Book Nine. Sookie’s still going, even though nothing new has happened for at least five volumes now (being generous). This particular edition of her repetitive adventures recycles two oft-used Harris’ plot – a spate of random attacks and a war involving ‘Supes’. Both of these proceed as usual, although the latter does involve the hasty introduction of a horde of new characters, and a rushed explanation of their lineage. Given Harris’ has had eight previous books in which to launch some of these characters more organically, this desperate scrabbling to establish them is pretty poor. It also means that a good portion of events involves barely-differentiated characters in whom the reader can have little interest. Meanwhile Sookie is tricked into becoming Eric’s vampire bride, or summat of the sort. She’s mildly irritated by this, and shows her displeasure by sleeping with Eric repeatedly, drinking his blood and allowing him to drink hers; thereby strengthening the bond between them which she has been complaining about every ten pages for some while now. In all fairness, even fans would surely have to admit that Sookie’s motivations are a little on the contradictory side.

This novel also includes a description of a trowel of surely record-breaking length and staggering dullness. For aficionados of garden buildings the shed in which the trowel is stored is also described to a mind-numbing extent, as is the exact details of how Sookie weeds a garden. Why and how Harris imagines that anyone could possibly be interested in the fact that Sookie wields a trowel with her right hand and pulls up the weeds with her left is a mystery left unexplained.

Following this, Sookie kills yet another being by fortunate accident, thereby saving her life. Then two of her ex-boyfriends turn up at her home and beat each other up, due to them being idiotic obsessive Neanderthals. So greatly do they love Sookie that they manage to knock her out, meaning that we the readers miss the actual fight, but are treated to yet another sex scene immediately afterward, featuring Sookie and yet another ex, Eric. Charmingly, he waits until she is recovering from being knocked unconscious and stupefied by yet more of his mind-controlling blood before sleeping with her, making it strictly more of a drug-rape scene than a love scene. Fortunately Sookie is fine with rape, due to being an idiot whose author is a misogynistic bitch, so there are no consequences to these actions.

Then Sookie is nearly killed a few more times. A string of different supernatural beings are co-opted as bodyguards for her, in order that she can collect her dry-cleaning without fear of death. I myself would probably have abandoned the dry-cleaning in favour of my physical safety, but not Sookie. Eventually she discovers who the murderer is, which is in no way interesting because the fact that they were introduced and described in exactly the same way as all Harris’ previous murderers means it was less than a challenge to guess their secret identity. Sookie is then captured and horribly tortured for a chapter, before her boyfriend and great-grandfather save her. Then the usual battle concludes the novel; several characters die basically for the sake of Sookie, but all the main character are as usual fine. Then Sookie’s grandfather briefly pops up to tell her that the battle was a waste of time, as he’s decided that the now deceased leader of the opposition was right all along. Left alone, Sookie returns to her usual pastime: pondering her love life. The End.


Worst New Character Names
Devon Dawn
Whit Spradlin
D’Eriq
Duff
Antoine Lebrun
Ginjer Hart


Worst Musical Choice
Mariah Carey. Although I grant it is exactly the kind of crap you would expect Sookie to listen to.


Cruellest Post-Mortem Character Analysis

“I wasn’t amazed that someone would want to kill Crystal, but I was really horrified about the baby.”

Fair enough. Crystal was known to have cheated on her husband, so presumably the whole town was up for her ritual slaughter. Bon Temps is that sort of place.


Most Impressive Police Work
FBI Agent Weiss is able to identify from half-changed paws alone that a crucified body is specifically half were-panther. Given that the world only learnt about weres the previous night, she’s a quick learner.


Most Disgusting Faux-Childish Summary of a Serious Issue of Morality Involving a Recently Crucified Woman

“Yeah, it is. Cheating with your husband’s baby in your stomach between you . . . that’s just specially icky.”

Most Redundant Pronunciation Explanation
Sookie likes to thoroughly explain what pronunciation of each character’s name she personally approves of, often repeatedly. It’s one of her things, along with an obsession with the minutiae of her day-to-day life, a compulsion to detail every single item of clothing she and every other character wears, etc. It’s clearly symptomatic of a psychological disorder, evidenced by her inability to stop herself even when a pronunciation explanation is completely unnecessary as for example:

“Our father, Dillon son of Niall, and his first wife, Branna. Our mother is Binne. If Niall goes to the Summerlands, Dillon will replace him as prince. But of course he must wait.” The names were unfamiliar. The first one sounded almost like Dylan.”

So Dilllon and Dylan sound almost the same. Fair enough. How the hell else does Harris imagine I might think to pronounce Dillon?


Clearest Example of Cultural Ignorance

“Claude and I used to have Irish names. It seemed stupid to me. Why shouldn’t we please ourselves? No one can spell those names or pronounce them correctly. My former name sounds like a cat coughing up a fur ball.”

No-one? The Irish don’t count then? Many of them can both spell and pronounce Irish (or rather Gaelic) names. Particularly when they’re partly anglicised, as many of the names in this book are. There are plenty of places outside Ireland also where such names are common. Brendan, Niall, Dillon and Neave are pretty standard around my way. Plus, it seems pretty rich of Harris’ to start criticising unusual names, given the ridiculous appellations constantly appearing in her work.

It seems pointless to sum up this book, since I’ve already commented on an identical plot at least twice during this series. All I can say is that I still hate Sookie violently, and I can’t see any likelihood of that changing at this point.