By Charlaine Harris
37: Dead Until Dark
38: Living Dead in Dallas
39: Club Dead
40: Dead to the World
41: Dead as a Doornail
42: Definitely Dead
43: All Together Dead
These are the kind of novels you want to read on the beach or some other time when you just want to be entertained. The characters are interesting and Harris puts new little twists on the classic Vampire and Werewolf stories.
Alan Ball's HBO show, "True Blood," is somewhat based on these novels. I'll talk about the books all together so I don't ruin the plots for you. I don't know if the show will continue to loosely follow the books or go completely in its own way. By the way, the second season starts in June!
The writing is generally what you might expect from this type of genre novel: not impressive. It's adequate.
The stories and characters are what makes these good. Sookie Stackhouse is telepathic and has always been considered a freak by the residents of her little town. One day, Vampires make an announcement of their existence on TV around the world, now that synthetic blood has been perfected and they no longer have to hunt humans to survive. One vampire walks into Sookie's bar, she can't read his mind, and she is infatuated with him and his mental silence. Then she gets more and more involved in the world of the Vampires and the Werewolves and other creatures, and all sorts of things happen.
Sookie has comically terrible fashion sense:
·banana clips
·stretch jeans that lace up the side
·long, taupe dress on a tan blonde
·red and green Christmas sweater with reindeer (she regrets that she can only wear it at Christmastime)
Something seriously fell apart in the editing process of Book 6, Definitely Dead. She must have been in a rush. Rather than telling us the story in chronological order, she started in media res and kept leaking out bits of the earlier events throughout the book. It was a mess. Further, the sentence structure and logic from one sentence to the next was missing in several sections:
“I glanced over to their table, to make sure Halleigh was sitting with her back to me. She did.”
I've been reading Dracula in installments thanks to this blog, and the difference in writing quality is striking. Dracula is a book to savor, and the Sookie books are for devouring during every spare minute you can find.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
First I wanted to love True Blood because Six Feet Under was one of the best shows ever. Then I wanted to hate it because the dialogue or the acting or something just seemed not right. Then I fell for it. I am glad that I am not really missing too much not reading the books.
ReplyDeleteHi Michi! I also had very high expectations for the show, and was terribly disappointed. It's a trashier show than I had hoped for. But I still really like it, on different terms. I don't respect it like I do Six Feet Under.
ReplyDeleteI agree that some of the scripting is terrible, and a few accents are horribly off. But it's so fun! How about the awful tripping on V hallucination scenes??? WORST MODERN SPECIAL EFFECTS EVER.
The books are kind of the same -- if you want to read something kind of trashy and addictive, these are for you. If you want quality writing, stay far, far away.