Megan's Mark, pt. 2

by Lora Leigh
pgs. 242-295 (End)

Lora’s Leigh’s books are the kind that I wish I could hide when I have company. The problem is I have too many of them to hide. I have serious, plentiful problems with Megan’s Mark, a few of which I’ve already included in my first entry on this book, i.e. annoying female, cardboard male, and a predictable plot. I could point out a few other problems I found within the last quarter of the book.

For instance, why would a deputy sheriff living in a small, remote desert town need “an impressive display of weapons and ammunition” that includes items that not even members of the Navy SEALS posses? Why would Megan have trained in the canyons with her military family members since she was a child? Were they expecting some war on the home front Leigh hasn’t told us about? Maybe Leigh wants us to believe that that’s what people who live in remote, desert towns do: collect expensive weaponry and train at the age of infancy to prepare for the coming Armageddon. I would have thought that that’s just a stereotype but then I’ve never been to a remote town in the desert, so what do I know?

And who in the world edited this book? I’m generally willing to ignore certain egregious typographical and consistency errors in eBooks such as the ones published on ellorascave.com. The same cannot be said for books published in hard copy. I would think that editors working in hard copy production would be a little more diligent than those in eBook publishing simply because it’s much easier (and cheaper) to correct a mistake in electronic format. The editor working on this book must have been asleep. I don’t know about anyone else but I get annoyed when I read that a character is sitting one moment and suddenly standing in the next with no transition whatsoever. That’s just sloppy writing and sloppy editing.

Yet, and here’s the clanker, I know I’ll be chucking out another $6.99 for the next installment in three months. Two of the things at which Leigh excels, is creating enigmatic secondary characters and mysteries set within the existing plotline which are seductive enough to hook poor readers like myself. I’m not burnt out on the Breed series just yet but, I suspect, that just as I’ve tired of Christine Feehan’s Dark series, I’ll wear myself out this one as well. One can only read about the same characters except with different names but so many times.

Catskin

by Kelly Link
from McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

In the introduction to this collection of short stories Michael Chabon, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier & Clay I thoroughly enjoyed, posits that the “short fiction” of yester-year has been replaced with “the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story.” For the most part, I’d have to say that I agree with him. I love “The New Yorker” but I tend to skip their short fiction selections. Of course, I feel like a fat failure when I do but when I read a short story I tend to appreciate it more if it has a plot. This is why I enjoy reading anthologies of classic short stories that include selections like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”, or Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace.” It’s also the reason why I decided to try out Thrilling Tales.

As strange as it is, “Catskin” does satisfy the plot requirement…kind of. In a nutshell, – I think I can do this in less that three sentences – “Catskin” tells the story of a witch and her devoted son. For much of the story, the witch, who is actually dead and has consequently turned into a talking cat, and her son, who is dressed in a cat’s skin (don’t ask), journey to the house of Lack, the witch responsible for killing the ‘cat’ witch, seeking revenge. That would have been all well and good if the story hadn’t been so damn creepy and just plain odd. Take this selection for instance, a story the witch tells Small, her ten year-old son:

“A long time ago, when men and women were going to build a house, they would
dig a hole first. And they’d make a little room – a little, wooden, one-room house – in the hole. And they’d steal, or buy, a boy or a girl to put in the house in the hole, to live there. And then they built their house over that first little house…The boy or the girl stayed in that little house…They lived there all their life, and they are living in those houses still, under the other houses where the people live, and the people who live in the houses above may come and go as they please, and they don’t ever think about how there are little houses with children sitting in the little rooms, under their feet.”

The creepiest part of the tale above for me was not only its content but also that, in the world of “Catskin” it’s quite possible that it’s true. There's a scene in the story in which they actually open up one of the houses in a hole. Nothing comes out but I think Link wants readers to believe that it could. The creepiness of “Catskin” lies in that it plays upon the complete vulnerability of children. Children are kidnapped, abandoned, tossed into rivers, burned alive, and turned into captive kittens. I’m sure if I liked the story more, I could come up with something like “it’s-commenting-on-the-fragile-bonds-that-exist-between-parents-and-their-children” critical analysis – I was after all, an English major – but I don’t. I don’t like stories in which children seem to die just for the hell of it.

And the cats were just so damn creepy, ands I like cats! But after reading this story, I think I’ll be avoiding them for a while. Plus, I understand that in the world of “Catskin” we’re dealing with witches and magic so everything isn’t going to be explicable, but what was up with those gold bars miaowing, and how is a ten-year old boy dressed in a cat suit small enough to look like an actual cat? And what was up the red ants that spurted out of dead bodies carrying “pieces of time’ in their mouths? Okay, I get the metaphor but still, disturbing. And what happened to the ending in the story? It’s as if the writer got bored with her story and just ended it and purposely left the story and its readers with no resolution. How else do explain the last paragraph:

“The Princess Margaret grows up to kill witches and cats…There
is no such thing as witches, and there is no such thing as cats, either, only
people dressed up in catskin suits.”

Allll-right. And what was up with those damn cats?

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
By Guy Delisle
from The Best American NonRequired Reading 2006

I generally never read comics. I don't have anything against comics at all, I just don't read them - I watch the cartoons. But if there are comics out there like this Delise selection then maybe I should start quick, fast, and in a hurry. Delise's account of his experience in the "ultra-secretive communist dynasty of North Korea" reminds me of my...interesting experience in China last year (that's a whole other long, painful story - Canon Powershot 700, I miss you wherever you are). But this isn't about me; it's about Delisle and his hilarious account of the "daily deification of Kim Jong Il" and the North Koreans who love him. Did I mention that this is all done with graphics? The "scene" in which he sees Kim Jong Il's face in the mirror instead of his own is hilarious. And there's a mystery too: what were the bags of rice for? And how in the world do two men with military training loose a sharp-shooting contest to a man who has never held a gun? If that were me, I'd have hung the bullseye on my wall too. Thank God I don't have any portraits of Kim Jong Il hanging there too.

Nadia

Nadia
By Judy Budnitz
from The Best American NonRequired Reading 2006

I’m in love the Best American series. Our flaming hot love affair began three years ago with the 2003 edition of The Best American NonRequired Reading in a quaint little bookstore called Borders at Pentagon City. Since then I've branched out to the other editions in the series, particularly TBA Travel Writing, TBA Essays, and, most recently, TBA Science Writing, all of which I love. But nothing ever really quite compares to my first love, TBA NonRequired Reading. Judy Budnitz short story “Nadia” is one of the reasons why.

“Nadia” is about how the lies that we tell ourselves to hide from our true feelings can distort our point of view until we’ve reached a position in which we’re unable to recognize the truth in others and, least of all, in ourselves. It’s about the masks that we wear to hide from our loneliness, our disappointments, our depression, our pain, our insecurities, and all those other bleak emotions we’d rather not think about. The story’s narrator, whose name Budnitz never divulges (likely for stylistic reasons; the narrator doesn’t need a name because she is us and everybody), is largely driven by the former.

Despite her claims to altruism, it becomes apparent in the way that she constantly justifies her actions that she is motivated, not by her concern for her friend Joel or his new mail-order bride, but by her selfish need to alleviate her own loneliness. Not that that makes her a bad person but by the end of the story it’s apparent that it doesn’t necessarily make her a good or even safe person either. Instead, it’s made her jealous, conniving, vindictive, and evidently, to judge by the last scene and the fate of poor Nadia the mail-order bride, it’s also made her and her “friends” dangerous.

The one quibble that I may have with this story is that Nadia herself remains a bit of mystery. You never really understand her motives or even really those of Joel. We’re given only a picture of their relationship as seen through the eyes of the narrator who’s still in love in him. It would have been interesting, I think, to hear the story from Nadia’s and/or Joel’s point of view but, alas, such is the plight of short stories: so much story to tell, so little time.

Megan's Mark, pt. 1

Megan’s Mark
By Lora Leigh
pgs.1-241

I’m three quarters of the way through this book and I’ve yet to find anything new or exciting here despite its jazzy cover and its odd claim to be the first in a series that’s already at least eight stories deep (see www.ellorascave.com). Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how I feel at the moment, Megan’s Mark is turning out to be typical Lora Leigh fare: gorgeous alpha male, inexplicably bitchy and irrational female, action bordering on the absurd, and sex that really does singe the fingers when you turn the page.

As always, I approached this book with more than a little hope that this time I would actually like the heroine and not be annoyed every time she opened her mouth. No such luck. Why – someone please tell me why virtually every female character Leigh creates is an all-out, no hold’s-barred bitch? Since when did being strong and independent mean that you had to be a bitch in the process? Since when did being horny turn out to be a good excuse for being snappy, sarcastic, and plain-old mean? I don’t know. Maybe I missed the memo for that one.

And another thing: on top of being bitchy, do the women always have to be so stupid and stubborn? I have nothing against stubborn people. Hell, I can be stubborn too when it suits me. But even I know that there’s a fine line between being stubborn and stupidity. What right-minded woman denies even the possibility of danger and refuses the help that she knows she needs, a day after she is baited, trapped, and almost killed by highly-trained, stronger than human soldiers?

Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that she doesn’t want Braden on her couch because she’s attracted to the half lion/half man Breed. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t think that being attracted to sexy, single, exciting man was necessarily a bad thing. Neither did she, it seems, until she realized that he was a Breed. Alright, one might say, maybe she has something against Breeds. But no wait. We’re quickly told that she’s not prejudiced against Breeds which becomes hard to believe at times considering the snide “Puss in Boots” and having him “neutered” remarks. But if we take her at her word and believe that she’s not prejudiced then what the hell is her problem? I couldn’t figure it out and trying to follow Megan’s ever-changing “reasoning” for why she didn’t want to sleep with Braden is like trying to plot Bush’s reasons for going into Iraq.

I’m so tired of push-and-pull heroines being presented as strong independent women who, at the end of the day, don’t know their own minds or hearts. How many times do I have read a scene that boils down to: Kiss me. – Don’t kiss me. Hold me. – Don’t hold me. I love you. – I don’t love you. No wonder there’s always some great, macho male ready to take these women on. Who else would put up with such bullshit?