December 04, 2004
47. Incubus Dreams, Laurell K. Hamilton
Ah yes, my resolution to never again actually spend money on a LKH book has been confirmed and strengthened.
I don't even know where to begin. Some of you may have already seen my recent Livejournal rant about this book. I simply cannot believe that ANYBODY at the publisher bothered to even look at this before it was put into print. Certainly nothing resembling an editor got their hands on it. I have never ever seen a "professionally" printed book come out with more typos, grammatical errors, spelling errors, continuity errors, etc., etc. Ever. Y'all, the 1st edition of Tribe 8 had a better copyeditor, and some of y'all understand what I mean when I say that.
So we have about 400+ pages of increasingly improbable and repetitive sex acts with various supernatural beings in various human and inhuman forms--yes, that's right, this is the book where Anita finally does fuzzy, and I don't care if I'm spoiling anybody on that fact. This is also the book where there's finally a Richard-Anita-Jean Claude sex scene--something we might have actually CARED about five books ago--and it's as dull and pointless as the rest of the book. And when you're writing a book primarily about sex, and the sex scenes are boring? Not a good sign.
That leaves maybe about 150-200 pages for the actual crime-fighting, mystery-solving part of the book. WHICH NEVER GETS RESOLVED. I am not kidding. Oh sure, at some point we find out who's behind the string of stripper murders, but do we ever meet said character? No. Does the character get caught? No. After 650 pages, do we even care? No.
I think I finished the book because of anger. I really wanted to see if it stayed as bad throughout the whole thing. And maybe there was a sliver of hope too, that maybe, maybe it might get back on track. Well, it didn't. LKH has joined Anne Rice on the shortlist of authors I used to love, but now read for the sheer joy of mocking.
I still have the tiniest, teeniest bit of hope for the Merry Gentry series, but it's dying fast.
Posted by Lisa at December 4, 2004 12:46 PM | 2004I just read this as a library copy, and am glad I didn't spend money on it. You would think her publishes would sell enough of her books to be able to afford to copyedit them.
Posted by: Elaine at December 23, 2004 12:51 PMwell I have pretty much read all of herbooks and I have always thought they were interesting. I have nothing but good things to say about Laurell and her books. KEEP ON WRITING. Change your editor though... there are alot of mistakes.
Posted by: sarah at December 25, 2004 04:38 PM