Dead Until Dark (1st Sookie Stackhouse novel)

Charlaine Harris' "Southern Vampire Mystery" series is the source for the characters and the basic story lines (so far) True Blood on HBO which just began it's second season. The full first season is also now available on DVD. The series probably better known now as the "Sookie Stackhouse" series after the narrator and lead character, a small-town waitress at a bar who is 25 in Dead Until Dark (2001), the first in the series. Sookie has what she thinks of as a disability, which is that she can read minds.

Warning: This review has some "plot spoilers", although the novel is far more character-driven and even atmosphere-driven than plot-driven. The plot is actually pretty simple: Girl meets boy. (Well, vampire boy.) Girl and boy fall in love. Their romance has complications: rivals, lifestyle differences, schedule issues, community disapproval, lovers' quarrels. Plus girl is being stalked by a serial killer.

The novel is set up as a mystery novel with the usual trappings of the genre: dead bodies, red herrings, building suspense. Pretty basic stuff. But what makes the story interesting is Sookie's gradual initiation into the world of the vampires. And the sexy aspect of the "vamps" is played pretty heavily. The process in Dead Until Dark could be taken as Sookie's delayed coming-of-age, as she learns about her full sexuality for the first time. Or, as Sookie might put it (at least when talking about others), when she finally gets laid.

As Sookie explains repeatedly, dating has been an unpleasant experience for her because she could read the lustful thoughts of her dates. She can't read Vampire Bill's thoughts, though, a fact she finds attractive. In other words, he's a polite, somewhat older man who treats her with dignity and isn't so horny he can barely concentrate on a conversation. Actually, he looks around 28, his age when he was "brought over" to the vampire state. But he was originally born in 1840, which gives him quite a few years on Sookie. But his age and experience serving in the Confederate Army was of considerable interest to Sookie's grandmother, who had him come to give a talk at her historical society, the Daughters of the Glorious Dead.

So a lot of the drama and suspense is around Sookie's progressive revelations about the vampire scene. A great deal of the charm of the story is receiving the narration through the viewpoint of Sookie, a smart, unconventional, optimistic, self-confident but inexperienced Southern small-town girl, perceptive and intelligent but unsophisticated, curious and open-minded enough to date a vamp in defiance of public disapproval (including a psycho serial killer out to get "fang-bangers") but cautious and skeptical about the darker aspects of vampire culture. Harris strikes a light-hearted and humorous tone, not easy to do tastefully in a story full of blood-suckers, vigilante arsonists, a serial killer, a shapeshifter and a telepath.

She does overdo it a bit on the Southern clichees. So many of the characters are said to live in trailers that I was beginning to think that Bon Temps was more a trailer park than a small town. And she introduces a comic-relief character, Vampire Bubba, who used to be Elvis Presley in his human life. Couldn't she at least have made him an Elvis imitator?

But the godforsaken small town setting makes a nice grounding for the exotic supernatural creatures, allowing Harris to transform what would otherwise would threaten to be a deadly-dull life in an isolated, impoverished small town into an exotic adventureland. The efforts of the vamp community to live on equal terms in human society makes for a lot of interesting and amusing dilemmas. Sookie's boyfriend Vampire Bill is taking the effort further than most by trying to live apart from vampire "nests" and live on his own among humans. This is known as "mainstreaming" in the vamp community.

One of the main sources of dramatic tension in Sookie's life in this story is the obvious interest in her from Eric, a blond vampire who is the leader of the vamps' Area 5 community and therefore Bill's superior authority in the vampire hierarchy.

The first season of the True Blood TV series generally followed the plot of Dead Until Dark.

Tags: charlaine harris, dead until dark, sookie stackhouse, true blood