Magical beings behaving badly

May 23-24, 1975 no books listed. I think I remember why, but I'm not saying. Not, alas, that I was having as good a time as the characters in Hamilton's books (see below).

May 23-24, 2005 I read:

A Stroke of Midnight, Laurell K. Hamilton

I'll start by saying that I always put aside everything else to read a Laurell K. Hamilton book, so the criticism I'm just about to make is from the point of view of one who adores her work.

This is the fourth in the Hamilton's Meredith Gentry faerie series, set in the aftermath of a war between humans and magical beings. The Faerie royal families are pursued as celebrities when they venture out of their protective compounds. The heroine of this series is Faerie princess, Meredith Gentry.

One friend who has also been reading this Hamilton series until recently, decided to stop after the over-the-top sadomasochistic and gory finale of the third Gentry book, Seduced by Moonlight.

I have to say that I'm now correcting this blog after realizing thatg I had mentally merged the second book, A Caress of Twilight with the third. It's easy to do that, because in the second book nothing much happens except all the characters hang out in LA and have sex. Not much story. Another friend and Hamilton aficionada was alienated by the last three Anita Blake books, Narcissus in Chains, Cerulean Sins, and Incubus Dreams. Those have featured less plot and more sex scenes with more S&M. Worse yet is the soap opera about the resident boy toys, and a lot of angst about how no one understands vampire executioner Anita Blake's newly liberated lifestyle.

Both of Hamilton's series skate on the edge of soft porn and fall over into it a lot. Maybe I have the definition wrong, but isn't soft porn when the genitalia are not named in either Anglo-Saxon four-letter words or their Latin equivalents? Everything is euphemism--and I have the most anarchistic desire to substitute silly slang for the solemn euphemism as in:

I could feel the hard length of Mr. Happy, and it brought answering quiver from my Tweetie Bird.
(Not a quote from anything, though there's page after page of stuff like that in Hamilton these days.)

Faerie princess, Merry's bodyguards (all gorgeous, magically glowing, beefcake types) have been ordered by her aunt, the evil queen, to compete to impregnate her and thereby become king.

Meanwhile, in Hamilton's first series, poor Anita Blake, formerly kick-ass raiser of the dead and vampire executioner, has recently suffered a curse. No, not that curse, although she's always had a leaning toward PMS. This curse is called "the ardeur"--also inflicted on the heroine by an older, evil queen. Again with the evil queen, hmm… The ardeur rises up every few hours and forces Anita to have sex immediately with whoever is handy.

Ya sorta want her to take public transportation, just to see what---never mind.

For her own protection, Anita must surround herself, just as Merry Gentry does, with a harem of men who have the bodies of strippers and the souls of teddy bears. In each series this is presented not as an indulgence on the part of the heroine, but as an externally-enforced demand (by those evil queens!), essential to everyone's survival. "It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done…" oh, wait, that's A Tale of Two Cities, and the hero was taking another man's place on the guillotine, not a heroine picking which hot stud(s) get to go to the orgy room.

I liked the early Anita Blake books where the plot and character took up 80% of the book and the seduction only 20%. I keep wondering what the early Anita would think if she could meet the complaining, self-righteous, orgy-organizing den mother of the later books.

The Merry Gentry Faerie series started at a higher sex-scene-to-plot ratio than the early Anita Blake vampire hunter series. My guess would be that A Kiss of Shadows had maybe 60% erotica, 40% plot and characters. Hamilton introduced the Faerie folk as uninhibitedly sexual at every opportunity, and full of deadly political plots that make the Borgia court look like a kiddy summer camp. A Stroke of Midnight is probably more like 80% erotica and 20% story. There is a double homicide early in the book with a not-totally-wrapped-up conclusion.

I have all these issues, and yet I read all these books. Some of them more than once. Go figure. True, I won't be RE-reading some of the later books with more soap opera, S&M-tinged violent sex and less plot.

Maybe read I'll A Stroke of Midnight again. Probably.