2003;
275 pages. Book 3 (out of 13) of the “Sookie Stackhouse” series. New Author? : No. Genre : Vampires; Paranormal Thriller; Gothic
Romance. Overall Rating : 7*/10.
The vampire Bill Compton has gone missing in
action! He’s Sookie Stackhouse’s
sometimes boyfriend, sometimes lover and full-time source of anxiety and
frustration, and it goes without saying that Sookie’s upset.
Of
course, the reason why she’s upset is a little complicated. The last time he was with her, Bill told
Sookie he had to do a top-secret project for the (Vampire) Queen of
Louisiana. Hush-hush, very dangerous,
and if anything happens to me, please hide my computer and its hard drive.
But
it turns out that Bill isn’t in Louisiana, he disappeared while in
Mississippi. And the word on the street (okay, in the
vampire bars) is that he’s being held captive by the local bloodsuckers. Oh yeah, and those local vamps
include his ex-lover, Lorena, with whom he had a long and passionate
relationship. Could it be that Bill was
in the process of dumping Sookie to rekindle a relationship with Lorena?
Now you know why Sookie’s as mad as ...well... a jilted lover.
What’s To Like...
Club Dead
is the third installment in Charlaine
Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series, and broadens the setting a bit more. The first two books were set in Louisiana and
Texas, respectively; here Sookie is off to adventure and mayhem in Mississippi. We get to visit a new vampire nightclub, ‘Jospehine’s’, also known as the titular
‘Club Dead’, and learn that vampire
royalty: kings and queens, rule the undead territories we mortals know as our
50 states.
The
storyline has the usual structure:
Sookie goes on a quest on behalf of the vampires; she gets beat up a lot
and has relationship issues with Bill; the action speeds up and the good guys,
girls, and ghouls eventually kick undead ass.
A
character from Book One is back, “Bubba”, and he’s one of my favorites. There are a bunch of Mississippi undead to
meet as well. Vampires are still the
most prevalent beasties we run across, but we learn a lot more about the
various shapeshifters, generically called “Weres”, of which the Werewolves are
the dominant type. We also cross paths
with a goblin, and I think that's a new beast for the series. It’s also hinted that witches will make an appearance soon.
The
vampire Eric plays a larger-than-usual role here, but most of the other Louisiana
characters – the patrons and workers at Merlotte’s Bar, Sookie’s brother, and
the Bon Temps locals – are limited to cameo appearances. I enjoyed the brief nod to Samhain, and I’d
still like to take at least one flight on Anubis Airlines.
Sookie gets her first mani-pedi, as well as her first killing. There’s some sex and lots of cussing, but
that’s the norm for this series. The
ending is adequate, but not spectacular.
Instead of a tension-built climax, it felt to me like it was rushed, and
then coasted along another 50 pages or so afterward.
A major thread remained unresolved (Bill’s mission for the vampire queen of Louisiana)
although this could also be him BS-ing Sookie.
Either way, the main plotline, Bill’s abduction, is tied up completely,
and Club Dead is both a standalone
tale, as well as part of a series.
Kewlest New Word…
Virago (n.)
: a domineering, violent, or bad-tempered woman.
Excerpts...
“Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof,” I told myself.
That had been Gran’s favorite Bible quotation. When I was about nine, I’d asked her to explain
that to me, and she’d said, “Don’t go looking for trouble; it’s already looking
for you.” (loc. 2655)
“Did this Alcide
kill him?” Bill looked down at me,
reconsidered. “Or Sookie?”
“He says no. They found the corpse in the closet of Alcide’s
apartment, and they hatched a plan to hide his remains.” Eric sounded like that had been kind of cute
of us.
“My Sookie hid a
corpse?”
“I don’t think
you can be too sure about that possessive pronoun.”
“Where did you learn that term, Northman?”
“Where did you learn that term, Northman?”
“I took ‘English
as a Second Language’ at a community college in the seventies.” (loc. 3332)
Kindle Details...
Club Dead sells for $7.99 at Amazon. The rest of the books in the 13-volume series
also go for $7.99, except for Book 1, Dead Until
Dark, which is only $2.99. Charlaine Harris has several other series
started, and their books range in price from $2.99 to $13.99.
“This Blood’s For You.” (loc. 440)
I
had some quibbles. For me, the book
started out slow, although in fairness, that may have been a necessary evil as
Charlaine Harris introduces a slew of the recurring characters to any reader
that might be making Club Dead their first
book in the series. However, since most of these
meet-&-greets play no part in the story, this was just lag time for
me. Even the Book Two baddies, the
Brotherhood of the Sun, appear briefly later on, presumably for the
same reason. Still, once the introductions are over, around
a quarter of the way through the book, the pace picks up nicely, and its
lots of thrills and kills thereafter.
A more
significant problem was the storyline as a whole, which felt disjointed to me. It was never really made clear (at least to me)
why Bill was kidnapped. Nor, as already
mentioned, was it clear whether he was actually on a secret mission for the
queen. Busting Bill out of captivity
seemed way too easy, and the subsequent “chase” seemed contrived and way too
speedily put into action by the baddies. All in all, the whole storyline felt formulaic.
True, Bill has a computer program that would be useful to all sorts of factions. But is it worth engaging in
kidnapping and torturing, and risking a war with various other undead for? It didn’t seem so to me.
Maybe the author had a deadline to meet, or maybe my brain was just too
tired or dense to see the answers to my quibbles. I've read the first three books in this series, all in the past six months. Maybe I'm a tad bit burnt out on it.
7 Stars.
Add 1 star
if this is your first Sookie Stackhouse book. You'll find it a fascinating series.
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