of all the pantheons the average person would have heard of Greek is quite high on the list. But the immediate question that follows is: Are any other pagan pantheons real? They certainly aren't geographically confined to their original continent, so where is everyone else? They don't have to exist, but it's just really odd because there is a Christian heaven and hell, where some select souls get to go after death (very select, I'll come to that), and yet there are no other gods. Showalter doesn't even feel the need to say, "I know the ancient Greeks believed in an underworld that's different, but that's because they're wrong and were off their tits on mushrooms." Most books employing an existing mythology in its world-building puts in a line or two, the standard: "What a silly superstition you humans have about garlic and vampires. We fear it not."

The Anthropologist suggests perhaps that Showalter simply doesn't realise that other religions have a different vision of heaven and hell. But then she does as she mentions Hades later, but it doesn't seem to feature in any great way.

It's just weird to try to fuse the two.

 

Lucien, Incarnation of Death

Which really quite neatly brings me to Death Himself. Now, beauty is the eye of the beholder and all that, but it really defeats the point of having an ugly hero if the heroine finds him irresistible. The point of Beauty and the Beast is that Beauty grows to love him despite his appearance and eventually grows to love his appearance as well (the latter part surfaces in modern retellings and I quite like it.) But if she thinks he's walking porn to begin with, then he might as well be walking porn to everyone else.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, the scars so puckered they abraded his palm. Had they scratched Anya?

Anya's over-the-top attraction to Lucien comes across as delusional. His descriptions of himself as horrifically scarred don't add up to her descriptions of him. He wonders if his scars are scratching her but whe

n we're reading from her point of view, Anya hasn't even noticed, which is weird considering how much attention she was paying to him.

Now that I think about it, who is the man on the cover? He has the mismatched eyes of Lucien, but he lacks the horrific scaring. Also, as the Anthropologist notes, MrCoverModel is incapable of ever moving his arms since it would distort his carefully placed shoulder tattoo.

Lucien's insecurities are ridiculous. He obsesses about how Anya is perfect and how he is so scarred all her attraction must be feigned... but what is most annoying is that he possesses the ability to see emotions with his damned SpirtEye. He saw her passion. But after this one use of his magic power, he doesn't really use it again in the book. He doesn't even use it to see if Anya's faking it. Seriously.

In this spiritual realm, Anya’s passion appeared a blazing pink. Real. Not faked, as a part of him had assumed. That pink trail glittered with a dazzle unlike anything he’d ever seen.

 

Lucien, Keeper of Death

But that's not really the bone I want to pick when it comes to Lucien and his job of soul-ferrying. He insists he hates his job and that he finds the taking of innocents distasteful, but he never really articulates this hatred as anything other than (as Azrael puts it) the hatred one has for an exceptionally dull desk job. If he believed that his own death would stop death forever in the world and if his existence was really that joyless... wouldn't he try to end it? Why doesn't he have some sort of philosophical stance on the necessity of death, if only to justify to himself his existence and not feel like a bastard?

Now he was charged with the responsibility of collecting human souls and escorting them to their final resting place. Even if he opposed the idea. He did not like taking innocents from their families, found no joy in delivering the wicked to their damnation, but he did both without question or hesitation

One isn't really sure how free will and the gods (keepers?) interact. Is he personally responsible for the deaths of his victims or not? He didn't chose to have the demon of death stuck inside him, but then if he believes what he's doing is truly Evil. He mysteriously thinks he is, but he arrives at the scene and sees the mangled bodies of the soon-to-be dead. (The Anthropologist notes a quick comparison thing to Death of the Pratchett's books, who sees his job as a necessity but doesn't see any reason to make it any worse for the people concerned.) Lucien thrusts his arm into the chests of the dying, retrieves their soul, teleports to the gates of either heaven or hell and tosses them in, all rather unceremoniously. I understand he's on a tight schedule, but really, it can't be pleasant. Nor does it seem very Greek since they have ideas about Charon, the ferryman of Hades.

He was still at a loss as the pearled gates opened wide, revealing golden streets and bejeweled, arched lampposts hanging like diamond-studded clouds. White-clothed angels lined the sides, singing a melodious welcome, their feathered white wings gliding gracefully behind them.

I can't get over how Christian heaven and hell are. Pearly gates with golden streets is very specifically Christian. It's straight out of The Book of Revelations, "The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate being made from a single pearl." There is nothing of this in Greek mythology and it is jarring. But that isn't what is getting to me.

“Lots of people die. Every minute. Every hour. Why don’t you have to escort all of them?”
“Some remain to wander Earth, some are reborn and get the chance to start anew. Some, I think, are escorted by angels.”

That practically makes him redundant. I know that he can't be too tied up with this whole soul-ferrying business since he needs to have time for being with Anya and hanging around with his heterosexual friends, but it really diminishes the character when we find out he doesn't deal with all death, that he's just one soul-collector amongst many.

HE WAS KNOWN AS THE Dark One. Malach ha-Maet. Yama. Azreal. Shadow Walker. Mairya. King of the Dead. He was all of those things and more, for he was a Lord of the Underworld...

The other odd thing is what qualifies as evil enough to land a soul in hell.

The man’s sins suddenly flickered through the demon’s awareness and in turn through Lucien’s. As the man had already proven, he had considered himself above the law, slaying anyone who got in his way—men, women, children—all in the name of a better world.
Bastard.
Maintaining a strong grip on the protesting spirit, he flashed to the entrance of hell. Not Hades—that gloomy underworld was reserved for those who did not deserve either the tortures of hell or the glories of heaven. This man deserved the flames. Though the gates to the fire pit were closed, Lucien could feel the intense heat radiating, could hear the symphony of tormented screams inside, the demonic laughter. The jeers. The stifling scent of sulfur permeated the entire area, enough to make a man gag.

Firstly, as the Anthropologist points out, considering himself above the law isn't really more than what Anya is doing in her daily life. Given how many legal systems Lucien must have lived through, it seems odd that he would attach that much significance to any actual law code.

But more importantly, this man wasn't just working for a better world. He was working for a world that is devoid of pain, suffering, death, war, lies... He is working for paradise on earth. I'm not saying that I feel this means he deserves heaven, I'm just saying that in his paradigm, it's justified and I'm uncomfortable with the idea that this man deserves eternal torment. I'm uncomfortable with the adamance with which the hero thinks this. I'm not saying that I personally believe that the ends justifies the means every time, but there are many things that have been done in the name of the Greater Good and these things do include the American War of Independence (picking an example that most Americans would like to think of as a Good Thing) and the French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution.***** Perhaps again it is that Showalter doesn't think that the audience may disagree on this point, that her reader won't read that and feel uncomfortable. It's that the Universe judges it so with Absolute Morality, not simply the hero's personal morality.

Two bodies lay on the floor, a man and a woman. The man, Lucien instantly knew thanks to his demon, had wrongly suspected the woman of cheating on him, had shot her and then turned the gun on himself.
Bastard, he thought, then stilled.

Now, I'm not saying that killing your girlfriend for cheating on you is morally right. But again, I'm uncomfortable with the idea that it deserves eternal torment in hell. Eternal is a very long time, like seriously. And he did kill himself afterwards. I'm not saying that I like him or that he deserves heaven, but eternity in hell?

Furthermore, what did that woman do to deserve heaven. Again, I'm not saying she necessarily doesn't, but what differentiates her so very much from everyone else since this is a setting where only a select few get into heaven.

She  [the dead spirt] saw him and gasped. “Naked,” she said, staring at him. “Am I in…heaven?”
Should have dressed first. “Not yet.”

Can you really respect Death who goes to work naked?

 

Anya, Minor Goddess of Anarchy

Yes, minor. 

“You are the minor goddess of Anarchy.”
“There’s nothing minor about me.” Minor meant unimportant, and she was just as important as the other, “higher” beings, damn it.

No, minor means she wasn't widely worshipped, which she wasn't. She doesn't have a cult, let alone a widespread one. She has no temples or shrines dedicated to her. She's minor and none of her quibbling is going to change that. Her petulant, foot-stomping tantrums come across like a six-year-old insisting that they're all grown up, because being a child is unimportant. She doesn't hold power in the divine courts of the Greeks, uninvolved in godly politics. She seems to serve no function in the everyday running of the world. I'm not sure you can get more minor than that.

When she’d first come to earth, she hadn’t known how to control her rebellious nature. Gods had been able to protect themselves from it, humans hadn’t. Besides that, she’d been almost…feral from her years in prison. A simple comment from her—you aren’t going to let your brother talk to you like that, are you?—and bloody feuds erupted between clans. An appearance at court—perhaps laughing at the rulers and their policies—and loyal knights attempted to assassinate their king.

Showalter has no idea what anarchy means. When Showalter describes Anya's deep need for anarchy, she describes pyromania and kleptomania. Anya controls her instincts to anarchy and disobedience by stealing, and whilst that is anarchic on a personal level in that she is disobeying the law that tells her not to steal... kleptomania just isn't anarchy. Neither is doodling moustaches on the original Mona Lisa. And really, it's quite unremarkable and dull.

Eventually she’d learned that if she fed her need for disorder with little things—petty theft, white lies and the occasional street fight—huge disasters could be averted.

What immediately came to mind as something she could be doing is feeding her desire for anarchy by inciting rebellion against tyrannical leaders across the world. She would justify to herself that many of the riots she incites may not succeed, but that freedom is a cause worth dying for. She would tell herself that she has a need to incite rebellion so she should at least do it in a place where she knows there is an unjust dictator. She could work ferrying equipment to guerrilla fighters and pass messages. She probably won't get personally invested in any cause too much, but she'd hang around salons  and bitch about dictators, though she wouldn't put much store in political idealism. Would that cut a little close to home for escapism? Perhaps, but it would make her so very much more interesting. That heroine is one I can root for... pit she only exists in my head.

“Once I attended a masked ball and dressed as the devil. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the year was eighteen-nineteen and I created quite a stir, let me tell you. When I asked Baron something-or-other to sell me his soul, he tried to stab me with a butter knife.”

It was great when Showalter finally decided to tell us a little of what Anya was doing for the last few millennia, but why she doesn't talk nostalgically about past rebellions? I disbelieve she wasn't there for the French Revolution, wasn't involved in the English Civil War or the Glorious Revolution, didn't care about the leaderless state of medieval Iceland.****

Showalter's blindspot really cripples Anya's potential as a character. She seems so very petty when compared with what she could be doing. Self absorbed and really... well, what claim has she in being a goddess when she isn't doing anything to affect the world? She's hardly the embodiment of a force if she isn't involved in places where anarchy is at its zenith. Surely not all rulers deserve their thrones? And not all laws are just?

 

The Goddess of Lawlessness and Sexual Sin

Dysnomia is really obscure a figure, usually coming in lists of personifications. She is named daughter of Eris...

"But abhorred Strife [Eris] bore painful Toil [Ponos] and Forgetfulness [Lethe] and Famine [Limos] and tearful Sorrows [Algea], Fightings [Hysminai] also, Battles [Machai], Murders [Phonoi], Manslaughters [Androctasiai], Quarrels [Neikea], Lying Words [Pseudea], Disputes [Amphillogiai], Lawlessness [Dysnomia] and Ruin [Ate], all of one nature, and Oath [Horkos] who most troubles men upon earth when anyone willfully swears a false oath." (Hesiod, Theogony 226; as quoted on Greek Mythology Link).

Now, in the context of that list, it is quite easy to see that Dysnomia is not associated with promiscuity. She is lawlessness in the sense of chaos and anarchy. She is lawlessness as in the world turned upside down. The opposite of ordered, stratified Greek society. She is by no means an important figure, but the reduction of her to some slutty goddess (which isn't really true in Hesiod, at least) who sleeps her way around Olympus seems a bit of a slap.

Her kiss had been sinful. Delightfully so. But the woman he’d held in his arms had not seemed evil. Sweet, yes. Amusing, absolutely. And, shockingly enough, vulnerable and wonderfully needy. Of him.

The whole novel is firmly set in the moral framework that views sex as sinful (the standard of romance novels) and it's really quite jarring. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the Greek pantheon would know that they hardly adhere to our sexual standards. A classicist would be able to describe all the nuances of Greek sexuality, but suffice to say it is hardly identical like our own. Read Thornton's Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, for example. No, we don't know what it was like exactly and there is hardly critical consensus, but they are not exactly like us. If they were, it would be really dull. These are immortal warriors from the dawn of time, can't they at least think a little differently?

Why did he have to look so sexy standing there? The sun was acting like his lover, caressing him, weaving an angelic halo around his dark head. Yes, angelic. He was a fallen angel just then, causing her pulse points to throb and her stomach to quiver.

Even more perplexing is the constant reference to angels. At first the Chronicler simply thought it was metaphorical (which is odd since they don't exist in Greek Mythology) but then references to real angels happened. The reader is never told how they fit into the hierarchy. Presumably with the existence of demons there are also angels, but who are they working for? What purpose do they serve?

 

Anya the Warrior Princess

Showalter allow Anya to fight competently when it comes to the various combat sequences, but why does she dress her in the literary equivalent of cheesecake? I know she's busy bucking trends and expectations, I know she doesn't really need mobility since she can teleport but...

"Despite what you seem to think, I am a powerful being, and I choose whether or not to endanger myself." [...]
Finally, he looked at her—and immediately regretted it. She wore a white gossamer gown with gold threaded throughout, and was even lovelier than he remembered. With the golden glow of moonlight crowning her and emerald plants framing her, she was an ancient queen straight out of a storybook.
The top layers of her pale hair were piled on her head, the rest tumbling down and begging for his touch.

Firstly, he was there in the ancient times and he hardly has time for storybooks, so maybe she should be "an ancient queen like that one he saw in Sparta" or something.

Secondly, her comment that she is a powerful being is really rather undermined with the gossamer gown. Maybe mortal armour is useless for her and she likes the way it looks but Showalter never justifies Anya's battle wear, especially since she doesn't blast them with her lasers, she actually enters the melee.

 

The Canonical Characters were Mean to Me

The Darkest Kiss, as the Anthropologist pointed out, is a lot like Knight of Darkness in that the author is writing about a setting she seems to despise. Kenyon dramatically recast the Arthurian setting to conform to her ideas of manliness and relationships and ideal worlds, keeping almost none of the original concepts.*** Sandra Hill did the same to the Viking era and Showalter is doing the same now with Greek mythology. She uses so very little of the classical Greek religion, the big names of the pantheon barely make an appearance. Her use of Christian heaven and hell points to a world setting badly thought out. When gods from classical myth do turn up, it's only be mean to Anya and call her names in goddess-training-school. Showalter just doesn't seem to care about her source material.

 

Inexplicable Pop Culture References

The Anthropologist wondered about the pop culture references and the tendency for these books to feel dated really quickly. It doesn't make Anya any more connectable. Or likable. Where did she pick up all that slang anyway? Surely hanging around valley girls and chavs is hardly feeding her anarchic desires.

Shortly after, he’d found her a second time and threatened her with the Lords. Now here she and Lucien were, about to go Halo 3 on each other. Score one for Team Cronus.

What does "about to go Halo 3 on each other" even mean? Does it just mean "perpetrate some sort of violence"? Or is the hero going to be permanently stuck in some suit of power armour and aliens will descend from space? It's a shooter game and most of the violence in The Darkest Kiss is even gun violence....

 

To be continued... on the subject of The Darkest Kiss...
How Not to Write Sexual Tension
Distancing the Reader: Revelations of Backstory
Romance Novel Curses
The Other Keepers

 

---

* Perhaps it's publishers wishing to appeal to readers who shy away from reading books out of order, but this decision to not imprint a large number on the spine really does impair one's ability to understand the world setting and actually get into the book. MrsGiggles has complained on many an occasion about the false advertising of non-standalone books. And every dedicated Harry Potter reader is well sick of Rowling's insistence on reiterating the plot of the previous books in her first few chapters.... So, a compromise is need. This the Chronicler well understands. But the point is: two pages of things-you-should-know situated just before the beginning of the story really can't be that much effort to produce. Or maybe they feel it'd scare away readers who want to just leap into the romance and feel uncomfortable with needing to acquire prior knowledge.
But that is the crux of the problem: pretending the book can stand alone when it can't. 

** Why are they called "Lords of the Underworld" anyway? They don't possess an underworld, which presumably is Hades, but this setting has a curiously Christian afterlife. There's a heaven, complete with pearly gates and a sulphurous hell. What is the Underworld, in that case? And why does being a walking prison make them lords of it?

*** To be fair, every era does this, but the Chronicler is often annoyed when a thing goes from being interesting to boring and nonsensical.

**** Some anarchists hold that medieval Iceland is the closest thing to a realised ideal system in their book. A government where there is only one paid official (the lawspeaker) and regular gatherings to settle issues. Minimalist government, eh?

***** I'm not happy about the things that happened in the Cultural Revolution. It was horrific. Thinking about it makes my uncomfortable. But I'm not going to say I believe that everyone who participated in it was evil with a capital "E" and deserving of hell.

The Loinfire Club reads... A Hunger Like No Other

A Hunger Like No Other, by Kresley Cole

The Chronicler remembers all the heated debate back on "Dear Author" over a romance trilogy that ended with vampire hero's death at the hands of the heroine. A romance novel is defined by its happy ending and anything else would result in the readers feeling cheated. Jane wrote: "I kept thinking as Candace Steele engaged in various relationships with men other than Ash that - huh, this doesn’t sound like a romance but I will hang on. After all, the spine of the book says romance. Ballantine says this is a romance. It must be a romance right? I can live through the multiple partners and the separation so long as the hero and heroine end up together."

Well, let's put it this way:

When reading through A Hunger Like No Other, the Chronicler wondered about whether or not it was a romance novel. After all, it was sold as a romance. The quote on the front cover called it one. It even won a RITA, and those are really prestigious, the veritable Oscars of the romance novel world. The spine and the blurb certainly weren't calling the book anything else... Azrael came out and said it and I think he's right: "This book isn't a romance novel. It's just about rape. Seriously. It's crossed the line."

The Chronicler has no problem with people wanting to write about their rape fantasies (or any other, for that matter) as long as they is plenty of warning on the tin and preferably heavily flanked with caveats about how rape really isn't okay in the real world. More importantly, don't try to sell me that fantasy as a romance novel. I don't just feel cheated, I feel concerned about how no one else seems to have noticed this gaping flaw and allowed the book to win a RITA. I wonder if we were even reading the same book.

The Restitution was quite repulsive enough with its heroine waltzing off into her happily ever after with her rapist who never really apologises. It was all part of God's plan that she suffer through her rape to save that man's black, black soul and wasn't it worth it in the end? He could have raped her hundreds of times when he was holding her captive and he only raped her one, wasn't that nice of him?

But really, this pales in comparison. If only because The Restitution actually acknowledges that rape is quite a traumatic thing for a woman.

Now, admittedly, the Loinfire Club throws around the word "rape", quite a bit, and for that we know we're bad people. Often the situation described is more in the realms of dubious consent and sexual harassment, but Kresley Cole's A Hunger Like No Other really defies all expectations and previous experiences. This isn't a forced seduction or a punishing kiss... 

At the point where we put down the novel, several chapters into the book, the werewolf hero has broken free of his fiery prison under Paris, forced himself onto the heroine. He rips her blouse off in the middle of Paris. He then forces her to show him the way to her place and asks her to clean herself. When she refuses, he strips her naked, gropes her in the shower, fingers her and, deciding against ripping her open with his massive cock, relents and asks her to use her hands instead. He toys with her throughout the night, allowing her to think she's managing to escape but catching her the last minute with superhuman strength. He wakes her up by going down on her and then forces her to call her aunts and tell them she'll be away for a while. He listens in, worried that she might tell them to descend with their supernatural powers, but the good little heroine doesn't and they set off to Scotland.

Now, all this happens without werewolf hero asking for consent of any form or at least informing Emma that she's his soulmate and that fate has willed it they be together forever and ever. Emma alternates between being confused, aroused and scared. I am well aware that Mr-Rapist-hero has been imprisoned for a hundred and fifty years in a fiery hell and, presumably, chaste for every minute of it. I am also aware that he hates vampires and would be killing Emma if she didn't smell of true love... but none of this really seems to justify his actions even a little bit. The only way you could possibly believe frustration justifies rape is if you believe male lust is this overpowering, uncontrollable drive that strips they of rational thought, morality and human empathy. And I don't believe that. Seriously. 

I don't care that he's enraged about her being a vampire and that he's been tortured by vampires for centuries. That doesn't justify rape. That especially doesn't justify him thinking to himself that Fate is chaining Emma to him forevermore with the whole soulmate business so that he can take out his rage over being tortured on her. I don't care that he's attractive or that she's a bit aroused -attractiveness isn't a free pass and arousal is certainly not consent. I don't care that they're predestined mates, since funnily enough, rape can happen within marriages. I don't care that he doesn't quite bring himself to penetrate her vaginally; it's hardly any mercy on his part. I don't care that Socrates thinks there's a beast in the best of us. It's really, really no excuse. I don't care that he's surprisingly gentle, it's still no substitute for consent.

That we aren't give any cultural touchstone of any sort ("Werewolf chicks dig rape", "where I come from, this is how you say hi")  makes it even more difficult to see any reason to justify the rapist-hero's behaviour. It's not that cultural upbringing justifies this behaviour, but that the author seems to not feel it necessary, that the reader would simply sympathise with the lying, manipulative sex offender.

At no point in the first few chapters is the heroine in control of her situation. At no point was she consenting to all the sexual contact the hero inflicted on her. Really, this point is becoming laboured, so I'll move onto the whole abduction business. He takes over her life, steals her money and her credit card. He decides where they're going and what they're doing. He decides how she'll dress, what underwear she'll wear and watches as she changes. He listens in on her conversations, threatens her with rape, torture and death.... 

It is also baffling how baffled the heroine is. He told her repeatedly and without ambiguity that he intends to rape her. Maybe she's so sheltered she's never read the odd case of woman-kept-in-basement-and-repeatedly-raped-etc in the newspapers. Maybe its his Scottish accent obscuring his meaning.

Oh, and a real half-valkyrie would have castrated him by now.

(Rant out of system now. It may be a little while before the Chronicler manages to face Cole's again and post the full write-up...)

The Loinfire Club reads... The Darkest Kiss

The Darkest Kiss, by Gena Showalter

She has tempted many men… but never found her equal.

Until now.

Though she has lived for centuries, Anya, goddess of anarchy, has never known pleasure. Until Lucien, the incarnation of death—a warrior eternally doomed to take souls to the hereafter. He draws her like no other. And Anya will risk anything to have him.

But when the merciless Lord of the Underworld is ordered by the gods to claim Anya herself, their uncontrollable attraction becomes an anguished pursuit. Now they must defeat the unconquerable forces that control them, before their thirst for one another demands a sacrifice of love beyond imagining...

Preamble and Dedications

Cathed has been re-reading Cupid's Melody this morning, apparently.

The Anthropologist: "You have to remind yourself how bad these things are. Or else it'll be like grade inflation, but not. We'll forget how bad and wrong the old ones are and the judgment would be skewed... it's like Connie Mason's lactation fetish. It's weeks before I think of that these days."

This week (at the Anthropologist's urging) we are reading is Gena Showalter's The Darkest Kiss.

(The Anthropologist has recently found F.A.T.A.L. and if that becomes the theme of this week's meeting... well, the point is, there were many digressions about it and anything she says is merely a rehash of the horrors of the actual review. If you, dear reader, feel like poking your eyes out with a spork, this is a valid alternative.)

The Balance decides to start by reading the (unusually long) dedication...

To Kresley Cole. You would let me wear your skin if at all possible—and I won't mention what you’d let me do to your eyeballs...

Pillywiggin: "What?! Eyeballs?"

To Marjorie Liu. Because you spank on and there's nothing cooler!

The Anthropologist: "Mental image I didn't need!"

(The Chronicler notes that Majorie Liu is also a paranormal romance novel writer.)

To Jill Monroe. You are a sister of my heart— hearter? sisart?—and even though you stole my gnome, I can't imagine a life without you. For realsies.

The Anthropologist: "WHAT?!"

Pillywiggin: "I don't think book dedications is a good idea."

The Chronicler: "I don't think book dedications this length is a good idea."

Art director Kathleen Oudit and designer Juliana Kolesova—I owe you big-time! The lips on this cover…Shiver! And you didn't blink twice when I mentioned one brown eye and one blue eye.

The Anthropologist: "Because they don't expect that, romance novel cover artists, mismatched eyes."

(Also, the cover is really freaky. The more you stare at it, the more weird it seems. For a start, that man's arm is now forever fixed in that position as any movement will distort his butterfly tattoo. Secondly, his head is far, far too small for his torso and his pecks glow... the Anthropologist thinks he has a birth defect which means he looks as though his head is photo-shopped on.)

HE WAS KNOWN AS THE Dark One. 

Cathed: "As they are."

Malach ha-Maet. Yama. Azreal....

Cathed (pointing): "He's Azrael! But he's Azrael!"

The Balance: "Different spelling. It's spelt Az-real."

Azrael: "That's okay, then."

Long ago he had opened dimOuniak, a powerful box made from the bones of a goddess...

Cathed: "As you do."

... unleashing a horde of demons upon the earth.

Pillywiggin: "You make it sound so casual."

Cathed: "Like trying to open a restaurant."

The Anthropologist: "And what, he couldn't hire any good waitresses because of they just kept falling in love with him?"

Pillywiggin: "He could always hire lesbians and old people."

The Anthropologist: "Around this man, lesbians aren't lesbians for long..."

As punishment, he and the warriors who aided him were forced to house those demons inside themselves, melding light and darkness, order and chaos...

Pillywiggin: "So, a mobile, sentient prison is better than a non-mobile, non-sentient one."

(The Balance: "Yes, the best way of preventing these demons from escaping is by putting them inside sentient prisons who don't want them to have them inside them.")

Because he was the one to open the box, he had been given the demon of Death. A fair exchange, he supposed, for his action had nearly caused the demise of the world...

Cathed: "God! If I'd known that I wouldn't have done it!"

Now he was charged with the responsibility of collecting human souls and escorting them to their final resting place. Even if he opposed the idea.

Azrael: "He opposes the idea of death in general?"

He did not like taking innocents from their families, found no joy in delivering the wicked to their damnation...

The Anthropologist: "Taking innocents from families... remember what that means normally in these books..."

Pillywiggin: "Death... Death of rats... Death of hymens..."

Azrael: "Skeleton with artfully lodged scythe."

Resistance, he’d soon learned, brought something far worse than death to his door. Resistance brought an agony so complete, so inexorable, even the gods trembled at the thought.

Cathed: "Oh dear."

The Chronicler: "Exactly why are the gods contemplating his punishment with anything other than glee?"

Did his obedience mean he was gentle? Caring? Nurturing? No. Oh, no. He could not afford softer emotion. Love, compassion and mercy were enemies to his plight.

Anger, though? Rage? Those he sometimes embraced.

Azrael: "Both anger and rage."

Woe to anyone who pushed him too far, for man would become fully demon. A beast. A sinister entity who would not hesitate to curl his fingers around a human heart and squeeze...

Loinfire Club laughs.

The Anthropologist (referring to the new Halloween toy): "We have to get the heart!"

Squeeze so tightly that human would lose his breath and beg for the sweet kiss of eternal sleep only he could offer...

The Loinfire Club each squeeze the "Throbbing Heart" in turn.

With that thought, the Prologue ends and the first chapter begins...

The Darkest Kiss, part two...

Chapter One...

ANYA, GODDESS OF ANARCHY, daughter of Lawlessness, and dealer of disorder,

Pillywiggin: "Tell, not show!"

All of the dancers were human females, beautiful and nearly naked, chosen specifically by the Lords of the Underworld to provide the night's entertainment. Both vertical and horizontal...

The Anthropologist: "If they're sitting down, it's not really vertical or horizontal... it's a sort of Z shape."

Wisps of smoke cast a dream-fog around them, and pinpricks of starlight rained from the swirling strobe...

The Anthropologist: "It's a Vampire From Twilight mooning everyone!"

From the corner of her eye, she caught a scintillating glimpse of a taut immortal ass...

The Anthropologist: "No ass should ever scintillate!"

Cathed: "Maybe that's why you'd want one... they're walking mirrorballs!"

The Lords of the Underworld were delectable immortal warriors who were possessed by the demon spirits that had once resided inside Pandora's box. 

Pillywiggin: "We know."

And now, with a few rounds of hard liquor and even harder sex, they were saying goodbye to Budapest, the city they'd called home for hundreds of years.

Cathed: "Budapest?! It's living in Stockton!"

Anya wanted in on the action. With one warrior in particular.

There are some debates over which one it is she sees.

Cathed: "Darkest and Most Seductive one, obviously."

The Anthropologist: "No, it can't be. She says 'each more dangerously seductive than the last' and this isn't the last book in the series..."

"Part," she whispered, fighting her intrinsic compulsion to shout "Fire" instead and watch as the humans raced away in a panic, screaming hysterically...

Pillywiggin: "What? Ah... I see. She's trying to get them to move."

Let the good times roll.

Pillywiggin: "Is that all she can come up with? How about shouting 'Smallpox'?"

The Chronicler: "What's holding her back from shouting 'Fire'?"

An erratic pulse of rock music that matched the erratic beat of her heart blasted from the speakers, making it impossible for anyone to hear her.

The Balance: "Medical complication..."

Cathed: "But she is a goddess of anarchy."

Pillywiggin: "I don't wanna pump blood! Shut up! Stop stressing on me! I want to hear my own music."

Heated breath caught in her lungs, and she shivered.

Pillywiggin: "Why is she shivering if she has something warm near her? Or is she that anarchic?"

Lucien. Deliciously scarred...

Pillywiggin: "Delicious... So he's scarred with licorrice?"

Azrael: "Or with the Cadbury's signature."

The Anthropologist: "It's like TT's fake blood. The people making the phys-reps ended up coming up with a concoction that tastes of chocolate..."

...irresistibly stoic and possessed by the spirit of Death.

The Anthropologist: "Back me up on this, Cathed. Didn't the stoics have a thing about celibacy? It doesn't seem to end well."

Cathed: "I really don't think stoic is that attractive."

Pillywiggin: "He has a face like the London Underground map!"

Right now he sat at a table in back, expression blank...

Cathed: "Wow. Hot."

"—she was right. I checked the satellite photos on Torin's computer. Those temples are rising from the sea."

Pillywiggin: "Get back in the sea where you belong!"

"One is in Greece and one is in Rome, and if they continue to rise at such a swift rate, they'll be high enough to explore sometime tomorrow."

Pillywiggin: "What? Out of the River Tiber? I didn't think there's that much space in it..."

The Balance: "It says the sea in the book..."

Pillywiggin: "But Rome doesn't have a sea."

Cathed, the classicist, affirms this. As does Wikipedia.

No one else would—or could—see them. She had made sure of that with a sweet little thing called chaos, her strongest source of power, hiding the temples with storms to keep humans away, while at the same time feeding the Lords enough information to draw them the hell out of Buda...

Cathed: "Buddah?!"

The Balance: "Budapest in short."

The Anthropologist: "I was thinking about trying to drag hell out of Buddah..."

Pillywiggin: "It's why he's so fat. He's got hell inside him."

"Perhaps the new gods are responsible. Most days I am sure they hate us and long to destroy us, simply for being half-demon."

The Balance: "I think that's a very good reason to hate them."

Lucien's expression remained blank. 

The Anthropologist: "Is he still being irresistibly stoic?  Man with hammer... does not matter..."

"If we're lucky, we'll find that damned box while we're there."

Azrael: "Damn that box! It killed my family!"

Anya ran her tongue over her teeth. Damned box, aka dimOuniak, aka Pandora's box.

Pillywiggin: "How many times have they explained the same box?!"

Cathed: "We get it."

The Anthropologist: "It's a book written for people with short time memory loss."

Boring? Ha! Anya had never met anyone who excited her more.

Cathed: "She is really, really excited by boring people."

The Anthropologist: "Has anyone read that book I wrote about accounting?"

Cathed swoons.

Azrael: "Is that some sort of dullness fetish?"

The Balance: "So the goddess of anarchy has a dullness fetish."

The Anthropologist: "That makes a certain amount of sense. Like that neat freak bureaucrat who wants to screw Fry..."

Cringe when they saw his scars, sure. But none of them wanted anything to do with him—and that saved their lives.

The Anthropologist: "Maybe they're allergic to liquorice."

"Notice me," Anya commanded softly. A moment passed. He didn't obey. Several humans glanced in her direction, heeding her demand, but Lucien's gaze latched on to the empty flask in front of him and remained, becoming a wee bit wistful. Much to her consternation, immortals were immune to her commands. [...]

"Bastards," she muttered. Any restrictions they could place on her, they did. "Anything to screw with lowly Anarchy."

Azrael: "She's the goddess of anarchy! You'd think her spells would summon a pineapple or something in front of him... That would totally attract his attention."

There are various theories about what boring and prosaic thoughts about the flasks is flashing through his mind:

Cathed: "Hmmm... maybe I spent too much on this at the flea market. Maybe I shouldn't have impulse-bought it... oh, but it wasn't really on impulse, but maybe it would be cheaper from a second hand shop...etcetcetc..."

Anya hadn’t been favored during her days on Mount Olympus.

The goddesses had never liked her because they assumed she was a replica of her "whore of a mother" and would jump their husbands.

Cathed: "Eris isn't a whore! She never got invited to any of the orgies!"

(At this point, we're under the impression that Anya's mother is a goddess of discord and we've assumed that she's a canonical goddess - thus Eris.)

The guys had wanted her, though. Well, until she'd killed their precious Captain of the Guard and they'd deemed her too feral [...]

The little shit had tried to rape her. If he had left her alone, she would have left him alone. But noooo.

The Balance: "It has four Os. And it's in italics."

Pillywiggin looks pained.

Cathed: "Noooo!"

Pillywiggin: "How many Os?"

Cathed: "Four."

The Anthropologist: "And in a strange font. A font of pain."

She didn't regret cutting the black heart out of his chest, didn't regret placing said heart on a pike in front of Aphrodite's temple. Not even a tiny bit.

(The Chronicler is wondering if this is meant to be a sacrifice to Aphrodite or otherwise...)

Choice. The word rang inside her mind, bringing her back to the present. What the hell would it take to convince Lucien to choose her?

Cathed: "She likes freedom of choice but she likes mindraping mortals?"

Pillywiggin: "Well, she is anarchy. She doesn't have to make sense."

She stomped her foot.

The Chronicler: "That's just pathetic."

For weeks she'd cloaked herself in invisibility, following Lucien, watching, studying...

The Chronicler: "And you're surprised he doesn't notice you?! You're invisible!"

Cathed (droning on): "Oh, maybe I should have checked on Ebay first..."

The Anthropologist: "Ebay might be a bit too exciting for this man... In fact, the internet is too interesting for this man."

Cathed: "Maybe I should check the stock market, just to see how it's doing."

The Balance: "No, the stock markets are fluctuating a bit too much. It would be too exciting."

And yes, lusting. He'd had no idea she lurked nearby, even as she willed him to do all sorts of naughty things: strip, pleasure himself…smile.

Cathed: "That would be spoiling the stoic façade... he could still strip stoically, though"

The Chronicler: "He's like St Benedict incarnate!"

Pillywiggin: "That man really hated laughing."

There is some speculation about high level stoics and their possible ability to be able to have sex without their expression changing. There is miming and giggling.

But she’d wanted to see his beautifully flawed face light in humor just as much as she’d wanted to see his naked body glisten with arousal.

Azrael: "He might be cheating and recently had botox."

Had he granted even that benign request, though? No!

Cathed: "And meanwhile, he's just sitting there counting the coasters..."

A part of her wished she'd never seen him, that she hadn't allowed Cronus, the new king of the gods, to intrigue her with stories about the Lords a few months ago. Maybe I'm the idiot...

The Anthropologist: "Why does it have to be a zero sum game? Maybe they're both idiots!"

Cronus had just escaped Tartarus, a prison for immortals and a place she knew intimately. He'd imprisoned Zeus and his cohorts there, as well as Anya's parents. When Anya returned for them, Cronus had been waiting for her. He had demanded Anya's greatest treasure. She'd declined—duh—so he'd tried to scare her. Give me what I want or I'll send the Lords of the Underworld after you. They are demon-possessed, as blood-hungry as starving animals, and they will not hesitate to peel the lovely flesh from your bones. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

Cathed: "So he threatened her... wait... the author actually wrote 'blah, blah, blah... oh'."

She'd ended up seeking out the warriors on her own. She'd thought to defeat them and laugh in Cronus’s face, a sort of look-what-I-did-to-your-big-scary-demons kind of thing.

Pillywiggin (rolling her eyes): "Fascinating."

One glance at Lucien, though, and she’d become instantly obsessed.

The Chronicler notes that that can't possibly be healthy.

She'd forgotten her reasons for being there...

The Chronicler: "That happens a lot with heroines..."

It was just that contradictions tantalized her, and Lucien had so very many. He was scarred but not broken, kind but unbending. 

Azrael: "Kindness and bendiness are not synonymous."

The Chronicler: "Neither is scarred and broken, for that mater."

He was a calm, by-the-book immortal, not blood-hungry as Cronus had claimed.

Pillywiggin: "Flangey, but dull."

He was possessed by an evil spirit, yet he never deviated from his own personal code of honor. He dealt with death every day, every night, yet he fought to live. 

The Anthropologist: "If you're immortal, you don't have to work very hard to stay alive."

As if that wasn't enough to prick her interest, his flowery fragrance filled her with decadent, wicked thoughts every time she neared him...

Azrael: "Wait, flowery fragrance?"

The Anthropologist: "Must be really inconvenient to find flowery fragrances irresistible. What if she gets sprayed with perfume in department store... an impromptu orgy?"

Azrael: "She must really freak out people in when walking in parks."

Why? Any other man who smelled like roses would have made her laugh. With Lucien, her mouth watered for a taste of him...

Cathed: "He's so hot in his grey socks."

(The Chronicler: "At least the author is acknowledging roses is a stupid scent for a man... but it's still stupid.")

her skin prickled with white-hot awareness...

The Balance: "Heat. Skin comment. And Medical Complication!"

Pillywiggin: "Three in one combo!"

Gods, he was sexy. He had the freakiest eyes she’d ever seen. 

Cathed: "Freaky good or freaky bad?"

Pillywiggin: "Like a Cyclops?"
The Anthropologist: "Freaky is not a good word either."

One was blue, the other brown, and both swirled with the essence of man and demon...

Cathed: "I've seen creepier eyes."

Pillywiggin: "Like David Bowie, but less interesting."

The Anthropologist: "except he has a fruit pastel stuck to his face."

And his scars… All she could think of, dream about, crave, was licking them.

The Anthropologist: "It's because it's made of liquorice."

Cathed: "Why can't you just talk to him?"

Possessed by Promiscuity, Paris was blessed with pale, almost glittery skin....

Cathed: "It's a sparkly TWILIGHT VAMPIRE!"

...electric-blue eyes, and a face the angels probably sang hallelujahs over, but he wasn't Lucien and he did nothing for her.

Cathed: "Angels sing praise of demonic faces?"

The Chronicler: "She's mixing mythologies. Or simply copy-and-pasting an oft-used descriptor."

She might deal in petty disorder, but she never uttered a threat she didn't plan to see through. To do so smacked of weakness, and Anya had vowed long ago never to show a single hint of weakness...

The Anthropologist: "But drooling and shivering in the middle of the dance floor doesn't count..."

Azrael: "That's not weakness. It's drug abuse."

Paris's laughter intensified and managed to snag Lucien's attention. Lucien's gaze lifted, first landing on Paris...

The Balance: "Lucien's gay."

then locking on Anya. Her knees almost buckled. Oh, sweet heaven. Paris was forgotten as she fought to breathe

Pillywiggin: "Too many gaze!"

Azrael: "He's been deliberately not looking at her to kill her under an avalanche of his gaze."

Did she imagine the fire that suddenly sparked in Lucien's mismatched eyes? Did she imagine the way his nostrils flared in awareness?

The Anthropologist: "You're just pretending he's noticing you. You're just deluding yourself over his cold."

... Licking her lips, never removing her gaze from him, she eased into a sensual bump and grind and made her way toward his table...

Azrael: "Wait. She's bumping and grinding whilst walking?"

The Anthropologist: "She's walking quite slowly then, since at any given time, about 40% of her is moving in the opposite direction."

Azrael: "She could be bumping and grinding the furniture."

Up close, he was six-feet-six of muscle and danger. 

Azrael: "He's made of steak, tied together with police tape."

Pure temptation.

Pillywiggin: "Steak is very tempting."

The Balance: "And she's an anarchist, so she can't help but cross police tape."

There was a brief diversion in which the interesting quote is...

Pillywiggin: "I can't think of anything more dull than a clairvoyance conference."

"We meet at last, Flowers."

Cathed: "She really is the goddess of anarchy. She's going for the gay accountant."

She ground her left hipbone against the hard juncture between his legs, turning erotically and presenting him with a view of her back

The Anthropologist: "Juncture is not an erotic word."

Azrael: "Neither his hipbone."

Her ice-blue corset was held together by nothing more than thin ribbons...

The Anthropologist: "That implies it's not very tightly cinched. Which would render the corset pointless."

...and she knew her skirt hung so low on her waist that it failed to cover the bands of her thong. Oopsie.

Cathed: "And there I was thinking she's written her number in binary."

Azrael: "Appeal to the sodomite!"

Men, mortal or otherwise, usually melted when they caught a glimpse of something they shouldn't.

The Balance: "...like Cthulhu."

The Anthropologist: "It's not really a glimpse. She's just been showing off her thong all night because she's not capable of dressing herself."

...body as she raised her hands over her head then leisurely ran them through the thick mass of her snow-white hair...

The Anthropologist: "Mass is also not a sexy word."

Her nipples hardened.

Pillywiggin: "Pebbling!"

The Anthropologist: "Is she masturbating on the dance floor? Not that people would be shocked with all the fucking, but...."

"Why did you summon me, woman?" His voice was low, yet as disciplined as the warrior himself.

Pillywiggin: "Boring, then."