Dragaera

The LKH thing

David Rodemaker dar at horusinc.com
Sat Feb 15 09:08:46 PST 2003

> >My wife's rather interesting comment on the whole discussion was along
the
> >lines of how many of the lost readers are men (and women), who hate the
fact
> >that Anita is moving away from a strong character who nontheless relies
upon
> >the even stronger men in her life to protect her and is sexually insecure
to
> >becoming an even stronger character who is sexually confident and treats
the
> >men in her life the way most men treat women *and* who is rapidly
becoming
> >somebody who is truely an equal of the men in her life (if not more
> >powerful).
> the fact that she is strong character and dosen't need to rely on
> anyone doesn't bother me either--it is just that the power of the
> month club seems to be a cheap plot device to rather than a true out
> growth of the plot.  It just make the books seem ad hoc.

Once again, my contention is that if you go back and re-read the books back
to back, it's pretty obvious that this is a plot arc throughout the series.
I'll go one further and say that the series demands something of the sort
because otherwise we'd be reading 10 books where she deals with a slightly
different form of undead each time and never grows...

> >We all know it's all right for men to have harems, but for women to have
> >(what her writing group evidently calls) hisims just doesn't go over
well.
> I like the merry books and she has a harem--I like the sex in merry--
> ithink it is just the whole angst and sex thing in the anita books
> that is really annnnnoying me. Plus richard is just heading for
> serious trouble.

The 'hisim' is evidently a joke by her writing group in reference to the
Gentry books. If the angst thing is bothering you then the recent novels
should be a relief, there's less of it (discounting Richard) since Anita
finally starts making a few choices and sticking to them.

I know that part of my attitude about this series is the fact that I was
able to read them in a 2 week period, I didn';t have the years inbetween
releases to come up with my own slants, perceptions, and opinions on where
things were going to go and have them solidify.

Richard... When hasn't he? <shrug> I've always found Richard to somewhat
annoying. Interesting, but ultimately annoying. There is transcript for a
talk she gave in 2001  http://www.bibliora.com/bibliora/html/dc2001_2.html
(the site has a whole bunch of decent interviews with LKH btw) where she
discusses the whole problem with Richard, Jean-Claude, and Anita among other
things.

Basically, Somewhere around the 3rd book IIRC, Jean-Claude was going to die,
Richard and Anita were going to get married and lord knows where the series
was going to go. LKM mentions that the big problem with that was the fact
that is was rapidly apparent that Richard was the perfect man for LKM, and
possibly one of the worst for Anita...

LKM also notes that with the recent books even she is getting *really* tired
of the character's bickering, but she's sort of stuck seeing where thye
characters go at this point. <shrug> I write myself, so I understand what
she's talking about.

David