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charlottesometimes
Sookie Stackhouse has literally one interesting feature, namely telepathy. This one feature has ruined her entire life by preventing her from being a completely vapid blonde airhead, as is her dream. Instead she sits about wasting her life waiting for a man to save her by having sex with her. Eventually Vampire Bill turns up, and as he fulfills her criteria of having an unreadable mind and a fairly good body she commences to have regular, cliché-ridden sex with him, whilst in no way seeming to actually like him or have anything in common with him. There are also some murders happening, which is a bit annoying because they effect Sookie. Eventually her grandmother is killed, which is mildly irritating for her and occasions Vampire Bill getting her the most ridiculous bodyguard of all time and thereby making the book actually painful to read. Various people are vaguely suspected of the murder, which is violently and yet boringly signposted by the author. Finally the murderer is caught, which is good because the situation was getting on Sookie's nerves. The end.
There seem to me to be two key reasons why the TV series is infinitely better than the book:
1. The writers of the TV series seem to have an awareness of concepts such as irony, social relevance and character.
2. The writers of True Blood have some basic understanding of how to write.
Charlaine Harris is one of the most ham-fisted writers whose works I have ever had the misfortune to read. She has no understanding whatsoever of first-person narration, rendering her protagonist an unrealistic and unlikeable figure prone to making plot-enhancing statements whether they are relevant to her or not, and with a pathological obsession with the details of clothing and furniture. Harris’ only narrative technique is blandly stating whatever it is she wishes to convey. Thus if Sookie is tired she will say “I was tired”. If she is upset that her grandmother is dead she will say “I was sad about gran having been murdered”. If the author wishes to indicate that there is potential danger in a situation Sookie will say “Uh-oh. I just realised that this whole thing could go all bad, with all people killed by vampires and things”. She will then proceed as the plot requires, the previous statement having had no relevance other than hammering the reader over the head with the plot. All character development and supposed suspense is created in this same, lazy way. Meanwhile Sookie proceeds through the plot with the kind of naivety only possible in either a disingenuous sociopath or a badly-written idiot. Harris counteracts this by the ingenious method of having Sookie occasionally make comments such as “People think I’m stupid, but I’m not”. Unfortunately, the access to her private thoughts afforded by her position as narrator makes it clear to all readers that she is undeniably stupid. Harris’s tendency to make bald statements about the characters or plot, which are in no way supported by the text itself gives the whole thing a strange, unintentionally satirical bent which sits oddly with the complete lack of depth the novel displays.
If Charlaine Harris had any brains then she would be either incredibly jealous of or incredibly grateful to the writers, cast and crew of True Blood and their ability to take exactly the same ingredients she has used and turn her sow’s ear into a silk purse. Sadly, I doubt she has any idea of the difference between what she has created and what eventually emerged as a TV show. Consequently I see little chance of her works improving beyond facile pap. I’ve got the rest of the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels to get through yet though, so hopefully I’m wrong.
Some characters we don’t know die off screen. Nothing happens for a long time. There’s a brief incident with a bomb, which comes to nothing. Then Sookie gets to try on a pretty dress, a situation which fills her with excitement and is described, along with all her accessories and underwear, at great length. After some talking, the dress is briefly endangered by the bleeding of her boyfriend when he is seriously injured, but luckily it survives without stains. We are then treated to another example of how incredibly sexually provocative vampires find Sookie’s dancing, followed by a bit of sulking from Sookie’s jealous boyfriend due to someone else touching his woman. Finally the plot creeps to a peak with the bombs that have been hanging around for most of the book finally exploding. None of the important characters are killed, but as a by-product of the events Sookie gets to hail a cab for the first time, which is pretty thrilling for her. She also strips a sleeping man naked without his permission and gets into bed with him whilst similarly unclad, but this passes without comment. Until the following morning, when it belatedly occurs to her that it was a bit of a weird thing to do.
Most Laughable Statement
“Sookie is good at thinking outside the box.”
This being the same Sookie who is sickened by the sight of a woman without a tan, and considers having satin sheets or more than one piercing per ear a sign of depravity and social dysfunction.
Worst Named New Characters
Elmer Claire Vaudry – A female, apparently.
Johan Glassport
Olive Trout
Cindy Lou Suskin
None of which rate a mention from Sookie. She does however find it impossible even during a serious trial not to laugh at a female vampire being called Jodi. Granted not the greatest spelling, but since Sookie is able to regularly serve drinks to someone called Jeff LeBeff without giggling I wouldn’t have thought it would cause her too much trouble to keep a straight face.
Least Appealing Opening to a Sex Scene
“But in the next moment, his eyes got that focused look men get when they’re thinking about sex very specifically.”
Phrases that Should Not be Used During a Sex Scene
“He tugged my top out of my pants and began exploring territory he’d only visited briefly before”
“Mmmmm”
“little bitty panties”
“Oh, boy”
“This is like standing in front of a buffet,” he said. “I don’t know where to begin.”
I touched my breasts. “First course,” I suggested. "
"“I dreamed of this,” he said, and shoved inside me up to the hilt”
A usual, Harris indulges in yet more unrealistic and embarrassing sex scenes featuring yet another massively well-endowed man who can barely control himself at the sight of a woman in bra.
Phrases that Should Not be Used After a Sex Scene
“I was pleasantly aware of the tenderness I felt south of my belly button”
“His lips were so warm and firm, they reminded me of something else that had been warm and firm.”
“Even through the condom, I’d been able to feel the heat.”
More of Sookie’s Judgemental Bitchery Towards Other Women
“I’d always figured Jason wouldn’t marry a woman I truly adored; he’d always shown a partiality to tough sluts. And that was Crystal, sure enough.”“Carla was getting dressed (thank God) in what I thought of as “classy whore.””
Least Interesting Question to Ask a Vampire
Sookie finally gets around to asking Pam how she became a vampire and Pam reveals that she was turned in the Victorian era. Sookie, given this unprecedented opportunity to ask any question about human or vampire life and experiences in the last century and a half, goes with the following:“Did you wear your hair up every day?”
Apparently, yes, Pam did wear her hair up every day. Sookie’s curiosity about Pam and the entirety of history from the Victorian era onward thus satisfied, the conversation ends.
Most Random Self-Assessment“I wasn’t too pleased with myself for being so judgmental”
Really Sookie? It’s certainly not been summat that bothered you before. Nor, apparently, will you have any further qualms about judging everyone you meet. So, a reformed character for roughly 12 seconds.
Stupidest New Supernatural Beings
Britlingen. Super-bodyguards from another dimension, apparently. Despite these credentials, Sookie’s description of one of them runs to her having ”feathery ash-brown hair that needed a good stylist”. What makes her think they have stylists in this unnamed alternative dimension I’m not sure, but obviously having a good hair-do would be of paramount importance to an enslaved warrior from another world.
Most Blindly Patriotic Outlook“In a moment, I understood that I hadn’t even thought about worrying because I’d grown up a free United States human citizen; I wasn’t used to worrying about my fate being in question”
Because of course in the Good Ol’ USA there is no social injustice and the legal system is swift and flawless.
Least Likely Choice of Artist for a Vampire Band to Cover
Jennifer Lopez
Worst Synonym for Dancing“pretty soon we were shaking our bonbons all over the place”
Most Inappropriate Response to Your Friend Having Been in a Massive Anti-Vampire Terrorist Explosion“Oh, my God! Your new clothes!”
What plot there is being over, and all the usual lines and events trotted out yet again, the book finally concludes with the most hokey ending possible, short of “they lived happily ever after”:“We went inside with the sun bright on our backs and our shadows preceding us into the old house.”
“If this was The Lord of the Rings and I had a smart British voice like Cate Blanchett, I could tell you the background of the events of that fall in a really suspenseful way.”
This annoys me for three reasons:
1. Cate Blanchett doesn’t have a British voice. She is Australian.
2. There is no such thing as a British accent. Britain is made up of 3 countries (More if she means the British Isles). Each of these countries has many different accents associated with them. The fact that Sookie either negates Wales and Scotland or conflates them with England is racially and socially ignorant. The fact that she imagines that everyone (or indeed anyone) in England speaks like Galadriel in Lord of the Rings is ridiculous.
3. Speaking with any of the accents originating from Britain does not make you automatically sound smart. Not unless the person listening to you is as much of an irredeemable idiot as Sookie Stackhouse.
With a beginning this bad, the chances that Harris had suddenly developed some writing talent, or that Sookie had become a less appalling character, were slim. And indeed, this is yet another terrible book to add to the Stackhouse mound.
It commences in possibly the most boring way possible, with a long and details description of a wedding. Apparently it’s an Episcopalian wedding, but since I am nowhere near as interested in Christian denominations as Harris’ assumes, I have no idea what this means or why I should care. At any rate, said wedding is massively dull. It does however give Sookie a chance to re-describe every character in the series once again, including the compulsory mention of Sam’s “halo of strawberry blond hair” , which she has somewhat of an obsession with. She also has another opportunity to display herself as the woman-hating bitch she is, when her ex-boyfriend Bill makes some tacky gesticulation in her direction to indicate that she is still in his heart, or some such mush. This she finds very romantic, despite the fact that his current girlfriend, Selah is sat next to him at the time. Selah’s feelings on the matter go unrecorded.
A few pages later Bill creeps up on Sookie whilst she is getting undressed and declares that he would love to sleep with her again. She is mildly annoyed at this voyeurism, but since being called fuckable is the greatest compliment possible for Sookie, she forgives him. To be fair, by this point Sookie has been repeatedly sexually harassed by all her soon-to-be-, current and ex-boyfriends to a point where this sort of incident must seem rather minor to her. She seems much more annoyed at Selah’s temerity in asking her about this episode than she does the matter itself, and certainly neither shows her any sympathy or evinces any interest in her situation. This is because Sookie has absolutely no fellow-feeling with women whatsoever and the only emotion they inspire in her is jealousy.
Sookie’s problems with other women, prominent throughout all the books in this series, reach a previously unmanaged level of vileness in this volume. During a meeting with her previously absent great-grandfather Sookie is led to give a slight amount of thought (which is the most she can manage in any case) to her most recent ancestors. She recalls some problems in her relationship with her mother, adds this to the new information that her father was ¼ fairy, and concludes that obviously her relationship with her mother, who died when Sookie was seven, was strained because her mother was obsessed with her husband, Sookie’s father, and thus felt sexual jealousy toward her young daughter regarding him. Personally I would have at least considered the fact that Sookie’s mother would have been coping with a child who exhibited unexplained supernatural powers, which could have contributed to her difficulty dealing with her daughter. But not Sookie. Sookie’s mother didn’t adore her. Sookie’s mother was a woman. Ergo, Sookie’s mother was a bitch who was jealous of Sookie QED.
If this damning indictment of her own mother and females in general wasn’t enough, Sookie, learning of her grandmother having born children to a man other than her husband, then proceeds to make one of the most disgusting statements I have ever had the misfortune to read:
“He raped her,” I said, almost hoping it was so. My grandmother had been the most true‐blue woman I’d ever met. I couldn’t picture her cheating anyone out of anything, particularly since she’d promised in front of God to be faithful to my grandfather.
Apparently Sookie would rather think that her beloved grandmother, the woman who raised her and cared for her before being brutally murdered, was raped on at least two occasions and almost certainly more over a period of several years, rather than have her morality offended by the thought of her grandmother committing an infidelity. This is what passes for Christian sensibility in Sookie’s neck of the woods.
This is not the first time by any means that Harris has made light of rape, but previously I was able to temper my repulsion somewhat with the hope that she spoke in ignorance alone. However in light of these remarks I am forced to assume that she is in fact a contemptible, narrow-minded, judgemental bitch. There’s certainly plenty of corroborating evidence for this assumption in each and every one of these awful books.
After discussing such a serious and offensive matter my usual glib criticism seems rather shallow. But since Harris has worked so hard to earn my animosity so fully, I shall continue with the denigration she so richly deserves.
The plot seems even weaker than usual, although perhaps that’s only due to it beginning to wear out through overuse. Once again Sookie is harassed, sexually and generally, by a variety of characters. The plot combines the mystery of her missing boyfriend, which goes nowhere, with the mystery of yet another random spate of werewolf attacks, which meanders through the first half of the book in constant danger of petering out. These plots eventually lead to yet another supernatural battle or incredible dullness. Meanwhile we hear a lot more about Sookie’s prowess at cleaning houses and her more limited culinary abilities, which is obviously fascinating. There’s also a spate of boyfriends and ex-boyfriends letting themselves into Sookie’s bedroom, often whilst she’s asleep. For some reason she’s not even slightly perturbed by this obsessive stalker behaviour. In other random events, Sookie confesses to murder several times to random friends and acquaintances, all of whom are similarly unperturbed, and the parents of Sookie’s murder victim suddenly turn out to have died together in a car accident, thereby allowing a boring plot from several books back to proceed. This is partially resolved when Sookie deals with a woman with whom she has a slight disagreement by having said woman’s current boyfriend (an ex love-interest of Sookie) kidnap her, and helping two witches to erase her mind of all thoughts that Sookie doesn’t like. This seems like the actions of a crazy, self-obsessed bitch to me, but as none of the characters other than the girl herself share my view the mind and character alteration proceeds. After this Sookie participates in catching her brother’s pregnant girlfriend cheating on him. Meanwhile Sookie’s flatmate has a brief lesbian relationship with Pam the vampire before deciding “Pam and I are more buddies than honeys” as soon as a man shows a sexual interest in her; this homophobic dismissal oddly earns her no apparent animosity from Pam, although it does save Harris from having to describe anything other than a heterosexual relationship. Then there is a random vampire-related attack which makes very little sense. Finally, Sookie decides to visit her long-lost nephew for some reason. This accomplished, the book ends. None of the various plot-strands are tied together, or at any point rendered interesting.
Stupidest New Character Names
Hamilton Tharp
Copley Carmichael
Octavia Fant
Remy Savoy
Niall Brigant
Corbett Hale Stackhouse
Police Chief Parfit Graham
Tyrese Marley
Dove Beck
Hunter Savoy
Most Worrying Inconsistency
Hoyt Fortenberry was previously described as Maxine Fortenberry’s grandson. He is now described as her son. There are three possible explanations for this:
1. The Fortenberry family is more inbred than I was previously aware.
2. Harris has been watching True Blood.
3. Harris is an idiot.
Most Unremarked-Upon Small-Minded Evangelism
Maxine Fortenberry on her son(?)’s new girlfriend:
“Holly’s not much of a churchgoer, but we’re working on getting her to come with us and bring Cody. We better get moving if we’re gonna be on time.”
Or alternatively you could just leave the poor girl alone to practice her own religion or not as she sees fit. Although I suppose you can’t expect any better from a town whose inhabitants use the metaphor “about as welcoming as a church lady forced to entertain an atheist.”
Least Erotic and Most Badly Written Instance of Faux-Naïve Grotesquery
“Eric took my hand as we walked across to the restaurant, and he ran his thumb absently across my palm. I was surprised to find out there was a direct line from my palm to my, my, hootchie.”
If you ever need evidence that Charlaine Harris is an appalling writer, this quote should cover it. The worst part, if I can possibly isolate an individual element from the overall horror, is the coy little stammer as Sookie can’t bring herself to say a rude word.
Stupidest Death
Sookie is attacked two or three times a book by ciphers, in a vain attempt to add some tension to the plot. After these attacks Harris routinely disposes of the attackers in a variety of contrived ways in order to avoid straining herself by having to create any more characters or provide them with any motivation. The methods of dispatch are usually any that absolve Sookie from moral blame, such as death by a nearby supernatural or death by accidentally throwing themselves on a stake Sookie is holding. However this book features a particularly poor effort. Sookie and an innocent bystander are attacked in a library. Sookie throws a book at the threatening assailant, trips him up, and he promptly accidentally falls on his own knife and dies instantaneously. Now, I’m not expecting a great deal of medical accuracy in these books, but I would like to know what type of wound Harris thinks an adult male is likely receive from falling on his own knife that would kill him so rapidly. I’m beginning to think “attacking Sookie Stackhouse” is a valid cause of death in Bon Temps.
Worst Personalised License Plate Owned by a Vampire
BLDSKR
Most Unreasonable Break-Up
Sookie, after finding out about her boyfriend’s mentally ill mother.
““So you’re breaking up with me because of my mother,” he said. He sounded bitter and I didn’t blame him.
“Yes,” I said after a moment’s inner testing of my own resolve. “I think I am. It’s not your mom as much as her whole situation. Your mother will always have to come first as long as she’s alive, because she’s so damaged. I’ve got sympathy for that, believe me. And I’m sorry that you and Frannie have a hard row to hoe. I know all about hard rows.”
…
“Yet, knowing all this, and knowing I care for you, you don’t want to see me anymore,” Quinn said, biting each word out. “You don’t want to try to make it work.”
“I care for you, too, and I had hoped we’d have a lot more,” I said. “But … your mom and Frannie , they’re . . . dependent. They have to have you. They’ll always come first.” I stopped for a moment, biting the inside of my cheek. This was the hardest part. “I want to be first. I know that’s selfish, and maybe unattainable, and maybe shallow. But I just want to come first with someone. If that’s wrong of me, so be it. I’ll be wrong. But that’s the way I feel.”
“Then there’s nothing left to talk about,” Quinn said …
I felt like a bad person. I felt miserable and bereft. I felt like a selfish bitch.”
That, Sookie, is because you are a selfish bitch.
I particularly like the part where she tries to milk the situation for her own benefit. “I know all about hard rows.”. Not really the time or person to play for sympathy, Sookie. Particularly when you yourself as good as admit that you’re dumping Quinn because you’ve got a better offer from rich and powerful vampire Eric. From whom you’re receiving gifts about half a dozen lines later, like the classy independent woman you are.
Most Ridiculous Concept
“the Elvis Undead Revue with all‐vamp Elvis tribute artists.”
Most Simultaneously Cruel and Nonsensical Insult
Sookie to Jason’s wife Crsytal, in response to catching her sleeping with another man:
“I said the worst thing I could think of. “No wonder you lose all your babies.””
Most Unnecessary Assault
Sookie breaks a friend’s fingers with a brick because some were-panthers told her to. Later she demands sympathy for having undergone this trauma. Any sympathy received by the injured friend goes unrecorded.
Most Clear Admission of Being a Self-Obsessed Manipulative Drama Queen
“This was totally unfair. I’d expected tons of sympathy when I finally confessed the reason for my bad mood. But now Sam and Eric were so wrapped up in being irritated with each other that neither one of them was giving me a moment’s thought”
Worst Self-Invented Phrase
” This was definitely an Oh, shit! moment. (An OSM, as I called them to myself .)”
Stupidest Patriotic Statement
” “I did an awkward sort of dip in the king’s direction (American! Not used to bowing!)”
I assume that Sookie means since she is a citizen of America, the absolute gosh-darned best and most free country in the world, she herself has no monarch or aristocracy to bow to. I understand that Harris likes to point out how brilliant the USA is at least once a book, but this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Most citizens of monarchies are not “used to bowing”, as they usually don’t meet said monarch on a day to day basis. I myself have the misfortune to be a citizen of a country which still ascribes to the outdated notion of a monarchy, and I resent the assumption that because I wasn’t born in the “Land of the Free” I must be used to servility and self-humiliating gestures.
Most Unlikely Hostage Situation
Siebert the Vampire simultaneously capturing Sheriff Eric, new king Felipe de Castro and Sam the bartender. Leaving aside the poor effort of the two supposedly powerful vampires I would like to have an explanation for the capture of Sam. Unfortunately the only details we are given is :Sam had been tied to the bumper of his own truck somehow., which isn’t massively descriptive. But whatever the details I feel one very salient point is being ignored. Sam is a shifter. He can shift into any animal he likes. So surely he would shift into a mouse and crawl out of his bonds, or a mountain bear and tear them apart, or something of the sort? No. He just stands there until Sookie saves him, doing absolutely nothing.
Eventually the series of random events masquerading as a novel simply stops, without conclusion or cliff-hanger. I presume Harris simply got bored. So did I. Sadly, somewhat earlier than she did.
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.
Unfortunately I assume this development of normal emotion was tacked on last-minute in response to reader criticism, as it begins and ends in the brief prologue material. Once Sookie has recovered from her horrific experiences by means of a steak and an orgasm, the novel proper begins.
It’s business as usual. Sookie witters on about hair, make-up and outfits as a series of events occur around her. Her housemate Amelia is summarily disposed of, her use as a character having run its course, and she is replaced by Sookie’s fairy cousin Claud. Sookie is attacked for about the 30th time, and spends a great deal of time going on about people’s hair-dos and judging every man’s girlfriend as not good enough for him. All the male characters would prefer to date Sookie, but since she can’t be involved with all of them at once they are sometimes forced to resort to dating the other female characters, who are either bitches, nonentities or both.
There’s a long and rather dull explanation of how vampires divide America into various kingdoms and fiefdoms, which Sookie pays little attention to because she’s too desperate to have sex. She does briefly get enraged about some issue with Hawaii being autonomous, which I failed to understand; I guess it’s summat that concerns Americans. After this we meet Eric’s sire (whose existence Harris’ remembered to mention for the first time in the previous book - pretty good forward planning for her), and his latest sex slave, who for some reason is the last Tsesarevich of Russia. I can only assume that Harris had read a trash history book about Rasputin the same week she wrote this latest book. Still, at least this new random real-life character involvement is less annoying than the ridiculous Elvis business she insists on including in so many books of this series.
Not much happens to Sookie for some time after that, and certainly nothing new. She gets involved once again in both vampire and werewold politics, thereby endangering her life. She accompanies Bill when he tells the Bellefleur family that he is their direct ancestor, a revelation the reader has known since near to the beginning of the series and which has no ramifications whatsoever. Also she steals a disc from Bill containing a database of all known vampires in America, which has been mentioned in almost every book so far for no apparent reason and finally serves 2 purposes; to allow Sookie to trace Bill’s vampire sister and to make Sookie look incredibly stupid. It’s bad enough that she hides the disc for the day in a hall cupboard under some towels, reasoning that this is safe because she calculates her cousin will definitely use few enough towels to come upon it by accident, rather than hiding it somewhere she doesn’t know for a fact her cousin is likely to be looking. But what really makes you question if her intelligence is within the “normal” range is when it emerges that she believes it likely that a piece of software can be so programmed that if you enter the security code incorrectly it could blow up your entire computer. She considers this so credible a threat that she actually hides under the desk after entering the code, just in case. I know she’s not exactly a technophile, but Jesus Christ!
Eventually the ill-advised involvement in were-politics leads to Sookie taking a random illegal drug which her ex found lying about among the belongings of some never-before-mentioned were-Shaman, which even she admits is a bit stupid. The effect of this unknown substance is to make Sookie feel “a lot like Alice in Wonderland after she took a bite of the mushroom.”, by which she presumably means annoyed and either much taller or much shorter. Unless of course Harris hasn’t read the book and is talking crap. Under the influence of this unknown substance Sookie is able to see the degree to which all the were-pack members are devoted to their leader, Alcide, visually represented by the colours of their auras. This makes no particular sense, but it does allow Sookie to identify some obvious traitors to the pack, before she and Jason leave in order that Jason not witness the murder of two attractive girls. Presumably he would’ve been fine with seeing some ugly women ripped apart by wolves. At any rate, this episode is very dull and only interested me insofar as it left me wondering how Sookie can take mind-altering substances but still recall and recount events with exactly the same clarity, detail and tedium as always.
The book concludes with Sookie once more in danger, as Eric’s newly introduced vampire brother predictably goes crazy and kills several unimportant people. All the key characters survive as usual, and conveniently there’s a mass blood-bath where Sookie’s enemies helpfully murder each other, saving Sookie having to make any effort whatsoever. There’s then some random sub-Disney disenchantment of a character who I thought was supposed to be bloodthirsty enemy of Sookie. Then everyone goes home to bed. And that’s it.
Worst New Character Names
Dr. Dinwiddie
Kennedy Keyes
Perdita and Crawdad Jones
Hamilton Bond
Worst Attempt to Get a Girl’s Sexual Attentions
Bill suggests that Sookie sleep with him in order to make him feel better after he was injured in the last war to feature in the books. To Sookie’s discredit she does waver slightly here, which doesn’t say much about her commitment to her current boyfriend, Eric.
Most Naively Patriotic Statement
“It would be awful to think your own government was spying on you,” I said. “Especially after you’d been thinking of yourself as a regular citizen your entire life.”
Least Erotic Talk During Sex
“I think you love me to give it to you.”
This is from Eric. In the same scene he offers his erection as proof that he loves Sookie, which seems rather transitory evidence to me. However Sookie easily tops this unappealing tackiness with the truly appalling response:
“That looks painful. Would you like me to nurse it?”
And finally the even worse
“I moved with increased purpose, swallowing down everything he gave me.”
Harris is certainly on form, once again offering her readers one of the worst sex scenes ever committed to print.
Most Confusing Statement
Sookie on a new vampire who makes a brief appearance before being killed
“Corinna was—had been—African-American.”
Does being a vampire negate your racial origins? I’m pretty sure you are the same race after you die as before. You’re just a dead member of that race, surely?
Most Unusual Life Lesson
Sookie on her 5-yr-old nephew Hunter
“The better manners he had, the easier this world would be for him.”
Not quite sure how that works out. Especially since the “manners” Sookie refers to merely constitute calling her “ma’am.” Is that a great help in life?
Most Unjustified Self-Analysis
“I was not going to be one of those awful people who gets all bent out of shape when the ex acquires a replacement. That was hypocritical and selfish to the extreme, and I hoped I was a better person than that.”
No. you’re not a better person that that Sookie. Not in any way. You’re a spiteful, jealous bitch who hates all women, and most especially those who have the nerve to become involved with one of your many cast-off men.
Annoyingly, Sookie spends the entirety of this book going on about some vampire she wants murdered, presumably in the hope someone else will do this for her. Sadly absolutely no progress is made regarding this murder, so I can only assume it will be the main plot force of the next book. Hopefully it will finally occur to Sookie do summat for herself rather than rely on any other supernatural character or man she meets, as I’m getting sick of her whining prevarication.