The Laughing Corpse - Laurell K. Hamilton [May/06]

This is the second novel in the Anita Blake, Vampire Huner series. It was a gift from a friend, a late birthday and Christmas present. It sucks to have finished it because while I have been finding lots of the later books second hand, I still have not tracked down books 3 and 4. Hamilton also wrote a series based around Faeries, I have not found book 1 to that series yet, so I am going to have to either Amazon or buy new in order to further enjoy this series. I might just read the ones I have and then backtrack, have to see.

I really enjoy this series, as I have mentioned in the entries to the other two novels I have read of it, this book was no exception. In this novel "a creature from beyond the grave is tearing a swath of muder through St. Louis" (Back of book). Anita Blake has been called in to determine what they are dealing with and find a way to take care of it. The bodies found in this book are gruesome to hear about, I must warn people, as there is not much left of them by the time they are found. The police need her help before the undead tracks down more helpless victims and leaves them in pieces.

At the same time, one of the richest men in the area has contacted Blake to raise a three-hundred-year-old corpse which would require a human sacrifice. The man believes he will hold the secret to a buried treaure that rightfully belongs to him and will stop at nothing to get Blake to agree to the rising. Even if his methods are not totally legal. Blake soon comes to see that these two seemingly unrelated incidents are not all that they appear to be. She also grasps the full understanding of her powers, which might have scary reprecussions in later novels.

If that isn't enough, she has Jean-Claude to worry about. The new Master of the City, who considers her his human slave, is pressuring Anita to compete the transformation. Anita is not someone to be told what to do, though, and so fights Jean-Claude at every turn. He will never totally go away, as my later reading of the series revealed.

I really enjoy this series. I cannot wait until I either have the next book or break down and read them out of order. I like to savour each one, so I hate to rush through the series, but it is interesting to witness the life that is Anita's.

4.5/5

Bloody Bones - Laurell K. Hamilton [March/06]

After reading Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton, I found that I had to know what happened in the series next, so I went searching for the second novel. In my town, they only have the later ones in the series, but a store about an hour away appeared to have all of them. I used a book later in the series to figure out which book to get next and walked away with Bloody Bones. As I was reading it, though, I found that a lot of stuff seemed to have happened not recorded in a book, so I was a little confused as to where some of the characters had come from and others gone to. Turns out this is like book 5 in the series and the book I was using to find out the order was wrong. I have book 2, The Laughing Corpse, now in my to read pile. I hope to get to it soon because now I need to know all that I missed.

Anyways, in case people have forgotten, Anita Blake is a vampire hunter and animator. She is good at both of her jobs and high in demand. This novel starts out, though, when she is even busier than originally she planned. She gets called in as an animator to raise an entire graveyard of two-hundred-year-old corpses who have been disturbed by a bulldozer and thus quite separated from their bodies. It is a hard job and Anita is not even sure if she can possibly do it. While arranging what she is going to do about this job, though, the police call her in to investigate what happened to three Missouri teenagers who have been slaughtered like Anita has never seen before.

In the blink of an eye, Anita has herself in the middle of a very powerful battle that most people are not even aware of. She is forced to ask help of the local vampire leader which causes more headache for her than it seems worth. This novel also has fairies in it, which I liked because I am fond of fairies almost as much as vampires. Hamilton has another series centred around fairies, actually, but I have as of yet not read it. This is another very exciting novel and the sexuality that I have been warned about is still not over-whelming in this particualar novel, so that was good. I really like this series, I don't think it will be long before I read the other one I have from it. Then, I think I might check out the fairy series.

4/5

Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton [March/06]

Well, of all the reading I had done up to this point, this was the most interesting discovery. I had been hearing about her on a few web sites, but never got around to reading her, then one day I happened to see a book by her at the second hand store and low and behold, it was book one. I had never really done the vampire novels before, so I was curious how it would play out. What happened was, I really liked this novel.

This is book one in Hamilton's "Anita Blake" series. Anita Blake is a vampire slayer and a neomancer. Not sure which came first, Buffy or Blake, but I was never much of a Buffy fan. Anyways, in the novels she deals a lot with dead people, so it is sort of interesting. She has some pretty amazing abilities and can do things that regular people can not dealing with vampires. The particularly good thing about book one is that this is not her beginning out in her career, by the time we are reading her, she has been in the business for I think 4 years, so she has connections and interesting experience which adds to the novel.

In this first book she has a meeting with the master of the city that she lives in. Someone is killing vampires and the master wants Anita to crack the case. This is a really old, really powerful, and really deadly vampire that Anita is dealing with, so it gets interesting. It is one of those novels that I would hate to have spoiled for me, because figuring things out is half the fun. I will tell you that there is a vampire that has a "thing" for her, which is sort of interesting because he is a vampire and she is practically a mortal. I say practically because well, strange things happen. She gains some powers from the lover boy and can actually stand nearly neck to neck with most vampires, just not all of them.

I have to admit, I was skeptical about these novels at first, even though people were telling me they were good. I really enjoyed reading this, though. Anita Blake is a action sort of gal and she really gets the job done! I hear that she gets sort of romancy in the later novels, but for the time being it is nice to read about a strong independant woman that knocks out the bad folk.

4.5/5