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The Laughing Corpse
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The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K Hamilton- 2 stars (2nd in Anita Blake Series)
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Aw, I like all the added sound effects in this audio series.
To each their own. Did you keep reading further in the series?
Yeah, I continued to listed to the audios because I like them. :-) But, continued is in the past tense (for now, anyway). I just - in the past month or so - finished the 6th book, I think. I am considering stopping there. I may change my mind later, but at the moment, that's what I'm thinking.
Holy cow, I just realized there are 25 in the series, and still going?! Geez, I'm never going to finish that many, haha.
I didn't even realize there were that many!
The tone of the stories shifts drastically somewhere in the middle - it's been so long since I read them that I can't remember where it changes (8? 9? 10?), but from an urban fantasy mystery series, it became all about erotica at some point, with the mystery/action taking a backseat. Now, it's excellent erotica, she writes it very well, but after awhile they just got too heavy with it and I got tired of it, which is why I stopped around 16 or so. I went back to it once, but I need long periods of rest in between the books.The Merry Gentry series, IMO was just boring - that was even heavier with the erotica, and the story progressed so slowly that I gave up after book 2 or 3.
I read the first in the Anita Blake series about 3 1/2 years ago. I recall enjoying that one. I'm not sure if I'm a little older now, and more skeptical and critical of the paranormal genre. Or perhaps the audio completely ruined it for me- because it was horrible. I don't read much (any?!) paranormal since the Sookie Stackhouse series ended. This doesn't make me want to come back to the genre.
Anita Blake, an animator who can raise the dead is back at it again- this time against Salvadore Dominga, a powerful voodoo priestess. It seems like it's everyone in the world against Anita, with the exception being the sexy French Jean Claude. Who appeared kind of pointlessly throughout the novel.
One problem was that there was always too much going on. Murder and gore scenes just to prove the novel is 'dark'. There seemed like quite a bit of discrimination, against the disabled, slight racist, that kind of thing that was just talked about like it was normal. There is huge sexism, which I understand if you're writing a character to be sexist- but the casual rape talk and sexual assult that goes "unnoticed" doesn't seem distinct to one character- it's overarching throughout the entire book.
And god the audio. I feel like I may have liked this MAYBE if I had read the book instead of listened to the HORRIBLE audio. The voice actress was way too over-dramatic, her accent's were only distinguishable because of the words not the tone, her female and male voices were in the same register and hard to distinguish apart. And to top it off, there were "creepy sounds" plugged into the background of the text as well. Oh, Anita is shooting a gun? Let's add 3 gunshot sounds to the background! She's raising the dead? Let's add spooky cemetery howling wind noises.
I may try and continue the series for future Halloween reads or if I ever need to read a paranormal book. But NEVER trying any of this series on audio again.