In Review: Bloody Bones by Laurell K. Hamilton

Released: 1996                 370  pages                          

Publisher: Ace Books

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 0-441-00374-5

Bloody Bones opens with another job for our favorite animator, this time a mass zombie raising, in Branson, Missouri in order to build a resort on the graveyard. All the corpses are at least 100 years old, some much older and she’s probably the only person in the world able to raise them without a human sacrifice. But of course it can’t be that easy where Anita is involved, there is some dispute over the land, and elsewhere in the city there is a crime scene of mangled teens that point to a sword wielding vampire.
Soon an additional suspect winds up on her radar in the form of a half fey, who has both the spped, agaility, and magic to have killed those teens, and his family is the ones who are holding up resort’s building.
Another police call, brings on a vampire hunt, when a local girl appears to have been  turned. Anita spends much of the books jumping from one disaster to another, until she tracks whose actually at the bottom of the deaths, the turning, and what is actually going on with that graveyard.
While Dolph is only seen via phone, Jean-Claude and Jason do show up to help, but no Richard. I love Jason, but he’s no Richard, and Jean-Claude is using Jason to try to deter Anita from marrying Richard. We’re introduced to a new kind of vampire, rotting vampires, and the ick factor knows no bounds. Anita’s will is put to the test in more ways than one, as is Larry’s stomach.
It is a quick read, that had few dull moments. Some of Jean-Claude’s history is explained, and the death of Anita’s mother is very vivid. The story’s has subplots that are a part of the entire series, however the way that the story’s main arc is written it is able to stand on it own without giving a new reader too much trouble to follow along. For the best effect all of the books should be read in order. The story wrapped up quickly and fairly cleanly as most of Mrs. Hamilton’s stories do.