The Lunatic Café
27 January 2012 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThis is the first book so far of the series to disappoint slightly on re-reading; it doesn't really achieve the grip of the other novels until right at the end, in a nail-biting sequence in which Anita Blake is disarmed and imprisoned in the company of a werewolf who is fighting a losing battle not to eat her...
In terms of the series as a whole it certainly brings up a lot of future staple concepts for the first time, from the 'triumvirate' (at this stage, one gets the impression, conceived chiefly in terms of a plausible reason to stop Anita's rival suitors from simply killing each other!) to 'Monsieur Zeeman's attraction to corny musicals (interestingly, it turns out to be originally Anita who introduces the idea, to be gratified when he confesses a similar liking). Not to mention the whole werewolf thing.
"The Lunatic Café" is arguably the first book in which Anita's private life takes precedence over the actual detective/thriller elements — however, I think perhaps one reason why it felt rather weak in this department was simply down to the way the crime plotting was handled. The typical Anita Blake novel tends to feature two separate (although ultimately often allied) sets of antagonists confusing the issue: in this case, we have three (the lycanthrope hunters, the shapechanger witches, and a plain ordinary murder), which means that individual plot strands get rather less time for development. And I'm afraid that plots in which the person who originally instigated the investigation turns out to have themselves committed the crime (presumably on account of being 'least likely' suspect?) have always struck me as unsatisfactory. To have three separate sets of clients asking for Anita's help all ultimately featuring as actual criminals simply compounds this effect!
Sheriff Titus is an interesting creation, as an authority figure who instantly puts Anita's back up (racist, sexist, obstructive, overweight) but enables her to do her job and acquires a grudging respect for her in turn: it would have been more adventurous for the author, I think, to have developed this line further and have Anita dealing with someone she dislikes but who isn't actually one of the 'bad guys', rather than simply revealing him to be in league with the villains all along. To LKH's credit, it's an option she later takes with the character of Officer Maiden in "Blue Moon".
The other noticeable thing about this book is that it's not as quotable as its predecessors — perhaps a side-effect of the reduction in the 'hard-boiled' atmosphere (though I have to confess that "the client did it" is, of course, a genre classic from that point of view). The sex quotient has gone up (in what ultimately turns out to be a side-plot, the book even features a pornographic snuff movie) but the ratio of wry one-liners seems to have gone down. Moreover, the whole concept of 'dominance' and werewolf politics, which I remember as taking an increasingly large part in the future of this series, doesn't appeal to me and this book is no exception in that respect.
There are good points in the book (the discovery of the naga, for example, is a memorable scene) and the usual supply of action sequences, but on reflection I think the story in this case is probably spread across too many different strands to be entirely effective. And while this is clearly a pivotal novel in terms of Anita's private life, I didn't actually find those sequences terribly engrossing this time round; perhaps knowing the future outcome robs the situation of tension?
All in all, a necessary volume if one is to follow the rest of the series, but a bit of a disappointment relative to its predecessors — I hope this isn't an omen for future re-reading...
In terms of the series as a whole it certainly brings up a lot of future staple concepts for the first time, from the 'triumvirate' (at this stage, one gets the impression, conceived chiefly in terms of a plausible reason to stop Anita's rival suitors from simply killing each other!) to 'Monsieur Zeeman's attraction to corny musicals (interestingly, it turns out to be originally Anita who introduces the idea, to be gratified when he confesses a similar liking). Not to mention the whole werewolf thing.
"The Lunatic Café" is arguably the first book in which Anita's private life takes precedence over the actual detective/thriller elements — however, I think perhaps one reason why it felt rather weak in this department was simply down to the way the crime plotting was handled. The typical Anita Blake novel tends to feature two separate (although ultimately often allied) sets of antagonists confusing the issue: in this case, we have three (the lycanthrope hunters, the shapechanger witches, and a plain ordinary murder), which means that individual plot strands get rather less time for development. And I'm afraid that plots in which the person who originally instigated the investigation turns out to have themselves committed the crime (presumably on account of being 'least likely' suspect?) have always struck me as unsatisfactory. To have three separate sets of clients asking for Anita's help all ultimately featuring as actual criminals simply compounds this effect!
Sheriff Titus is an interesting creation, as an authority figure who instantly puts Anita's back up (racist, sexist, obstructive, overweight) but enables her to do her job and acquires a grudging respect for her in turn: it would have been more adventurous for the author, I think, to have developed this line further and have Anita dealing with someone she dislikes but who isn't actually one of the 'bad guys', rather than simply revealing him to be in league with the villains all along. To LKH's credit, it's an option she later takes with the character of Officer Maiden in "Blue Moon".
The other noticeable thing about this book is that it's not as quotable as its predecessors — perhaps a side-effect of the reduction in the 'hard-boiled' atmosphere (though I have to confess that "the client did it" is, of course, a genre classic from that point of view). The sex quotient has gone up (in what ultimately turns out to be a side-plot, the book even features a pornographic snuff movie) but the ratio of wry one-liners seems to have gone down. Moreover, the whole concept of 'dominance' and werewolf politics, which I remember as taking an increasingly large part in the future of this series, doesn't appeal to me and this book is no exception in that respect.
There are good points in the book (the discovery of the naga, for example, is a memorable scene) and the usual supply of action sequences, but on reflection I think the story in this case is probably spread across too many different strands to be entirely effective. And while this is clearly a pivotal novel in terms of Anita's private life, I didn't actually find those sequences terribly engrossing this time round; perhaps knowing the future outcome robs the situation of tension?
All in all, a necessary volume if one is to follow the rest of the series, but a bit of a disappointment relative to its predecessors — I hope this isn't an omen for future re-reading...