Note: I did use dictation software for part of this so if there any errors well… even with me going through and editing… I am sure I missed the opportunity to correct things.

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Returning to the Anitaverse, our convenient witness has gone off to give a formal statement about what she saw and experienced with the vampire on fire. While the young woman does not seem to think anything is amiss, Anita makes it clear in her internal monologue that this is just the first step on analyzing and unpacking whether or not she was responsible for a murder.

One of the things I find really interesting that shows up in this chapter, is the use of texting on the page. Part of this book when Anita texted one of her loved ones, her internal monologue is what carried that information to us. We got the details of the texts but not the words themselves. In this book, in this chapter specifically, we actually see the text messages on page with Anita texting back and forth with Ethan, one of her guards and possibly lovers.

It’s a little thing that isn’t even new — texting on the page is used to convey emotion and narrative without using direct dialogue in a bunch of novels I’ve been reading across the past decade and a popular YA series was built around texting –but it almost gives me hope for Hamilton bringing the series into the 21st century proper. Anita is a character who used a pager well past the point where people used pagers.

I was in high school, having never seen a pager in my life, but Anita was still getting pages to come to the different crime scenes in Saint Louis. Any update is a good update here, because like I said last time one of the big issues with the Anita Blake series for me is that it really lacks a sense of time and place.

Anyway, we’re getting some more characters from the universe introduced and we get this tidbit that Anita’s usual guard Nicky is not going to be part of the crowd this time around and the reason is really funny to me.

“What, Murdock isn’t with you today?” Dolph said.

“Nicky had something else to do,” I said. If it had just been Dolph I might have explained that I’d made the mistake of kissing Nicky in public, and the image went viral. Speculation was that I was dumping Jean-Claude at the altar for my ruggedly handsome bodyguard. To calm the rumors and to keep the media from swarming me we were rotating my security for a little bit. Since Nicky had become my regular security person as well as my lover and one of the men I was in love with, it felt weird that he wasn’t in the parking lot ready to back me up.

First of all, I have no respect for Nicky because he’s the guy who has like super broad shoulders that can’t really fit in a normal size doorway and bright yellow anime hair.

It remains fascinating to me that you can tell what Hamilton’s hyperfixations are based on the love interests in her books and the plot points she uses. Her turn away from the traditional smooth and suave vampires and rugged werewolves in her previous books to guys that seem ripped out of an R18 manga has been one of the funniest things about her evolution as a writer for me. I think there’s one character that I saw people comparing to Sephiroth based on how she described him and I hope it’s not Nicky but if it is that’s even funnier.

Next is the fact that people wouldn’t really care about her relationships the way that Hamilton thinks they would. Anita Blake isn’t actually a celebrity even in this world.

She is a cop. She doesn’t do interviews, she has no public presence, and she isn’t someone who is photographed.

What I mean by that is that she’s essentially A niche micro celebrity. More so than a YouTuber or a podcaster, but she’s not a public figure. She is essentially a basketball wife. She’s someone who has her own thing going on and her own very small fanbase of haters and lovers, but the actual draw is Jean Claude. So people aren’t really going to go after her the way that Hamilton thinks they will but that ties in to Hamilton’s use of Anita as a self insert alongside her own view of her sense of self as a celebrity.

If Jean Claude or Anita were a little more famous –think about the Hollywood vampire that was introduced several books back — maybe this would make sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t make sense that anyone would actually care that Anita had other lovers especially because if you were stalking her or Jean Claude you would know by that point that this was a massive closed polyamorous relationship and so you would know it wasn’t cheating.

Next, Anita winds up sort of being kicked off of the case. She’s not allowed to join in or even watch the investigation because, on paper, it doesn’t fall into her jurisdiction as a marshal and because, as Dolph points out, “If the hate groups get her a lawyer, you being involved with the interrogation will give them ammunition to say we used supernatural influence to get a confession.”

We’re so close to characters in the Anitaverse practicing good police policy (an oxymoron, but still). So close.

Anita then gets back on her grind, preparing to go back to preparing for the wedding that should be the center of Slay (Anita Blake #30), and her longsuffering sighs make McKinnon point out that, “You sound more like the long-suffering groom instead of the bride.”

And I know Hamilton is old as hell, but these archaic gender roles she layers her favorite characters into are super tiring. We are beaten about the head by the fact that Anita is never Like Other Girls even when it comes to wedding preparations.

Anita is Prince Charming, not Cinderella. She’s the groom, not the bride. She doesn’t fucking giggle.

Again, Hamilton should really consider rethinking her internalized misogyny approach because Anita’s personality being like this in her thirties is actually the most “like all other girls” shit I’ve ever seen?

When Anita goes out into the crowd, she feels as if someone is watching her, so she first sends out her necromancer powers and then sends out her shapeshifter powers only to find… Rodina hiding underneath her car. Rodina and her brother Ru were introduced in Crimson Death, the “Anita and the Gang Go To Ireland” book I was reading back in grad school. She’s one of Anita’s “brides” – in the Dracula sense, not Frankenstein – and despite the metaphysical bond that essentially makes her one of Anita’s slaves (ick), she still clearly has it out for Anita over making their triplet a twinset.

I kind of like Rodina because she is annoying.

As you know, I look for that in my favorite characters.

I also find her incredibly valid because Anita did kill one of her siblings… and then enslaved her. I get that Anita was doing what she felt needed to be done in order to protect herself, but Anita has now enslaved… three or four people because of that and she doesn’t ever experience a moment of guilt. (I’m not counting the people linked to her through their dependence on the ardeur.) She literally takes their will to be. They can’t move against her, they can’t even think about it. And in Nicky’s case, she literally overwrote his personality to be more amenable to her in order to save her life.

I also feel bad for Rodina too, because well…

“I’m sorry that you don’t like your new life,” I said.

“I was one of the most feared assassins in the world, and one of the best interrogators among us, and now I’m a glorified babysitter who isn’t allowed to hurt the reporters or the civilians with their phones taking pictures and video and posting them everywhere. No one needs spies anymore because the ordinary people have given everyone eyes and ears.”

“I am sorry that you are this unhappy, Rodina.”

“But you’re also angry with me for being unhappy, I can feel it, hear it. Your thoughts and feelings invade me in a way that being my old master’s leopard to call never did.”

“I’m done apologizing.”

“Good, I don’t want apologies, my queen, I want purpose.”

Anita doesn’t get how her actions impact people. Do I want Rodina to run around doing assassin things? Not particularly. Does it suck that she lost her sense of purpose and is forced to give up her agency and career to take care of Anita? Oh god yes.

I guess a thing that strikes me is that… Anita has actually always lacked empathy for others? Especially when they’re not hers properly? She feels bad for Micah and Nathaniel when they’re going through shit, same for her other lovies, but… her most common response to people being hurt or upset right in front of her is “icky… ick… why” even if it’s in her mental monologue.

Kind of shitty for a hero, I think?

The chapter closes with Rodina insisting that she ride with Anita in the car for security purposes and when Anita asks if Claudia ordered her to do so, Rodina replies with something I think will reaffirm what Hamilton’s sociopolitical POV is… (if her occasionally retweeting right wingers wasn’t enough, I guess):

“Me; your American press and general populace seem very heteronormative no matter how woke they talk, so she thought a woman riding with you would quiet the rumor mill that has you running away with Nicky and leaving Jean-Claude at the altar.”

Y’all see that, right?

Y’all see that condescending and dismissive use of “woke”, right?

Which doesn’t even make sense because even if Anita is a celebrity… unless Anita was publicly bisexual (and she’s not), of course people wouldn’t assume “hey she’s fucking a female guard” from her being in a car with one. Especially because Anita got papped kissing Nicky. Not walking with him. Not chatting with him. But kissing him.

Unless Anita is also out here smooching the female guards – but not Rodina, that’s never happening – there’s no reason to assume that she’s queer? (And the press won’t assume it. They’ll sooner assume Jean-Claude is queer than her because he’s a fashion forward French vampire. And like… he is queer. I think there’s some homophobia that’s going to happen either in this book or the next because he’s a pretty public queer figure.)

Anita’s danger senses are going off so we close out eleven with Anita deciding she won’t be riding with Rodina.

Chapter twelve reintroduces Rodina’s brother… Ru.

RODINA’S BROTHER, RU, was in my passenger seat looking like a carbon copy of his sister except for an inch taller and a little more muscle on his slender frame. Oh, and he’d dyed his pale blond hair a deep rich brown so that it looked black in the darkened car. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the hair color, and Rodina hated it, because it made them not look alike. I guess that was weird for triplets; Rodina had requested that I not think of them as twins even in my own head because she and Ru could hear it, and their brother being dead didn’t change the fact that they were triplets, not twins. Since Rodrigo had died taking a shotgun blast to the chest to save Nathaniel, Damian, and me, I could call the remaining siblings triplets.

First of all, clunky writing.

Second of all, Ru looks “like a carbon copy of his sister except for an inch taller and a little more muscle on his slender frame”. He is 5’7”. He is short. Anita’s short kings are always really funny to me because they’re like… so tiny? Micah is 5’3”. Nathaniel is 5’6”. This is hilarious to me.

This chapter is mostly boring. It reaffirms Ru as Anita’s Bride and while he’s a lot less hostile to Anita, it’s still creepy to witness him basically bare his belly (metaphorically) to her and confess that he doesn’t have a sense of self or purpose without her giving him one. What’s interesting is the reveal that vampires and shapeshifters basically are super limited in where they can travel. I kind of figured it because of the plot of Crimson Death and the way our current world limits who can fly and where, but the confirmation is… nice in a frustrating way.

Anyway, Ru has a relationship realization about Anita:

“You truly want us to be happy, I can feel that it makes you hopeful to offer us this chance to do something that interests us.”

“I like my people to be happy, why is that so strange to everyone?”

“You have no idea how selfish and petty most people are, Anita.”

“I’m a cop, I know people are shitty, but I try not to be.”

As someone related to an unfortunately large amount of cops (including NYPD, ick) and who’s currently watching Justified as an emotional support police procedural, let me just say that I howled at this bit.

“I’m a cop, I know people are shitty, but I try not to be.”

Anita is sooooo shitty.

She was shitty – to other women, disabled people, shapeshifters, and sex workers — before she was technically a cop. (See Lunatic Café and Now that she’s a cop, she can’t possibly be better? But it’s also like… the idea that Anita – a queer(ish) Mexican American woman in a male-dominated career – wouldn’t know how selfish and petty people are? The amount of assumed innocence people close to Anita heap onto her? Kinda Wild.

Anyway, we’re once again subject to the reminder that Anita killed Rodrigo and ended the terrible triplets as such. I absolutely respect their ongoing grief. I’m still mourning my favorite Anita Blake character who died in Crimson Death (Domino, the bi-colored tiger shifter who was my girl Jade’s only source of comfort in these trying times on the outskirts of Anita’s pathetic polycule). But when I say this chapter is just… this is all it’s been about: Anita and Ru going back and forth about how sad he and Rodina are with losing their brother while Anita doesn’t really care but also doesn’t want Ru specifically to be sad. (She, again, does not like Rodina).

Honestly, this was moderately a waste of words.

TWO HOURS LATER I was sitting in front of a mirror staring at someone that I didn’t know. It was me, I was in there somewhere, but I’d never worn this much makeup in my entire life. My eyes looked huge and dark. I had good skin, luck of the genetic draw, but the makeup artist had smoothed me out even more, so that my skin was flawless. Once they’d made me uniformly pale, then they’d done things with blush to give back some of the color they’d covered up, and then they’d used two kinds of powder. One to contour and one to cover over everything else. I suddenly had higher cheekbones than I’d ever had before. I couldn’t decide if they’d changed the bone structure of my face, or just carved out what was already there so I could see it?

My curly hair was both curlier and neater than it had ever been, because the hairdresser had used a curling iron to turn my mass of curls into perfect ringlets. I didn’t even know my hair could look this good. Jean-Claude had to be using a curling iron some nights when he was going onstage. Who knew?

“It doesn’t look like me,” I said, voice soft. I wasn’t really talking to anyone else.

Chapter thirteen begins with Anita in the makeup chair looking at her visuals. The paragraph kind of… makes me wish that the Anita Blake graphic novels weren’t canceled or that the fandom had artists still because I kinda wanna see Anita in her wedding (or date night?) makeup.

Two-thirds of the tripletdom give Anita compliments. Ro reassures Anita that the image she’s seeing in her reflection does look like herself and then Rodina says, “Now you look like our dark, slutty queen” which is a compliment, but what a weird one to give to someone you don’t even particularly like?

Anyway, they’ve got Anita in five and a half-inch stilettos and first of all… why? She can barely walk in heels normally even after all of this time and also, she doesn’t seem to like high heels so I don’t understand why they put her in the skyscrapers always.

Oh but then we get the why when Anita says that, “I know the shoes are revenge for me wanting to wear comfy sweats on our last in-home movie date. I swear I will never make [Jean-Claude] dress down on date night again.”

And I’d kill to see Jean-Claude dressed down.

But this also makes me wonder about the history of “house clothes” throughout well… history. And would a vampire from the 1400-1700s (genuinely can’t remember how old JC is supposed to be) be attached to dressing like he’s “on” all the time? Especially when… JC wasn’t a rich person who became a vampire? He was lower class and became bottom tier vampire before clawing and thotting his way to the top. Why would he be attached to fashion to the point of being anti-sweats in 202X?

Anyway, the way LKH describes Anita in her little dress is honestly cute? So is the way that she has Anita being intense and awesome about herself and realizing she’s lovely…

I almost forgot that this series fills me with rage.

And then, after Anita does all of that… we’re returned to the stuff that made me annoyed.

Starting from the bottom: god I missed Jean-Claude stripping. Hamilton can’t write it well, but it was such a formative memory for me but then as Jean-Claude got more and more power, his clothes stayed on more and more.

Boo. Hiss.

Next, I love that Rodina rolled back in to be like “actually you’re not slutty” only for Anita to be like “no I do… just like Jean-Claude will in a little while”.

Finally, can we return to talking about how Anita’s childhood insecurities about her mother and her identity have evolved over the years? Because it ties into how I feel Hamilton understands both Anita’s racialized past and her own white history? Because I’ve been reading the Anita Blake books from Incubus Dreams and keeping up with Hamilton beyond that – so that’s almost sixteen years and I did my backreading to boot – and the way Hamilton and Anita both talk about their devolving relationships with their grandmothers is… cyclical and intensifying.

And we know she sees Anita as a racialized self insert and an avatar to layer herself onto – because she has said as much over the years – and she’s layered her discomfort with her own identity (whiteness) onto Anita in a way that means her white grandmother becomes more and more violent, racist, and domineering over the years when… she literally wasn’t like that.

(And in the same vein, as I’ve mentioned, Hamilton’s grandmother also devolves into a villainous caricature of what she once was. I don’t doubt that her relationship with Hamilton wasn’t great, but the way it’s changed across time and in public… Well.)

Also, Anita assuming her dad marrying Nordic Barbie meant something against her mom’s beauty would’ve been normal if Anita was a child. However, she’s in her early thirties (I think) thinking this, and so that is weird.

Like…

I tried to believe it was me and to be okay with the fact that not only had my grandmother been a lying bitch, but the way my family had treated me was wrong. The man I called Dad, the man I wanted to give me away at my wedding, had told me I looked just like my mother, but never that I was beautiful in my own right, and always on his arm had been Judith, whom he called beautiful, and who was everything that my mother and I would never be.

There is nothing in Anita Blake canon thus far that says that Judith and Anita’s dad mistreated Anita beyond the dad balking at the idea of his daughter plowing her way through the supernatural community of St. Louis. Canonically, he didn’t understand her. And people, not Judith, pointed out that she didn’t look like her when they were out and about as a family… but it’s fine.

It doesn’t sound like her family was perfect for her or like they acknowledged her identity and existence (as a semi-visible Latina in a family of Thors, as a baby necromancer, etc) but it also doesn’t sound like they did anything to her until it was all retconned?

There’s this childish sense of… betrayal evident here.

Anita’s not saying her family did anything to her. She’s saying they made her feel bad for existing. And yes that’s possible as a biracial child to two white parents, but… this is what therapy is for. Especially since we’re not even shown – across thirty years of these books and her meta in the background – that Anita was subject to microaggressions from her family that should make her feel like this?

Anyway, Anita… ends the chapter on the lowest possible note:

I felt like a fucking victim in this outfit. I widened my eyes and thought the weak thought, I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry.

Next time, I’m sure, Jean-Claude will roll up to make things better with the power of his perfect body and we’ll be once again subjected to everyone reassuring Anita that she is the prettiest prince at the party and everyone should love her.

TTFN~