Laurell K. Hamilton's "The Laughing Corpse", #77

[katikat]

Synopsis: 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.

Review: Basically? Good story ruined by an unlikable heroine and over-the-top brutality. I don't like Anita Blake and when you don't like the main hero it's hard to like their story. I mean, Anita is tough as nails, sure, but to play with the bloody, torn-apart remains of a three-year-old just to one-up her male colleague and win a bet... That turned my stomach. The story itself was interesting but it seemed like the author loved to make Anita wade through brain tissue, bits of human meat and bones and every other chapter Anita just had to be dripping with blood from head to toe. Kinda not my style. And she and Jean-Claude? Running in circles doesn't describe it properly, it felt more like they were caught in a time loop, having the same conversation again and again.

Comments

[oddmonster.livejournal.com]

I am right there with you on Anita. I cannot stand her as a character, and it's prevented me from getting more than 10 pages into any Blake book. Which is a shame, because I would so be down for reading about zombies and voodoo priestesses. A neglected genre, I feel.

[katikat.livejournal.com]

I read those books just because other people swoon about them. I want to know what the hype is about. I have four Anita Blake books borrowed (two of them finished already) so I think I will read them and that'll be it.

[oddmonster.livejournal.com]

Speaking of being influenced by people who swoon about books, I bought LA Heat....

uh, and about 7 other books. Gold Box moment. :D