Who do you call when you have a mass grave that’s two centuries old and you want to raise them all from the dead? Anita Blake, of course. No one else can do it. But it’s never as simple as that.
Where The Lunatic Cafe served to broaden the Anitaverse to include lycanthropes, Bloody Bones reaches into a different sort of mythology: fairy tales. Specifically, the Faerie, cold iron and four-leaf clovers and bad nursery rhymes and all. But if you were expecting nice nature-loving creatures with pointed ears, this isn’t your book. Historically, faeries resided somewhere between arrogantly neutral to actively cruel; they started at shades of dark grey and got a lot worse quickly. Faeries in the Anitaverse are the same way.
Aside from the mass grave and the faeries, Bloody Bones forces Anita to deal with what may be the first vampiric serial killer on record. And as usual, calling Jean-Claude for help gets her in even more trouble with the local vampires, who don’t like being dropped in on by surprise.
This is the first novel in the series where the formulaic nature of the novels becomes noticable. Once again, the plot revolves around a mixture of monster kills and monster politics, with the odd hostage situation and a bit of romantic tension between Anita and her two romantic interests to spice things up and a newer, more powerful master vampire to contend with. Still, the addition of the Faerie is a new element that prevents the formula from interfering with the enjoyment of the story.
The degree of gore present in this novel is lower than in most of the others. Of course, it’s hard to top bodies chewed up and eaten, bodies with pieces missing, blood-soaked carpets, blood-soaked teddy bears… after all the blood soaking, it’s almost a relief to get a relatively small number of relatively undamaged bodies.
One of the more interesting side issues that is brought up by this novel is the interaction of the law with regard to new vampires being “brought across”. How do you apply the age-of-consent laws to death by vampire bite? How do you deal with the dead body that will be waking back up after 3 nights?What if the parents want the body staked rather than letting it rise?
Not easy questions, and not easy answers.
Overall, the story is well-told and interesting enough in the details that the formulaic nature of the plot is forgivable. There’s no reason to avoid this novel, and a number of good reasons to read and enjoy it.
