My Take in Brief: A terrific third installment, although I was slightly less enthralled this time out. This review contains spoilers.
For background on this series, and introductions to the main characters, see my reviews of Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas. This review contains spoilers for Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas.
Word on the Web:
Avid Book Reader, Keishon, B/B-
Book Smugglers, Ana and Thea, 6 and 7, respectively
LoveVampires, 5 stars
Thrifty Reader, B+
Amazon.com, 4 stars after 153 reviews
Fun Factoid: Alcide is the #10,386 ranked male first name in the United States, just ahead of Benilda. Louisiana, where the Southern Vampire Mysteries are set, has the most Alcides in the US, 150. Puzzlingly, despite its nearly exclusive use in Franco-American communities, the name is Italian for “strong one”.
Plot: Sookie’s boyfriend, Bill, disappears under mysterious circumstances and Sookie heads to Jackson, MI, home of the vamp bar “Club Dead” to find him, with the help of Alcide Herveaulx, a Were, and some old friends, including sexy vampire boss Eric and dimwitted vamp Bubba.
The Racy Romance Review:
As I did with the first two installments, I listened to this on audio, and once again, the narrator, Johanna Parker, was fantastic.
When the book opens, vampire boyfriend Bill has become inattentive to Sookie, spending all of his time at his computer. Sookie discovers that Bill has been working on a top secret project for the vampire Queen of Louisiana (an incredibly weak premise to hang the entire plot on, IMO). We learn that in the US, vampires are organized into kingdoms, equivalent to states, which are further divided into areas (Eric, Bill’s boss, is the Sheriff of Area 5). Suspecting that Bill is being held by the King of Mississippi, Russell Edgington, Sookie heads to Jackson to infiltrate the Mississippi vamp community and rescue him.
I’ve had a hard time writing this review, because I find I don’t have that much to say about Club Dead. The plot of Club Dead is more tightly focused than the previous two books, very simple and straightforward. There is almost no mystery to speak of. We see very little of Bill, and almost nothing of Bon Temps. There’s much less of Sookie puzzling about the differences between humans and nonhumans, or meditating on character or morality — in fact, although she grows quite a bit, she’s much less reflective throughout this book. And the new characters, such as Alcide, while solid, were less intriguing to me than the secondary characters in the first two books.
I did really enjoy it, though, and I’m still very enthusiastic about the series, which shows that I can actually love something even when it doesn’t make me think.
For one thing, there’s lots of Eric, and he has, as usual, the funniest lines in the book. An instant classic (just Google it if you doubt me) is this one:
[Eric] “What were you supposed to watch for?”
[Sonny] “A big dark guy and a tall blond guy. With a blond woman, really young, with nice tits.”
Eric’s hand moved too fast for me to track. I was only sure he’d moved when I saw the blood running down Sonny’s face.
“You are speaking of my future lover. Be more respectful.”
Although Sookie’s relationship with Eric becomes closer and more complicated in Club Dead, I was glad Harris avoided the temptation to send her running into Eric’s arms when things with Bill got tough.
Sookie’s relationship with straightforward, honest, practical contractor Alcide (“a proper man”), like much of the book, is very touching in a bittersweet way. On one level, there’s the mutual physical attraction, which can’t quite be explored thanks to both of them being semi-attached to others. On another level, despite being a Were, Alcide presents a kind of normalcy that Bill never can. The scene when Alcide comes to pick Sookie up to take her to Mississippi is one of my favorites in the book. She makes him breakfast and marvels at their companionability:
As I looked out the kitchen window at the cold landscape, I realized that this was how I had envisioned my future, on the few occasions I’d let myself imagine a man sharing my house.
This was the way life was supposed to be, for normal people. It was morning, time to get up and work, time for a woman to cook breakfast for a man, if he had to go out and earn. This big rough man was eating real food. He almost certainly had a pickup truck sitting out in front of my house.
We find out very early that Bill has left Sookie for Lorena, his vamp ex, and that Lorena has likely betrayed him to Edgington. In many ways, the first two books were about growth and gain, and this book is about the losses that came with Sookie’s journey into the supernatural realm.
Like her trust in the power of love. All of the things that made Sookie love Bill so intensely — her immaturity in love, her loyalty, her steadfastness, her sense of right and wrong — make her pain at his betrayal that much worse. Sookie’s grief (for most of the book, we don’t know what has happened to Bill, or even whether he lives) saturates Club Dead, and Harris does an amazing job of conveying the heartbreak of first love gone bad.
This is perhaps why I was disappointed in the denouement of Bill and Sookie’s relationship.
Showing her loyalty, Sookie decides to try to rescue Bill. I found the rescue, including the confrontation with Lorena, anticlimactic, but I figure I can’t always have what I want as a reader (and that’s usually a good thing, since authors can write their stories better than I can).
However, I was primed for an emotional confrontation between Sookie and Bill. What I got was very disappointing. Bill never directly addresses his betrayal (except by saying, “I already got paid back by that piece of madness”) and Sookie never really forces him to. Oh, she does the right thing, in the end, by showing him the door (her “Bill, I rescind your invitation to this house” is a great moment in literature for all of us Bill haters), but I had just spent 200 pages with Sookie and her feelings of betrayal, anger, jealousy, and hurt, which were very touchingly portrayed, and I found it incredible that so little of her inner world would be shared with this man who had meant everything to her.
But this is still Sookie’s story, and that’s all to the good. Just as she had with morality, she finds that love is complicated. I think Harris does an amazing job of communicating the complicated feelings Sookie has throughout the book for Bill.
One last point: in looking around the web at reviews of Club Dead, I noticed a number of readers feeling annoyed that every man Sookie meets seems to want her, and disappointed that Sookie seems to want them right back. As to the first issue, I guess if I read a lot more SF/F, I would be tired of the trope of the irresistable heroine, too, but I feel that Sookie’s attractiveness is not only believable (she’s an all-American blond with a great rack — she is aptly named, both “stacked” and a “[brick] house” — and she’s got the telepathy which gives her an extra lure), but handled really well by Sookie herself.
As to Sookie’s lust for several different men … I feel that Harris, and Sookie, seems to “blame” some of it on her romance with a vampire, as if it’s “not really Sookie”, but rather the corrupting effects of sex crazy vamps. I hope that road is not taken, since it’s very realistic to me, and healthy, that a young woman who discovers sex might find sexy things all around her.
Sookie’s attitude towards sex is complicated. Despite having lustful urges, she says “True adults don’t have sex just because the other person is skilled and pretty.” I’ll be interested to see how Sookie’s view of the morality of sex develops as the series progresses.
Although you can’t know it yet, Jessica, this book is probably the most important in the series, because it sets up some of the most significant and defining conflicts to come. Bill’s computer program, Alcide, Eric’s interest in Sookie coming to the fore, Sookie’s somewhat magnetic appeal, the stuff with Lorena, Alcide’s erstwhile fiancee — it’s all foundation.
This is also the book where people reaaally started to hate Bill, so I will forgive you if you cannot restrain yourself in your anti-Bill feelings.
Anyway, this series moves in an interesting rhythm, IMO, with some books functioning to really push things forward, some books setting up the future, some books tidying up from past books, etc. This book is a definite launching pad, IMO, and it makes me wonder if Harris’s initial contract was for the first three books, because after this one the series just seems to take off, IMO.
I, too, absolutely LOVED that excerpt you called out, and the touchingness of the Alcide relationship, and I half root for him sometimes as her final mate, but only if she doesn’t get Eric. This is also where Sookie notes that Eric “gets” her. (i.e. understands her) which is one of the threads I cling to as an Eric fan.
Does that trunk scene at all affect your view on her ethical journey?
Robin,
Thanks for cluing me in to the rhythm of a series I am only halfway through. It’s so hard to see it from here. But now that you put it that way, yes, I can see that this book functions differently than the others.
Carolyn Jean,
I steered clear of the trunk scene, as you can tell. Ethically, I guess since Bill had no control (?), he cannot be blamed, although, again, I felt he did not show enough remorse. It was a really well written scene and one of the most brutal in the series so far. It reminded me as a reader that vampires are dangerous.
What did you think of it?
I agree with you on all counts. I actually loved that CH made this move as an author.
And there is never the thought that Bill might rise above it, I mean, isn’t that sort of the trope? That he would have recognized her right off and been able to control it? His love for the heroine would do that? So I liked that. Honestly, I read it so long ago, though, I’m going off foggy memory on the specifics. But it was a fantastic scene.
One of the things I both love and fear about Harris is that she understands and is not afraid of showing how vulnerable women are, even among the men they trust the most. Sometimes it’s a very scary process in this series watching almost all of the men in Sookie’s life let her down and hurt her in various ways.
Sometimes it’s simply because they are of a different nature than Sookie, but sometimes it is because they are selfish or incapable of empathy or choose a competing priority over Sookie. Often it’s just plain thoughtlessness, but there are some real dangers lurking, as well, dangers that make Bill’s actions in the trunk seem almost mild, IMO.
In some ways this series strikes me as the “everything that never happens in Romance because it would impede the HEA” story of one woman’s desire to love and be loved unconditionally. There are moments where I hope Sookie will not be bound to any of these guys at the end of the series, and others where I hope against hope that one relationship will bring her the acceptance and comfort she seeks.
From what I understand, though, Harris is willing to risk reader disappointment to tell her story, so I have no idea what direction Sookie’s life is ultimately headed (which makes me extra anxious to read each installment, lol). This is, in fact, probably the only lengthy series I don’t resent having to purchase in hardcover.
@carolyn jean: That’s a great point about Bill being allowed to disappoint us in this way. It would never happen in romance, would it?
@Robin: Yes, you develop Carolyn Jena’s point about how the lack of need for an HEA (maybe also due in part to the fact that it’s an open ended series) allows Harris to do these unusual things.
I will need both your professional full names before I submit my article to a journal because you are both going in the acknowledgements!