Rating: 
Summary: Quality Down from GP, Still an Okay Junk Food Read
Review: The Anita Blake series is not deep and subtly crafted. I have no urge to immediately give a second reading to pick up all the nuances and depths I missed the first time through because one can catch everything on one reading. They're good fun, but not *great* reading.The book can stand alone, but since you're here at a book store, pick up 'Guilty Pleasures' to make everything crystal clear. Also because it's a better book and you might as well see Hamilton at her best to carry you through lesser volumes. The Laughing Corpse is a different book, yes, but the writing quality has dropped as well on objective levels. This is not a vampire book. Those from GP appear almost as cameos, more to set up future books and to keep them in mind than to further this story. Other characters could have been used for their functions, but it was nice to see the fang gang again. This story concentrates on Anita's abilities as an animator, raising the dead, dealing with zombies, and some of the implications of that power she has been staving off. Technical writing flaws have been allowed to creep in: comma splices, using the same word "gleaming" three times in ten lines, little distracting teeth-grinders that I still remember the next morning. More importantly, this volume uses gratuitous gore as sheer padding. The gross-out contest shows the characters involved as immature, unprofessional, and disrespectful of murdered women and children. Is this really what Hamilton wants us to think of Anita and the RPIT crew? The tremendously detailed crime scenes this time around, as opposed to those in GP, make me think someone gave the author a copy of 'All the Gooey Gunk Inside' and, when she found herself 15,000 words short of a novel she used it to pad things out. It's okay in the first murder scene to set up the horror, but elsewhere it's a weary drag on the story's pace. I wound up skimming it in boredom. She should have used another Jean-Claude scene and moved things along on that line, at least, rather than just marking time. Also, I was persistently thrown off by the long-term voodoo queen of the Midwest being Mexican, and the whole business being treated as if primarily a Mexican religion. Voudoun comes out of francophone Haiti. I would expect Santeria or Spiritism out of an Hispanic community. Read 'The Magic Island' and 'The Serpent and the Rainbow' for some NF on voudoun. At least a bit more of the story world background is explained, like why vampire criminals are executed in the field rather than any attempts being made at trial and incarceration. Her timeline is off here, though. Vampires have only been legalized two years, Anita has been the Executioner for two years, yet the executioners are said to exist in response to something that happened within that two years. Sloppy, but that's sort of the motif for this volume. If GP was a bag of Oreos, this was generic chocolate sandwich cookies. Okay for a snack attack, but it could have been better.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing
Review: Ever wonder what the United States would be like with vampires and shapshifters? Where vampires are treated as living people and a person could be tried for murder when they staked the undead. Where the disease known as lycanthropy can make a regular person howl viciouly at the full moon and crave warm human flesh. And a woman known as an animator makes a living off of raising the dead...as in zombies. If you've ever wondered if the supernatural could be natural then I would encourage you to read this book and the other books of the Anita Blake series. Especially those who love blood, guts, gore, and a heroine who's tough enough to take on the whole supernatural world that Laurell K. Hamilton has created.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Vampire Series
Review: This is the second novel in an excellent vampire series. Welcome to the world of Anita Blake, necromancer (zombie raiser) and vampire executioner. She is a 5'3" dynamo with a variety of weapons that would make Rambo proud. She is tough, but fair, and her world is very very interesting. Anita's money hungry boss has made an appointment at a client's home. This client would like a zombie raised. Once Anita arrives and notices the weapons carried by her client's bodyguards, and the type of bodyguards this client has, she realizes this is not your ordinary "I want my attorneys to review my husband's will" so please raise him as a zombie appointment. Anita's boss is offered a tremendous amount of money to have anita raise a very old zombie. This zombie is so old that the only way to raise him would be to take a human life, and to use human blood. Anita turns this offer down, but this client will not take no for an answer. Also, Anita is pulled into yet another police investigation when she helps the police investigate a case where entire families are being murdered. This novel has plenty of action and the story lines and characters flows beautifully. This novel is EXCELLENT and I would highly recommend!
Rating:
Summary: Can't get enough of Anita Blake!
Review: Animator and vampire hunter Anita Blake is back. And everyone wants a piece of her. Master vampire Jean-Claude wants her for his own. Millionaire Harold Gaynor threatens her life unless she agrees to raise a three-hundred-year-old corpse from the grave. The catch? Only a human sacrifice will raise a zombie that old. Voodoo priestess Dominga Salvador wants her to go in to business with her, raising zombies with souls. Is nothing sacred? Necromancer John Burke wants her to help him find his brother's murderer. However, he's a murder suspect himself. To make matters worse, a killer zombie is on a rampage, murdering and eating whole families. It's just an ordinary day for the Executioner. THE LAUGHING CORPSE is the second novel in the Anita Blake series. The action is nonstop. The humor is sharp as a wooden stake. The vampires are (...). The romance is as hot as a date in Hell. And Anita is the girl of my dreams. My next date with her is in CIRCUS OF THE DAMNED. Can't wait!
Rating: 
Summary: It's fun !!!
Review: "The Laughing Corpse", the 2nd book in Hamilton's "Anita Blake, vampire Hunter" series, is quite a good sequel to "Guilty pleasures". It is certainly not great literature, but it allows you to have lots of fun and doesn't ask you to think a lot. And if you are tired (of working at the office or at home, or of studying), that can be quite helpful. Here we meet Anita again, and we also get to see her quite strange friends and her aspiring boyfriend, Jean Claude (a really handsome man of 400 years who has only one big defect: he is a vampire, so he is dead). The plot is good and catches the reader's imagination (a BIG IMAGINATION is highly necessary to enjoy this kind of book). Anita Blake, who is not only a vampire slayer (legally, of course) but also a necromancer, is offered a million dollars to raise a 300-year-old zombie. Despite the big amount of money (and the protests of her boss), she declines the offer, because she knows that to raise such an old zombie she would need a human sacrifice (and that is a crime, even in the future when this books takes place). Her "would be client" (Mr. Gaynor) doesn't like it, but has to accept it. The problem is that some really strange murders start to happen, and Anita, who helps the police as a preternatural expert, thinks they are comitted by a crazy zombie. Could somebody else have raised Gaynor's zombie, losing control of it?. That is the question that Anita will try to answer, while she runs into the most strange people, including Dominga Salvador, a powerful voodoo priestess (who later, of course, tries to kill her). "The Laughing Corpse" is a very good book, that brings you a lot of fun and takes you into a world where vampires and werewolfs are also legal citizens. Sometimes it's kind of absurd, but this is the kind of absurdity that makes you grin. So, if you read it, HAVE A GOOD TIME !!!
Rating:
Summary: I stand corrected!
Review: After reading the first book in this series, "Guilty Pleasures", I decided that Hamilton was a good writer, but that if somebody wanted to read novels about vampires they should try Anne Rice first. Now that I have read the second book in the series I realize that Hamilton is clearly among the best in the genre. Anita Blake has a job unlike anyone else, she is an animator and vampire slayer. Therefore, she raises the dead and executes vampires that have broken the law (vampirism on itself is legal in USA). Anita's physical appearance is peculiar considering her job; her height is five foot three inches and she weighs a hundred and six pounds! She also has a black belt in judo and has been marked twice by the master vampire of the city, Jean Claude, who is in love with her. In this installment of the series, Anita is offered one million dollars, by one of the most wealthy and powerful men in the city, to raise a two-hundred-and-eighty-three-year-old zombie; task that requires a human sacrifice. After she denies doing this, half of her problems begin. The other half has to do with the gruesome murder of a couple and the disappearance of their child. It is clear that the murderer is not human, but...is it a vampire, ghoul, zombie? Anita sets out to help the police in their investigation and ends up requesting the assistance of Señora Salvador, the most powerful voodoo priestess in the Midwest. The different story lines come together to make a highly entertaining book. For those who have read the first book in the series you will also get a glimpse of some further aspects of Anita's past, like information about her mother and grandmother and some "secrets" about her tutor during her first steps as an animator. The action is fast-paced and Anita usually refreshes the mood with witty jokes and comments in situations that are definitely gruesome. I really cannot wait to read the next book in the series, "Circus of the Damned".
Rating:
Summary: I'm all smiles
Review: Second book in the series. Need I say more? Just buy it already! After all, who could resist Jean-Claude? ;D (See I told you this was an addictive series! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D)
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: After reading "Guilty Pleasures," I thought perhaps it was a fluke and didn't think a second book could be as good as the first one. I was, thankfully, proven wrong. This book talks more about Anita's skills as an animator, and introduces new characters. I'm sure that anyone experienced in the vaudun arts could shoot holes through the magical information, but I thought everything flowed together beautifully. Definitely a fun and wonderful read, highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: A+ : outstanding genre-bending entertainment.
Review: I'd been hesitant to read one of these, despite rave reviews by people
I trust - I'm not much of a fantasy reader, & we're talking vampires,
zombies and werewolves here. Well, folks, what we _really_ have is
a book in the class of the Harold Shea books - one that bends genres
and transcends them. Let me back off a moment, & tell you what I usually read. I'm in the
mining business, educated as a geologist & chemist. I like my SF hard,
& I'm uncomfortable with gore. So why would I _like_ (let alone
rave about) a vampire book with (literally) buckets of blood? Hint -
it's probably not the scene where, as a joke, Anita tosses a cop the
severed hand from a dismembered infant... It _could_ be the scene where Anita (5'2", 102#) disarms a _large_
rapist by sticking her derringer in his crotch & threatening to blow his
balls off... Anita's hard-boiled alright, but she's an uneasy executioner, a
necromancer with scruples, even a soft touch sometimes - she tries to
give a pretty prostitute a bus ticket out of town to "start over" (the
whore laughs in her face). The gore is an integral part of the story, &
the supernatural is treated as just a part of everyday, late 20th C. life -
as alternate history, really (I don't usu like alt hist either). I'm
reminded somewhat of S.M. Stirling's Gwen in "The Drakon" (another
A+ book) - tho Gwen is more cheerful at work. For sure Anita's no
Nick Seafort. I'm not sure I'm getting across here, but *read the book*
and see what you think. If nothing else, it will lay to rest any lingering thoughts that women
can't be as bloody-minded as men. review copyright 1997 by Peter D. Tillman
Rating:
Summary: Zombies galore
Review: Anita is back, she is tough, she works hard, she raises the dead for a living, she is not easily scared...or is she?
In this book 2 about Anita's adventures she is hunting a killer zombie, and this hunt brings her close to a master voodoo-queen, way too close for comfort. At the same time, a mobster with a taste for disabled girls, wants her to raise a very old zombie. Somthing she has denied doing, as it requires human sacrifice to raise such an old zombie. The mobster is not overly happy by being turned down by Anita, and she also has to fight her growing lust towards Jean-Claude, master vampire of St. Louis. She is, after all, known among vampires as the Executioner, and then she cannot be Jean-Claude's human servant....Anita has a lot going on, there are zombies on the loose, hunky vampires, ghouls, blood, gore and also some humor. A very exciting and funny read, highly entertaining.
| 
