Dear Author » Sookie Stackhouse

REVIEW: Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris

Janet — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:32:23 +0000

Dear Ms. Harris:

I must admit to a bittersweet experience reading Dead Reckoning, in part because I know there are only two more books to come in a series that has given me such reading pleasure for almost ten years now (I came to the series a couple of books in). Sookie is one of my favorite fictional characters – her blend of ordinary and exceptional, vulnerable and tenacious, pragmatic and idealistic has made her more realistic and sympathetic to me than many other series heroines. Also? The last few books in the series have been, in my opinion, a tour de force of plotting, thematic development, and emotional complexity. Which may be why Dead Reckoning seemed almost anti-climactic to me, despite the immense crisis that occupies the book. In fact, I had to read the book twice and both times my almost sedate experience of the book belied its frantic aura of instability and danger.

WARNING: SERIES SPOILERS AHEAD

Dead Reckoning begins with Sookie deciding to clean out her attic, an act which sets a tone for the book and, it seems, the series at this point – a clearing of the decks, so to speak. The last time Sookie had been in the attic was right after her grandmother was murdered, and she now decides it is time to face the past and make something new of it. Again, a theme for the book.

As readers know by now, any attempt Sookie makes at constructing a life of normalcy does not last long, and Dead Reckoning presents no exception. A firebombing later that night at Merlotte’s almost destroys the bar and kills everyone inside, including Sookie and Sam. Who could be gunning for Sam? There is already a new bar off the highway that is siphoning business from Merlotte’s, although Sam hardly seems like the kind of guy to really piss anyone off. To make matters worse, Eric has been incredibly stressed and brooding, while he and Pam are in some kind of tense standoff, but Sookie does not know why. She suspects, though, that it has something to do with her, because Pam keeps making loaded statements about Eric and Sookie’s marriage and Eric makes over-reacting gestures to keep her quiet. Pam, in the meantime, is miserable because Victor, Louisiana’s new regent and uber-adversary of Eric, will not give Pam permission to turn her leukemia-struck lover before she dies. And speaking of Victor, guess who owns the bar taking business away from Merlotte’s – as well as a vampire bar not too far from Eric’s own Fangtasia? Victor, it seems, is all sorts of trouble. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, Sandra Pelt is out of jail and is, from all reports, crazier and angrier at Sookie than ever before.

Reading Dead Reckoning is like watching a chess match, a two-layered chess match. The first layer concerns Sookie, Pam, and Eric, all of whom have been made abjectly miserable by Victor, who is becoming more and more aggressive in his attempts to provoke Eric into an injudicious attack (giving Victor an excuse to kill him). Sookie is also feeling hunted – literally – by Sandra Pelt, who simply wants Sookie dead, as soon and as violently as possible. Sandra, however, is something of a nuisance when compared to the danger Victor presents, and it is clear very early on in the book that all the strategizing between Victor and Eric is ultimately going to leave only one of them alive. Should either strike out unprovoked, however, that vampire would answer to King Filipe, with no guarantee of justice or mercy.

There is a great deal I cannot say about the plot of Dead Reckoning, because to do so would spoil the series of revelations and surprising outcomes the book has to offer. And they are numerous. Because in the same way that various characters are plotting against each other in the novel, so can you sense the book’s authorial hand moving characters around, positioning everyone in a certain way, revising past history and revealing past “secrets” in a way that feels very much like the moment before a very decisively executed climax.

WARNING: SOME BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD

For example, a secret regarding a long association between Eric and Sookie’s fairy grandfather Niall is revealed by Terry Bellefleur after the firebombing, and while I have not gone back to previous books to check, it does not seem to jibe at all with the existing series timeline. However, the information makes it seem as if Sookie was involved in fae politics much earlier than she was even aware of her own fairy streak. This is important because one of the subplots in Dead Reckoning involves the fate of all the fae trapped on the human side of the portal Niall closed at the end of the Fairy War. The fight between Pam and Eric involves the political machinations of Eric’s maker, Appius Livius Ocella, who re-appeared in Dead in The Family. The demon lawyer, Mr. Cataliades, is revealed to have a special relationship with Sookie that was never revealed when they met during the settlement of Hadley’s estate, five or so books ago. This relationship is revealed through a secret letter from her grandmother Sookie uncovers during the attic clean-out, a letter that attempts to smooth out the rough edges around the revelation that Sookie’s God-fearing, straight-laced grandmother was the lover of Sookie’s fae grandfather, Fintan.

There is also a lot of movement in the ranks of current, past, and potential mates for Sookie. Eric has a secret that threatens his future with Sookie. Bill declares his undying love for Sookie again in this book, with the added bonus of actually being there to help her during at least one crucial incident. Sam is dating Jannalynn, Alcide Herveaux’s pack enforcer, and while he seems happy, neither Sookie nor Jannalynn have many good feelings for each other. One thing Sookie and Sam have in common is that they each believe the other deserves a better mate. And both are probably correct. Amelia and the now-human Bob also show up in the book, and among other things, Amelia has found a way to break the blood bond Eric effected on Sookie without her consent. Amelia is also involved in an incident that results in a decisive moment in any potential future Alcide and Sookie might share.

All this maneuvering is somewhat ironic, since one of the novel’s main themes is the question of how much Sookie is acting upon the world around her and how much she is being acted upon. Eric, Amelia, Niall, Bill, and even Claude and Dermot have all acted upon Sookie over the years in ways that have had drastic consequences on her life, from Bill’s orders to settle in Bon Temps and acquaint himself with the telepath to Eric’s arrangement of the vampire marriage that now both protects and vexes Sookie. On the one hand, Sookie knows that she cannot shirk responsibility for her actions, and that those actions mean, “My determination to survive, and to ensure the survival of those I loved, was stronger than the religion I’d always held so dear.” But there also seems to be a kind of fatalism closing in around Sookie, a sense that the very nature of her being has brought her to this place. And yet, free will is still a central theme in the series:

When I went in the kitchen with a tray full of dirty dishes, I thought, This is happiness. Last night wasn’t the real me.

But it had been. I knew—even as I thought this—that I wasn’t going to be able to fool myself. I’d changed in order to survive, and I was paying the price of survival. I had to be willing to change myself forever, or everything I’d made myself do was for nothing.

Change is another heavily handled theme in the novel. Sam and Sookie have a very pointed conversation about whether people can change who they really are, and both agree that one may be able to change habits, but character was character. Which raises the question of what kind of character Sookie is. One answer in the book comes from Mr. Cataliades, who insists that humans like Sookie “who are born with the essential spark are born to experience or perform something wonderful, something amazing.” And yet when Sookie reflects on her feelings for Jannalynn, she must confront the irony of her own judgment:

…It was my personal opinion that Jannalynn was not good enough for Sam.

Of course, I kept that to myself. Glass houses, stones; right? I was dating a vampire whose kill list would top Jannalynn’s for sure, since Eric was over a thousand years old. In one of those awful moments you have at random, I realized that everyone I’d ever dated—though granted, that was a short list—was a killer.

And so was I.

Sookie clearly does not share the alternative morality of the supes, despite her own fairy blood and her recent life experiences. In fact, all of the true villains in the series have been deliberate predators, suggesting a differentiation within both human and supe categories. Victor, for example, is a “corrupt vampire” not only in his ruthless and violent ambition for power, but in the way he treats humans as vessels for food and orgiastic sex. However, the relationship between good and evil is no longer so black and white as Sookie once imagined, and her desire to be a “good person” has become complicated, not only by the things the world has visited on her, but by the autonomous choices she has made. The sum of these actions weighs heavily on how Sookie defines herself and with whom she will ultimately choose to identify. Communities can be welcoming and supportive or divisive and exclusionary, often at the same time. And yet being alone never seems like a wise or happy option. This philosophical pondering of the series has always been one of its strengths, in my opinion, and has, over the course of eleven novels, become wonderfully nuanced.

Clearly, Sookie is at a crossroads, as her change comment above indicates. And clearly that change is going to coincide with the end of the series. Although I have never been particularly invested in Sookie being in a relationship with The One, there has always been a bittersweet quality to Sookie’s relationships that is distilled in one exchange she has with Bill:

“I love you,” Bill said helplessly, as if he wished those magic words would heal me. But he knew they wouldn’t.

“That’s what you all keep saying,” I answered. “But it doesn’t seem to get me any happier.”

It now seems unlikely that in the next two books Sookie will find lasting happiness, especially given Sookie’s own grappling with who she is, where she belongs, and with whom she belongs. One of my favorite things about this series, though, has been watching Sookie grow stronger and more confident in herself – to see her take that unfailing pragmatism and use it to find her own strengths. She is the mastermind of something in Dead Reckoning that should reveal to her the depth of her intelligence and will to live. Where that will take her I’m not certain, nor am I completely comfortable contemplating the end of the series in a mere two books. However, I think Dead Reckoning is really the first book in the series where I felt that the thematic concerns of the book – as strong and compelling as they are — overrode its plotting and characterization, and where I felt so keenly the manipulations of the authorial hand, especially when those manipulations seem to conflict with earlier books.

I read every installment in this series, including Dead Reckoning, with engaged appreciation for the ongoing saga of Sookie’s life, but I wish the behind the scenes machinations were less visible in the book. B-/C+

~ Janet

REVIEW: Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris

Janet — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:00:23 +0000

Dear Ms. Harris:

The first time I read Dead in the Family I felt almost hypnotized by the emotional aftermath of the horror Sookie faced in the last book, Dead and Gone. Enthralled by the effects of her trauma and the painfully slow steps she was making toward recovery, I could barely summon my critical faculties to the task of reviewing the book. It took two reads for me to reflect, analyze, and evaluate the book beyond an inchoate awe at what registered to me at the time as a perfectly rendered narrative. My second time through provided some necessary distance, but it did not dim my appreciation of Dead in the Family as one of the most powerful and thematically coherent novels in the series.

First a warning: this review will contain spoilers from Dead and Gone and perhaps some mild spoilers for Dead in the Family. I will do my best to minimize their appearance, but I cannot discuss the current book without revisiting some of the momentous events of the last.

Now that the Fae War is over, the door between realms apparently shut and locked tight, and Sookie's recently discovered fairy great grandfather Niall reigning on the other side, Sookie is just barely beginning to heal from the wounds she suffered at the hands of the insane, tortuous fae couple, Neave and Lochlan. She marks as progress the fact that the parts of her body that were chewed out are now covered over completely with fresh skin, thanks in large part to the substantial amount of vampire blood she has been receiving from Eric, who remains, at least for now, her "husband" according to vampire law. Whether Sookie will ever recognize their relationship in that way is part of her struggle in this book, as she tries to sort out her feelings for him and copes with the reality that Eric did not (could not, he claims) come to rescue her, even as she called and called and called for him during her horrific experience.

Eric, in the meantime, is facing his own challenges, namely with Victor, the new vampire king's eyes and ears in Louisiana, who appears to want more than mere oversight of the territory as Felipe's right hand vamp. Eric, being the most powerful sheriff of the most important territory, is now a target of Victor's simmering ambition. And if that situation was not unsettling enough, he must accommodate an unannounced – and unwanted – visit from a very influential figure from his past.

As the title implies, family is the prominent theme of this book. A clever echo of death in the family, the small change makes a big difference here. Superficially, both Sookie and Jason have suffered from several family deaths over the past few books. The Fae War impacted numerous members of Sookie's circle, both human and supe. But this is a book that also deals with whether and how the dead live on in a family, as vampires, as memories, as legacies, as burdens, etc. And it considers, on many levels, how families are comprised, connected, experienced, remembered, avenged, and honored.

When we first met Sookie Stackhouse, we knew her as she knew herself: a human woman with an extraordinary ability who felt more alone than embraced by her lifelong home of Bon Temps. Her parents were long dead, her grandmother a death she suffered in our first months of acquaintance with her, and her brother a somewhat estranged, unreliable presence. She was close to her boss at Merlotte's, unaware he was a shifter, best friends with a woman who would soon betray her brutally, and smitten with a somewhat taciturn vampire named Bill Compton, who was not only her first love, but her first experience with the supernatural kind. Now, eight books later, Sookie has increased her family in both blood relations and emotional bonds, and her own touch of supernatural heritage connects her to more communities than she ever knew existed. The bittersweet experience of not feeling loved has been replaced by the bittersweet knowledge of how many people now connected to her have died:

Probably that should have made me long for peace above all else. But instead of turning into the Bon Temps Gandhi, in my heart I held the knowledge that there were plenty of people I wanted dead. I wasn't directly responsible for most of the deaths that were scattered in my wake, but I was haunted by the feeling that none of them would have happened if it weren't for me. In my darkest moments-’and this was one of them-’I wondered if my life was worth the price that had been paid for it.

The lighthearted Sookie who always tried to see the best in people and knew a better day was just around the corner has paid her own price for being alive and for the complex relationships she is continually struggling to negotiate and manage. It's not merely a loss of innocence, but rather an acquisition of experience that has shaken the foundations on which her whole world had previously been built:

"You've changed," [Bill] said.

"Sure, I have. I thought I was going to die for a couple of hours. I hurt like I've never hurt before. And Neave and Lochlan enjoyed it so much. That snapped something inside me. When you and Niall killed them, it was like an answer to the biggest prayer I'd ever prayed. I'm supposed to be a Christian, but most days I don't feel like I can even presume to say that about myself any longer. I have a lot of mad left over. When I can't sleep, I think about the other people who didn't care how much pain and trouble they caused me. And I think about how good I'd feel if they died.”

Her greatest moments of happiness now often come from Eric, with whom she shares a blood bond, which makes her both relish and distrust her growing attachment to him. However, it is clear that he cares about Sookie, although his new vulnerability extends not only to his feelings for her but to his increasingly precarious safety under Victor's middle management and other complications from his past:

"If they stay until Tuesday, I'm going to see you no matter what they're doing," Eric told me. He sounded a little more like himself. "We'll make love. I feel like buying you a present."

"That sounds like a great night to me," I said, feeling a surge of hope. "I don't need a present, just you. So I'll see you Tuesday, no matter what. That's what you said, right?"

"That's what I said."

"Okay then, until Tuesday."

"I love you," Eric said in a drained voice. "And you are my wife, in the only way that matters to me."

Across generations, species, centuries, and emotional bonds, the complexity and depth of the relationships Sookie has seem constantly to be shaping and re-shaping her, defining her strength, outlining her vulnerabilities, altering her expectations and desires. Her moral and ethical values are in flux, even as she becomes bolder and more fleshed out as a character and a person. For me, Dead in the Family is the book in which the cost of Sookie's maturation has not yet been set, but like her, we would be foolish to believe that it is not quite high. As one of the many supernatural beings in her circle remarks to her, "Dead things love you… They're pulling on you." At no point in the series has that been clearer than in this book, where Sookie's fuller presence in the world around her has both grounded and shattered her. The genius of this book, in my opinion, is the way it so deftly ties together the sometimes seemingly disconnected pieces of earlier books.

One thing I have noticed about these books is that time is marked off in very specific, discrete pieces, and Dead in the Family is no exception. But here that narrative structure takes on even more significance, because it feels that time is counting down to some ultimate crisis point, and because we can see powerfully the way Sookie's own life is built on so many moments and events that she may not have a part in making but which will require an action or decision or reaction from her. Where some books feel stuffed with action and others feel like virtually nothing occurs, looking back I am already beginning to see how every encounter Sookie has had in these books is shaping both her character and her ultimate fate. And quite honestly, I am a little scared for her.

From the beginning of this series I have been engaged in Sookie's journey toward true independence and fulfillment. Whatever she is moving toward, it will likely be beyond her own imaginings, and for me, as a reader, that is both an exciting and frightening prospect. Where Sookie once yearned for a sweetheart, now she has several males in her circle who desire and care for her. Where she once wanted to be accepted by the people of Bon Temps, she now has deep ties both human and non-human communities, and it seems sometimes she has little peace in her life. She has a cousin she will finally get the chance to know, and a brother who has a very different view of family after his own recent losses. She has a current lover, a good friend who is most likely in love her, and several past lovers who still hold deep feelings for her and will move to protect her when necessary. She has some new friendships and is enjoying the revival of some old friendships. She has fae relatives on both sides of the door to Faery who are still reaching out to her.

In many ways Sookie's life is incredibly rich in family from whom she receives comfort and support. But as Dead in the Family demonstrates with incredible emotional poignancy and thematic cogency, "dead things" are "pulling on" Sookie. And even when their love is a gift, it is a burden and a risk. In some ways I feel that this series is the same, but like Sookie, I cannot bring myself to give up. A-

~Janet aka Robin

This is a hardcover published by ACE, a division of Penguin. Penguin has not come to an agreement with Amazon and therefore there is no Kindle version. Pricing is set by the publisher for the digital book.

Big Money Yields Same Exact Results

Jane — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:37:08 +0000

We readers have lamented about the over use of stock images resulting in look alike covers. Apparently, this can happen with expensive (six figure +) media campaigns.

This fall, we will be treated to a new HBO show featuring Sookie Stackhouse based on works of Charlaine Harris. Apparently Sookie and her bloodthirsty-ness will appear in a movie, Jennifer’s Body written by Diablo Coby.

I have to confess that I have wondered at the movie poster because, well, the Sookie we know isn’t a bloodsucker. Will True Blood be something totally different? SB Sarah says she’s seen the ads for Sookie’s TV show everywhere.

REVIEW: From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris

Jennie — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:00:29 +0000

Dear Ms. Harris,

Back in the spring of 2004, I was one of those entrenched historical romance fans decrying the new flood of paranormal romances (if only I’d known how much worse it would get, I would’ve paced my ire a bit). A friend loaned me your first Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Until Dark, and despite my prejudices against vampires, Southern settings and small town locations, for some reason I picked it up and started reading.

And I fell in love.

In love with Sookie. In love with your writing, and with Sookie’s utterly unique and endearing voice. Even in love with the paranormal world you created, which quickly expanded from vampires to include shapeshifters, fairies and other assorted non-human beings. You portrayed the effect that Sookie’s telepathy had on her life in the medium homogenous community of Bon Temps beautifully, making it both realistic and poignant.

I devoured the first four books in the series, one after another, and never even began to get Sookie-fatigue. Then I settled down, twitching every once in a while, to wait almost a year for the next book in the series.

Because I read the first half of the series in one gulp, and also due to its serial nature (the events of each book often begin only days or weeks after the end of the previous book), I sometimes have trouble distinguishing one "Dead" book from the next. Yes, I remember that Living Dead in Dallas is the one where Sookie goes to Dallas (I’m quick that way), and that Dead to the World is the one where Sookie gets with Eric (because, ooh la la). But in general, the events of the books tend to blend together. (Also, I forget whole huge important details from one book to the next. But I think that’s more a function of my advanced age – I’m going to be 40! In 15 months! – than anything to do with the books themselves, except for perhaps the fact that each book is pretty chock-full of goings-on.)

I have given each of the first five books in the Sookie Stackhouse series A grades; 2006’s Definitely Dead was an A-, and last year’s All Together Dead earned a B+. One might think that this constitutes a trend and that the series has started to slip for me, but honestly I think the less than stellar grade, at least for All Together Dead, had largely to do with the change of setting (from Bon Temps to Rhodes, the site of the vampire convention). That book just wasn’t quite as anchored as the other books in the series, and thus suffered slightly in comparison (not that a B+ is a bad grade).

For a more coherent synopsis of the plot of From Dead to Worse, I would point to Janet’s review here. To some degree, though, your plots are both fairly irrelevant (except in that their events contribute to Sookie’s emotional growth), and great big messes, anyway. On the one hand, this sometimes gives your books a bit of an episodic feel – at time plot threads are started at the beginning of one book, and then pretty much dropped while the main plot is dealt with, only to be picked up at the end, by which time I have well-nigh forgotten about them. It can make the story feel a little uneven, at least for anal-retentive me, who likes intricate, circular plots that fit together neatly at the end.

But on the other hand, the messiness of the plots highlights the intense realism of Sookie’s world. Yes, it’s odd to say about a world that is populated with witches, vampires and werewolves, but one of the series’ greatest virtues is how seamlessly the mundane and the fantastic are folded together. It doesn’t matter what death-defying hijinx Sookie has gotten to in a day – she still has to go home, get ready for work, and then do a full shift as a waitress at Sam’s bar. She has bills to pay and responsibilities that extend beyond her ever-expanding commitments to the supernatural community.

So the fact that all plot points don’t get wrapped up in one big tidy bow adds to the sense that this is Sookie’s real life we’re reading about. In From Dead to Worse, the aspect that was picked up at the beginning and then semi-ignored until the end was that of Sookie’s newly introduced otherworldly great grandfather. I assume we’ll be seeing more of him in future books. I’m cautiously optomistic about him as a character; Sookie needs all of the help she can get, considering how often she finds herself in peril, and how useless and unreliable her one other blood relative, her brother Jason, is.

I have never been one of those readers bothered by the fact that Everyone Loves Sookie (or rather, every paranormal male seemingly is attracted to her – at one point, I lost count at six men). I adore Sookie, albeit in a platonic girl-crush kind of way, so who am I to say that the men in her life shouldn’t fall at her feet? Which they don’t, actually – if anything, the various men who are drawn to Sookie tend to present more problems than they solve. In any case, Sookie appears to drop one admirer in this installment, and I won’t miss him hugely. The tension of "who will Sookie end up with?" is not, IMO, overplayed in the series, and most of the main contenders have enough virtues and flaws to keep me interested in the answer.

There were some aspects of From Dead to Worse that bugged me. Sookie’s folksy, conversational voice is one of the main draws of these books, but sometimes she repeats herself, reiterating details that have already been mentioned earlier in the book or even in previous books (yes, I know the werewolves are thinking of going public – I swear it gets mentioned four times in From Dead to Worse alone). The many characters that are reintroduced in each book usually get a little blurb from Sookie reminding us who they are and their relationship to her. This is helpful when I can’t quite remember the character, but irritating with characters I’m quite familiar with already. I recognize that there are challenges to writing a continuing series with so many characters and where so much happens in each story. I might prefer a glossary of characters at the beginning for the new reader (not that I would advise that anyone pick up this series in the middle!) or those whose memories need refreshing.

Can I just reiterate that I love Sookie? She feels so real to me that I am invested in her happiness, and when people who should care for her let her down, I feel her disappointment and hurt. I think From Dead to Worse was a return to your classic form, and for that reason, I can’t give it less than an A grade.

~Jennie

This book can be purchased in hardcover from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

REVIEW: From Dead To Worse by Charlaine Harris

Janet — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:00:54 +0000

Dear Ms. Harris:

First I have to admit that I adore this series; I feel very connected to the characters and to the world of the novels. Although I’m not old enough to be Sookie’s mother, I have very protective feelings toward her and wait impatiently for my yearly fix of her continuing saga, cheering her on as she becomes more independent and confident, feeling sharply the bittersweet sacrifices and compromises she so often has to make. And quite honestly, this is one of the few series of books I inhale rather uncritically. However, since this is a review, I have to say that while I am every bit as hooked in emotionally to this series as I was after reading Dead Until Dark, as a crafted work of fiction, From Dead To Worse is not the strongest book in the series.

Recently returned home to Bon Temps from the disastrous vampire convention in Rhodes, Sookie Stackhouse is dealing with the usual combination of human and not-so-human problems. Her boyfriend Quinn has not returned, having been injured badly in the hotel explosion that claimed the lives of numerous vamps and gravely injured the queen of Louisiana, Sophie-Anne Leclerq. Bill Compton, Sookie’s first love and the vamp who broke her heart, seems intent on trying to prove his love for her. And Eric, who now shares a blood bond with Sookie, is increasingly involved in her life and her emotions, as they are now psychically connected. And a new man enters Sookie’s life in this book (well, two men, really, although one is only four years old – her telepathic nephew, son of Sookie’s deceased cousin Hadley), her great grandfather Niall, an incredibly powerful fairy who wants to be Sookie’s protector.

And Sookie could use some additional protection, because, as she feared, her high profile in Rhodes (using her telepathy to locate living and undead bodies after the hotel explosion) has made her a person of greater interest in the supernatural community. During the course of From Dead to Worse, Sookie acts as a negotiator in an increasingly tense and violent Were conflict, is forced to stand up on her brother’s behalf in a horrific Shifter ceremony, has to fend off several mysterious Were attacks, has to do a favor for roommate Amelia’s shady father, is caught in the middle of a standoff between the vampire king of Las Vegas and the weakened Louisiana vamps, and has to face some difficult choices about one of the men in her life. Although Sookie has been coming more and more into her own as a woman who is neither fully human nor fully something else, she faces more complications stemming from her somewhat marginal attachment to various, sometimes competitive, communities. And, as her great grandfather points out, her humanness makes her somewhat fragile despite her abundant and admirable courage.

One of the things I have always admired about this series is the reminder that bad things can, indeed, happen to good people. Sookie has borne a lot of sorrow in her life, and every gift she gets seems to be accompanied by a bit of pain. Although she is grateful to have more family in her life, for example, the explanation of her fairy heritage forces her to accept something about her grandmother she would never have suspected or expected. Bill’s feelings for her seem genuine (we can see his misery at not being able to win her back), but there is no guarantee that any of these men would not choose their own survival over Sookie (something she is reminded of poignantly in this book). And despite the number of men who find Sookie irresistible (and I agree with those who are tiring of Sookie’s excessive appeal within the supe communities), they each pose almost as much danger to her as they do enhanced protection. In other words, Sookie needs every ounce of collected courage she can muster to negotiate the increasingly complex and unstable supernatural networks of which she is a reluctant but seemingly crucial part.

For me, one of the most powerful aspects of this series has been the bittersweet quality of Sookie’s life choices. Should she choose any of the supes she is attracted to, she will make significant sacrifices. Even Sam, who hovers somewhere between friend and something more territory is far from normal, and with the shifter community now on the brink of going public, that will become even more evident later on. And while Sookie’s network of friendships continues to grow – with both human and otherworldly individuals – so do her responsibilities. For example, the first scene of the novel finds Sookie being begged to stand in as a bridesmaid for Halleigh Robinson at her double wedding with Portia Bellefleur after a similarly sized girl ends up at the hospital. The scene vividly illustrates Sookie’s insider-outsider status among the humans, because she is not close enough to Halleigh to be a “real” bridesmaid,” but she is too honorable a person to refuse the woman’s panicked request. So she suffers in high heels and big hair, posing for pictures and standing in for Halleigh, finally rushing back to change so she can bartend the reception with Sam. Sookie’s unusual position in the community makes her a perpetual outsider, even as she so often finds herself facilitating someone else’s happiness or well-being, whether that be her selfish brother Jason or her roommate Amelia’s elderly witch mentor. That Sookie continues to grow within herself, and that she continues to acquire the tools with which to find her own place in the world, remains a strong thematic thread across the series.

At the same time, though, I am getting the sense with the series that the story is beginning to unfold spontaneously rather than through a pre-planned trajectory. For example, the story behind Sookie’s fairy blood seems like a departure from characterizations developed in the first few books, and I don’t understand how Sookie did not question further how it was all possible. Also, as I mentioned above, it is starting to feel a little strange that virtually every straight supernatural being is drawn to Sookie sexually; I know that she’s attractive, but it is starting to feel contrived. There’s a point at which Sookie senses something in Alcide that did not feel authentic to me, undermining the very serious circumstances under which Sookie makes the discovery. And finally, the past few books have really been paced almost manically, with an incredible amount of action and conflict occurring within each installment, so much so that Sookie’s internal development and the more subtle aspects of character and relationship development are starting to feel secondary, or more specifically, accelerated.

Then there are Sookie’s men. Again, I think there is a fine balance here among these various relationships, a tension that keeps it all interesting. For example, now that Sookie is blood bound to Eric, she is happy whenever he is in the room with her, something that annoys her to no end. And surely this phenomenon will have a significant effect on whatever romantic relationship Sookie is in at the moment, especially if she ever marries. The difficulties of that, assuming she doesn’t end up with Eric, that is, are fascinating to contemplate. However, the abundance of interested men around Sookie threatens to undermine the seriousness of this issue. There is also the competition that exists between Eric and Bill, which, as funny as it often is, sometimes seems to overshadow whatever feelings exist between each male and Sookie, threatening to turn the triangle into a caricatured drama.

I do not mean to imply that the series has become cartoonish, but the sheer number of scraps Sookie survives makes me wonder where the series is headed and whether the more subtle, and in my opinion substantive, insider – outsider dynamic is being eclipsed by drama sufficient to propel the series through however many more books. In other words, I am starting to feel that all the drama is distracting rather than purposeful. Not that the series has to mean something as a whole; Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series is going strong at thirteen books and counting, and Stephanie’s growth has been extremely slow. But I’ve always felt that this series was different – not better or worse, mind you – but different in its sharp and sometimes beautifully nuanced social and cultural commentary. And while I don’t want Sookie to be merely a symbol of those thematic conflicts, I am not sure how easily I would take to the series if I started with this book instead of the first one. And while I cannot foresee ever turning away from the series, stepping away from my emotional investment in the journey these books have taken me on, I have to give From Dead To Worse a B-.

~ Janet

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