Sandra Hill, We Meet Again: Kiss of Surrender

[Alytha]

Maybe they'll slip right off? That's what the band-aids on the nipples would be for, then.

[The BlackBear]

Hang on, California has a smoking ban in bars right? Does that mean every time you want to light up, you have to get drenched? That'd get old really fucking quickly.

[Datepalm]

Right-o...

While the marines are off for an empowering, nipple band-aid optional night of womanly empowerment, Trond is lounging about in his underwear and sharing a six pack of fake blood with his Vangel buddy on their off time. (Remember that these guys are actually vampires? Because I had genuinely forgotten. Sigh, what's the point? The proud vampire mythos, reduced to this.)

Oh, and texting with Archangel Mike. Now, there was a bit earlier where Archangel Mike telepathically communicated with him (nothing important, just some "you must save the sinners" something or other one-liner.) But he also texts, because, why not? Or, to be precise, he IMs.

a quick check of e-mail had shown messages from each of his brothers and one alarming IM from Mike:

Why have you not yet saved the sinners, Viking?

Well, gee, Mike, it would help if I knew who those sinners are.

Why are the Lucipire terrorists still thriving, Viking?

Earth to Archangel: You expect me to save the entire world all by myself?

IMO, if you have time to jest, I have not given you enough work to do, Viking. LOL.

To work then:

So, did Mike mean sinners, as in plural, or was that a keyboard error? Talk about pressure!

Um, this is actually vitally important information for the mission, no? You're really going to let it slide because you can't be bothered to clarify a text? Well, he is lazy.

Karl came in, making enough noise to wake a hibernating grizzly with his new pair of rubber-soled shoes...Each squeak was like scraping fingernails on a weary concrete brain.

...his partner was fully dressed in T-shirt, open button-down shirt with silver angel epaulettes on the shoulders, jeans, and the irksome athletic shoes with the tortuous squeak.

Trond asked, “Where you going?”

“Down to the exchange to buy a few things.”

“Condoms?” Trond inquired teasingly,

Couldn't resist "weary concrete brain" and the silver fucking epaulettes on a casual jeans, sneakers and buttoned shirt outfit. Totally inconspicuous, right? And they are undercover, but Trond is also constantly saying various homey vikingy, old-timey things, and people do notice, but he just re-iterates that he's really a viking, because there's only so far undercover he's willing to go. Like, at all.

Apparently, Karl died in 1972 in Vietnam. His wife is still alive, and despite not actually being able to see her, he's still keeping the faith, and of course they're not allowed to have sex outside of marriage anyway, so that's totally not frankly rather crass crack with the condoms, since it's Trond who outlines all this.

Now Karl starts complaining that he really needs to get some real blood, because his skin tone is fading and he's all tired and stuff. The SPF 1000 isn't cutting it anymore and there's lots of detail about which sort of blood is better than what other kind of blood and so on,

In an emergency, they used blood ceorls in their community or the unsatisfactory Fake-O. Or, as his brother Vikar had discovered recently, he could flourish off the occasional feeding on his life mate, or eternity mate in their society. But the best way remained drinking blood of a person they had saved from Satan’s vampires, once purified by repentance or failure to act on sin.

So, yay! Remember everyone's fave couple? Alex is now totally a walking buffet. Romantic.

Karl stomps off to get bubblegum and smokes and no condoms, and Trond sits about moping and thinking about how hard his life is.

“Whoa! No sad sacks allowed!” said Cage, whose room was across the hall, "As my mawmaw allus sez, ‘You have a face so long you could eat oats from the bottom of a barrel.’ ”

You know how some books have really elaborate clothes porn, usually for women? This has some kind of clothes-slightly-smutty-Miley-Cyrus-vidoe, usually modelled by men. We just had Karl's epaulettes, and now we get:

Cage was wearing tight denim braies, or pants, an equally tight black T-shirt with the logo “It’s Only Kinky the First Time,” cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat tipped rakishly on his long hair.

This is the worst, and yet most elaborately, dressed military base on earth. What's wrong with just having everyone in uniform, ffs? What's the point of military porn without the uniforms? Ah, this is beyond me.

[MinDonner]

So, did Mike mean sinners, as in plural, or was that a keyboard error? Talk about pressure!

This line had me actually crying with laughter. Keep imagining some Damn You Autocorrect!-style misunderstanding where the Vikingpires (I forget what they're actually called?) accidentally end up on a mission to save Engelbert Humperdinck from shrimps or something.

[Angalin]

This line had me actually crying with laughter. Keep imagining some Damn You Autocorrect!-style misunderstanding where the Vikingpires (I forget what they're actually called?) accidentally end up on a mission to save Engelbert Humperdinck from shrimps or something.

If it's Xray's pet shrimp, only one would be required to take out Engelbert Humperdinck.

[Darth Richard]

So do we pick on this author for a particular reason? Other than the hilarious terribleness, of course.

Just wondering if she did something specific or you guys just threw dart at the 'holy shit someone thought this stuff up on purpose" board :P

[Galactus]

She wrote a novel called "The Very Virile Viking".

That makes her deserve everything she gets.

[Darth Richard]

Oh I'm not saying she doesn't deserve it, she just seems crazy enough that I wondered if there was any history I was not aware of.

[Larry of the Lawn]

She had a fling with Stanek.

[Xray the Enforcer]

So do we pick on this author for a particular reason? Other than the hilarious terribleness, of course.

Just wondering if she did something specific or you guys just threw dart at the 'holy shit someone thought this stuff up on purpose" board :P

The time-traveling Viking Navy SEAL paranormal romance oeuvre has a long and storied history that began when Yagathai, Mr. X and I drunkenly read excerpts of this book online when Yags was visiting Brooklyn at one point. Which led to me buying one (I was also drunk at that point) at a local bookshop. Which led to a dramatic reading by Mr. X in our apartment, during which I said "oh gods, this makes me never want to have sex again," which prompted Mr. X to throw the book across the room. This banishment led to the book being hauled overseas to London and given to Chaldanya as a birthday present. Which then led to a lot of cackling about it here, as pretty much everyone (most of whom are on the boards) grabbed it to read passages during the party. A dramatic reading from another of these books was performed by Mr. X at Lyanna Stark's wedding (also in London) a few months later. And this is how board legends are born.

I had no fucking clue about the Vikingpires though. Goddamn.

[Datepalm]

Truth be told, I think I discovered the wonder that is Sandra Hill independently. There was a long running joke about absurd romance hero typology, which led to several bouts of creative writing, including my epic time travelling viking highlander sheikh steampunk welsh vampire astronaut thing, and Lummel's Sexy Bank Robber Stalin and the Capitalist Shiekh of Capital BDSM scenes in a Baku bank vault (although I believe those efforts were questioned on ground of dubious fictionality.) When I discovered that despite all our collective efforts at parodying the more absurd corners of the romance genre we had been soundly beaten by an actual romance novel, there was no choice but to read it. It proved vastly more bizarre than anything we could possibly have conceived. Clearly, the board has some kind of tortured psychic connection to her.

[Darth Richard]

Ha. Books are fun!

Maybe one of us is secretly Sandra Hill........

[Galactus]

I make absolutely no secret about me being Sandra Hill!

[Lummel]

"a cowboy hat tipped rakishly on his long hair."

Are men allowed long hair in the US military?

But anyway isn't time to make predictions about the ending of the book?

Naturally Dopey Dwarf marries the Lieutenant whose bum he bit after saving her from the temptation of smelling lemon fresh, presumably this lewd bar that is a centre of depravity pumping out lemony scents into the heart of a Christian nation has to be converted into a Church of some description (but presumably non-Catholic despite all both of the any Cajuns) and all the SEALS and WEALS have to start attending Christian Rock concerts on a regular basis. There should probably be some kind of lame fight too with the wicked vampires.

[MinDonner]

I wish Ms Hill had the courage of her convictions and named this book "Kiss of Sloth" instead. Though I'm sorta liking the surrender/sloth conflation here; it's not so much a promise of "overwhelmed by passionate lust" as "oh well, I'll go along with this if I have to, can't be arsed to object". :love:

[Lummel]

I wish Ms Hill had the courage of her convictions and named this book "Kiss of Sloth" instead...

:laugh:

The kiss was long and lazy. Long not through passion but because he really didn't want to shift his position again. He had already moved twice since waking up, surely that was enough for one day. 'Thank [Archangel] Mike for incontinence nappies' he thought, 'soon I'll never have to move again'. A happy sigh escaped round the sloppy edges of their wet kiss.

[Datepalm]

They're allowed long hair because it's good for infiltrating foreign countries. Or something. Because that's totally how that works. Anyway, Cage and some buddies, all of whom also have cute-but-masculine nicknames ('cause they're in the army, dude, and army people like totally have nicknames. They're just so witty and tough, you know?) are also off to the Wet and Wild, evidently the only place in southern California with a liquor license. They invite Trond, but it's too much work.

“Nah. I think I’ll stick around here. Order a pizza. Watch a few Band of BrothersDVDs that I’ve missed. Thanks for asking, though.”

Just then, JAM stuck his head in the door. That would be Jacob Alvarez Mendozo, a former almost Jesuit priest, of all things. The fine hairs rose all over Trond’s body as he stood and stepped closer. Yep, the scent of lemons, a clear sign of a sin taint.

Trond and Karl exchange meaningful looks!

Wait, you say. DIdn't Karl leave? Yes, he did. But now he's back.

But wait, maybe JAM was wearing some citrusy cologne. Menfolk in modern times tried everything in their power to hide honest male sweat. Some men even shaved their chest hairs. What was wrong with men being men? That’s when he noticed the two small marks on JAM’s neck.

He and Karl, who had returned, exchanged glances.

This is writing so lazy she couldn't be bothered to go back two paragraphs and add in "...Karl came back without any condoms."

*******

Nevermind all the nonsense - we're now onto chapter 3 and the return of Jasper! The worst villain ever!

Jasper, king of the Lucipires, was about to hold court with his commanders, who made up the Lucipire Council, in the great hall of Despair, his palace in the remote icy mountains of northern Scandinavia, sometimes known as the Land of the Polar Night. A U-shaped conference table had been set up with comfortable armed chairs, everything made ready for the arrival of Jasper's guests.

Most humans couldn't withstand the extreme cold or long periods of total darkness beyond Svalband, Norway, the northernmost inhabited region of Europe, but those were the very conditions that appealed to vampire demons.

First, clearly Galactus really is Sandra Hill.

Second, the geography here doesn't bear thinking about, but i've been doing it anyway. The "mountains beyond Svalband [sic]" is much worse than the "forests of Upper Mongolia" business in the last book. Oh well.

Of course, the long period of polar nights also led to what was commonly known as Land of the Midnight Sun, days and days of nothing but sunshine. The Lucipires relocated during those times or stayed in the windowless dungeons.

So, you know, they've totally put some thought into that.

Jasper was now forced to work side by side with Heinrich Mann, a former Nazi general who was . . . well, a Nazi about organization. Who ever heard of demons getting orgasmic over spreadsheets and P&L statements, the profits and losses referring to victims? If it were up to Heinrich, their victims would be forced into regiments that goose-stepped, German army–style, to and from their killing jars in the torture chambers.

A Nazi! They have a Nazi! This book has a Nazi! Why don't all books have a Nazi? Can I have a Nazi? OMG. Random Nazi. Jasper always delivers.

[Lummel]

Heinrich Mann? Of all the names she could have chosen :crying: :laugh:

[Alytha]

Ah yes, Svalbard...lovely place...

Didn't meet any vampires there though. Just reindeers.

[Datepalm]

Of course not. They're in the mountains past Svalbard. Or Svalband, rather.