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 and I have every reason to believe that future novels in the series will be at least as good as this way. These books deserve their reputation and popularity if the rest are any where near as good as "The Laughing Corpse."

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. 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. Remember, you were given fair warning.


Quality Down from GP, Still an Okay Junk Food Read   April 4, 2002
 34 out of 43 found this review helpful

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.


Amazing   March 6, 2000
 33 out of 37 found this review helpful

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.


Can't get enough of Anita Blake!   April 9, 2004
 18 out of 18 found this review helpful

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!


Finally, the series might have hooked me...   October 16, 2003
 16 out of 18 found this review helpful

This second book is great - Multiple plots weaving together, true NON-stop action, greater interation between Anita Blake and Jean-Claude. I didn't like the first book too much, but this one seems to work - the story moves smoothy, we now know many of the characters and something about Anita Blake hints at power and danger. And she doesn't get her butt kicked...as much.
While the book does not focus on vampires, Jean-Claude, Master of the City, seems to appear more in these chapters than in "Guilty Pleasures", mostly because they REALLY talk to each other instead of trying to stare each other down.
I got an older copy so as to have a normal looking cover.