Product Description

After a few centuries, the only death 'big enough' is a human sacrifice. I know, because I'm an animator. My name is Anita Blake. Working for Animators, Inc. is just a job - like selling insurance. But all the money in the world wasn't enough for me to take on the particular job Harold Gaynor was offering. Somebody else did, though - a rogue animator. Now he's not just raising the dead ...he's raising Hell. And it's up to me to stop it ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123071 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 293 pages

Review
'I was enthralled by a departure from the usual type of vampire tale...' - Andre Norton 'This fastpaced, toughedged supernatural thriller is mesmerizing reading indeed' - Locus

LOCUS
'This fastpaced, toughedged supernatural thriller is mesmerizing reading indeed'

P N Elrod, author of THE VAMPIRE FILES
'Supernatural bad guys beware, nightprowling Anita Blake is savvy, sassy and tough'

Customer Reviews

Anita Blake is back.
Anita Blake may be a professional zombie raiser, but the millionaire Graynor wants her to raise a very old zombie, which would require human sacrifice. Of course she declines, but he is very insistent. And to make matters worse, there's already a killer zombie on the loose, and the police get her to investigate Señora Dominga, a powerful voodoo priestess. So now Anita has got two new powerful enemies.
It's all zombies, rather than vampires, this time, although the new Master vampire, Jean-Claude, makes a few appearances, trying unsuccessfully to get Anita to acknowledge she is his human servant. Anita herself is just as competent, sassy, and put upon, and the mixture of the grisly and the comic in scenes works well. I really enjoyed the 'gross-out' contest when examining a particularly gruesomely bloody corpse; it felt to be a very real coping strategy in an otherwise almost unbearable situation.

"The rush of power was like the memory of painful sex. Part of you wanted to do it again."
Enter the world of Anita Blake, licensed vampire executioner and necromancer of mixed Anglo/Mexican heritage. In this second installment of the series, she is bombarded with mystery, violence, blood and sex. Anita has a talent for the dead which she became aware of at the age of 13 when her dog died--and then showed up a week later curled up in Anita's bed. Her Mexican grandmother was a voudun practitioner and was able to teach Anita to control her ability. As an adult, Anita uses her power over the dead as a business to help people who have unfinished business with the dead.

Anita is investigating some very gory murders and she suspects the local voudun master, Dominga Salvador. In the process of the investigation she discovers a grisly plot to exploit the dead as well as a twisted financiers unscrupulous plan to profit from human sacrifice. Anita is also attempting to dodge the new vampire Master, Jean Claude, the most powerful and sexy vampire in the city, who is determined to court Anita. He has a strange power over Anita which she is not prepared to acknowledge.

Hamilton delivers a paranormal thriller drenched with violence and gore, and hinting at twisted sex. The character of Anita is charming and appealing. She has a taste for weapons, coffee and straight talk, as well as a mordant sense of humor. Hamilton maintains a nice degree of suspense which keep the pages turning! Highly recommended.

Anita Blake, Animator, is up to her neck with killer zombies
"The Laughing Corpse" is the second in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton, although the focus is much more on her job as an Animator than as the person the vampires call The Executioner. Once again the title is taken the name of a St. Louis hangout for those who like to visit the dark side, in this case a comedy club (helpful hint: zombies do not like to be the butt of jokes). This time around Anita is in way over her head with a whole bunch of serious problems. A lord of the underworld wants to pay her big time bucks to raise someone who has been dead for a couple of hundred years and does not like it that Anita has refused because the only way to do so required a human sacrifice. Her friend Catharine is getting married and wants Anita to be a bridesmaid, which involves wearing a pink gown that has to be altered to cover all of her scars. The voodoo priestess for the entire Midwest has learned how to put a person's soul back in their dead body, which stops the zombies from decaying, and Anita refuses to help her raise more zombies for profit. Meanwhile, Jean-Claude, the Master Vampire of St. Louis who has already put two of his marks upon our heroine, demands Anita start acting like his human servant. But the case Anita is trying to focus regards a savage zombie that is going around murdering families in their home, making her problems with three powerful people who refuse to take "No" for an answer rather inconsequential. Like it says on the coffee mug her boss would not let her have at the office, "It's a dirty job and I get to do it."

I was surprised to decide at the end of "The Laughing Corpse" that it was not only an improvement over the first book in the series, but one of the best horror stories I have ever read (and I read a lot of horror novels). There is a lot going on her, but Hamilton weaves the various cases, most of which would have sustained an entire novel, into a coherent narrative. I really was surprised when everything came together in the end. Hamilton has a much surer sense of her character this time around. The first half-dozen books in the Anita Blake series offer some of the most horrific endings you are ever going to find. Then there is the train wreck that is Anita's love life, which picks up more and more speed as we go merrily along (and the sexual content of these books becomes more and more prominent).

Big Time Warning: this is a gruesome book. Younger readers of "The Laughing Corpse" are going to be upset by several of the scenes, especially when Anita investigates the bloody crime scenes and the climatic encounter which I think is the high point of the entire series. I read these sections in the light of day and they were still disturbing. Those who come to this series because of their love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer need to be told that this is a much darker world where the violence is brutally horrific and not beautifully choreographed. These books are much more intense. If they made this into a film it would give "The Exorcist" a run for its money and it would be rated NC-17. Remember, you were given fair warning.