Crouching Reader, Hidden Head-Desk

Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang by Katie MacAlister

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I was ensnared into reading this by the amusing title. The plot is about as complicated as the film whose title it parodies, except there are fewer entanglements.  There are some attempts to be amusing, but mostly this is your alleged standard women's wish fulfillment romance with a plump, needy heroine who just happens to be able to summon deadly amounts of light.
These supermythophagilisticexpialidocious stories are starting to get on my nerves.  You have to absorb too much cant to follow the plot.  What the hell's a zorya?  A llargi?  A lich?  I don't even know how to pronounce this stuff, much less keep track of the spelling.  Half the time I suspect they make this stuff up.  Oh, wait, of course they do.  Sorry. 

Pia (uffda, that name!) continues her saga of being torn between her "job" as some kind of light spirit helping some mysterious Brotherhood and her new supernatural linking to the vampire-cum-Fabio-impersonator, Kristoff - the Italian guy with the German name (I've been to Northern Italy - I know it happens).  In a previous book they "hooked up" as the kids say and now he doesn't call.  Is she too fat?  Was it something she said?  She got his soul back (some way - I dunno - it was in the previous book) and now he's supposed to be permanently linked to her.  What's wrong?  She spends the whole book not believing his answers even after they become linked telepathically.  Oh, man!  I mean, oh, WOMAN!  You've got cool supernormal powers!  Either he puts out and adores you or you roast him, right?  Half of this book is spent with him being diminutive-for-a-housecat-whipped into admissions of adulation.  [I'd never do that, right, Bob?  BOB?!]

And then the plot comes to a complete halt for the over-the-top sex.  I have to admit I skipped over those bits because after reading the first ones I decided that they are less arousing than head-desking.  Once you've superlatived someone to the point of explosion, what is left to life?  More plot, please.  Let me amend that: more comprehensible plot, please.
But it was okay.  As mindless, harmless (I hope - this doesn't cause dissatisfaction with life because it sets up unattainable scenarios ... does it?) entertainment, it does the job. 



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