It's been a while since I read Dead Until Dark - about three and a half years, according to the Goodreads record, which honestly gave me a bit of a shock... I thought it was only last year! But I enjoyed that first book and always meant to carry on with the series, so when I saw Living Dead in Dallas on the library bookshelf it reminded me to keep going. I'm glad it did, because I liked this one just as well... even if I did look for a summary of Dead Until Dark on the internet to remind me who was who. Once I started reading, most of it came back anyway.

Much of the action here takes place in Dallas, which I think is a sensible decision. Clearly the small town Sookie lives in is a hotbed of supernatural activity, but broadening the world building by introducing other places makes her home town look less like a very strange aberration, and more like the norm. I mean, a strange new norm, but still. A lot of other fantasies I read of this type are set solidly in big cities, but I like the almost rural tone of this... it has that very small-town-community feel, where everyone knows everyone else's business and it's not always a good thing, though it does make for drama. Sookie herself continues to be the strongest point of the book for me - I enjoy her determinedly normal, friendly personality and how she interacts with other people - and Bill got fleshed out a little more so I'm not as indifferent to him as I was in the last book. The couple of pages of backstory he got at the end here rounded him out some, which helped.