The book starts off with Anita and her boss Bert pulling up Harold Gaynor's house who is apparently a client.
[...] parked the car on the crushed gravel of the driveway. The gravel was so white it looked liked handpicked rock salt. Somewhere out of sight the soft whir of sprinklers pattered. The grass was absolutely perfect in the middle of one of the worst droughts Missouri has had in over twenty years. Oh, well. I wasn't here to talk with Mr. Gaynor about water management. I was here about raising the dead.
Not resurrection. I'm not that goo. I mean zombies. The shambling dead. Rotting corpses. Night of the living dead. That kind of zombie.
Oh LKH, where am I even suppose to start with this?
Alright, lets start with the drought expect of this crap. If it's the worst drought in over 20 years, why don't you have water restrictions? When Australia goes through droughts (like every other year) we have pretty heavy restrictions on water. Before the 2011 floods which washed the majority of Queensland and Brisbane (the capitol) away, we had a limit on how long we could shower (preferably every other day. Yeah, summer wasn't fun for anyone in QLD), washing your car was a no-no, you could only water your plants either before 7am or after 6pm. The kitchen I was working in at the time had it's water pressure lowered because we were deemed to be using more then necessary thanks to our ancient dish sanitizer.
Long story short, if you're going to whinge about water management don't do it to people who have to leave through that shit.
As for the zombie raising part I just... Why is she going on about movie zombies? If raising zombies was a normal thing, would they even be a horror icon? And why did she state 'that kind of zombie'? is there another kind we were talking about that was deleted from the finial draft????????
Animating had only been a licensed business for about five years. Before that it had just been an embarrassing curse, a religious experience, or a tourist attraction. It still is in parts of New Orleans, but here in St. Louis it's a business.
Wow, I'm sensing some major town rivalry with this sentence. Also I thought it was stated in the first book that the supernatural had always been part of this world, if so why is everything only changing in the past five years? Did no one before Bert get the idea to turn this into a business? And did no one get pissed that people were raising their dead relatives for shits and gigs??
Insert Bert's description here, if you can't remember it from the first book I'll sum it up for you. He's a money hungry business man that has a boaters tan and is built like a pro footballer because he use to play for his uni or something.
It's random exposition time!!
Basically Bert starts talking about how there's a movement to use zombies in fields that are pesticide contaminated, since it would save lives, cost less and generally be good for the owners of said fields,
Anita slaps this down by pointing out that zombies rot and this fact cannot be prevented, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything as they would make awesome compost for the fields, just saying.
Bert swings back by pointing out that zombies have no rights under the current set of laws, a swing Anita blocks with an 'not yet'
It was wrong to raise the dead so they could slave for us. It was just wrong, but no one listens to me. The government finally had to get into the act. There was a nationwide committee being formed of animators and other experts. We were suppose to look into the working conditions of local zombies.
Anita then goes off about how it's pointless since zombies don't care, they have no mind of their own yadda yadda basically undermining her own argument of why zombies shouldn't be used for dangerous jobs.
Bert smirks and goes on about how Anita and another animator named Charles in on that committee and that it's good press for his business.
Anita bitches that she's not doing it for the press and Bert gets all condescending since you know, how dare she have a firm belief about something!
We then get a surprisingly brief description of what Anita is wearing (while whinging about silk in the heat and gun straps) Bert notices her gun and tells her to take it off. Anita claims that Gaynor will never know that she's strapped.
Anita, hunny? If your clueless boss can spot it, then I'm pretty sure your client will spot it also, and I don't know about you but I'd be bloody insulted if someone I was wanting to hire came into my home armed.
They have a bit of a back and forth about her not needing the gun, managing to slip in that Gaynor had already paid 5 thousand dollars just for them to come out and talk to him. Anita finally agrees to leave the gun behind and after 3 pages of pointless bullshit the plot attempts to come back onto the stage as they walk towards the house.
Once the door is open, Anita instantly is pissed that Bert made her leave the gun behind.
The man was maybe five-eight, but the orange polo shirt he wore strained over his chest. The black sport jacket seemed too small, as if when he moved the seams would split, like an insect's skin that had been outgrown.
Black acid-washed jeans showed off his small waist like someone had pinched him in the middle while the clay was still wet. His hair was blond. He looked at us silently. His eyes were empty, dead as a doll's. I caught a glimpse of shoulder holster under the sports jacket and resisted an urge to kick Bert in the shins.
I just... That description is just one bloody mess after another, seriously!
And it slowed what plot there is right back down into a crawl, which is clearly what this book needs right now because I'm struggling to keep up with the fast paced action!
Whatever, Bert tells him that Gaynor is waiting for them and he lets them in, Anita bitches that the air-con is too high and it instantly gelled her sweat or some shit.
Blah blah, this is an expensive house, with expensive things and oh god, where the fuck is the plot?!
We finally meet Gaynor, he's a large man in an electric wheelchair, he comes across as friendly and helpful.
He introduces them to Tommy the blond haired body guard and another one who is in the room called Bruno.
Now hold onto your hats kids, we finally get to see what everyone reads these books for. Anita's unappreciated humor!
"Is that your real name or just a nickname?" I asked, looking straight into Bruno's eyes.
He shifted just a little in his chair. "Real name."
I smiled.
"Why?" He asked.
"I've just never met a bodyguard named Bruno."
"Is that suppose to be funny?" He asked.
I shook my head. Bruno. He never had a chance, it was like naming a girl Venus. All Bruno's had to be bodyguards. It was a rule. Maybe a cop? Naw,it was a bad guys name. I smiled.
Bruno sat up in his chair, one smooth, muscular motion. He wasn't wearing a gun that I could see, but there was a presence to him. Dangerous, it said, watch out.
Guess I shouldn't have smiled.
I always knew Bruno Mars was a horrid person, now I know why. He's a bad guy! He has to be, even though it's not his real name he adopted it so he has to be bad, it's a rule!
And since when are bodyguards all bad guys?
Notice how all the bad guys are muscular and use guns? That's how you know LKH has never met a truly dangerous person, some of the most terrifying people I've met have had a massive beer gut and wouldn't know how to use a weapon if their life depended on it. Strangely enough, they were also the nicest people I've ever come across.
Bert apologizes to Gaynor about his employee's behavior, Anita smacks him down since she doesn't like him apologizing for her, thinking to herself that she doesn't understand what he was so upset about since she didn't say any of the really insulting stuff out loud.
A women entered. She was tall, leggy, blond, with corn-flower blue eyes. The dress, if it was a dress, was rose colored and silky. It clung to her body the way it was suppose to, hiding what decency demanded, but leaving very little to the imagination. Long pale legs were stuffed into pink spike heels, no hose. She stalked across the carpet, and every man in the room watched her. And she knew it.
She threw her head back and laughed, but no sound came out. Her face brightened, her lips moved, eyes sparkled, but in absolute silence, like someone had turned the sound off.
So this random person is Cicely, Gaynor's girlfriend, for some reason when she looks at Anita she looks uncertain for a second before Gaynor pats her hip.
Random what I'm guessing is foreshadowing is very random...
Gaynor want's them to raise a two hundred and eighty three year old corpse, Anita just stares at him wondering if she even realizes what he's asking for.
Bert points out that it's nearly three hundred years old......
Apparently most animators can't raise anything that old, hence why Gaynor requested Anita.
Bert asks her if she can do it, she thinks that she's never raised anything that old before stating that she can, but won't.
Bert looks at her in annoyance and Gaynor offers her a million dollars.
Bert has a minor spazz out since according to Anita money is sex to him so he probably has the biggest boner of his life.
I could have gone my entire life without knowing that....
Anita asks Gaynor if he actually understands what he's asking for, he nods and says that he'll supply the white goat. Anita gets to her feet demanding that they leave, like, yesterday.
Bert grabs her arm, imploring her to sit back down, Anita stares at him until he lets go, she then has a wank fest about how his mask slips enough for her to see his anger before he's all professional again, pointing out that it is a very generous payment.
It turns out that Bert knows very little about the business he runs since white goat is code for human sacrifice, knowing that Anita wouldn't lie about something like this, but also not wanting to believe it he asks her to elaborate.
"The older the zombie the bigger the death needed to raise it. After a few centuries 'big enough' is a human sacrifice."
Anita then randomly asks if Gaynor really wants to be talking about murder in front of Cicely, it turns out that she's deaf and never bothered to learn how to read lips. Gaynor then neatly slots himself in the asshole bad guy role by going on to explain that he hates women who talk too much.
Bert asks if she could merely kill a bunch of animals instead of just one, Anita says no, it wouldn't work. My next question would be why human? There's a lot of animals that are bigger then humans, why makes up so special that our death can raise older zombies then say... A cow?
We then get a paragraph about how losing out on so much money must be like psychical pain to Bert, but he surprises Anita when he turns down Gaynor's question about another animator doing it.
Gaynor offers them more money, Anita retorts that she's not an assassin.
... Well, duh? Killing someone doesn't make you an assassin Anita, it makes you a murderer. Believe it or not there actually is a difference.
Tommy points out that she kills vampires for money and Gaynor states that his sources claim that she's killed humans before.
A claim Anita smacks down since it was all in self-defense.
Bert states that they should get going and both Bruno and Tommy get all defensive, Bruno doesn't pull a weapon but Anita would bet good money he knows martial arts, while Tommy pulls a magnum, Anita goes on to state that because Tommy has a gun it puts a stop to her doing anything, she could handle Bruno (I call bullshit on that one, but sure, lets just go with it) but she can't do anything against a gun.
Tommy admits that he didn't pat them down upon entry, giving Anita a chance to bluff that she does in fact have a gun on her while she wonders why they're treating her like such a danger because she's so short and innocent looking.
You cannot make this women happy, when people treat her like a danger she bitches, when they don't she bitches. Make up your damn mind!
Gaynor speaks up, saying that no one needs to die and that going to the police would be useless as it'd be his word vs hers and he has friends in high places.
Once that is out of the way, Bert and Anita leave. Once outside Bert asks if they really would have shot them, he unlocks his trunk without being asked so she could get her gun out.
Anita figures that there was too much evidence that they would be at Gaynor's house today so it'd be too risky to have them killed, Bert then asks why she pretended to have a gun then. She replies its because she could be wrong.
And that's the start of this book, I have a feeling it's going to be a lot, lot worse then the first one. At least the chapters are longer then two pages. Even if 90% of it is just filler.
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