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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780515134445
ISBN number: 0515134449
Label: Jove
Manufacturer: Jove
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: September 24, 2002
Publishing house: Jove
Sale Popularity Level: 8000
Studio: Jove
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Now available in hardcover for the very first time, The Laughing Corpse takes readers back to a time when Anita's life was a bit less complicated. As the best Animator in the business-she's as good at raising the dead as she is at slaying the undead-she crosses paths with a creature from beyond the grave, a super-powerful zombie who is tearing a swath of murder through the city. And she discovers that there are some secrets better left buried-and some people better left dead.
Amazon.com Review:
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. Notice to Hollywood: forget Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Anita Blake is the real thing.
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Rated by buyers 
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This is the second book in the series. Once again these books are short so I hope no one expects a lengthy in-depth read. Instead of giving away a lot of plot information I think I'll just give a list of likes and dislikes.
Likes: Jean-Claude. Though this character is rarely seen in this story I crave the subsequent opportunity to see him. It isnt the greatest sexual tension I have read between two charcters, but this is all we're given in these two books so far. I like this character and his interactions with Anita.
I like the very first person point of view. Anita is witty at times and can make me laugh.
Dislikes: This list will be fairly long. First of all, the repatitive aspect of this book is quite annoying. I'm seeing phrases that were repeated from the very first book word for word. This doesn't happen just once, but many times throughout the book. It's often used for describing peoples characteristics and physical being. Not to mention she does this all throughout her third book I am reading.
Anita's personalitly. It was nice to see the tough girl image in the very first book. This book, not so much. It seems she's void of regular emotions a twenty-four year old female would have. She's not girly in any way. If I didnt know any better I'd say she was written as a man. It would be nice to see a vulnerability to this character and have her be feminine every once in a while.
Her hate for Vampires is something that is questionable. She pushes for Zombie working rights and shuns all vampires as evil, when the plot of this story is about a Zombie on a murderous rampage. Why does she hate vampires? It never really says. Sure, she was attacked by them but she was also attacked by wererats and zombies, yet she doesnt seem to harbor the hateful feelings she holds for vampuires. She pushes Jean-Claude away at every turn for what reason? He wants her to be his human servant, I can understand she wouldnt want that. But why does she feel he's so dangerous when has he made any kind of threat to her?
The gore: I'm not one that's grossed out by alot. Yet, this book takes the cake. It's scenes were borderline distasteful. Her playing and making bets to see who can gross out who in a family murder scene is outrageous. The detailing is something that Hamilton doesn't shy away from.
Despite my lack of positive reveiws I gave it three stars. I would really like to see this character develop and a piece of me thinks I should give it time. I think I judge things a tad too sharply. I wasn't bored at all while reading this book. It was a decent read. Like any book it has it's flaws. Hopefully, it will get a shade better as the series continues. More than anything I would like to see what becomes of her and Jean-Claude.
Rated by buyers -
Although the very first bok in this series is really good this on e seemed a little dry and hard to follow for me. I was very disappointed
Rated by buyers 
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Boy, and you thought the very first one was bloody? This one was easily the goriest, most gruesome piece of writing I've seen outside of Stephen King and some of the schlock-fest fiction I've read in the past when no better option was available -- you know, the kind of thing where you're trapped in a waiting room and the magazines are old and water stained, but hmm, what's this paperback without a cover? Oh, Attack of the Lung-Eating Leper Beasts? What's this about?
But unlike those books, this gore had reason and purpose, and it made the book better than it would have been without it -- surely the requirement for any given element's inclusion in a novel.
Anyway, the second Anita Blake book was as good as the first, and that is a good sign. Because the second book is in some ways very unlike the first: in the very first one, the murder mystery takes a backseat -- way back, like hanging off the rear bumper of one of those double-length buses with the accordion joint in the middle -- to the vampire stuff, which is very scary and shows that the vampires are incredibly nasty and overpowering and no human really has any chance. At the end of the very first book, Anita feels small to the reader. And that's good, because it makes the character human, and when she says at the very end of the book that line -- "I don't date vampires. I slay them." -- it sounds desperate, like she's whistling in the dark and she knows it, because Jean-Claude already has such a claim on her, both in terms of his mind control and because of her attraction to him, and because she never should have won the fight with the evil vamps. The poignancy of that line, and her desperate situation, makes her sympathetic.
This book made her bada$$. The murder mystery took center stage, because at every pause in the action, back it came with an even bloodier and more horrifying murder scene -- and since the very very first murder scene begins with a corpse that is nothing but a section of ribs, and a blood-soaked teddy bear, saying that each scene is more horrifying than the last is saying a lot. And more so than the very first book, the murder mystery and the intrigue element complemented each other, because this time, the intrigue involved the killers with Anita (The same held true of Guilty Pleasures, granted, but in a much more coincidental way.), and so her dealings with the evil folk brought her closer to solving the murders. I appreciated that the gory scenes helped to build hatred for the villains, as well as building up to the final scene; I think the last monster that is thrown at Anita would have seemed much more of a joke if we hadn't already had the sheer bloodiness of the murder scenes before then. There's also a wonderful moment when Anita catches up to the killer, and it asks her for mercy, in a way; one thing that I feel is an absolute requisite for monster fiction of any kind is the humanization of the monsters: if the monsters aren't human, then I can't care about them and I don't want to get involved in their existences, even peripherally. When the murderer asks for Anita's help, it makes me pity it, just a little -- and that makes the blood spilled by this thing that much more horrible. Which makes Anita's final victory over those responsible for this not only impressive, because this time she's the strong one, but also righteous, because the evil was contrasted with pitiable, tragic figures. Human figures. Something that is lacking in far too many paranormal fiction novels.
I definitely enjoyed this one, even more than the first, and now I'm eager to read on.
Rated by buyers 
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This is my second Anita Blake book that I have read (after "Guilty pleasures") and I am not impressed with it.
Anita Blake is a self-righteous, supposedly cool, totally unlikeable person. Her attitude is aggravating to say the least. She doesn't know when to shut her mouth, pisses the wrong people off at the wrong time and still comes out of every confrontation unharmed.
The descriptions of the murder scenes in the book are gross. To describe the scene once is necessary, but to describe the same stuff again and again is redundant. I'm getting the picture after the very first time.
The books are called "vampire hunter novels", yet so far Anita hasn't hunted any vampires. Not that I think that vampires need to be hunted per se, but a bit of vampire interaction would be nice. In the very first book the "vampire hunter" actually worked FOR the vampires and in the second one there were hardly any vampires.
Jean-Claude was only put in as a minor supporting actor. The whole book deals with zombies of all kinds - a topic that doesn't do it for me at all.
*SPOILERS*
What annoyed me most was:
- that Anita found out that raising a dead animator has very bad consequences and that that zombie can't be controlled by the one who raised it. Nevertheless she doesn't hesitate to - or even think about
it - raise a whole graveyard, meaning loads and loads of zombies she doesn't know anything about. What if there are former animators among them?
- that at very first Anita wants to bring down Dominga Salvador with legal means and only in case those would fail she would let John Burke deal with her. That resolution didn't last for long, because as soon as she realizes that Dominga got out on bail (something which is pretty much inside the legal system, even though she obviously reached that by bribery) she decided it's time to have her killed by the numeours zombies she just raised. Nice double standard.
Guess this book wasn't for me.
Rated by buyers 
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I'm not really a fan of this genre, but people will buy these books and I read them when I dont have anything else to do. This book took me close to nine months to finish. Anita Blake is invincible. No matter what the situation you know Laurell Hamilton will never allow anyone to get the best of Anita Blake, and thats annoying. If two guys have guns pointed at you, if either was actually willing to shoot you, there would be no way to get out of it without getting shot. Not to mention how she's always talking about how vampires can "throw cars" yet she always seems to get disarmed in the fight, and still beat them. And every two pages, there is a paragraph explaining where her gun is and how she is carrying it, and it's pointless. Despite that she seems to have very little knowledge of firearms. Since when can you shoot a .22 in a .38? That is stupid on so many levels. And since when could a 9mm, or any handgun for that matter take off limbs? Jeane Claude is annoying the way he talks and how he's always dressed like a freak and nobody says anything about it. I gave the book two stars because Laurell Hamilton isn't the worst author, and this is far from the worst book I've read, but it's still pretty bad. I'm not into the genre, but her books are nowhere close to scary, or even dark. They remind me of tales from the crypt or something.
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