So the vampire community of northern Louisiana has been getting some good publicity recently. HBO recently released some shiny new stills and promotional videos for the much-hyped sophomore season of the show “True Blood”. Additionally, the latest installment of the series of novels on which the show is based also came out earlier this month. Dead and Gone, the ninth book in Charlaine Harris’ southern vampire mystery series, hit stores almost two weeks ago. However, thanks to these annoying little things called final exams I’ve only just got a chance to track down a copy and zip through it. The verdict? I definitely enjoyed this book, as I did the previous installments. This series is such a guilty pleasure for me. I do have misgivings and reservations, which as a responsible reviewer I will fully disclose, but the series continues to deliver a fun, exciting read with an unusually extensive cast of delightful characters.
I already wrote a general review of this series, so I won’t bother to introduce it thoroughly here. I’ll just say that the Southern Vampire Mysteries, aka the Sookie Stackhouse novels (it kind of bugs me that this series doesn’t have a definitive name), feature a telepathic waitress named Sookie Stackhouse who lives in a small town in Louisiana and gets involved with the various local supernatural communities. Some of these communities, such as the vampires and the were-folk, have more or less assimilated into mainstream society. Others, such as the witches and the fairies, haven’t.
While I thoroughly enjoy the alternate universe Harris has created in this series, I often find myself frustrated with her story development (or lack thereof). Each book generally contains one or more stand-alone plotlines, while the series itself doesn’t really boast that much of a big picture, plot-wise. Yet this doesn’t bother me as much as it might; what really carries the series is the ever-expanding cast of colorful characters and complex supernatural politics. Seeing as I’ve stuck with the series this long, I obviously enjoy reading these books and have pretty much committed myself to continuing to do so. Still, with nine books currently published and still no end in sight, the series runs the risk of becoming monotonous, with the same kinds of things happening in every installment. On the other hand, readers who know they like what the series has to offer can pretty much count on it to consistently deliver more of the same. So while the Southern Vampire books definitely fall into the category of “light reading”, I’ve got no major problem with that. I can take my low culture as well as the high any day of the week.
In Dead and Gone, there’s a lot of stuff going on simultaneously. The good people of Bon Temps are dealing with the aftermath of the werewolves’ “coming out” announcement, the Louisiana vamps are adjusting to the recent takeover from Nevada, and the few remaining fairies on this side of the veil are entangled in a bitter and violent power struggle. And once again our telepathic heroine somehow finds herself in the middle of it all. So much for the supernatural political developments; on to the character developments. Sookie starts to mend bridges with her brother Jason while also continuing to get closer to arrogant but charismatic vampire sheriff Eric (although she still stubbornly attributes her affection for him to the blood bond they share.) Bill continues to be a douche (ok, maybe that’s just my personal interpretation) and Quinn turns out to be a sore loser. Oh, and by the end of the book at least one minor but totally awesome character dies. All in all, Dead and Gone provided some very juicy developments to the meandering story of the series, although I would have liked to have seen more of my absolute favorite character (Pam).
It’ll probably be about a year until the next book gets published, but in the meantime there’s the second season of “True Blood” to keep me occupied.
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