A Touch of Dead: Sookie Stackhouse short stories

A collection of five Sookie Stackhouse short stories just came out this week, A Touch of Dead:Sookie Stackhouse: The Complete Stories by Charlaine Harris. The Sookie novels and stories are those on which True Blood is based. These five stories are all previously published pieces and, as the title suggests, all of the short stories featuring Sookie to date. There have also been four other short stories published so far featuring the "Sookieverse" but not Sookie herself. (See list at the end of this post.) "The Britlingens Go To Hell" (2009) sounds especially intriguing. The Britlingens are inter-dimensional warriors who first pop up at a national vampire convention in All Together Dead (2007).

The first story in A Touch of Dead is "Fairy Dust", which first appeared in the anthology Powers of Detection (2006). In Sookietime, it falls after Dead to the World (2004) and features the fairy twins Claudine and Claude. It turns out that their are actually part of a fairy triplet set. But the third triplet, Claudette, has turned up dead. That's where the title comes from; fairies turn to fairy dust when they die. The remaining twins enlist Sookie's help to figure out which of three suspects offed their sister. And, as we learn in the most recent Sookie novel Dead and Gone (2009), having fairies ticked off at you can get very unpleasant. Better not to bump off fairies if you don't just have to.

Claude and Claudine are particularly attractive to humans. "Claude looked like a Clavin Klein underwear model," Sookie observes; "in fact if the designer had been there, he'd have signed the twins on the spot, and there'd have been drool all over the contract." They are even more attractive to vampires.

"Dracula Night" first appeared in Charlaine Harris, et al, Many Bloody Returns: Tales of Birthdays with Bite (2007). The copy of the original anthology I saw doesn't specify that it's for "young adult" readers. But it does seem to be more of a "story for the whole family" (the TV euphemism for "safe for kids to watch"). In the introduction to A Touch of Dead, Harris says that this one of the five "was the most fun to write" but that she also had to "smooth out the edges of the story". She also says this was the hardest to place in the novel's chronology, but she positions it as just prior to Dead As A Doornail (2005).

Sookie's fantasy life is tamer than usual. And the hottest sex comes when Sookie shows up at Fangtasia:

Eric's eyes were blazing with excitement. Without a word, he dipped me as though we were dancing and planted a hell of a kiss on me: lips, tongue, the entire osculant assemblage. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. When I was quivering, he assisted me to rise. His brilliant smile revealed glistening fangs. Eric had enjoyed himself.

Other than Sookie smooching with Eric, the story itself is about a Halloween party at Fangtasia and which Eric is sure that Count Dracula himself will show up. I suppose the only real addition to the Sookieverse here is that it actually includes Dracula, aka Vlad Tepes in life. Pam tells Sookie:

"His own people regarded him with fear, of course. But the local vamps admired Vlad so much they actually brought him over when he was dying, thus ushering in the new era of the vampire. After monks buried him on an island called Snagov, he rose on the third night to become the first modern vampire. Up until then, the vampires were like ... well, disgusting. Completely secret. Ragged, filthy, living in holes in cemeteries, like animals. But Vlad Dracul had been a ruler, and he wasn't going to dress in rags and live in a hole for any reason." Pam sounded proud.

I think it's kind of a throwaway fun story, so it's probably not worth quibbling about seeming inconsistencies. For instance, Pam explains to Sookie rules about vampires killing other vampires that don't seem quite to match with Eric's staking the bartender in the first novel Dead Until Dark (2001) or even one of the vampire trials Sookie observes in All Together Dead (2007). I don't have the earlier version in front of me. But I'm pretty sure this is one of the aspects she cleaned up a bit in this version, although at the cost of introducing another inconsistency and slightly weakening the plot premise.

Unlike the other stories, this one doesn't seem to add anything to the relationships among the various characters.

"One Word Answer" originally appeared in the anthology Bite (2005) and is the one of the five that adds the most to the ongoing narrative in the novel series. The action here is just prior to Definitely Dead (2006) and is important enough to the larger story that Harris had to recapitulate part of it in that novel. But even knowing the basic plot before I read it, there was still a nice twist at the end.

This one sets the stage for Sookie's own involvement with the Vampire Queen of Louisiana in New Orleans, which is where Definitely Dead is set. Sookie's cousin Hadley is first introduced in "One Word Answer", a character who is important to more than one later development in the Sookie saga. Sookie learns what Hadley has been up to since the last time she heard from her: "My cousin Hadley, the cheerleader, had become a vampire lesbian voodooienne. Who knew?"

Sookie's sardonic sense of humor has a memorable moment when she meets an unpleasant looking vampire named Waldo:

Most vampires are good-looking or extremely talented in some way or another. Naturally, when a vamp brings a human over, the vamp's likely to pick a human who attracted him or her by beauty or some necessary skill. I didn't know who the heck had brought over Waldo, but I figured it was somebody crazy.

I found the story "Lucky" to be the most fun of the five. It features Amelia, a witch who becomes Sookie's friend in Definitely Dead. This one falls after All Together Dead and first appeared in the collection Unusual Suspects (2008).

It also features Bob the cat, who is one of my favorite characters. This is set post-Katrina and the Katrina refugee situation figures into the plot. Like all the first four stories, it's a mystery. In this case, Sookie and Amelia are trying to figure out who's been going into the office of Sookie's friend and insurance agent Greg Aubert, who has his own special twist on the insurance business. You want this guy for your insurance agent, trust me!

There's a good scene with Sookie reading minds in Merlotte's bar, when Greg comes in with his wife Christy, his son Little Greg, and his daughter Lindsay, "who had the mistaken idea that she looked like Christina Aguilera." Sookie relates:

After I'd brought them their drinks and turned in their food order, I puttered around studying the Aubert family. They seemed so typical it just hurt. Little Greg thought about his girlfriend mostly, and I learned more than I wanted to know.

The final story, "Gift Wrap", is the most charming. It features one of Sookie's most exotic relatives, a story about a Werewolf feud and a couple of really good Christmas presents for Sookie. One of them she finds unexpectedly in the woods. This one originally appeared in Wolfsbane and Mistletoe (2008), as in Sookietime falls just before the apocalyptic events of Dead and Gone (2009).

Cover of Must Love Hellhounds: I'm not sure if that's a Britlingen in that picture or not, but it could be

Via www.charlaineharris.com, here are the other short stories to date from the Sookieverse but without Sookie herself 07/26/09:

"Dancers in the Dark" novella in Night's Edge (2004)

"Tacky" in My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (2006)

"The Britlingens Go To Hell" in Must Love Hellhounds (2009)

“Bacon" in Strange Brew (2009)

Tags: charlaine harris, sookie stackhouse, true blood

Dead and Gone (9th Sookie Stackhouse novel)

This ninth novel in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse vampire mystery series, Dead and Gone (2009) continues the somewhat more somber tone of the previous novel. It's not that the humor is gone or that the previous books were lacking in violent action. But the narration in Sookie's voice continues the more worldly-wise tone she assumed in From Dead to Worse.


In previous stories we've criss-crossing clashes among various "supe" (supernatural) communities: vampires, werewolves (Weres), shifters (were-creatures other than Weres), witches, and the occasional goblin or extra-dimensional Britlingen. The "Sookieverse" has developed quite a population of strange supernatural beings.

In this novel, a war with the fairy community of supes is the centerpiece. If you had a fixed image of fairies as benevolent creatures like the tooth fairy, this novel should cure you of that permanently. The fairies of the Sookieverse are very powerful, care less for human standards of conduct than the vamps, and some of them are very evil and cruel. The first Sookie novel appeared in 2001, so the Sookieverse to this point grew up during the Cheney years. Probably one reflection of that is a wrenching scene in which Sookie is tortured by two hideous and sadistic fairies. Harris doesn't indulge in pornographic gore; her sparse description leaves much to the imagination, which probably makes it seem more sinister than a more explicit description would have.

This probably portends a continuation of a darker view by Sookie of the supe world, even a major disillusionment. Her curiosity isn't gone. But here she seems to feel the burden of dark sides of her involvement. Now, however, she's even more clearly identified as part of the supe world herself since she's not only a telepath but descended from a fairy. This theme promises to reappear because even though the general fairy problem is solved by the end of this novel, there are still some on the loose. Plus her brother Jason is now doubly supe-ed up, as both a werepanther and part fairy.

Sookie's old boyfriend Bill enjoys something of a comeback with Sookie in this story. But the Eric-Bill rivalry continues and Sookie definitely hasn't made up her mind.

Sookie relates:

"You're not dead," Dr. Ludwig pointed out.

But I'd come pretty damn close; I'd sort of stepped over the line. There'd been an optimum rescue time. If I'd been liberated before that time, I would have laughed all the way to the secret supernatural clinic, or wherever I was. But I'd looked at death too closely - close enough to see all the pores in Death's face - and I'd suffered too much. I wouldn't bounce back this time.

Tags: charlaine harris, dead+and+gone, sookie stackhouse, true blood

From Dead to Worse (8th Sookie Stackhouse novel)

From Dead to Worse (2008) by Charlaine Harris shows the heroine Sookie Stackhouse, starring here in her eighth novel in a more cautious and reflective mood than before. Not world-weary but more worldly-wise. Her world being populated with not only humans but vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, fairies and sundry other "supes" (supernatural creatures). She's more marked by sadness than before. Which makes sense because she's been through some stressful times with her supes, who have feuds that would make the Hatfields and McCoys look like friendly cousins to each other.


Sookie's more somber tone as narrator is evident in the novel's second paragraph, where she unusually telegraphs the action of the novel:

But what happened in my little corner of northwest Lousisiana wasn't an epic story. The vampire war was more of the nature of a small-country takeover, and the Were war was like a border skirmish. Even in the annals of supernatural America - I guess they exist somewhere - they were minior chapters ... unless you were actively involved in the takeovers and skirmishses.

She continues by letting us know that she was indeed involved: "Then they became pretty damn major."

The previous installment of the Sookie story, All Together Dead, had the strongest plot of the series so far so it's not surprising that this one isn't quite as engaging. The plot, that is, not the story as a whole, which is very engaging. One notable aspect of this story is that the exposition of past occurrences is smoother and more integrated into the narrative flow than in the previous books.

Along with the Were and vampire wars, which each provide some real mystery and excitement, Sookie's family saga takes a new turn when she meets here great-grandfather Niall, who is a fairy. He gives her some of the background on her family tree which has given Sookie a touch of fairy blood that enhances her attractiveness to the vampires in the increasingly complex mythology of Sookie's world.

But while this connection to Niall broadens her family network, her always-rocky relationship to her brother Jason deteriorates when he sets her up to find his werepanther wife in bed with someone else. At the end of the story they are not on speaking terms.

But at the end Sookie's maternal instincts find a new object of engagement, a cousin she only recently learned she had, a little boy named Hunter Savoy who lives in Red Ditch, Louisiana, not far from Sookie's hometown Bon Temps. She lets his father Remy Savoy know about her gift of telepathy (or disability, as she still sometimes thinks of it). And she determines that Hunter is also telepathic, a fact which Remy was beginning to suspect.

She expresses her developing sense of pragmatic caution about the world of the supes when she reflects to herself:

People all had secrets, and I was in a position to know most of them. Being a telepath is not any fun. You hear the tawdry, the sad, the disgusting, the petty ... the things we all want to keep hidden from our fellow humans so they'll keep their image of us intact.

The secrets I know least about are my own ...

And Sookie's love life continues to be challenging, with her two main vampire boyfriends Eric and Bill playing prominent roles as well as her were-tiger guy Quinn. Relationships to in-laws in the supe world can also be quite complicated.

Sookie's overall story is fascinating on a number of levels. One of them is the enticing sense is that the reality we think we know about the people around us is actually far more complex than we normally assume. And that having our curiosity satisfied about some of those hidden truths can be as terrifying and dangerous as it is exciting and satisfying.

I've always suspected, for instance, that one of my neighbors is a were-raccoon ...

Tags: charlaine harris, from dead to worse, sookie stackhouse, true blood

All Together Dead (7th Sookie Stackhouse novel)

All Together Dead (2007) provides the most exciting and interesting plot line of any of the first nine novels. Sookie is drawn even deeper into vampire politics through her alliance with Sophie-Marie Leclerc, the vampire Queen of Louisiana.



The "all together dead" of the title refers to the national vampire convention to which Sookie accompanies the Louisiana vampire crew. There are a variety of conflicts and mysteries at work here involving the Louisiana vampires, the Arkansas vampires, the Kentucky vampires, Sookie and Sophie and Eric and Quinn, and the anti-vampire Fellowship of the Sun cult, who go all Timmy McVeigh in this one.

Sookie defines her strange journey into the secrets of the supernatural beings in a conversation with her boss and friend, Sam Merlotte, who is a shapeshifter who can turn into a dog (and has to on full moon nights):

"Sam, two years ago I didn't have any idea of what the world around me was really like. I didn't know what you really were; I didn't know that vampires were as different from each other as we are. I didn't know that there were real fairies. I couldn't have imagined any of that." I shook my head. "What a world this is, Sam. It's wonderful and it's scary. Each day is different. I never thought I would have any kind of life for myself, and now I do."

We meet a new brand of supes in this ones, Britlingen warriors from another dimension. Sookie's diplomatic skills get even more workouts dealing with the Britlingens along with the various other factions.

Sookie cxontinues her romance with Quinn the weretiger, who accompanies her on the trip. Eric, the vampire sheriff of Lousiana Area 5, is not pleased with this, given his own intense interest in Sookie. Her vampire ex-boyfriend Bill isn't pleased about it either, because he's still carrying a torch for her, too.

Sookie's fellow telepath, Barry the Bellman who she met in Living Dead in Dallas, shows up again and they get to know each other better.

Tags: charlaine harris, all together dead, sookie stackhouse, true blood

Definitely Dead (6th Sookie Stackhouse novel)

The plot of Charlaine Harris' Definitely Dead (2006) is the strongest of the series, so far, a trend that began with the previous novel. It involves Sookie learning more about the last days of her vampire cousin Hadley (now staked and "definitely dead"), the marriage of the vampire queen of Louisiana Sophie-Anne Leclerc to the vampire king of Arkansas, Peter Threadgill, with associated complications, and the efforts of the Pelt family to get revenge on Sookie for the death of their were-lynx daughter Debbie (who Sookie shot in self-defense in Dead to the World).


The metaplot is something of a mixed blessing. Sookie as the narrator describes the basic metaplot extending across the whole series to this point:

In the past year, somehow I'd assumed the role of guardian of the weird in my little corner of our state. I was the poster girl for interspecies tolerance. I'd learned a lot about the other universe, the one that surrounded the (mostly oblivious) human race. It was kind of neat, knowing stuff that other people didn't. But it complicated my already difficult life, and it led me into dangerous byways among beings who desperately wanted to keep their existence a secret.

We learn a lot more about fairies in this novel. We also learn that Sookie has a fairy ancestor of some sort.

Sookie acquires a new friend in this one, a New Orleans witch about Sookie's age named Amelia Broadway. In the end, Amelia goes to stay with Sookie in Bon Temps for a while, along with her cat Bob, who had actually been a human male witch who Amelia had accidentally turned into a cat and doesn't know how to turn him back.

And she begins a hot romance with Quinn, a weretiger who she met in the Dead As a Doornail.

Tags: charlaine harris, definitely dead, sookie stackhouse, true blood

Dead as a Doornail (5th Sookie Stackhouse novel)

"Being with a vampire is almost as tension-free as being alone, except, of course, for the blood-sucking possibilities," explains Sookie Stackhouse in this fifth installment of her continuing adventures with vampires and other "supes", (werewolves, shapeshifters, goblins, witches, fairies, a maenad and, of course vampires): Dead as a Doornail (2005) by Charlaine Harris. Sookie has a kind of sardonic personality, and her irony gets sharper the deeper she delves into the world of the supernatural beings, aka, supes.


This is the first of the novels in this series where the plot is really strong. Of course, it helps that by this point, there is a strong meta-plot going through the series, which is Sookie's continuing initiation into the world of the supes and her romantic entanglements with Bill, Eric, Alcide, Calvin, and Sam, to hit the main ones. Sookie's attractive and young and has apparently good taste in men, at least physically.

This plot is actually similar to that in Dead Until Dark, the first in the Sookie series. An unknown killer is shooting people, including Sookie, and he/she needs to be found out and captured. Harris uses the metaplot to offer us plenty of suspects, such as the two private detectives investigating the death of Debbie Pelt, a shifter who came to an unfortunate end in Sookie's kitchen; Charles Twining, a one-eyed vampire bartender who had been a pirate in his human life; and, Mickey, a rogue vampire who takes up with Tara Thornton, who has morphed into a close childhood friend of Sookie's over the course of five novels.

Since the assassin is targeting the "two-natured" (shapeshifters), the Weres of Shreveport and the werepanthers of Hotshot, the inbred rural Pantherville village out from Bon Temps. In the previous novel, Sookie's dumb-but-sexy brother Jason was bitten repeatedly by a jealous werepanther and in this novel he begins experiencing his change during the full moon. He doesn't become an actual panther, but kind of a panther-man. Jason quickly learns to like it.

Sookie finds herself drawn more into the dark world of Were politics, via her friend and admirer Alcide. And she finds occasion to do some remodeling at the house her grandmother left her.

Sookie's acquaintance with the world of the fairies expands with a larger role for Claude, the brother of Sookie's fairy guardian Claudine. Like his sister, Claude has immense sex appeal for humans, although he prefers guys. And all fairies are intoxicatingly attractive for vampires.

Tags: charlaine harris, dead as a doornail, sookie stackhouse, true blood

Dead to the World (4th Sookie Stackhouse novel)

Charlaine Harris' Dead to the World (2004) is the fourth novel in the Sookie saga. Here we delve deeper into the "Sookieverse" of "supes" (supernatural beings) with witches coming into the pictures and fairies beginning to play a prominent role. While the plots of the first three novels were somewhat weak, the plot here is definitely a step up. But the continuing character development and relationship-building isn't impeded by it.

Harris came up with a clever device to have Eric Northman, the sheriff of Vampire Area 5 in Louisiana, show his softer and more appealing side. Eric has been attracted to Sookie from the first but until the third novel, Club Dead, Bill Compton had been her vampire boyfriend. In this novel, a group of witches try to take over Eric's businesses in Shreveport and put a spell on him that leaves him running toward Sookie's house without his memory. Sookie puts him up in her house. And they have quite a lot of fun "playing house". This whole situation also puts Sookie and Eric's second-in-command Pam on better terms.

Eric eventually regains his memory but loses the memory of his time together with Sookie. This allows Sookie to have a romantic connection to Eric but also allows him to become his more sinister and threatening self. Meanwhile, Sookie is beginning to leave a trail of bodies of her romantic rivals behind her. Well, the one she staked in Club Dead was a vampire, so she didn't really leave a body behind. She uses a shotgun in this one. But it was in legitimate self-defense, so it doesn't make Sookie a serial killer. Not exactly.

There's a witch war - a local one, at least - as part of this one, so there's plenty of action. The Shreveport Weres (werewolves) make an unusual alliance with the vamps to fight the witches. Not all the witches are evil. Some good ones help out Sookie's side. We also learn that there is a difference between witches and Wiccans, the latter being a more touchy-feely New Agey brand of witch. The hardcore witches tend to hold the Wiccans in contempt.

The Anna Paquin-esque version of the cover

Sookie's brother Jason's amorous adventures finally get him into even more serious trouble than in the first novel, Dead Until Dark, when he's suspected of being a serial killer. (The cops were suspecting the wrong Stackhouse of those tendencies!) Jason's troubles involve a small community of inbred werepanthers who live out from Bon Temps.

Vampire Bubba shows up to play his role of comic relief. We also get the tidbit that Bubba can enter dwellings without an invitation, unlike the other vampires in the Sookieverse. Bubba's coming off to vampirism was flawed, so he would up "not altogether a true vampire," as Pam explains to Sookie.

Sookie also acquires a fairy guardian, Claudine, in this novel. There's a funny scene in which Claudine is standing around with a group, with Eric and Bill being almost irresistibly drawn to her. We learn that fairies are particularly attractive to vampires. She explains to Sookie, "My blood is intoxicating to a vampire. You don't want to know what they'd be like after they had me."

In this installment, Harris pushes back Vampire Bill's death date - or his coming over date, if you prefer - to 1867 from 1868, though it doesn't really affect anything in the plot. Eric also is described as having the title of "sheriff" of Area 5 for the first time, the state being divided up into vampire jurisdictions. They have a parallel system of government and justice.

My favorite quote from this novel comes from Sookie, pondering one of her many moral dilemmas: "I blinked, wondering if that wasn't exactly what Christianity taught. But I am no theologian or Bible scholar, and I would have to leave the judgment on my action to God, who was also no theologian."

Tags: charlaine harris, dead to the world, sookie stackhouse, true blood

Club Dead (3rd Sookie Stackhouse novel)

Club Dead (2003), the third novel in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mysteries series, livens up the dialogue, considerably complicates Sookie's love life, and gives Vampire Bubba a much more significant role. But the plot is the weakest of the first three novels. (Warning: "plot spoilers" in this review.)


Sookie is the curious, adventurous, drily witty narrator and human friend to an increasing circle of supernatural beings, aka, "supes".

None of the first three novels are plot-driven, so having a weaker plot doesn't distract that much from the story, which is driven by Sookie's further immersion into the world of the supernatural and her juggling three suitors: Vampire Bill, Eric the head of Louisiana's vampire Area 5, and a new one, Alcide Herveaux (pronounced "Al-see with the d barely sounded".) Alcide is a surveyor and also a "supe" (supernatural being), more specifically a werewolf.

We learn a lot more about the world of the shapeshifters, including the fact that the werewolves are a type of shapeshifter but prefer to be calls Weres. Weres get huffy if other "shifters" use were- as part of their disignation, e.g., were-dog, were-panther. Weres also have a reputation as blue-collar toughs among the supernatural world, vampires being a wealthier bunch, on the whole. Alcide is fairly wealthy, though, through the family survey business.

Vamps and Weres are generally wary of each other. Alcide comes into the story because his father has gotten over his head in gambling debt and the Louisiana vamps wound up with his marker. So he has to accompany Sookie to Jackson, Mississippi, to help her find Bill. Vampire Bill disappeared there while working on a special project for the vampire queen of Louisiana, who we hear about but don't meet. Bill has also fallen back in love with a former lover of his, Vampire Lorena, and intends to dump Sookie for Lorena. This doesn't make Sookie very happy. But she agrees to help Eric find Bill.

Just as most of the second novel was set in Dallas, this one is mostly set in Jackson. There are some local touches there, including Sookie and Alcide going to the Mayflower Cafe and to Hal and Mal's, both real places and longtime Jackson landmarks.

This is the first time we learn about the state-level organization of the vamps involving royalty. Mississippi has a king vampire, a gay vamp named Russell Edgington.

As in the first two novels, the tone is humorous and light, despite the Gothic darkness involved in the settings and conspiracies. And with this novel, it seems fair to say that there is a meta-plot at work, too. It turns around the interaction of various factions among the supernatural (vamps, shifters, Weres) and Sookie's romances with Bill's rivals for her love. In this novel, Bill becomes a minor character, with most of the story devoted to Sookie's relationship with Alcide and Eric. Especially Eric. Running off to Mississippi with Lorena was not Bill's optimal move to keep Sookie's romantic allegiance. Sookie removes Lorena as a rival of hers. But she's major-league ticked off with Bill over the whole thing. Plus, there's a darker reason for her breaking off with Bill, due to a situation set up by Debbie Pelt, Alcide's were-fox former girlfriend, but nevertheless ugly and ugly moment with Bill.

Vampire Bubba, who was a very, very famous singer from Memphis in his human life which ended in 1977, plays a bigger part in this novel. He's mainly comic relief, but he fits into the story much better than when he was introduced in the first novel, i.e., he doesn't seem such a kitschy character. He does get crucified in this novel. Literally.

Sookie's friend Tara also plays a larger role in this installment. A new type of supe is introduced, a goblin named Mr. Hob [groan]. And Alcide's were-fox former girlfriend Debbie Pelt becomes a very annoying factor in Sookie's life. As Lorena finds out, Sookie can be a surprisingly tough enemy. Even aside from her vampire and other supe connections.

From the previews it appears that the second half of the second season of HBO's True Blood will be based in part on Club Dead. The Lorena character has already been introduced on the TV program while Bill and Sookie are in Dallas, which was the setting of the previous novel, Living Dead in Dallas. In the series, Jessica the Teenage Vampire apparently is the comic relies substitute for Bubba, who doesn't appear in the series.

Tags: charlaine harris, club dead, sookie stackhouse, true blood

Living Dead in Dallas (2nd Sookie Stackhouse novel)

Living Dead in Dallas (2002) by Charlaine Harris is her second installment in the continuing story of Sookie Stackhouse of Bon Temps, Louisiana. At present, the story stands at nine novels and five short stories in various anthologies, with a Sookie short short collection advertised as "The Complete Stories" scheduled for publication in October. Sookie is in the early stages of discovering the world of the "supes", primarily vampires so far but also shapeshifters, a process which began in the first novel.


The plot wraps Sookie's trip to Dallas and her encounter with the Fellowship of the Sun into the middle of a local plot about the murder of Lafayette in connection with a sex club. Lafayette had been the cook at Sam bar, Marlotte's, The second season of the True Blood HBO series has broadly followed the plot of this novel in its first five episodes, but with differences, e.g., Lafayette was not the one mysteriously murdered by having his heart removed.

The Fellowship of the Sun is a Christian fanatic group whose only real purpose is to oppose vampires. The conflict in Dallas, where Sookie and her two vampire suitors Bill and Eric confront the Fellowship, is surrounded by a second plot line that plays out in Bon Temps. This involves Miss Clarissa, a maenad, a supernatural follower of the Greek god Dionysus, whose presence becomes entangled with a murder mystery.

In Dallas, Sookie meets Barry the Bellboy in their hotel, which caters to vampires. Barry is another telepath and he and Sookie discover they can send telepathic messages to each other. More shapeshifters, one perhaps a bat, two other werewolves, one a doctor (animal shape not specified) are added to Sam, who revealed himself as a shapeshifter in the first novel. Shifters and vampires don't always get along well together but sometimes find themselves cooperating for the common good.

Eric, the leader of the vampires' Louisiana Area 5, shapes up as someone in whom Sookie has some interest. He had seemed more of an exclusively threatening presence in the first novel. Bill remains Sookie's vamp boyfriend. But tensions arise when Bill has a mysterious apparent romance with Portia Bellefleur, sister of one of the local cops. Near the end of this novel, when Eric's arrival at her house surprises Sookie, we learn that the vampires in the Sookie Stackhouse world have to have the permission of humans before they can enter their houses.

As in the first novel, the plot is much less important than the characters and Sookie's wide-eyed amazement at her continuous discoveries about the supernatural community. The plot is more complex than the first novel's, though.

This book gives the human life dates of Vampire Bill - William Thomas Compton is his full name - as 04/09/1840-11/25/1868. A supporting character, Tara Thornton, is introduced in this novel. Benedict "Eggs" Tallie is Tara's boyfriend. Tara runs a clothing store in a strip mall that Bill has bought. There's an orgy party, too.

The first half of Season 2 of the HBO series True Blood largely follows the plot of Living Dead in Dallas. Not completely, though. Jason isn't a convert to the Fellowship in the book as he is in the TV program.

Tags: charlaine harris, living dead in dallas, sookie stackhouse, true blood

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

The politics of True Blood

I'm a big fan of Michelle Goldberg's work. Her Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2006) is an excellent, carefully research piece of journalism about the far-right politics and emotional appeal of today's Christian Right leaders, factors about which some of their own fans are in denial. Since real journalism is becoming an endangered species in the US, we're lucky to have writers like her around. Her Salon article about the "war on Christmas" fraud pimped regularly every year now by FOX News and the OxyContin crowd is a good example of analyzing a piece of rightwing crackpottery without giving it more dignity than it deserves: How the secular humanist grinch didn't steal Christmas Salon 11/21/05.

Sookie and her vampire boyfriend Bill

But when it comes to TV criticism, she has a ways to go. More specifically, she needs to brush up on vampire lit a little more. Because her essay on the HBO series True Blood is way off base: Vampire Conservatives The Daily Beast 07/18/09.

I don't put a whole lot of faith in arguments that try to derive social trends from the popularity of certain movies or TV shows. True, social trends, economic situations and political concerns play a role in art, and there are ways to discuss what those are. But people don't still read John Milton's Paradise Lost because it drew on the experience of the English Civil Wars. They read it because it's a good story and technically well done, good enough to still make it appealing despite some now-archaic language.

Michelle doesn't quite fall into that bad habit. But what she does do is make what seems like a forced comparison between "antigay literature" (by which I assume she means writing with a propaganda purpose of creating hostility to gays) and True Blood.

Underlying much antigay literature is the unspoken assumption that homosexuality, while disgusting, is also unbearably tempting. And so, in True Blood, is sex with vampires. Sookie aside, those who crave it are somewhat pathetic—they’re referred to, derisively, as fangbangers. Human-vampire carnality is often rough and humiliating. When there is love involved, it's laced with darkness, tragedy, and pain.

And this is supposed to be a contrast to human sexuality in the real world, straight and otherwise? Good grief, love doesn't have to have a lot of "carnality" along with it to produce "darkness, tragedy, and pain."

Vampire sheriff Eric considers the situation

This strikes me as a personal impression. Some people don't like musicals. I don't like slasher movies, myself, because the gore often strikes me as over-the-top and gratuitous. But to say that I don't like slasher movies because they somehow suggest that love involves "darkness, tragedy, and pain" would just be trite. If not entirely meaningless. And that's how Michelle's comment comes across here. (True Blood is not a "slasher" series, by the way.)

The show does use a comparison between the vampires "coming out of the coffin" and the current debates over LGBT rights. But one of the major ongoing themes of the first season (now available on DVD) is whether humans or vampires are more dangerous and deadly. The chief villain of the first season is a human serial killer who has an irrational obsession with human women who sleep with vampires.

In the second season, the human heroine Sookie Stackhouse, played wonderfully by Anna Paquin, goes to Dallas with her vampire boyfriend Bill and her vampire admirer Eric. They find themselves arguing against the aggressiveness of the local Texas vampire leader. In one scene in the fourth episode, Eric tells Bill that the Texas leader wants to just start killing humans indiscriminately to free a kidnapped Texas vampire. Bill expresses shock that he would want to start unprovoked aggression against humans, saying that it's insane. Eric responds, "That's Texas."

In case the George W. Bush analogy wasn't explicit enough, in the fifth episode Bill protests to the Texas leader that his proposed attack would destroy the whole international policy of the world vampire community. The Texas vamp just snarls that he thought the whole getting-along-with-humans idea was ridiculous to begin with.

But someone seeing those episode ten years from now might not think of George W. Bush and the Iraq War immediately, but see it instead as a general joke about the famous stereotypical swaggering Texas style.

I would also question her interpretation of the story itself when she says:

Of course, not all vampires are bad — hence the tragic romance between the series’ leads, the vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), and the psychic waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin). But Bill retains his humanity through an act of will. He hates his kind and avoids their company, and even he sometimes loses control and turns violent. And as gallant as he is, he's aggressive, even feral in bed, where his fangs come out.

The story does not show Bill as hating vampires and avoiding their company. And Bill's aggressiveness isn't primarily shown through his fangs coming out. (Did she expect a vampire story with no fangs?) Or even his attitude in bed, where Sookie is at least as enthusiastic as he, though she doesn't have fangs. Bill's aggressiveness comes out more in his willingness to get aggressive to protect Sookie and other humans. But he's also a more conflicted character than Michelle's comment there suggests. Just as the more sinister and violent Eric has more positive sides.

(I'm partially influenced here by the Charlaine Harris novels on which the series is based. By the third novel, Bill's uglier side becomes more manifest and Eric's better inclinations - at least from Sookie's point of view - emerge more clearly.)

And a nit: Sookie is a "telepath", not a "psychic", a distinction she insists on making in the books.

And I'd have to say Michelle's also off-base on one of my favorite minor characters in the series:

Homosexuality is not the only right-wing preoccupation that True Blood turns into a genuine menace. One of last season’s most sinister characters was Amy Burley, who played the bohemian Northeastern liberal-arts chick from hell. Among this season’s villain's is Maryann Forrester, an urbane, stylish social worker who lavishes attention on the lost and friendless and feasts on piles of fresh produce while using some kind of evil witchy power to drive people into fits of pagan abandon. She’s a wonderful creation, but she also seems like something sprung from the mind of a lip-smacking, hungry-eyed televangelist railing against feminism. [my emphasis]

I don't understand the bit about the Maryann character. If Michelle goes back to the Season 1 episode where Sookie's friend Tara Thornton gets arrested and uses the pause button, she could see clearly that Maryann's first appearance is as the naked woman standing beside the road at night with a razorback hog. Their appearance makes Tara run off the road and is the reason for Tara getting arrested in the first place; Maryann then rescues her from jail. Maryann is a sinister figure from the start, more like a New Agey cult leader than "something sprung from the mind of a lip-smacking, hungry-eyed televangelist railing against feminism."

The Amy Burley character played by Lizzy Caplan comes off more as tragic than "sinister". And her dark side is portrayed as coming from her traditional human prejudice that vampires aren't as good as humans, and even more so from her physical addiction to "V" (vampire's blood). But she is a very entertaining character, a kind of mystical-minded intellectual who genuinely seems to fall in love with Sookie's unselfconsciously stupid brother Jason. And her "sinister" side itself raises the issues of whether humans are more humane than vampires. She herself falls victim to the human mass-murderer driven by a psychotic hatred of vampires.

Michelle does point out that there is a villainous Christian fanatic group, the Fellowship of the Sun, that plays a big role and does not reflect particularly well on crackpot Christian groups. But I would also say that no one of normal perceptions is likely to imagine that the portrayal of the Fellowship is meant to be some kind of general slam against Christians or even fundamentalists. Their fanatical intolerance of the vamps and human friends of vamps clearly comes off as evil, further teasing out the theme of who is more destructive, humans or vamps.

The Sookie character is central to the series, kind of a Victoria Winters for the 2000s. And much of the charm of the story comes from the tensions that arise as her rural Louisiana community adjusts to the social changes produced by learning that supernatural beings live among them. She's an intelligent, open-minded, adventurous young woman who's also socially and sexually inexperienced. And like the rest of the characters on the show, improved impulse control would probably serve her well. Because her self-confidence combined with her naivete leads her into situations over her head. I think Anna Paquin does a great job portraying Sookie, right down to the beaming smile she makes when she gets nervous.

Tags: michelle goldberg, true blood