Anita Blake 12 - Incubus Dreams
Page 84
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A Stroke of Midnight
I am Meredith Gentry, P.I., solving cases in Los Angeles, far from the peril and deception of my real home—because I am also Princess Meredith, heir to the darkest throne fairie has to offer. The Unseelie court infuses me with its power. But at what price does such magic come? How much of my human side will I have to give up, and how much of the sinister side of fairie will I have to embrace? To sit on a throne that has been ruled by bloodshed and violence for centuries, I might have to become that which I dread the most.
Enemies watch my every move. My cousin Cel strives to have me killed even now, from his prison cell. My uncle Taranis, the King of Light and Illusion, ruler of the bright Seelie court, makes no attempt to hide his deep desire to destroy or conquer the Unseelie court—just as my aunt Andais, the Queen of Air and Darkness, would do to his court… if she could. The two courts have been enemies for centuries, but suddenly Taranis has invited me and my guards—the Queen’s own Ravens—to the realm of the Seelie for a ball. Never before have the bright ones allowed so many of the Unseelie nobility inside their shining sanctuary, and the surprising invitation throws my mind into confusion. What does the glittering throng want with me and my men?
Before I risk the treachery of the Seelie Court, I want my allies firmly at my back. I will embrace Sholto, The Lord of that Which Lies Between, in all his alien beauty. I will risk the Goblin King’s court, and my guards and I will show them that violence and sex are as popular among the sidhe as they are among the goblin kind. I will go to the beds of men I do not know and do not trust, in a bid for political and military might. Passions undreamt of await me—and as my enemies gather, the future of both courts of fairie begins to unravel.
Look for Laurell K. Hamilton’s new Meredith Gentry novel,
A Stroke of Midnight,
coming January 25, 2005, from Ballantine Books.
[text from book jacket]
Praise for the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels:
“[A] sexy, edgy, wickedly ironic style… red-hot entertainment.”
—Jayne Ann Krentz
“I’ve never read a writer with a more fertile imagination.”
—Diana Gabaldon
“Hamilton just keeps getting better and better.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Anita Blake is one of the most fascinating fictional heroines since Scarlett O’Hara—and a hell of a lot more fun that most.”
—Publishers’ Weekly (starred review)
No one is as good at stripping bare the dark desires of the inhuman soul as Laurell K. Hamilton, something she has proven time after time in her New York Times bestselling Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels. Now, in Incubus Dreams, Anita’s life is more complicated than ever, caught as she is between her obligations to the living—and the undead.
As consultant to the Regional Preternatural Crime Investigation Unit, Anita’s called in on what appears to be a case involving a serial killer—a vampire serial killer—who may be preying on strippers.
She’s sure that none of the local vamps are responsible—but her judgment may be clouded by a conflict of interest. For she is, after all, the consort of Jean-Claude, the ever-intoxicating Master Vampire of the City—something both her human friends and her ex, the alpha werewolf Richard, are quick to point out.
Surrounded by suspicion, overwhelmed by her attempts to control the primal lusts that continue to wrack her as a result of her passionate contacts with vampire, werewolf, and the shapeshifter Micah, Anita is pushed to her limits—and beyond…
Version History
1.0 – scanned, formatted, and spell-checked. Obviously, wasn’t spell-checked by the production department at Penguin/Berkley before the manuscript was sent to the typesetter—I’m talking around a spelling error per page, including spelling “particular” as “particliar” and “suave” as “sauve” throughout. I didn’t fix anything which wasn’t an obvious and blatant spelling error—if it could have possibly be interpreted as an authorial “voice” choice, I left it alone, and if Hamilton wants to write “midmorning” instead of “mid-morning,” who cares. It’s spelling “hospital” as “hoptial” that risks breaking the readers’ trace, or using "wretch" (the noun) when "retch" the verb was what was intended. All authors make typos, and many find it difficult or impossible to detail-proofread their own work—which is why proofreaders and spellcheckers are standard for published works. The real problem with typos in books is that they jar the reader from the “reader’s trance”—making the reading experience, on a subconscious level—less enthralling (and hence less entertaining, and less commercially successful, particularly with the author’s following works). I have never seen a published book with this many typos before (and I’ve read thousands).
It's disgraceful when the "evil pirates" scanning books, like me, obviously care far more about the quality of the finished product than the "major white-hat all-knowing" publishers do. Trust me, the proofreading was so bad that this novel in its hardcover form, instead of being an interesting but controversial examination of dark sexual impulses, read like illiterate porn from the alt.sex newsgroups.
Otherwise, it’s a decent read.
2.0 – October 5, 2004 – The_Ghiti – proofed in detail against deadtree format from first edition (release date September 28, 2004). As usual, if there was an oddity in dialogue, or an obscure alternate form, I left “as is,” but if there was an obvious typo, I corrected it, even if it was in the original, as I regard this as a new edition, not just a reproduction. In particular, I left Hamiltons … innovative … (yeah, sarcasm intended) use of punctuation, including extra commas scattered seemingly at random through the text, and occasionally used instead of periods to separate sentences, not to mention her sentence fragments, alone. If you find additional errors (beyond the ones left in by the incompetence of Penguin/Berkley’s production department, I mean) please correct, increment version by 0.1, and re-post.
3.0 - October 13, 2004 - Fixed some OCR errors. Proofer's work never ends.