According to my previous rating of 5 stars, I was definitely a lot more into Bloody Bones than I am now. (Down to 3 stars) It's alright and boy, does it go a mile a minute once we meet Seraphina... but that mile a minute-ness is actually what made me dislike it more this time around. I feel like a lot happened in too short of a time-frame to make the plot fit and go where it needed to. I really feel like the ultimate solution to Rawhead and Bloody Bones was too easy. Aaand then there's the first real taste of what vampire "politics" are like in the Anita Blake universe, which I also hate with a seething passion.
So... first, on a reread it's actually kind of nice to "experience" Anita traveling pre-entorage. Larry definitely doesn't count. We don't have 5000 characters to keep track of at any given moment. Just Anita and Larry joined by Jean-Claude and Jason. Very chill. Kind of miss that.
I did enjoy, as usual, further expansion of the Anita Blake world with the fairy stuff. This is one of the very few times Anita comes up against fairies... honestly mostly lack-luster. I'm not a fan of Dorcas, but Magnus was at least as menacing as he needed to be. Rawhead and Bloody Bones was semi-interesting before his end... his lore was a lot more interesting than the actual beastie, in my opinion.
Okay, so, vampire "politics" and show-boating and all the "we're gonna play with our food" crap... I get we gotta have vampires shown to be much more dangerous, but I hate it. I honestly feel this is an extension of their humanity showing through. You've got the power to intimidate so you gotta throw it in the faces of your rivals. I get it. This was particularly drawn out by Janos and his rotting ladies. I like that there's more than one type of vampire, and honestly, that scene, or rather, the aftermath, did very much endear Jason to me. However, the manipulation aspect of it bugs the shit out of me. Consent with a coercion backer does not mean actual consent, no matter whose life appears to be on the line. This also happens pretty much non-stop from the moment Anita and the boys arrive at Seraphina's. Anita, we're about to torture some girls to get you to let us torture you instead. Anita, we're gonna kill Larry. Anita, we're gonna kill Jeff. Anita, Larry's about to get killed again. On and on. Ugh. I hate it.
I legit spent about 4 days avoiding the Janos-in-the-basement-scene. Weird, honestly, because I'd forgotten that trauma happens this early in the series... but my brain remembered. I skimmed it, this time, just to get it over with. Read the rest of the book in about 24hrs.
So yeah, I'm a lot less into Bloody Bones than I was originally. I really found a lot of it repetitive in how it forced the plot to move along. I did like the very ending, though. It was interesting, if also kind of confusing... but not a bad ending at all.
Favorite Lines
"You've just admitted you don't know anything about my job," I said. "How do you know what will affect it and what won't?" - Anita Blake
"A vampire was a person once. Just being dead doesn't cure you of any problems you had as a live human being. If you have a violent pathology before death, that won't change just because you're dead." - Anita Blake
"It's alright," I said. "Carrot's inert." - Anita Blake
In Other News
As of posting this, I'm one hatching away from finishing my Ebonwumon project over on OviPets. Gonna go ahead and post about this now so I don't end up forgetting later. Ebonwumon is part of my Mega Digimon Project and based on the Digimon of the same name. I did the tattoos on their heads to mimic the helmet-things on the two-headed Digimon. I also did the tail tattoo.
Ebonwumon took me about 13 months to complete.
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| Ebonwumon |
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