•Source: Free
•Publisher: Vook
•Publication Date: October 8, 2013
I’ll start this review by stating this was the short story that prompted this blog. I had far too many feelings to keep to myself after reading this little gem.
I’ve been a long time reader of Laurell K Hamilton’s work (hereafter known as LKH). I found the first Anita Blake book, ‘Guilty Pleasures’, when I was 14 (so about 11 years after it was first published) and loved it with all my teenage heart. I’ve read the Anita Blake books compulsively since then (I read Affliction the day it was released) and I’ve been one of the fans who loved the series and the character no matter what direction LKH took them in.
Until now.
I’m afraid ‘Shutdown’ caused me to rage quit Anita Blake.
On Adobe Digital Editions this short story is twenty pages long and all but one paragraph is a waste of space.
If you have read any of the Anita Blake books there is only one paragraph that is of interest to you. One paragraph that furthers the plot and/or the emotional depth of the series. One paragraph in twenty pages that provides something newish to the Anita Blake story arc and to the development of the characters.
Even that one paragraph, though, is too long. The development could have been contained in one, possibly two, sentences.
LKH needs an editor stat.
However I am getting a little ahead of myself.
For those that don’t know the Anita Blake series the main character is a necromancer, vampire executioner and supernatural consultant for the police. The series used to center around the mysteries and police work she was involved in. It later centers around her supernatural powers and her relationships with her romantic interests. At the time of the latest novel, Affliction time is spent somewhat evenly between the two different themes. Anita becomes involved with a whole host of men and at the time of ‘Affliction’ and the short story ‘Shutdown’ is in a polyamorous, kinky relationship with a few characters (including her ex-fiance).
Richard is one of Anita’s men. He was her fiance and now he’s her occasional lover and top. They had a tumultuous relationship that couldn’t work because Richard had hang ups and needed therapy. So you would think that this story would be about Richard’s character development (especially when reading the status update LKH posted).
The premise of ‘Shutdown’ is that Richard has a vanilla fiancee who wants to meet Anita and Anita’s primary partner Micah – presumably the fiancee is feeling a little worried about the whole poly, kinky, sleeping with the ex thing.
This could be an interesting short story, except that LKH does a hatchet job.
Firstly, this story is not about Richard. It’s about Anita. I get that LKH writes from a first person perspective and that in the Anita books that perspective will be Anita’s. Cool, I’m down with that as you can still learn a bunch about different characters through a first person perspective. The point of view doesn’t have to dictate what character this story is about.
However this story doesn’t focus on the interactions between Richard and his fiancee. It’s all about Anita’s feelings about the fiancee and her uncomfortable feelings about the ‘meeting the fiancee’ scenario.
Want proof?
The first two pages have Anita comparing herself to the fiancee and coming off better.
Dr. Ellen Radborne was about my height, 5′ 3″ with thick shoulder length brunette hair that I might have thought was black, but my hair was black, so I knew hers was really just dark brown. Her eyes were brown, like mine, though again mine were a little darker. She had a pale summer tan, to my nearly white skin, but then my skin never tanned, it just burned, and then went back to being pale. She was curvy, maybe not as curvy through the chest as me, but no man who liked breasts would complain that she lacked. She was in shape, though not as fit as I, but then I doubt she needed to hit the weights and cardio as hard for her job as I did for mine.
If LKH needed to give a description of Dr. Radbourne did she have to compare her to Anita? Why is this necessary? Why do we need to have Anita superficially established as the better woman?
It takes five pages for LKH to get through the descriptions of each of the characters, what they’re wearing and how matchy they all are. Considering that we know what three of the four characters look like it’s a few pages too much. Also why is how their clothes match so important? Except it apparently serves to reinforce how amazing Anita is.
I knew with that small eye flick that I looked too good, had dressed too well, and she had done that girl thing where you compare yourself to the ex, and she didn’t feel like she was winning.
At this point I’m confused at to why Anita is so bitchy. Ok LKH says that Anita doesn’t want to do lunch but doesn’t provide a reason why. As far as I’m concerned having lunch to reassure a vanilla partner that this whole poly, kinky thing is ok is worth playing ball for. Bitchy comparisons aren’t conducive to that.
Ugh.
But wait, there’s more problems with this story. It starts to rehash old ground. Anita Blake has ‘issues’ … I prefer to call them LKH’s old reliable story tropes.
The main protagonist doesn’t believe she’s beautiful even though all the menz tell her she is in an ‘aww shucks she doesn’t believe she’s beautiful isn’t that adorable?’ kind of way.
“I’m not prettier than you are,” I said.
She gave me a look of utter scorn. “From one woman to another, don’t bullshit me.”
“Ellen, she’s not lying,” Richard said
This comes up in every Anita Blake book. Every fucking book. I get that females, especially females in rough and tumble worlds, aren’t supposed to believe they’re beautiful but does LKH really have to belabor the point for 22 books and 5 short stories? This is poor writing at it’s finest; clunky and unoriginal. It also goes on for like three pages.
So at the half way point of the story all we’ve talked about are appearances and how Anita is sooo much prettier to other women (even though she doesn’t really believe it.)
Bad writing. So much bad writing.
But wait, there’s still more!
The next half of the story is all about explaining the kinky and poly terms to the uninitiated. Except that they’e already been explained in other books and are capable of being quickly googled by a reader if absolutely necessary. Again we rehash old ground and it goes on and on and on.
Like actually.
We also rehash the fact that Richard was not always entirely comfortable with being kinky, dominant and a little sadistic and needed therapy to come to terms with this side of his nature. This again is old news and quite frankly needing therapy to come to terms with a thing that can be controversial shouldn’t be as frowned upon as it is in this short story. I get that Richard needs to come to terms with his sexuality but Anita, who is the judge and jury here, is hardly perfect herself (or does LKH want us to forget books 1-21?).
So we come to the last two pages and therein lies the meat.
SPOILER ALERT
After explaining everything that the reader already knows about poly, kink and Anita’s appearance we discover that the fiancee can’t cope with any of this and storms off out into the street with Richard deciding not to follow her.
Hasn’t Richard just recovered from all his issues guys?
The end.
Spoiler End
The last two pages that deal with Richard’s issues and the fiancee’s questions could be dealt with in one line in the next Anita Blake book.
‘Richard had come a long way with his therapy and was starting to realise that a strictly vanilla fiancee might not be the best thing for him.’ Or some such. (Ambiguous rewrite because I didn’t want to really spoiler people.)
I think this short story gives credence to the accusation that Anita doesn’t like other women. There is no reason for Anita not to like Dr. Radborne and yet LKH insists on deriding this character from the get go. As someone identifying as a feminist and as a female this makes me acutely uncomfortable. The lack of other powerful or smart women in this series could imply that women need to compete with other women. In fact competing with the other woman is exactly what Anita does from the start in this story. The only real ‘problem’ with Dr. Radborne is that she’s having difficulty understanding the poly and kinky lifestyle and in Anita’s eyes that seems to make her intolerant and all the evil. Really having questions about that lifestyle, especially when her fiance is involved in it, doesn’t make her the devil. It makes her practical. I hate the way this character was treated. (Oh there was a problem with her attitude to vampires but considering Richard and Anita’s attitudes in books 1-4 they can’t seriously be throwing stones about that. Except I suppose that they’re all enlightened now, which is the type of attitude that gives me the mental vomits.)
Finally the writing is full of clunky, awful dialogue:
If she’s Jean-Claude’s blood whore, then so am I.
–
She looked at us; her eyes were shiny with unshed tears…
–
Ellen gave me a not entirely friendly look and said, “For you not to sit there looking fabulously beautiful and making me feel like an ugly duckling to your swan.”
Who actually ever talks like that?
TL:DR
This story provides nothing new to the Anita Blake world, except a situation that could be summed up in a single line (and there’s a problem when that much writing can be skipped over). It lacks substance, has clunky dialogue and in the end exposes an ugly side of Anita that I wish I could unsee.
Anita in this story is vain, unpleasant, bitchy and churlish. It disappoints me that she was written that way.
I used to love her as a teenager and I loved her as a young woman. However this story showcased far too much of what is wrong with the Anita Blake series and LKH’s writing and I just don’t think I can read it anymore.
–
P.S.
Minor pet peeve 1: I’m not sure why Anita would introduce Richard as her top in social settings when she could introduce him as the third of the triumvirate.
Minor pet peeve 2: I also want to know what kind of public and social events Anita has been going to with all her men. She doesn’t have a social life or any friends anymore, vanilla or poly.
lkeke35
October 15, 2013
I’m surprised it too you so long to dislike this character. I’m a feminist and like you I really truly loved her for the first ten books.
The usual tropes were there from the beginning but after Obsidian Butterfly, Anitas quirks became more and more strident and I started to get really uncomfortable at the constant denigration of “girly stuff “, blondes, lesbians… basically women in general. This sort of behaviour from her isn’t new and made me only mildly uncomfortable in the earlier books but back then I thought it was just that Anita had issues and needed to grow up. She also had friends back then who were women and she mostly treated them well. (I also started having racial issues with this character,too.)
But my question is, why did it take so long for you to find this particular issue problematic? I know what was the last straw for me and I realize this one is yours but its puzzling to me that you weren’t this disgusted earlier.
I’m not trying to be snarky. I’m genuinely curious as to why people still read the books because for me the problems became too big for me to overlook quite a few books ago. Why stick around?
AshleyM
October 15, 2013
I totally didn’t read any snark into that so we’re all good.
I did notice problems with the way Anita sometimes represented women but they’re way more spaced out and scatter shot in the series than they were in this story. This is going to sound terrible but it was actually easier to ignore because there was so much going on; usually I had zombies or psychopaths or sex to actually drag my attention away from what she was saying. She also does occasionally do things that are feminist in the books so it was a little more contradictory.
Also many of the women Anita does meet (and hate instantly) in the series are actual bad guys, not all of them but enough of them to her anti woman stance make less in your face.
In Shutdown, though, there was no actual reason to start on Ellen the way she did. Also being wholly centered on Anita’s thoughts on this relationship and with no distractions I managed to get a clear read on the way LKH was writing Anita, her motivations and just what a generally awful person she was.
If that makes sense?
lkeke35
October 15, 2013
I get it.
But hey there’s a bright side. There are about a bajillion books out there with strong, capable, heroines with less strident personalities to read about. I found quite a few but still miss the old Anita though.
AshleyM
October 15, 2013
Is there anything in particular you’d recommend? I’m always on the lookout for new things to read.
S Hayes
October 15, 2013
FWIW, the only thing I enjoy about LKH’s writing anymore is reading the “flogs” some people do on the Amazon forum for each new book. Of course we don’t fit into LKH’s world because we don’t worship her and everything she vomits out, err, make that writes. I used to love he series, but she lost me after Obsidian Butterfly.
Thank you for writing this – that’s 30 minutes of my life not wasted reading this drivel.
AshleyM
October 15, 2013
No problemo. Writing this stopped me (mostly) from boring my friends to death about this book. I actually had hope for LKH’s writing for the Anita books after Affliction, she seemed to be returning closer to her roots in Guilty Pleasures but after this short story I have no hope left for that series.
Still looking forward to the next Merry book. As a friend said, ‘After Anita’s head space Merry is almost refreshing.’
lkeke35
October 25, 2013
I don’t think LKH will ever realize how unsumpathetic she has made this woman. You’re right. In the earlier books, there was a lot happening and Anita’s thoughts were contradicted by her behaviour. I have to say I really loved this character at the beginning of the series. She was young, dumb and full of c… and I thought she would grow and mature and change and be totally awesome and powerul and that didn’t happen. After a while I was very very disappointed in her.
The reason I asked the first question was I understand people who kept reading because they were hoping the series would get better. I get that. What I absolutely do not understand are the people who absolutely love the series now. I find that unfathomable.
Unfortunately,I have not much to rec. right now. My reading habits run in stages and so the only UF I’m reading now has male protagonists only. I’m mostly avoiding American fantasists as they all seem to be writing LKH knockoffs and I’m a little tired of that. Ive also been reading a lot more horror and Scifi. But, fwiw, I’m reading:
Nicholas Kaufmann- Dying is My Business
Richard Kadrey – Sandman Slim series
Kate Griffin (a personal favorite of mine)- Matthew Swift and Magicals Anonymous series, which is a heck of a lot of fun!
Tad Williams – Bobby Dollar series
Kim Newman – Anno Dracula series
Benedict Jacka and Ben Aaronovitch (both these guys and Kate are writing some of the best UF coming out of Brittain, right now.)Jacka writes the Alex Verus series, which is a wonderful rival to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files and Aaronovitch writes The Rivers of London series. The first book is awesome.
And I have it on good authority that Chuck Wendig, John Scalzi and Jim C. Hines write some great stuff.
Sorry it took so long to reply.
leopardamoonwater
November 13, 2013
Reblogged this on MOONWATER PRESS and commented:
Anita Blake get this while you can for free.
Sue-Ellyn
November 26, 2013
I downloaded and read “Shutdown” today and now I’m looking at a few other opinions, checking to see whether anyone else was left with the same sour taste in their mouth. You would seem to have that look on your face. Anita’s negative, spiteful attitude started right on page one. Ellen, whom she was meeting for the first time, is Not – not as dark, not as curvy and not as fit. One sentence in particular jumped out. “We’d learned a lot about each other, but unless we were looking to date, I didn’t see the point.” Excuse me?
Richard and Ellen started the meal engaged, which should have suggested the woman was plenty important enough to get to know on that level alone. Anita was meeting the potential life partner of a third in their triumvirate with Jean-Claude, the ‘current’ of her ex-boyfriend – whom they are both having sex with apparently – and whom they all want to reassure. Yet, hey, she couldn’t see the point in all the pleasant, social interaction. Instead we get the offhand reference to Richard’s “type, as if only the names changed for his short, dark haired women.”
It went downhill from there for me.
I found one word repeating in my thoughts as I read. Ellen asked Richard to ask Anita what she was going to wear – seriously? “It hadn’t occurred to me to coordinate what the *boys* were wearing.” – seriously? Show Ellen that Anita hugs up to and is coupled with another just as handsome man and that will totally reassure her about the sex Anita is having with the man she’s engaged to – seriously? Richard shows up with a woman he’s engaged to and she doesn’t even understand the references and words used to describe the lifestyle he can’t be happy without – seriously? You get the idea. And there they are at the end – Ellen has walked out and Richard is turned to stone so … Micah looks to Anita to do something. Say it with me.
I started off really enjoying this series, the world Ms. Hamilton created and the characters she built the stories around. After a few books, there did seem to be a bit of axe grinding – repeated focus on negative reactions from police officers, clients and other men toward Anita, The Girl, in any of her occupations. Generalizations made about women always seemed to underline how Anita fell to the male side of each line drawn – increasingly tougher than all of them and never quite able to understand women herself. The axe got bigger and bigger as the books continued with repeated (and repeated) reasons why she can’t trust, can’t believe she’s beautiful and so on. Initially one has sympathy, of course. But it wears off.
Now it’s all axe grinding with a bit of plot to give it fuel. This short story only underlines it because, as you mention, there are no distractions. There is no real story. Ms Hamilton could have had fun with this and totally turned it around with a few remembered situations from when she and Richard first met, how she handled her first threesome, foursome, and so one (and so on). But no. It seems she is too busy proselytizing through Anita for alternate and poly lifestyles. Quick to anger, quick to judge. And Richard, despite all the therapy, is still looking to outdoorsy, short, dark haired, vanilla-lifestyled human women for his white picket fence. Yup, we’re just all moving on.
Anita was never a warm, cuddly wuddly character. She’s always been a wee bit focused, a little serious, a touch paranoid and kinda prickly. Now, despite every kind of sex there is to be had with any combination available (and a token girlfriend thrown in for balance) she is a very heavy character. In the beginning the vampires were very wary of her, The Executioner. Now … her powers and abilities have only grown and continue to; some vampires are afraid that she’s more powerful than Jean-Claude; were animals and their alphas from different states who’ve never even met her are afraid of her ‘collect the whole set’ sexuality; she needs bodyguards to go anywhere, including work; travelling out of state (or territory) could cause a national incident and her guards (at one point in colour coordinated tee shirts according to sexual availability) are STILL not used to how loud she is during sex.
Come on – she’s no longer human and there has never been anyone as unique. Ever. It’s just not the same any more.
Lisa e briggs
June 5, 2014
How can I get a copy of shutdown?
AshleyM
June 8, 2014
It was placed on the internet for free – here’s a link.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/vookflow-sf-prd/Shutdown.pdf