Sometimes when I pick a book, it’s not always because of a
review or an author’s name or even a recommendation. It can just be because of
the cover art. I’ve been guilty of this pretty often, though more often for
videos when video rental stores were still around. So Anna Dressed in Blood
came to my attention not because it’s got a good recommendation from Stephen
King, and nor because it’s a female voice in the horror genre (though that gets
it big stars in my book). The outside cover is dressed up in this very (ok,
yes, it’s pretty stereotypical) foreboding picture of a girl facing a house.
She’s dressed up in this pretty, lacy white dress with a pink sash. Her hair is
being swept up an away from her by a harsh wind that’s blowing through the portrait,
and the edge of her dress is coated in a deeper color than its sash. Frankly it
looks not unlike many a j-horror icon with long black hair curling as though it
were an entity with its own free will. Staring at the cover long enough makes
you hope that the girl never turns around.
The innards of the book do not quite live up to the cover –
there’s a very generic love story between a boy and a girl, but one that’s
twisted enough to keep your attention. The main character is Cas, a ghost
hunter who’s been looking for the spirit responsible for his father’s death
many years prior. He has a special blade that he uses to dispatch ghosts into what
he believes is a better plane of existence for them; he and his mother move
from place to place quite often, seeking out the most bizarre and terrifying
urban legends so that he might one day find the thing that ate his father. This
is how we learn of Anna Dressed in Blood, the titular character. For me, the
best parts of the book were descriptions of Anna – she’s a ghost who is forced
to kill anyone who enters her home. When we are initially introduced to her,
her story is a simple one: a girl on the way to a party all on her lonesome has
her throat slashed unceremoniously in an alley way where she’s found the next
morning. It certainly leaves the reader wondering how she came to be back in
her house, haunting it and killing anyone who sets foot inside.
The majority of the story revolves around Cas and Anna’s
relationship, and Cas’ obsession with freeing Anna from her curse. There are a
few other interesting characters – Thomas, a psychic, and Carmel, a sort of
Buffy stand-in – but the main two are the ghost and the ghost hunter. It’s your
typical Romeo and Juliet love story, only one’s already dead. The other
downsides to the book are that there aren’t any real rules for the ghosts;
their behaviors and abilities vary, especially Anna. She’s able to float
through walls and other objects, but she’s also able to grip a man and tear him
in two. It doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but when facing a
supernatural subject, little rarely ever does. There’s also the issue of the
villain of the piece, who ends up being a black character who is a
voodoo/hoodoo practitioner. There was a lot left to be desired when it came to
him, to be perfectly honest, but he did serve his purpose as the antagonist very
well.
The best part of this book, however, is the descriptions.
Kendare Blake wastes no words in describing the state of Anna’s victims, who
are plentiful throughout the novel, or in helping her reader visualize the
villain, who is quite bone-chilling to read about. When it comes to gore and
horrifying passages, Anna Dressed in Blood definitely has it, and it seems
incredibly surprising for something found in the Young Adult section that is
quickly taking over any and all book stores.
And then there came the sequel. After enjoying the first so
much, anticipating Girl of Nightmares was no easy feat – I was ready to dive
back into the realm of Anna and Cas, especially following the ending of Anna
Dressed in Blood. The second book gives more detail as to where the ghosts Cas
slays are going – and it’s not a pretty sight. Girl of Nightmares follows a
similar pattern to Anna Dressed in Blood in that Cas is struggling to rescue
Anna again, but Anna is left out of the majority of the book. I found this odd
and disconcerting, since she is, again, the titular character and essentially
the main selling point of the novel. She was one of my favorite characters, and
in the second novel she was reduced to little more than a damsel in distress
waiting for a knight in shining armor to come and save the day.
The second novel also suffered from a lot of other issues –
the story covers a wider geographic area, sending our heroes to England to find
a cult who may be the source of Cas’ knife, but there is little that really goes on in the first half of the book. By the
time we get to anything interesting (such as Cas and a competitor all but
committing suicide to pass over to the ghosts’ plane), it’s closer to the end
of the book, comprising maybe a quarter of it or less. There are very few what
you might describe as horror scenes in the book (with the exception of Cas' dreams of Anna, which he interprets as cries for help), instead choosing to focus more
on action and some deduction work that becomes incredibly tedious. There is one
interesting scene of the characters being forced to travel through a suicide
forest, but again with no specific rules on the ghosts, sometimes it seems a
bit jumbled. I would think that a second novel would be tighter than the first,
a better concept that was polished to completion, but it feels more like there
was a rush to get it out for public consumption.
Overall, I definitely recommend the first book. Maybe get
the second from a library, if you feel that you absolutely must read it to get
some closure from Anna Dressed in Blood.
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