Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

Title: Dead to the World
Author: Charlaine Harris
Publisher: Recorded Books
Rating: WARTY!

The Suckfest continues, and yes, I did mean that in a bad way. Dead to the World pretty much sums up Sookie Stackho, the dumbest dumbass in Dumbville, Dumbiana, United Dumb-clucks of America, but at least this was book four and I could ditch this whole sorry series after I heard it. I could have simply used the same review I wrote for Club Dead (and that could have been the same review I wrote for Living Dead in Dallas). Nothing changes in this series, so why should the reviews?!

Charlaine Harris is a professionally godawful writer. How about this: "The car was obviously a threat until they learned likewise." Honestly? Or how about this bizarre paragraph: "Bill looked good in his Khakis. He was wearing a Calvin Klein dress shirt I'd picked out for him, a muted plaid in shades of brown and gold. Not that I noticed." I mean how utterly clueless do you have to be to write that?

This novel appears to have precisely the same formula as the previous two: some guy disappears and only Suck-ee can rescue him. In this case it's not a vampire, but her brother, Jackass, who you may know as Jason. Jackass is evidently abducted right outside his lakeside home, and they find a spatter of blood and a paw print on the dock behind the house. Now Suck-ee has a shifter friend who would do quite literally anything for her (her boss, Sam), and she has a werewolf friend, Rancid, who would pretty much do likewise. Both of these guys have an extraordinary sense of smell, and yet Suck-ee never once even thinks for a split second of asking one or other of them to scent where Jackass was taken. Instead she constantly bemoans how devastated she is by his disappearance, whilst making out (or fantasizing about making out) with any hot supernatural guy who happens to cross her path. She does not even remotely behave like she's grieving for Jackass.

Once again Bill is AWOL, and Eric steps in. Eric (who shall hereinafter be referred to as Eriction) has been bewitched and lost his memory of who he really is, so Suck-ee is tasked with mothering him, although her brand of "mothering" is more accurately described as incest. Why is it that these supposedly powerful and fearful vampires are always, without exception, completely dependent upon humans? It's pathetic.

Not only is there the usual intensely boring repetitive bullshit about the minutiae of Suck-ee's tedious life, her boring clothes, her uninteresting household activities, the repetitive layout of her house, and the lives, clothes, activities and layouts of every person, natural or supernatural whom she meets, there's also endless re-hashing of themes already established monotonously in the first three books.

There's more racism in this novel, so I guess that's kinda new, along with a liberal dollop of bullshit American jingoism, and the usual casting of aspersions upon all religions not Christian (in contrast, I cast aspersions on all religions, period). No one who gets any real air time in these southern mysteries is black, and those with whom Suck-ee is more than merely acquainted are all uniformly olive-skinned if they're not whiter than white. The vampires, of course, are also pretty much entirely Hollywood white. In her blindness to be grammatically correct, Harris slices and dices her Suck-ee character by having this poorly educated southern barmaid speak grammatically correct sentences, too. Oh, and did I mention that Harris loves to have "long seconds" and "long minutes" and "long moments"...?

I don't get Suck-ee. She cannot stop herself from lusting after Eriction and Rancid even when, in the earlier books, she was supposedly head-over-heels in love with Bill and had no eyes or time for anyone else. She will pretty much lust after any supernatural guy she gets to know, but the one she will give no time to is Sam, the owner of Merlotte's, where Suck-ee works. She rather have some hot muscular, tall studly manly man who doesn't give a shit about her than a guy who loves her and proves it repeatedly. That's the kind of dismal sorry-assed bonehead Suck-ee is. She deserves everything she gets. Contrast this Suck-ee with the real Sookie: the one in the TV show, and it's disgusting how absolutely awful Harris's version is in comparison.

As I alluded earlier, Harris has sorely warped views on religion. Christianity is apparently the only true religion. The only other 'competitor' evidently, is the "Jews" - not Judaism, but "Jews". Evidently Harris doesn’t grasp that you can be Jewish without following Judaism, and you can follow Judaism without being Jewish. Islam doesn’t enter Harris World™ at all, and forget about all those other totally irrelevant foreign religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and a score of others across the globe. This is curious, because this novel is about witches, but Harris draws a bizarre distinction between Wicca (the supposedly innocent religion practiced by pagans) and witches - who are pretty much evil and have nothing to do with Wicca! Oooooh! That's like Ian Fleming's inane distinction between the Turks of the mountains, and the Turks of the plains!

On this topic, what’s with the religious trappings of vampires? Why is silver harmful to them? Harris never explores this, merely taking the trope and blindly rubber-stamping it, running with it like a kid with scissors. What really tickles me is this farcical business whereby a vampire has to be invited in and they can be repelled by rescinding the invitation - and they have to walk backwards out the door! Seriously? I can't think of anything more insane or hilarious than that. Harris, wisely I think, doesn’t even try to offer any intelligent explanation for these inane rules; it’s all just swallowed as a meaningless trope and we’re expected to go with it just as blindly as she does.

I noted that Suck-ee was much more in-your-face about her Christian religious views (or Harris was about hers), ranting about praying etc., yet never once in four books, has any god ever stepped in to help her. She had to do it all herself or have her friends do it. A god like that isn't worth worshiping.

Rancid (you may know him as Alcide, or even Pesticide) shows up in this novel, so of course we're quickly reminded of what a manly man of a man he ruggedly is), but both Bill and Eriction are AWOL. Bill I don't miss in the slightest because he's a complete loser and a waste of printing ink (or laser burns, or magnetized disk or whatever!). Eriction I do miss because he was the only character worth reading about in all of the Harris hemorrhaging hegemony. He isn't worth listening about in this volume however, because Parker completely louses his accent. Her Sookie accent is nauseating, too, and combining that with Harris's absolutely worthless trash prose is truly vomit-inducing. Other than that, Parker's a talented voice artist.

Nor do we get any intelligence (in whatever definition you want to use) on why there is a witch coven which seeks to drink vampire blood. In fact there's no intelligence in this novel at all. I'd write a list titled "Sookie Stackhouse is so stupid that..." if I could stand to do the research, but forget that! Let me just pass on one: Sookie Stackhouse is so stupid that she thinks that the reason she's never encountered a fairy before is because she's been so often in the company of the undead. She conveniently forgets that for 26 years, Suck-ee had never even met an undead. That's how abysmally mindless Harris's writing is - or how stupid Suck-ee is.

But back to the witches: is their magic so weak that they need to indulge in this supposedly dangerous practice? And why are they trying to take over the vampires' financial concerns? They're friggin' witches! They can't magic-up all the money and power they want? The finale has the weres and the vamps joining forces to take down the coven. Sookie is required to put herself in harm's way so she can find out how many witches are in this house, and whether there are any 'civilians' who the vamps and weres should leave alone.

The problem with this is that later we're told that the handful of good witches working with the vamps and weres, have been able to single out and put a shine on the three innocent people so everyone knows to leave them and go only for the bad witches. But if the good witches can determine who is in there in order to put the shine on the right ones, then why the hell is Suck-ee needed to figure out who is in there? I'll tell you why: because Harris has trapped herself into the first person using Suck-ee as narrator, and now nothing can happen unless Suck-ee is there to witness it, or we have to learn of it second hand in megabytes of exposition. Yet another example of Harris's bad writing.

This plot sucks! The characters suck. Sookie sucks. Even Eriction sucks in this volume. Conclusion: WARTY IN THE EXTREME! Harris is arguably the world's worst writer and she wins this years Pedantry in Prose award from me. Rest assured I am done now and I will never read - much less review - another Charlatan Harris novel of any blood type. You have my pledge.

Oh, and please don't link to this review. I don't want anyone to know I was stupid enough to actually read four items pulled from Charlaine Harris's garbage!

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Title: Club Dead
Author: Charlaine Harris
Publisher: Recorded Books
Rating: WARTY!

Welcome to the Sookie Stackhouse Self-Pity Party! Yes, I'm back with another Charlaine Harris extravaganza of sucky tedium on audio!

You know, there's something I don't get when I read other's reviews of say, volume one of a trilogy and they rake it over the coals and then conclude with the revelation that they're looking forward to volume two to find out what happens! Why? Why would you put yourself through that if you didn't like volume one? So what's my excuse? Well, I have it on good authority (I hope) that book four is really good, but in order to get there, I have to get through book three (do I really? honestly?). You know how they say "Three's a shame"? No, they don’t! But three is a shame, because I have to confess I was so ready to ditch this novel after three chapters because it is so god-awfully whiny and tedious.

Those first three chapters consisted almost literally of nothing save Sookie (Suck-ee from here-on out; the reader is the sucker...) whining about how much she misses her boyfriend vampire Bill who typically treats her like dirt, yet she's utterly devoted to him. So devoted is she in fact, that she only gets horny for every supernatural guy who comes in her orbit (to coin a phrase), and no one else! This woman is sick. Seriously. Suck-ee needs therapy. Sookie Stackhouse is also a complete moron for whom I have absolutely no respect. Contrast that with the TV version whom I really like. What does that tell you? When she's not whining nauseatingly about Bill (which isn't often), she's describing what everyone is wearing down to the most tedious detail imaginable, or she's describing what she's doing down to the most tedious detail imaginable

And Harris is so repetitive: she keeps trotting out things she's already explained more than once in volume one and all over again in volume two like your average reader is a moron. Perhaps that's true for people who are helplessly addicted to this series. I really find it hard to believe that book four can be that great, quite honestly, but that volume will have to be outstandingly incredible to make me go anywhere beyond book four, rest assured. At least by then Ally Carter won’t have the dubious distinction of being the only writer for whom I've reviewed four titles and given largely bad reviews!

The tediousness in Club Dead is mesmerizingly brutal. Harris seems like she can't keep herself from describing every excruciating detail no matter how mundane; when Sookie is packing to go on a trip, for example, we read: "I got out my suitcase and opened it" like we don't get that, in order to pack, you need to actually open the suitcase first! Later we're treated to a detailed description of how to clean a frying pan. I am not kidding. Is Harris deranged? Or is it just her devotees, and she knows only too well what drivel she's writing? At one point, Suck-ee actually has this thought: Somehow, it had never crossed my mind - I guess since I'm an American - that the vampires who had snatched Bill might be resorting to evil means to get him to talk. You know what, Suck-ee? You don't have a friggin' mind to cross.

So what of the so-called story here? Well, Bill mysteriously disappears, telling Suck-ee that he's going on a mission for Eric, when he isn't. Suck-ee has a snit, claiming to the reader that she's usually been an integral part of the investigative team, which is an outright lie. They've had only one assignment, which was in book two! 'Usual' isn’t on this bus! When Suck-ee discovers that Eric is sending vampires to guard her, she also learns that Bill has lied: he isn't on any mission for Eric or for anyone but himself and he's looking up an old vampire flame (his maker?)! Naturally Sookie is chosen to go find him because there isn’t a damned vampire on the planet who can find a missing vampire, as we learned in volume 2. And while we’re on that topic, Club Dead is exactly the same plot as book two: Vampire disappears, other vampires useless, Suck-ee to the rescue, dresses erotically, visits nightclub, visits hostile lair, gets seriously injured, engineers rescue of abducted vampire. That's it.

The vampire whom Bill visits is named Lorena (no word on if her last name is Bobbit!). Suck-ee requests that Eric 'take her out' (that is, kill Lorena - lest there be any misunderstanding!) if she doesn't come back from this mission on which he's sending her, and Eric agrees. Like I said, Sookie Stackhouse is seriously deranged. This is the kid her charming Old South grandmother raised? The genderism in Club Dead is even more disturbing than in previous volumes. Suck-ee relaxes by folding laundry, she's "self-educated from genre books"(!), she's ostensibly a nun, but dresses like a pro, she cooks and cleans for everyone, and entirely unsurprisingly, she pronounces milieu as 'mil-you', not 'meal-yuh', and fracas as fray-kass, and not fra-cah. At least, Parker does in the narration, let's say.

So what's with this 'vampire organization'? I honestly don’t get this. In Club Dead, it's rigidly organized, and Harris explains it (in too much detail as usual). Each state has a monarch, and under the monarch is a number of areas, each of which has a sheriff. Given that, why are they called 'areas' and not 'shires'? And why on Earth would vampires even care where state lines are? This, to me, is purest bullshit. Given what we're told about vampires in this novel (and in other vampire novels) vampires buck authority at every turn, yet the novels would have us believe they exist in nests with a king or a queen and a hierarchy? That, to me, is so pedantic that it's laughable. Why write a vampire novel and then belittle your topic like that? I can see that in a comedy: Terry Jones's Brasil meets Bram Stoker's Dracula. But to be taken seriously? Fuggedabowdit

And what's with vampires being obsessed with and sexually attracted to humans? Honestly? That's like saying humans are sexually attracted to chickens - and yes, some are, but those people are considered deviant. Why would vampires, whom we're told repeatedly have nothing but disdain for their food, be even remotely interested in us as sexual objects? It's farcical, yet we get it in most every vampire story there is. Can no author break out of this pathetic mold? Well, Maybe Bruce MccCandless can. His story is well off the beaten vampire track!

While we're on the subject of things I don’t get in the southern vampire so-called mysteries series, why is Harris so tickled pink by her Elvis Presley vampire? She never calls him that; he's always referred to as Bubba, but if she's scared of being sued by his estate, then calling him Bubba isn’t going to help her one bit given that she's already positively ID'd him by writing all around who he is.

Let's get back to the purported plot. Despite constant whining about how much she misses the completely bland and uninteresting Vampire Bill, Suck-ee has no problem at all in powerfully lusting, with very other thought, after her escort in this novel. He's a werewolf called Alcide, but I shall hereinafter refer to him as Rancid. He's a real man who drives a man's truck and eats man's food and talks with a man's voice. He probably makes manfarts and takes mandumps, too, and no doubt Suck-ee will get around to giving us the low-down in due 'coarse'. But now Harris has me wondering what Bill is. Or Eric. I mean if Rancid is such a manly man's man, and very manful too, where does that leave the previous men in her life? Oh man!

Rancid is working for Eric (who is the only character in this entire novel who makes for remotely acceptable reading); Rancid is in Eric's debt for his father's gambling and that's why he's escorting Suck-ee to Jack-off, Mississippi, where (exactly like the previous novel) she has to dress up like a wolf's dinner to go to a night club and listen in on the thoughts of others. Of course, she's 100% spectacularly successful in all cases because there is always one of the bad guys guaranteed to be running off at the mind on the very subject she wants to learn about. Rancid's old boyfriend, over whom he's really hurting, just happens to be having her engagement party there, and she trots over to diss him and his 'girlfriend'. I was dearly hoping that Suck-ee would have some tart one-liners for her, but intelligent and/or amusing repartee is was evidently well outside of Harris's reach.

Tera is also there (why?!) and she and Suck-ee do a raunchy dance to the thrill of everyone there. Then she wonders why the 'Weres' hit on her! This leads to her becoming injured and she's rescued by Russell Edgington, the vampire king of the state, who insists she come back the next night. When she does, she saves the life of Russell's number two (not to be confused with Rancid's mandump), but gets staked herself instead. Of course, Eric is there to rescue her. Eric also gets to lick her tears. I am not kidding you. Suck-ee has zero problem with this, yet bitches and whines endlessly about Vampire Bill's possible unfaithfulness.

Which self-respecting girl (and one in a supposed love relationship, to boot) would let another guy lick her tears? We're expected to believe that vampires get off on all kinds of human body fluids, but evidently this applies only if they relate to crying and blood. I seriously doubt there will be a volume in this series where we'll see Harris extol the joys of licking sweat, or swallowing semen, chawing ear wax, or gulping down the golden rain.

Needless to say this novel sucked almost exclusively. The only salvageable parts were the ones where Eric showed up. Why Harris can write him as quirky, interesting, and issuing amusing comments while everyone else in the entire novel is boring as a Rancid Mandump is the Southern Vampire mystery.

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

Title: Living Dead in Dallas
Author: Charlaine Harris
Publisher: Recorded Books
Rating: WARTY!

So I'm trying an audio book for the first time, and it means I get to review three novels simultaneously - audio, ebook, and paperback, each one for reading under different circumstances (and all different titles, of course, in case you wondered exactly how crazy I am! I wonder if I can get the semaphore version of Wuthering Heights so I can get four going all at once? No? Okay....

Anyway, Johanna Parker narrates this - with the southern voices, yet! - which is quite listenable, although at times she sounds a bit too much like Ash Ketchum from the Pokémon cartoons when she;s doing her Sookie, and some of the characters come off sounding downright demented when they really oughtn't to do so. Unfortunately, there comes a massively huge, perhaps insurmountable problem in chapter one - Harris kills off Lafayette!!! Damn straight it’s a three exclamation problem. I do de-clare that I am inclined to rebel right here and now, and to melt down this CD and never read another novel by Charlaine Harris! How can she kill off one of my all-time favorite characters - and especially in chapter one, and especially in book two when we hardly even came to know him in book 1? Lafayette is kick-ass. I adore him on the TV show, yet here he is: gone! I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from this unwarranted assault on my peccadilloes!

Poor Lafayette is found in Andy Bellefleur's car. The latter was forced to leave his vehicle because he was drunk after having to deal with an awful case in his policing work. His sister Portia had to pick him up and when Sookie came in to work the next morning, she discovered the body, poor Sookie. She really needs to kick out the discovery of dead bodies habit with velocitous extramuralization. Unfortunately, the mystery of Lafayette's demise comes to a screeching halt right there, and isn't mentioned again until the end of this novel. There goes another issue running wild.

So Sookie gets to leave work early because she's traveling With Bill down to Eric's place, and therein lies another problem. Bill's idea of freeing Sookie from Eric's clutches is to join Eric's organization and become subservient to him! lol! Bill is, I'm sorry to say, a complete loser in this novel. He's cardboard and pathetic. The only character who does come out of this smelling spring fresh is Eric himself.

On the way to visit Eric, Bill and Sookie get into an argument and the car breaks down. Like a child, Sookie runs off into the woods and like he is, Bill leaves her behind despite there being a killer on the loose! Naturally, Sookie runs into Callisto, who is a maenad. She declares that she's not going to eat Sookie: she just wants her to take a message to Eric. The message is one of severe pain, as Sookie is poisoned by Callisto and left for Bill to find. Bill hurries her to Shreveport where the vampires suck the poison out of Sookie's system and save her life.

As this audio book continued to be rather annoying, I had to ponder how much of that was from Johanna Parker's narration and how much was Sookie Stackhouse's vapid obsession with hair and clothes. The novel is also rather disjointed. We're introduced to Lafayette's murder, but that immediately takes a back seat to the appearance of the maenad; right after that, all the time is hogged by Eric's summons for Sookie where she's told that she's being loaned to the Dallas chapter of Hell's Vampires. It's dissatisfying to say the least.

Sookie takes her first flight while Bill travels cargo in a coffin. As Sookie awaits Bill's unloading, a guy dressed as a priest tries to lure her away from the plane, but fails. They arrive at Hotel Vampire - that's not its real name, but it is its real purpose ("...you can check out any time you want but you can never leave..." maybe?!), a truly gone vampire, Isobel, acts as their host, pointing out the Texas school book depository as she drives them to her meeting with Stan the king vamp of the neighborhood. I have no idea what’s going on there. Why would vampires even care? That part just struck me as bizarre.

So Sookie's task is supposed to be that of extracting information from a barmaid as to where Farrell, a missing vampire has gone. Frankly, this seems a bit sad to me! I have no idea why they think this barmaid knows something, but aren’t vampires supposed to be awesomely powerful? So why can’t they locate one of their own who's gone astray? Worse, why can't they glamor the barmaid and have her tell them what she knows?! What’s up with that? Other than having some flimsy reason to get Sookie out of Bon Temps, there seems to be no point to this plot at all.

But anyway, she hypnotizes Bethany, the barmaid, and gets some useful information, but none of the other people she "interviews" can provide anything of value. They do track down the vampire who lured Farrell into the men's room, which was apparently the last place he was seen! The link leads them to the church of the Sun Shines Out of Their Ass (some names may have been changed to protect the in no sense). This is one more in a never-ending line of psychotic religious groups this world has seen. Fortunately this one is fictional. Sookie goes with a human friend of the vampire Isobel, and of course he's the very traitor they're looking for and Sookie is far too Mary Sue to grasp it.

She ends up as a prisoner in the basement, but a young thousand year old vampire called Godfrey rescues her. Unlike in the TV series, this Godfrey isn't the maker of Eric, he's just a child-killer, who is a child himself in appearance, and who has a remorseful death wish, which is why he voluntarily went to the church. This bad conscience makes no sense because we've been told that vampires have no conscience, so which is it? It's really annoying, as well as sad, when a writer sets up their world and then immediately proceeds to break every rule they've established! There is never an explanation given as to why he needed to take Farrel with him, much less kidnap him, either.

Sookie sends a request to Bill via a fellow mind-reader who is back at the hotel, to come rescue her. Why she can't send one directly to Bill given that they have both taken each other's blood is a bit of a mystery, especially since she's called out to him mentally for help before. Oughtn't there to be a bond between them?! She doesn't even consider mentally calling Bill as an option here. Note: at this point, I am soooo sick-to-death of hearing Sookie endlessly, tediously, wearyingly, boringly, numbingly, painstakingly, tiresomely, and monotonously describe hair and clothes even, on one occasion, as she's being attacked by someone who seeks to rape her.

Sookie escapes with the aid of a shape-shifter, the religious cult is taken down, but a few escaped members of the group take some shotguns to a vampire party. Sookie is, of course, the only one who notices something is wrong; the vaunted vampires are senseless to it! Despite the fact that these guys who are attacking have not one silver bullet between them, none of the vamps go after them until the shooting is done. Bill takes off along with a few others. Eric literally covered Sookie and took a bullet for her; then he makes Sookie suck it out of him. When Bill returns, Sookie, who is absurdly worried about him (why?! At what risk, exactly, is he?), gets pissed with him for leaving her, and she stalks off alone heading back to Bon Temps. This is truly pathetic.

At this point I was ready to ditch this novel. Some of it was passable, but I think the combination of a first person narrative and Johanna Parker's Ash Ketchum delivery of Sookie's voice is a disaster. It really turns off my interest, especially when the story is not engaging in itself. Johanna Parker's narration alone isn't the problem. She has an impressive array of voice intonations which she can call up at will. Luna Garza's voice in particular was highly amusing; it's just that her Sookie impersonation combined with the vapid writing of the Sookie character in this volume is a massive turn off. Her 'Eric' isn't endearing either in his voice, but in that case, the writing is far more entertaining, so it offsets the poor voice.

If this had been written in a third person narrative, it might be a bit better, and there is some nice humor here and there, but it was just not enough until we reached chapters nine and ten, when it came roaring back as Sookie talked Eric into accompanying her to an orgy and he showed up dressed like he was a flaming gay. There was nowhere near enough humor before that point, but here, I was laughing out loud. I think the problem was that I made the mistake of watching the first few eps of the TV show and it's absolutely hilarious. I watched the most recent ep last night and Pam was entrancing. I think she, Tera, and Lafayette are without doubt my favorite characters. But coming back to the audio novel after all that really made it suffer in comparison.

I haven't anywhere near enough interest in "What Sookie Did Next" either. I am so tired of hearing every little detail of Sookie's life. I am. I couldn't care any less about what she's wearing, or where her latest bruise is, or where she's going, or what she thinks of character X, and I honestly really and truly do not, in any way shape or form, care even remotely how dirty her hair is and how much it bothers her, or whether it's hanging down her back or up in a pony tail. I absolutely do not. Nor do I care what every single person in her vicinity is currently dressed in. I don't. I never will.

I decided to finish this novel, but that was based solely on the humor in chapters nine and ten, but I vowed that it had better not get any worse or I'd definitely have to rate it 'warty' as opposed to 'worthy'. Unfortunately, Charlaine Harris has to be the only writer on the planet who can make an orgy sound boring, and a shotgun showdown sound painfully tedious. I am not kidding, The closing couple of chapters were so painfully laborious and totally dull and uninteresting that I would have tossed the CD out the window right there if it had not been an appalling way to litter the countryside and if I'd not been so close to the end. This book, despite chapters 9 & 10, is without question warty beyond redemption.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Title: Dead Until Dark
Author: Charlaine Harris
Publisher: Ace Books
Rating: Worthy!

This is the novel that kicked off the HBO True Blood series, which I adore. As I've mentioned before, I am not a fan of vampire novels, or angel novels, or fairy novels. Frankly, I'm not sure what it is about the TV series that I like since it’s bleeding vampire clichés out of its ears, but there's something about it, and I think it’s mainly the humor and the ridiculous situations into which the characters so routinely get themselves.

Since I do love the TV show and I saw this first novel sitting dirt cheap on the shelf at Goodwill, I decided I had nothing to lose and picked it up. Goodwill is a great place to find novels, if you can find a store which has a decent selection. Not all of them do, but once in a while you find one with a really good selection, and it opens up the option to experiment: a novel that you don’t want to risk $20 on as a new volume is well-worth a risk of not liking it, at a mere three or four bucks. or looked at another way, you can avail yourself of four or five used novels there for the price of only one new one!

The first thing about the TV show which amused the heck out of me was the name of the female protagonist: Sookie Stackhouse. Suck-ee: she who is sucked! I thought that was priceless. The Sookie in the novel is a little bit different from the one in the TV show, but mostly the same. I do wonder how I would have viewed the novel version had I not seen the TV show first, but all I can think of, and hear, now is the TV version coming though the novel.

As far as I recall the TV show's pilot, the novel starts out very much the same way. Living in small-town Bon Temps (good times!), Louisiana, Sookie encounters her first vampire at the restaurant where she works evenings. Sookie is a bit different from your average girl if only in that she can hear people's thoughts, and she hears the thoughts of the couple who start talking to the vampire, whose name is Bill. They want to 'drain him' and sell the blood, which has aphrodisiacal and medicinal properties. When they all leave together, Sookie follows and saves Bill's life. He returns the favor shortly afterwards when the couple ambush Sookie late one night in revenge, as she leaves work.

It’s pleasant for Sookie to be with Bill because she cannot hear his thoughts and it's so peaceful for her. She can relax and she doesn’t have to work to block thoughts out like she normally does every minute of every day or her life. Her grandmother, with whom Sookie resides, wants to meet Bill, especially if he's old enough to remember the American civil war. She's a member of some civil war society or other. Why the US is so obsessed with the civil war is a mystery, but there you go. So Bill agrees, and they spend a pleasant evening together, after which Bill and Sookie take a walk in the evening air.

Sookie volunteers to help Bill liaise with the workers who are working on renovating the old house he's inherited and decided to move into. He has a problem with being out in daylight, and they have a problem with being around a vampire after sundown! She also kisses Bill good night, which turns into a passionate embrace and leaves her wondering if the undead 'do it' in the same way that the non-dead do! Not that she's had much (indeed, any) experience with doing it - the very thought of trying to have sex with someone to whose every thought she is party quite turns Sookie off.

Sookie is also turned off Bill somewhat when she visits him to deliver the details of the arrangements she made with the local builders to work on his house, only to find Bill in the company of several vampires, who are not at all as gentlemanly as Bill is. The most interesting of the vampires is a tall, slim dark-skinned female and a tall, muscular male, who (according to Bill) are ancient acquaintances. Sookie leaves shortly after the vamps do, and she isn't very thrilled with Bill's attitude.

This book is a bit odd in that it's almost 300 pages and yet only twelve chapters, but Harris definitely moves the story along apace. In addition to Sookie's growing relationship with Bill, we're treated to several murders in Bon Temps. The victims have apparently been murdered because of their association with vampires, but rather than see this as a series of acts perpetrated by someone who hates vampires, the community sees these as the act of a vampire. Sookie discovers the next victim when she's sent by her boss Sam Merlotte, to find out why one of his waitresses has not shown up for work in two days.

Intent upon finding out more about the murders, Sookie asks Bill to take her to Shreveport, to Fangtasia, the vampire bar which both Dawn and Maudette apparently frequented. She confirms that they visited, but can learn no further details. She does meet a native American vampire who tends bar there, and she meets Eric and Pam, the oldest vampires in the region, although they by no means look old at all. She makes a favorable impression on these three vampires when she warns them that there is an undercover cop in the bar who is calling in the police for a raid. She, Bill, Eric, Pam, and Long Shadow, the barman, all manage to leave without any problem.

The third murder is a huge personal tragedy for Sookie. After Bill has spoken at the civil war society meeting and made a very favorable impression, Sookie, who attended with Sam, arrives home later to discover her grandmother dead on the kitchen floor: beaten to death apparently by the same psycho who killed Maudette and Dawn. It would appear that the killer intended to murder Sookie, but found only her grandmother home alone. After this, Sookie resumes her relationship with Bill in a most dramatic way: by relinquishing her virginity to him in her grandmother's bed. The house is now her own and she chose to use the main bedroom now. Her brother Jason, the local stud, is not thrilled that she inherited the entire house (and surrounding land) to herself, but she relinquishes her share in her parent's home to Jason free and clear, and the violent disagreement slowly heals.

So the killings continue and Bill and Sookie's relationship continues to be a roller-coaster. Eric calls upon Sookie's services because someone at his bar stole $60,000. Sookie helps them figure out who did it, but both she and Bill fear this growing relationship with Eric. Bill heads off to New Orleans to do something about it, leaving Sookie all alone. He did leave the vampire of Elvis Presley in charge of securing Sookie's grounds, but Bubba is of no use at all, and Sookie becomes more fearful and desperate, especially since her brother Jason is arrested after the latest murder! There are disturbances around Sookie's home, and the rifle she kept in a closet is missing. One night, no help to be had, she has to go out to confront the killer...!

I rate this novel a big worthy, which was a bit of a surprise in some regards since I'm not a vampire novel fan, as I've mentioned. However, I do adore True Blood the TV show, so perhaps it wasn't such a stretch after all. I do plan on reading more in this series!