Melissa's Reviews > Both Feet in the Grave

Both Feet in the Grave is another completely inessential addition to the Night Huntress universe. By design, it sort of has to be. Not only is Bones the deuteragonist of the original series, but his relationship with Cat, our viewpoint, is pathologically codependent and possessive. In narrative terms, that means they spend next to no time apart.

Except for in One Foot in the Grave that is. The first book ends with Cat leaving Bones in a bid to save his life, and as a consequence they don't see each other for four years. Of all the choices Frost made in the series, this is probably her smartest. It gave time for Cat to be her own person and cultivate a life outside of her mother and Bones: two incredibly domineering personalities. While I'm disappointed with how paltry that life is, its something, and it made their relationship going forward a lot more palatable.

The tweaks and overt changes from the original book aren't as glaring this time around. Or my memory isn't so great. Also, Frost has dialed down the pop culture references. I can't recall a single one, actually.

With the four years both of them spent apart largely detailed within the original series, there weren't many revelations to uncover from another retelling. It did give Frost a chance to retcon a few things.

Juan stared at him, and then burst out laughing. "You know?" he said, still in Spanish. "Don't tell the others. I get away with so much acting like a B-movie Latin stereotype."

Juan has always been one of the more egregious elements of the series. He's portrayed as preposterously hypersexual (sleeping with hundreds of women), is an ex-con, and, more importantly for the quote above, he sexually harasses Cat on the regular and everyone treats it like its something he couldn't possibly help. Why? Because of his ethnicity. It's as backwards as it sounds.

When it was published in 2008, it was just another abhorrent example of cultural insensitivity from a white author. Its been over a decade, and while its nice to know Frost has absorbed some critique of this depiction, this is not the way to rectify it.

The idea of a minority playing into stereotypes to make themselves more "acceptable" to white people is complicated territory that requires more than a single line of text to do justice. But then to have the character say they play into the stereotype so they can "get away" with things like sexual harassment (because that is Juan's major contribution in the text and biggest issue overall), well, somehow you've taken it to another level of offensive.

The other retcon is Bones mesmerizing Cat's insane mother, Justina, to be a better parent to Cat. Justina has always been a strange character because of the way the books handled her. Her fanatical hatred of vampires is understandable. She was raped by one (we'll get back to that) and Cat is a product of that rape. She then passed down her prejudices to Cat and happily allowed her daughter to risk her life hunting them. Her eventual change in attitude is abrupt on account of the story not willing to give the arc the time it needed, but this retcon smooths over a few wrinkles.

At the end of the book, one of the few things Max (her father) does say is that he didn't rape her mother. That the sex was consensual but once she saw his eyes and fangs, she screamed and bawled and he then, without her consent, fed on her and sent her on her way thinking he was a demon.

Taking that step by step, we have Frost giving time to the rarest of occurrences: false rape accusations. Then we have a clear-cut instance of Max admitting to forcing himself on her when biting her, and that gets zero condemnation. Why? Because Bones would be guilty of that. We're supposed to believe the mitigating circumstances are the fact his venom can make the bite pleasurable and his gaze can erase someone's memory of being bitten, but that's just the supernatural equivalent of GHB.

And that's why you shouldn't skip down that rabbit hole if you're not willing to examine it fully.

Beyond all of that, with this book I was looking for a greater exploration of Bones' turmoil and loneliness during their time apart. What we got was perfunctory. I got the sense that Frost just wanted to get to her favourite bits from the book, and I can understand that impulse, and I'm sure most readers will be right there with her — but if I'm going to read this story again, with the selling point that its from Bones' perspective, it might be worthwhile to invest in his emotional state more.

In One Foot in the Grave, Cat's devastation anchored the first hundred pages and informed the rest. Frost has a habit of sidestepping Bones' feeling by saying he simply "iced" them over or some variation of that. He wouldn't have survived this long to become a master if he didn't have that skill. I get it. That's fine, but now that I'm in his head, a little thawing wouldn't go amiss. This means that once we do get our reunion, it's not half as powerful as it could be — or as dramatic as it was when it was Cat we were following.

Outside of that, the story of Bones and Cat navigating the competing loyalties of vampire feudalism is just as riveting as ever. Which, to be clear, isn't much at all. Cat wants to kill her father, who was sired by Ian, whose obsessed with Cat over her half-vampire status and also sired Bones, so Bones goes above his head to keep Cat for himself. It's not that this couldn't be interesting, it's just that the key players need to actually show up more than once or twice for me to care about the game at play.

This series has exactly two decent antagonists, and that's relative to the slop we usually get. The story usually goes: bad thing happens, this bad guy is doing it, Bones and Cat meet and speak to bad guy all of two seconds before they are dead. It's honestly been a recurring issue with a lot of the books I've read lately. Incorporating antagonists in your stories better should be a priority; that feels like common sense.

I didn't have as much fun with Both Feet in the Grave as I did the last book, but that might have something to do with the novelty wearing off. Its still notably better than the original book told from Cat's perspective, but not enough to make the experience feel fresh.