Review of The Laughing Corpse

First published in 1994.
Thickness: 301 pages
Read in dutch
Personal rating: 3 stars

In short
Harold Gaynor offers Anita Blake a million dollars to raise a 300-year-old zombie. Knowing it means a human sacrifice will be necessary, Anita turns him down. But when dead bodies start turning up, she realizes that someone else has raised Harold's zombie--and that the zombie is a killer. Anita pits her power against the zombie and the voodoo priestess who controls it. 

In The Laughing Corpse Anita will learn that there are some secrets better left buried-and some people better off dead... (www.goodreads.com)

My two cents 
I liked The Laughing corpse because it is what it is. Mindless reading fun. Books about vampires and other nasties are always easy to deliver and the Anita Blake series does just that for me. I've had problems with the twilight franchise because of the weak protagonist, but Anita is far from weak and does remind me of another great hero, Buffy Summers. Both emerged in vampires and both trying to cope with it.

In this volume Anita is trying to find a quite psychopathic zombie and it's animator. Meanwhile the master of the town is trying to lure her in as his human servant. On top of that a millionaire is moving to persuade her to  rise a zombie which will need a human sacrifice. A whole lot going on so the story line is never faltering and boring.

The title is a bit odd. A night club named the Laughing corpse is mentioned but plays an almost insignificant part. Also the zombie involved in lot of the story couldn't be described as laughing. But what's in a title? I liked the novel and I do recommend this to other vampire/zombie/ghoul lovers out there.

On to the next I'd say, although I'm going to read an Stephen King novel first!! :)

Review of Guilty Pleasures - An Anita Blake novel

Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
First published in 1993
Page count: 368 pages

In short

When St. Louis's most powerful vampire comes to Anita Blake for help, she is faced with her greatest fear-a man capable of arousing in her a hunger strong enough to match his own. Anita Blake lives in St. Louis, Missouri, in a world where magic, vampires, werewolves, and the like are, and have always been, "out of the closet" and, in some cases, even legal. Anita is an "animator," with the ability to raise or inter zombies. She uses this ability in employ at "Animators, Incorporated," where she raises the dead for various purposes including murder investigations, will explanations, and other legal services. Anita also works as a "vampire executioner," killing vampires (by court order) and advising the police on supernatural crimes.(www.goodreads.com & www.wikipedia.org)

My two cents

This first Anita Blake novel I tried, delivered me with mixed feelings. For a first novel I didn't find it captivating enough to read on, but since it thrives on such a large fan base I probably will try the next novel, just in case it should get better.
Anita is portrayed as a strong female doing a dangerous job in an equally perilous world, we can hardly imagine. She's an animator, which in short means she can raise the dead and she is known as the executioner, for she occasionally takes part in the taking down of dangerous vampires. Also, she seems to be working along side with the police in helping with the supernatural crimes.
My thoughts with all this information is that is feels like I picked up a novel somewhere in the midst of the series, instead of the very first, that's how much information is being thrown at you.

I read a couple of reviews of this novel and all seem to be perplexed Anita doesn't like vampires, as Sookie, Bella or even Buffy does, but that doesn't bother me. We can't all love the lethal toothy ones and Anita has a right to feel about them as she want, but what would've been great if we knew a reason why. It doesn't even need to be a fully explained reason, just a peak into something traumatising would've been good too.

The anita blake series haven't had that WOW-effect with me, but overall it wasn't an all too bad read.