Dead Until Dark

Ok. So.

I like vampire books; call it a guilty pleasure. I'm writing one so I guess I better like them, right? It was the HBO series (not that I've ever seen it but I've seen previews for it) that got me interested in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books. Sure I'd noticed them in the store before but I was never all that interested so I guess it was a good move to make it into a series so Harris could attract more readers.

Now, I've read some of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series which were entertaining but I got sick of them. And I even read the Twilight Saga. Don't even get me started on that. So I'm pretty well-versed in vampire books although I've yet to read Anne Rice's famous series.

On to the review. Sookie Stackhouse is a waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's a pretty likable character but she seems pretty flat and almost fake. I never really understood her even though the story was told from her perspective. And the attraction she has to Bill Compton, the vampire, is pretty pathetic. It just seems like Charlaine Harris thought, "Hey, I want these two to hook up so I'm going to make them hookup whether they like it or not. The readers will love vampire/human sex." Uhhh...Ya gotta give me more than just this weird lust that they keep calling love. Yeah. Bill suddenly tells Sookie he loves her in a matter of a few pages into the story.

Ok. And what is with vampire book authors having their characters become so slutty after they hookup with the hero vampire? Sookie would be Exhibit A. Anita Blake is Exhibit B. And last but certainly not least Exhibit C is Bella Swan. By far, Anita and Sookie go far more into the slutty thing than Bella but it is still an element in all the books. It just seems like a rehash of the same ol' vampire story. Granted, there's really not much else you can do with vampires except maybe make them glitter, live in cloudy states, and walk around just looking perfect for mere mortals to gawk at them in wonder.

Give me a break. The more I think about it, the less I liked this book because the characters were flat and the story was a little predictable. Harris did get me, a little, with the twist of who the bad guy actually was, but even that felt anticlimactic simply because I didn't even know the antagonist well enough let alone the protagonist to really even care.

Now I thought I would like these books so I bought the first three. I'm rethinking that but I will eventually read the next two just because I have them. They're definitely a light fluffy read. The writing isn't exactly wonderful which actually made me feel great. If Charlaine Harris can get published then I sure as hell can.