Flirt by Laurell K Hamilton

I have a love-hate relationship with the Anita Blake books. There's a great deal about LKH's writing that leaves me unsatisfied, irritated and otherwise exasperated. I refused to even start the Merry Gentry series because of it but my attachment to the Anita Blake series has been really difficult to sever and even harder to explain (to myself or anyone else).

Actually, a lot of my LKH problems are the same as my problems with a lot of TV shows: I dislike the main character(s), but I have deep and irrational love for some of the secondary characters and that keeps me limping onward through less than satisfying stories. *shrugs* C'est la vie.

I actually think that LKH has improved over the last few AB novels; the middle of the series got kind of swampy and I actually did stop reading entirely for a few years, but then curiosity—and a library card, so I didn't have to spend MY money—won out.

Flirt, her latest, has a lot of the stylistic quirks that I find so irritating, most notably the way it feels like LKH does most of her thinking about the story in the story, working things out as she goes along. The action and plot get bogged down for pages of sex Anita thinking and thinking and thinking about what's going on and why it's happening and what she can do about it and what it's going to mean in both the short and long term. As well, there are often long conversations between Anita and the other people in the book (most often the 'villains' of the piece) about what's happening and why and what to do about it and what it means, etc.

From the standpoint of a writer, it feels sloppy. As I said, it feels like she's doing all her processing in the story itself and though one of my major complaints about the series as a whole is, indeed, LKH over-identifying with Anita and working out her own life-issues fairly transparently through Anita…it doesn't get any less irritating for knowing it's one of her quirks. Sometimes you need to step away from your book and do your thinking first and then come back to the story with an actual plan.

From the standpoint of a reader, it's boring. I skim through those pages so quickly, trying to pick up the thread of action/plot again and supremely uninterested in Anita's hand-wringing about What It All Means. Obviously there does need to be time for Anita to process and deal with the very radical things that have happened in her life, but the way LKH does it in huge blocks of reflective exposition just doesn't work for me.

Also, when it comes to the conversational scenes, it's just unbelievable. The notion that everyone would sit down (and this does to apply to Anita's friends/allies, but especially the villains) and discuss what's going on and what to do about it and how this happened to them…it feels so fake. Even when people are on your side, they're not always willing to sit down and talk things out and figure out what's happening. People just don't work that way. Not universally. And though it's more action oriented (and thus less boring) than the long exposition of Anita's thoughts, that marginal improvement is torpedoed by my eye-rolling exasperation at how unrealistic it all is. *sighs*

Okay, on to things I liked. Despite the fact that I don't really like Anita, I am glad that LKH has neither reformed her nor made her stagnant. Though characterized mostly by her anger, irrationality and stubbornness, Anita in later books is a changed person. Still characterized by those traits, but struggling with them, working on them, and, in some areas, making huge strides that she was incapable of in earlier volumes. I do appreciate LKH for allowing Anita to grow and evolve while keeping in mind that doesn't mean an entire 180 in personality. Change is a slow, gradual process, often terrifying and exasperating at the same time. While I think there's a lot LKH doesn't really do well about depicting the human experience, this is an area she's really starting to excel.

I like Nicky. I think I'm a bit of a sucker for the right kind of beta male and Nicky definitely fits the bill; there's a pathos to his story and personality that falls right in line with my narrative kinks. But more than that, I think there's interesting potential to Nicky as a character, representative of Anita finally crossing the line of coercion. Though I don't really trust LKH to develop it the way I would want, he does, as a character, present some fertile ground for story-telling as the ramifications of his enslavement develop and are explored.