Introduction
When I was a wee Pryotra of about eleven or twelve, I stumbled across the show Scariest Places on Earth. This was the first time I was aware of ghost stories that were actually supposed to be true. I managed to scare myself into being unable to sleep, and after that, I merrily started to research these ghost stories. While my motives were partly masochistic since I…kind of enjoyed not being able to sleep…I also thought it would be awesome to be able to write a ghost story that used elements from true stories, and learned to fully appreciate the subtle terror that ghosts inspire.
As such, this book really, really annoyed me.
Anna Dressed in Blood is a bit different from the other books that I’ve reviewed since it’s narrated by a guy. However, this doesn’t change things all that much since instead of being about the girl who meets the most special guy ever, it’s about the guy who meets the most special girl ever. It is attempting to be horror, but it suffers from over the top back stories as well as the same lack of research, romantic plot tumors, and the general hatred of humanity that I’ve come to expect. The major difference is that the author seems to have decided that random blood and guts equal horror.
Kendare Blake, our author, does not seem like one of the personalities that I’ve discussed before. There’s very little on her, which is a good thing. At the same time, she’s been published before yet she makes some very amateur mistakes in this story, which makes me very unhappy. Particularly as it’s apparently won awards. Though with the competition, I’m not all that surprised.
Oh, and sense SMeyer is apparently planning on making this into a movie, I feel no guilt about not pulling my punches.
So, let’s begin.
Cover Impressions
This is actually a pretty striking cover. The black and white adds a kind of drama to the whole thing, and there is atmosphere. Despite the fact that it’s just another girl in a prom dress, it’s an old fashioned prom dress stained red, presumably with blood as, she looks at an abandoned looking house.
This actually does a pretty good job of catching attention, there’s a loneliness and subtle creepiness to the whole thing, and it makes the reader wonder what’s going on and what happened. Even better, she’s not looking at the viewer, which adds to the drama of the scene.
In essence, it looks like it’s trying to be horror. The problem is that it looks like a different kind of horror story than it is. The creepy, insidious horror as opposed to the slasher.
Plot
As taken from Amazon:
Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.
So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.
Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.
Yet she spares Cas’s life.
My version:
We begin with our protagonist, Cas, talking about a hitchhiking ghost that likes to kill people. Huh. Usually the versions I hear are pretty much the same. They hitch a ride and disappear. So…where are the stories coming from?
So we go on; Cas has apparently gotten a car from an old man who likes him for some reason because he was doing yard work, and when the ghost appears Cas takes out a magic knife while the ghost seems to realize what’s happening and that it didn’t want to kill people (which makes me wonder if it was under something’s control), begs for its nonexistent life, the knife kind of…sucks the ghost up.
Which is really creepy.
Then Cas goes home and has an argument with his mother. It appears that his mother doesn’t approve of his little hobby since it got his father killed. Cas doesn’t care. He’s a man, and he’s going to do whatever he wants, and his mother can stay in the kitchen and make Blessed Be candles. (I kid you not.) Cas announces that he wants to move again, and his mother meekly complies.
You know, while this is an interesting inversion of the usual abusive parents deal, it doesn’t make me like Cas very much.
It appears that Cas once met a goth1 from New Orleans who figured out what he was doing, and started to give him tips, mostly in the form of urban legends. This is an interesting, idea, but Cas’s deep seated hatred of humanity and insistence that he is so much better then everyone really turns me off.
“If people knew what I was up to, they’d probably try to stop me. The idiots would take Casper’s side, and then I’d have to kill Casper and them after Casper bit their throats out.
Ain’t he cute?
The goth friend seems to have found something interesting, about a house where a girl was killed on her way to a party, and everyone who goes into the house dies. According to the legend, she’s wearing what remains of the white party dress that she had on, which is completely stained red with her own blood. Hence the name Anna Dressed in Blood.
Cas thinks it’s stupid, and Goth is stupid for believing it. Still, because the plot demands it, he moves over to see it. We have a decent description of the area, and it turns out that Blake actually went to Ontario to be able to write this with some knowledge of what it was like, and we have a kind of interesting scene when Cas’s mother allows her cat, which hates Cas, to sniff around. Apparently the cat can sense the supernatural. Cas has some angst about how his dad died when he was seven, and how much he wants revenge on the thing that killed him and left bite marks all over his body.
He also has a rather creepy moment where he looks out the window, and his prose turns purple as he thinks about Anna and how she’s going to try to kill him. This guy…has some…problems…
Observe:
“I think of her again. Anna. Anna Dressed in Blood. I wonder what tricks she’ll try. I wonder if she’ll be clever. Will she float? Will she laugh or scream?
How will she try to kill me?”
So far, the story isn’t too bad. If it weren’t for the main character, I’d have been enjoying myself. Oh, and the fact that the text is written in dark brown ink which is really annoying.
The problems start when Cas goes to school.
Blake, deciding that every single reader wishes that they were the most popular kid in high school or thinks that they are the most popular kid in high school, promptly has every single girl drooling over Cas. Including Carmel, the most popular girl in school, who he approaches because, as she is the most popular girl in the girl, and as such completely self obsessed (his thoughts, not mine) she must have a healthy knowledge and interest in local history.
Yep, you just read that right.
Carmel is…actually fairly nice, but Cas manipulates her shamelessly and uses the fact that she and her boyfriend are having a difficult time to his advantage and gets invited to some party. Where he thinks someone will tell him about Anna Dressed in Blood. The boyfriend, named Mike, shows up and acts like a stereotypical jock, and Cam basically smirks at him and says that there’s nothing Mike can do to him. As Cas has the knife on him, I’d take that seriously.
When he gets out of school, he gets followed by…an unpopular person. Said unpopular person manages to get him in a graveyard (where Cas likes to hang out) tells him that the old woman ghost that he was thinking of killing doesn’t actually attack people, and gets laughed at for being stupid by Cas. Unpopular guy introduces himself as Thomas. He can read minds, and he knows a little about the history of Anna Dressed in Blood since he was the guy who talked to Goth to get Cas sent to investigate it.
Cas whines about how much of a pain it is to talk to the stupid humans, thinks in purple prose about Anna again, and allows Thomas to take him to a sushi place.
Here we have some rather racist sneering at the fact that the Japanese eat raw fish. and Cas sneers at Thomas for having grown to like sushi. Because he must be a total freak to like someone Cas doesn’t. Thomas tells Cas that there have been several disappearances around the house, most being homeless people and a few teenagers, yet the police just don’t seem to investigate it that hard.
This is potentially interesting. It could be that there is something about Anna that is making people stop caring or just numbs them to the fact that someone disappeared, even if it was their own kid, but it’s treated as if it’s just because the police and everyone else is stupid and useless. Thomas says that he wants to help, and Cas isn’t having any of it. People are stupid and useless and just get in his way. They all think that what he does is cool when it’s really Serious Business, and he basically mocks Thomas and goes home to prepare to emotionally manipulate a girl.
Why he didn’t just ask Thomas about the history behind Anna is rather beyond me. Maybe he just gets a thrill out of getting some girl to like him, laughing at her ex (who’s more of her on again off again boyfriend) and then dump her when she starts to like him.
So, we have a pause where Cas’s mother turns up again, seems happy that he’s dating a girl and going to parties like a normal person, but Cas mocks her and says how he’s not even interested in living girls. He’s only thinking about the dead chick.
At the party, Cas is bored, and listens to Carmel introducing him to people with only slightly disguised contempt, and then meets Mike again. Mike is a big, mean jock, but says that if Cas wants, he’ll tell him the story of Anna Dressed in Blood. Cas bites, even though he states that he knows that Mike and his two cronies are trying to scare him off. I’m supposed to be sympathizing with him I know, but I honestly hope that the Jerk Jock gets some of his own.
The Jocks get him to go into a secluded area where I’m certain nothing bad will happen, and Carmel goes with them. They repeat the story about Anna Dressed Blood, but mention how a little after she died and her mother sold the house that she used to live in the words “Anna’s House” appeared written in read, and some bum disappeared. Most of the details are treated as if they are completely new, even when we’ve already heard many of them.
Mike then, behaving like a typical high school jock, tells Cas that if he doesn’t with into Anna’s house, then he’s not a real man. Cas treats this rather melodramatically for a guy who’s supposed to be confident in his own ability to kill ghosts, and Carmel basically calls Mike out on being an immature little brat, since people really have disappeared around that house, and Cas doesn’t have to do anything.
Cas basically thinks she’s stupid, but acts very self sacrificing and goes to the house with Mike and co.
At the house, Cas, for the sake of plot convenience, suddenly gets cold feet. And Mike knocks him out.
Yup.
Out of the clear blue sky, Mike knocks him out.
I’d be more annoyed if I wasn’t just confused as to where that just came from.
So, anyways, Mike is apparently the stupidest bully ever, since he drags Cas into the house with his friends and sits there waiting for him to wake up. In the house. The house that according to legend if you go into you will die. These guys are smart. Once Cas wakes up, he’s pretty annoyed, but his threats are interrupted when Anna Dressed in Blood comes floating into the room. And the entire prose turns purple as Cas starts thinking…rather odd things like
the goddess of death
about a chick who’s going to kill him. She’s described as having eyes that are completely black with no whites whatsoever. Kind of like the demons in Supernatural.
Sexy.
Anna takes a hold of Mike while the other two guys run off and literally rips him in half. This is lovingly described by Cas with utter uncaring. He’s too busy checking out the dead chick. Anna then turns to him, Cas takes out his knife, Anna basically tosses him around like a rag doll…and doesn’t kill him. Instead she just tells him to go away and floats back up the stairs.
Cas runs away, and finds that everyone else saw her and are deeply upset. Not so much by the death of Mike, well at least Carmel his girlfriend isn’t. She’s more upset that Cas was almost killed. The other two guys are very unhappy that Mike is dead, and blame Cas. This is treated as horrible, but really, it does make sense. After all, you just watched your best friend get torn in two while the guy he was bullying watches in rapture.
They all decide to go home. And suddenly the cat that hated Cas loves him, and no one really wonders about this, even though Cas, the definition of all that is true and right in this world, states that Siamese cats only like one person, who happened to be his mom. This is FORESHADOWING.
No one seems to notice or care in the entire city, apparently including Mike’s parents, that he just disappeared the next day. If Mike was accustomed to just vanishing every so often, this would be understandably, but Blake doesn’t seem to have thought this out very far.
Thomas turns up again. He’s a little miffed that Cas ditched him, but basically jumps on the bandwagon to help Cas, even though Cas makes some more sneers at Thomas and everything Thomas likes. Thomas says that they need to go see his grandma, who apparently does some Wicca type things, and because of this Thomas’s grandpa is apparently “in tune” with Anna and notices that she’s behaving different from the other ghosts.
Cas comes up with the idea to exorcise her. Which apparently NO ONE has ever attempted to do or even thought of in all the sixty or so years of this house eating people. Cas continues gushing over how hot Anna looked when she was tearing apart Mike and decides to go see her after everyone’s done talking. He mentions something about hurt pride and how awesome he is, but it’s clear that he just is attracted to her.
He goes over to Anna’s house, meets Mike’s ghost, who seems a little confused, and seems to be being eaten by the house itself. Cas doesn’t really care. He’s there for Anna and Mike can just rot.
Then
She’s standing above me the goddess of death, black lips and cold hands.
Anna tells him to scram while she doesn’t feel the need to kill him. Cas tells her he wants to kill her. Anna tells him to seriously scram because she’s getting annoyed, and doesn’t want to be killed. Cas pouts for a while, thinks in purple prose about how hot she is and finally leaves.
Cas is completely turned on and thinks about how she said she didn’t want to kill anyone and knows that she must be tragic. So the next day he, Carmel and Thomas go to the library and look for information. You know, something that he should have known to do before going to that stupid party. If the records of her death are in the papers, why did we even have that scene? Unless it was because Blake just felt like killing a jock in the most gory way she could think. So we could like her main characters all the more.
While they’re looking at the papers, and Cas finds a school picture of Anna.
I can feel that photo of Anna staring at me from sixty years ago, and I can’t help myself from wanting to protect her, wanting to save her from becoming what she already is.
The police suddenly turn up, ask some halfhearted questions about Mike, and leave. Carmel mentions that no one really seems to care that he’s gone. This could have been interesting, but it’s never explored, and Blake seems to leave it at this idea that all people are stupid and shallow. Cas, as usual, is too busy thinking about how awesome Anna is to think about Mike.
So, they blunder around for a little more, and then get all the stuff of their exorcism. Which is some bottled water and tree branches. Because holy water and other things are just pretentious or something. Blake, you do realize that holy water is pretty easy to get right? You just walk into a church with a bottle, go over to the baptismal fount and take some.
They have their little ritual at the house, which involves a circle of candles, river water being tossed around like holy water. Anna appears, but the circle holds and everyone holds hands and…sings kumbaya I guess. Blake didn’t even bother to make this ritual sound interesting. Then we get what is likely the most over the top, ridiculous angsty past that I’ve ever read in fiction.
Including the fanfics where the girl gets raped by nearly everyone.
Apparently, Anna lived in a boarding house that was run by her mother, who was a Dastardly Papist2 and her stepfather. Stepdaddy, like every good cliche stepfather, wanted to rape his stepdaughter, and Mommy didn’t notice, and he also beat her all the time. On the night of some dance, Anna comes down in a white dress that the Liberated Spanish Boarder gave her. Mommy throws a fit and waves her rosary around for a while and throws out the LSB, while calling her a slut for having fun. Anna doesn’t care and says she’ll do what she wants and she’s going to leave.
Mommy and Stepdaddy suddenly go nuts. Stepdaddy starts beating her while Mommy watches with glee, and then Mommy comes up to Anna, slits her throat and, using her rosary, which apparently has the ability to summon demons because it’s…an item with a crucifix on it used in the devotion to the Mother of God, invokes a demon to keep Anna in the house.
…
What.
And you expect me to take this seriously, Blake? This is so over the top, it’s almost funny.
So, Mommy tells Stepdaddy to get rid of the body, and everyone’s sad.
Other than Mike’s goons, who still think that she’s wrong for killing Mike. The horror.
After this, the candles all blow out, and Anna’s dress turns white. Then she smiles at Cas and leaves.
We are now halfway through the book.
I’m pretty sure that this was actually supposed to be the end of it, but then Blake realized that it was too short, so she decided to add what probably was supposed to be the sequel to it for the next half. I mean, up until now, all we’ve been talking about is Anna, and this pretty much covers everything that was discussed in the covers. From this point on, we go into the realm of the bizarre.
The next day, everyone, other than Mike’s goons, is happy about what happened. They congratulate themselves, and even Thomas’s grandpa is happy. Even though he really wanted Cas to kill Anna. Then they hear that there’s a body that’s been found that’s been brutally murdered. Mike’s goons automatically think think that it’s Anna, and Mike jumps to her defense. After all, she’s special. She wouldn’t kill someone if she didn’t want to.
Not like every other ghost in this universe.
Then Cas hears about a murder from the police, who are still doing a kind of search for Mike even though it’s pretty clear that no one, including his parents, really cares about it after a couple days. I think this is supposed to be something to do with how much power the house has or something, but the fact that the main characters, including this guy’s ex, still don’t care about getting Mike’s body to his parents or something when it’s rotting in the living room of the house, and it’s now safe just makes me see everyone in this town as being sociopathic
The goons think it’s Anna. Which is understandable, but it’s treated as completely stupid and horrible. Of course Anna would never do such a thing. It’s not like she’s done it before, and there’s nothing but an over the top back story that could have been a lie on her side. So, after an argument, one of the goons takes Cas’s Super Special Awesome knife and runs off with it.
Cas is sad.
He goes and talks to Anna, ignores Mike’s ghost again (yeah, I’m still annoyed about this, why do you ask?) and asks if Anna made a mistake. Anna is offended. How could he think that she would do such a thing! Cas then goes home and feels better. Because he completely believes Anna, and thinks about her in purple prose for a while.
He then hears from one of his father’s friends who decides to pop over to his new house and provide exposition, that the body has the same marks on it as Cas’s dad. Cas is very happy since he’s going to be able to kill it. Then he remembers that his knife is gone, so he goes and flirts with Anna for a while and talks about how he’s going to get the knife back.
After a few confrontations over a few days and a few pointless hints of romance between Carmel and Thomas that are vaguely interesting but not really, Cas decides that he’s going to break into one of the goons’ houses and see if he can find his knife. I wonder why he didn’t get Anna to do it. So, anyways, he sneaks in, and finds the goons dead, with the room splattered with blood and promptly leaves.
He finds the knife in his room when he gets home, and for the first time is worried.
I think we just got a second plot, people.
The next day, the cat isn’t there, and Cas goes off to talk to Thomas and Grandpa. Grandpa says that the knife is connected to an evil voodoo spirit called the Obeahman3 who also killed Cas’s dad. For the first time, Cas realizes that his mother is in the house with the thing and has a shred of human emotion. I’m very proud of him. He makes a stop at Anna’s, has some purplish dialog with her and then they go back to his house, but Anna can’t come in, so Cas goes in alone and confronts the Obeahman. Obeahman wants Cas to go back to killing ghosts, because once the knife kills them, he eats their souls.
Which really makes what Cas did questionable. I mean, even if these things were a danger to people, from Blake’s own writing, they’re not fully aware of what’s going on, and often when they’re disappearing, they are aware of what’s happening. Pleasant.
So, to make sure that everyone knows that Obeahman is bad, in case you didn’t get it with the whole eating souls thing, Obeahman says that he’s also eaten the cat that disappeared about three fourths of the way through the novel and Cas didn’t really notice. Apparently it had been trying to warn him, but he had been to busy with his crush. Then the Obeahman spits out the cat’s tail.
Because we needed to see that.
Anna attacks the house, and Cas and his mother run away. Cas is upset because he can’t use his knife, but his friends tell him how wonderful he is for a while, and then he and Anna come up with a plot to get rid of him that somehow involves opening a portal to Hell4 to suck him in. And then Cas can use his knife again. So, they attack the Obeahman again, Cas has a purple conversation with Anna, they express their love for one another and then Anna goes through the portal to Hell with the Obeahman.
The book ends with Cas talking down about his new friends and then saying how much he likes them. He thinks in purple prose about Anna for a while and swears to find her and save her.
And so ends this messed up novel.
Characters
Cas is really the person who ruins this book. He is an arrogant little twit who seems to think that because he got a knife from his father, he is somehow better than absolutely everyone else. Honestly, his behavior, particularly in the beginning stages of the book ranges on just flat disturbing. Blake seems somewhat aware of this, but she never sees it at a real problem. She seems to think that it makes him charming to have little to no empathy for anyone or anything and an unhealthy obsession with a dead girl for no real reason.
Anna is…actually a pretty bland character when you look at her alone. Her dialog is…strangely formal and she doesn’t really contribute anything to the story other than being something of a MacGuffin girl, since she’s the person who the plot revolves around, yet as a character she’s pretty poorly developed. She doesn’t seem to really have any personality, other than being somehow especially strong for a ghost because apparently no one else was ever…sacrificed to a demon or something…in the history of the world. She pretty much exists to be the object of the plot and Cas’s perverse sexual lust.
Thomas is actually a possibly interesting character. He has definite likes and interests outside of Cas, and is the only one who acknowledges that ghosts are not monsters. He’s talked down about and two throughout the book, but, really, he was better than Cas. Even his power of mind reading, which didn’t do much other than make Cas uncomfortable, was better than Cas’s Knife of Awesome. It’s unstable, and comes and goes, meaning he has a reason for not being able to know what everyone is doing or going nuts. I kind of wish the story had been about him.
Carmel is another interesting character and testament that Blake can actually write. She’s set up as pretty shallow, but she and Thomas have a very subtle romance through the story, and she is the only one of the ‘heroes’ who shows any kind of feeling about Mike’s death, though not that much. While she’s pretty one dimensional and disappears and loses importance as Anna turns up, she retains something that Anna never has: one dimension.
The Obeahman turns up at the end as an attempt to give this story a villain that isn’t Anna. He’s evil. That is the extent of his character.
Themes
Humanity is stupid and useless and only the few special people are worth listening too.
Rosaries can summon demons! For realsies!
It’s perfectly ok to manipulate people for your benefit, and if someone ends up dead, well that’s not your problem. They shouldn’t have stood in your way.
I’m assuming it’s really another one of those love conquers all things, but with a story this messed up, it’s really hard to tell.
Angsty Backstories
You know the problem with Anna’s backstory? It comes out of absolutely nowhere and doesn’t have a point. It sounds like, in the words of Shakespeare, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.“It just seems so over the top, so melodramatic, and such a bid to get my pity for Anna, that when I read it, I found myself wanting to laugh at the sheer amount of tropes that were being invoked, and it pretty much shattered my suspension of disbelief.
Anna isn’t hurt by the betrayal of her mother. She isn’t nervous about being in a relationship because of the molestation of her stepdad. She shows no real trauma from these events in the slightest. This is just there so that we feel sorry for her and forget about the fact that she kills people while giving it a kind of solution so that we can root for the romance between her and Cas. This is a Big Lipped Alligator Moment. It comes out of nowhere and is never mentioned again. Even the demon that was supposedly invoked doesn’t turn up.
An angsty backstory can really help when necessary. For instance: Fruits Basket. There is not a single character in that manga that hasn’t had a truly horrible past. Abandonment, failure, abuse, neglect, bullying, ostracizing, and just general crap is the staple, and it shows. The characters act within reason for how a person who had these things happen would. One girl stops talking completely, while another is angry and bitter. There pasts really affect them, and you don’t just feel sorry for them, you really want them to get a happy ending and have everything somehow turn out better for them in the end. Even better, they work through their traumas.
Anna isn’t like that. I’m sure that there are people who have had pasts like what’s mentioned, and honestly, I think that this little turd is an insult to those people. She just goes ‘oh, I was murdered by my mom and molested by my stepdad. I will flirt in monotone,’
Character Death
Character death is a really good device. Particularly when you’ve built up a character. It often can change the direction of a character, and therefore move the plot, and when played right, can examine some interesting aspects of the characters, such as how they deal with grief.
Unless it a) comes out of the blue or b) is not treated right by the characters. Blake is guilty of both. Mike is set up as an antagonist, and it’s clear that whoever enters the house dies. Now, some readers might say that Mike was planning to kill Cas. I disagree. It’s more likely that he, like most normal people, wouldn’t have believed the story, and was playing a prank to scare the snotty new kid and teach him his place. Obnoxious. Immature. Potentially dangerous given that there might be some psycho that’s taken up residence in there. But it is not worthy of the utter lack of interest that his death is met with.
I’m not saying that everyone should have been sad. I’m saying that Cas or at least Carmel, should have at least been quiet and pensive about it, and when there was no danger, at least tried to get his body back to his parents like normal human beings.
Mike’s death is treated terribly by the characters, other than his friends. Who we’re not supposed to even like. This does not make me like the characters more. This makes me go from dislike to outright loathing.
The cat’s death just comes out of nowhere.
Gore
There is a difference between gore and gorn. Gore is necessary for the story. Gorn is, like porn, gore done for no justifiable reason. I don’t like gorn. I think that when you have people being torn in half described in gruesome detail, it takes from the story when it doesn’t have a point.
Gore can be used to chilling effect in a story (If you don’t believe me, go read the Russian Sleep Experiment) but it is always used to bring home a point. The gore isn’t what is disturbing, the implications behind the gore are. Gorn is not overly scary. Particularly not in a book. Remember, this is not a visual medium. We can’t see the gore. We can only get the idea behind it, if the gore doesn’t show something wrong and it’s just there because you thought it would be cool to rip someone in half for some reason, you might need to reconsider.
Now, credit where is it due, the details of Cas’s father’s death are pretty chilling, but that’s because the fact that huge chunks were torn out of his body is used to accent how wrong and unnatural the death was. It had a reason for being there, and it was well played. Gore is disturbing, but it’s the situation and the unnaturalness of that which really gets us going.
Mythology and Religion
There are three real problems with this book mythologically speaking.
Ghosts are awesome. Why are they awesome? Because of the fear that they generate. You can’t touch them, you can’t do anything to them. Even though they (usually) can’t touch you, they can affect you. They can possess you. And there’s nothing you can do to keep away from them. The subtle horror of ghosts is not something that Blake seems to understand. In her world, they’re little more than monsters to be killed, and it’s honestly a waste of potential. Ghosts can be and are so much more, and this kind of cheapens it.
Ignoring the usual ‘let’s crap on Christianity’ that this book indulges in, Blake seems to have some trouble with the other religions. Her knowledge of Wicca is probably worse then mine. While Wicca is a pretty loose religion, and it doesn’t often have one tenet on much of anything, I’m aware that she’s pretty much making up the exorcism. Why? Because Wiccans don’t use them to my knowledge. They try to communicate with the spirit and convince it to move on, not force it out via ritual. At least that’s what the people who I’ve known and my research tell me.
Finally. Voodoo. This is a very complicated religion. I’m going to assume that we’re discussing New Orleans Voodoo, as opposed to Haitian Voodoo or the more…in practice only hoodoo. This is a mix between a traditional African (I believe Igbo) religion, Roman Catholicism and Southern spiritualism. Obeah is just general folk magic that was later used to mean magical items that are used for pretty much anything and everything from my reading. In reality, Voodoo works under the assumption that God is usually too busy running the universe to deal with where your car keys are, so you have the loa, who are often associated with saints and angels that you talk to. Things get more complicated from there, and all sorts of anything factors are involvined but, it’s not purely the dark, scary religion where everyone is raising zombies that Blake seems to think it is.
Actually, Disney got it better in Princess and the Frog. Consider that for a moment.
Mechanics
Blake can write. She’s not like the Casts who don’t seem to understand how people interact, and her use of first person is one of the least painful that I’ve had to deal with. At least Cas’s personality comes out in this.
The real problem is that it’s inconsistent. For the most part, the point of view and word choice are pretty consistent, modern and don’t stand out too much. Then Anna will turn up and suddenly the prose will turn purple, and I’ll get jarred out of the work. It also gives the impression to me that Cas is some kind of serial ghost killer who’s kind of fallen in love with one of his victims because she kills people to, and then it seems creepy in a way that I’m not sure that Blake intended.
Also, the text is brown. I think that Blake is trying to make me think that it’s written in dried blood or something, but it just feels amateurish.
Final Assessment
This could have been a good book. The real problems are the protagonist and the sudden plot jump in the middle. It almost feels as if the issue with Cas’s father should have turned up some time later, and Anna should have maintained her focus instead of suddenly becoming Cas’s love interest out of nowhere.
Blake had an ambitious idea, but she bit off a little more than what she could chew in this book. It’s disorganized and reaches too far with too little and then has to bring more things in halfway to keep it going.
While this is by no means the worst book that I’ve reviewed, it is flawed at a few basic levels, and I’m not sure if the sequel would be able to make up for them.
Rating 4 out of 10
Next up: Torment
1 Goths are, of course, all freaks of nature who believe in ghosts and try to drink blood because they happen to like black makeup and certain kinds of entertainment.
2 You know the kind. The ones who start screaming about things being a sin as a means of controlling people and wave a rosary around to give them authority? They’re basically Evil Evangelicals only Catholic, and usually have almost no research done on them.
3 Which would literally mean ‘magic man’.
4 Don’t you love books that reject Christianity and then use Hell in the Christian sense?
Brendan Rizzo on 24 February 2013, 15:20 said:
Not to defend the book, but if you’ve ever read the stuff on Fundies Say the Darndest Things, then you’d learn that those people do exist. They may be rare, and not speak for Catholics at all, but they do exist. So I don’t have anything against writers using them as antagonists. But as for rosaries being used to summon demons? What was the author thinking? Does she even know what the Rosary is for? And what kind of Christoan fundamentalist would knowingly consort with the beings for whom they blame all the people they’re against, anyway?
lilyWhite on 24 February 2013, 15:21 said:
And let me guess: this happens at the end of a chapter.
Because we need to have the ghost hunter having a firm grip on the idiot ball so that he doesn’t even bother trying to kill the ghost until she has time to react.
Which is why she tore some guy in half, right? Which is why she kills everyone who goes into the house? “I don’t want to kill anyone, but I do anyway.”
But of course, she must be a “tragic” ghost worth saving. What’s the different between her and the ghost from the beginning? Oh wait, she’s hawt.
Oh, so you can just exorcise a ghost and then they will never kill anyone again? How convenient, and how much better that sucking them into your vacuum-knife. Of course, Cas couldn’t have been bothered to do this for all of the unattractive ghosts…
“Holy cow, my mom could be in danger! I’m going to go see that hawt ghost chick first.”
Well, everyone knows that on the Scale of Evil, “eating souls” is about a million steps below “killing cute animals”.
What astounds me about paranormal romances is just how sociopathic the protagonists tend to be. They’re utterly unconcerned for people other than each other/other major characters and manipulate them for their own ends without a hint of remorse. They’re deceitful, apathetic, and arrogant, yet we’re supposed to like and identify with them.
Pryotra on 24 February 2013, 15:34 said:
Oh, I’m aware of it, I just get irritated when it’s stuck in a novel for no reason other than to be a cheap antagonist. Evil religious people can be fascinating, but this was done better in Carrie.
How did you know?!
She’s hot. That’s pretty much the only reason. And the guy was just someone who we weren’t supposed to like anyways. Because he was mean to Cas.
Personally, I think he just liked to kill them. It gave him a feeling of power or something. Anna was hot, so he didn’t want to kill her. Also, she wasn’t interesting. Seriously, I felt more sorry for the ghost at the beginning, who was apparently killed when he was hitchhiking to get to his girlfriend’s place to marry her, then Anna.
This. So much.
It’s a rather disturbing trend really. The author honestly thinks that this is ok because the reader is supposed to be mindlessly cooing over the main character.
What’s worse is when the reader agrees. I’ve heard some people claim that Cas’s attitude was OK because he killed ghosts, and therefore he had a right to act the way he did. Seriously.
Fireshark on 24 February 2013, 16:28 said:
Eh, you can find a fundamentalist (or the equivalent) for any belief or opinion. That doesn’t mean you should use them as characters, unless you go way into why they think the way they do. Otherwise, it feels like they’re being used as strawmen to make a position the author doesn’t like look bad.
The use of Christianity in this book and that Marked one seems be mostly of the “Nnngh! My dumb fundie parents just don’t understand my goffickness” variety, rather than as any sort of social commentary.
I went to the movies yesterday and saw a trailer for City of Bones. It looked really generic; I doubt anyone will want to see it.
swenson on 24 February 2013, 17:03 said:
Don’t you know that you Catholics are all idolatrous pagan devil-worshippers?
I disagree with Catholics on a number of theological points, but I hardly think you can summon demons.
Also, is it ever properly explained why Anna spared Cas? If so, I missed it. “She is in love with him” is not an acceptable answer here, by the way.
Ewwwww.
Deborah on 24 February 2013, 19:42 said:
Actually, Disney got it better in Princess and the Frog. Consider that for a moment.
Don’t you disrespect me, little man! Don’t you derogate or deride! You’re in my world now, not your world . . . and I’ve got Friends on the Other Side.
Awesome song.
Anyway, I’m tired of Evil Fundamentalists showing up. Also, wouldn’t a crucifix technically be used to repel a demon, not summon it? Shouldn’t she summon it with something else?
Pryotra on 24 February 2013, 20:31 said:
If we could, you’d have seen a lot more bored teenagers joining.
Unless someone’s been holding out on me.
No, not really. There was something about his being resistant to the demon that was making her kill, or something, but it was never really gone into.
You’re thinking too hard. Obviously it was an evil crucifix, since everyone who disagrees with what seems to be Blake’s ideas must be evil.
Really, the main problem that I have with this is that it makes the abuse so…unsubtle. It almost feels like a lazy cliche nowadays. I mean, if you wanted Mommy to be abusive, there were other, crueler ways to go about it. Using the Evil Fundamentalist seems cheap and like Blake didn’t really want to go through the effort to give her abusive parent a motive.
Apep on 24 February 2013, 21:44 said:
I get the strange feeling that this began as a Supernatural fanfic – magic knife that kills supernatural stuff, a character commonly referred to as ‘Cas’, plus that introductory scene is disturbingly similar to the first episode.
Look, just because Cassandra Clare and E. L. James did it, that doesn’t make publishing your fanfiction a good idea.
Django on 25 February 2013, 11:11 said:
Anna’s background is one giant Critical Research Failure. She’s a catholic finn with a (incorrect) russian surname.
I mean it’s almost like it’s on purpose…
sakuuya on 25 February 2013, 12:52 said:
No, not all rosaries have the power to summon demons. The plastic ones that you can get for free at a church can summon, at best, a small swarm of rats.
Pryotra on 25 February 2013, 16:43 said:
You’ve got a good point, including the fact that in this world, ghosts are inexplicably physical. Yeah, if you’re using your fanfic, you’d better at least try to hide the fact that it was a fanfic in it’s last life. Making the characters look like their original selves (Clare) or just changing the names (James) is cheesy. Though I’d be willing to bet that we’re not done with these types of stories.
I’d be willing to bet she just decided that it sounded right and didn’t bother to consider the name itself or where it was from. I guess… As Long As it Sounds Foreign…
Hey, those are useful when you start out campaigning.
Brendan Rizzo on 25 February 2013, 18:13 said:
So, what’s Anna’s surname? I don’t think it was ever mentioned in the spork.
Pryotra on 25 February 2013, 22:25 said:
Her name is Anna Korlov. From what research I’ve done, it’s the misspelled name of a city in Russia.
I’d be willing to bet this was a case of As Long As it Sounds Foreign.
Tim on 25 February 2013, 23:06 said:
I’m fairly sure Korlov would be a man’s surname even if it was a proper Russian surname, shouldn’t it be Anna Korlova?
Fireshark on 26 February 2013, 00:12 said:
Usually yes. Sometimes the name is rendered in English sans-A, since English doesn’t have grammatical genders, and the male version of a name is considered the default.
Mingnon on 26 February 2013, 01:54 said:
Just wait till you see the kinds of erotic Japanese harem games – FOR WOMEN! out there. =A=
And this gem has now been added to the nominees for Most Horrid Twilight Clone Evar.
Nate Winchester on 26 February 2013, 22:39 said:
…
Oh the SPN nerd rage cometh. DRINKING GAME everybody!
Speak of the angel! +1
Gee, like the pilot episode? +2 for both ripping it off, and changing the original story in the way SPN did too.
There is a flag on the field as this is ghosts instead of demons, but the refs are saying that’s still half a drink. +0.5
Gee… like Mary was set on fire and it sent her guys out on a path of vengence? +1 Oh and like how Jo’s dad was dead and Ellen didn’t like her hunting? +1
GAH! STUPID NAME! Why wouldn’t everyone just call her “bloody anna”?
Right, because when you’re hunting the supernatural, it’s not like urban legends and rumors are all you’ll have to go on very often.
Hmm… the refs are saying we already took a drink on this parallel and giving us a pass this time.
How cute, it wants to be dried blood. If this book earned more good will from the readers, that could have been a nice touch.
Probably intended to be a whole “fear those who kill the soul, not the body” kind of thing as everything Dipshit (I refuse to refer to his name) has gone through should leave him cold to simple “physical” threats.
But the knife ruins the scene.
Dang, if only they ripped off SPN more! Where you’d have… well just unexplained deaths with no leads or anything.
huh?
Dang, you beat me to this. +1
Ok Catholic peeps, clarify this for me. I thought exorcising only had to deal with demons, is it applicable to ghosts too?
Bad pun. Pryotra you should feel bad.
Wait… what? She was EXORCISED! How is she still around? The process is supposed to send the ghost on, not leave them around. Just… [head asplode]
Oh hi Azazel. +1
…Ok, I can’t stop laughing because you only have to remove the 3rd, 5th and 8th letters to get “obama”. The president’s haunting the knife!
Wait a sec… every one of these books written by a girl seem to all have the male leading love interests (or the ones that “win” in the end) being huge, massive jerks.
…
It’s like they’re trying to encourage the stereotype.
And I’ve heard some claim that women are very solipsistic.
…
Just saying.
Yeah… could have been interesting if say… the demon was the one killing and was using Anna’s form to do it.
To be fair… she’s had like… what, 50+ years and lots of kills to work through all of that?
!
That’s it! That’s the secret to the story! Mike was the last kill Anna needed to commit in order to punch the last hole on her “therapy card” so after that, she’s all cured of all issues.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking… right up until he stuck around in the house with Dipshit! They should have just run off which would have made the scene oh so much better.
See what I mean? Just one more entry and Blake will have won the stereotype trifecta! (in this instance: Chicks dig criminal jerks) I’m a completely emotionless, genderless internet intelligence and even I’m starting to feel insulted.
Final drink tally: 6.5
swenson on 27 February 2013, 00:30 said:
Best story premise ever: By day, he’s the President of the United States, one of the most powerful and widely-respected men in the world. But by night, he turns into a ghost who haunts the magical knife of a bratty moron who falls for a serial killer! Together, they… don’t really fight much crime, do they? Just kill stuff.
Anyway, the point is that it would be really funny if Obama had a secret life of helping dudes kill evil serial killer ghosts.
(On a side note, I didn’t even read your username and I knew it was you. :P)
Epke on 3 March 2013, 16:47 said:
This was my first thought as well: a fanfic where Cas(tiel) is mortal and put in the Winchesters’ shoes (kind of like Freaky Friday).
<pours Nate a large one>
I got nothing to add here. You’ve said it all, and that says a lot about how you can fill a book with words, yet they don’t mean anything to the reader.