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My Take In Brief: Surprise! Jessica loves another Sookie Stackhouse book!

Note: This review contains spoilers for this book, and for the previous books in the series. It’s also insufferably long. Click on any of the links below for a more concise spoiler free review. Scroll down to the Related Posts section for my reviews of the first three books in the series.

Word on the Web:

The Book Smugglers, joint reviews, 8 from Ana, 6 from the clearly deranged Thea, out of 10

The Romance Reader, 5 stars

Thrifty Reader (Ames), A-

Love Vampires, 5 stars

Sfsite.com, positive

Scooperspeaks.com, positive

World According to Books, 4 out of 5 stars

Infinity Plus, positive

Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People (what a fantastic concept), positive, with some scathe*

[Except this reviewer refers to Sookie as an "unreliable narrator". Is that right?? Can anyone comment?]

An interesting take on the vampire phenom, including the entire Stackhouse series,  with a gratuitous (aren’t they all?) dig at romance (“the embarrassingly Harlequinesque sex scenes” –obviously has never read a Harlequin) here.

Amazon.com 4.5 stars after 155 reviews

Audiobook note: I read this one in print, because the audiobook was the last of the series to be recorded, and was not available until December 15, 2008. But it’s the same terrific narrator — Johanna Parker–  and I’m sure it’s as good as the others on audio.

The Racy Romance Review:

In each Southern Vampire Mystery, heroine Sookie Stackhouse deals with a threat to a loved one while being drawn in to some larger intrigue in the paranormal community. In Dead to the World, it’s her randy brother Jason who has gone missing, while an ambitious coven of vamp-blood drinking witches, some of them Weres, have come to town. These two plot lines are equally strong, and are weaved together in a satisfying way in DTTW.

DTTW opens with a naked Eric Northman crossing Sookie’s path as she drives home from work at Merlotte’s bar. Eric’s memory has been wiped by a witch, and Sookie agrees to hide him in her home. Normally, Eric is ruthless, self-interested, ambitious, power-hungry, confident to the point of conceit, and morosely funny. I found it remarkable how Harris was able to write Eric in this book: somehow all of those characteristics were transformed into their benign variations. He was still Eric, yet … not.

Here’s an example. The coven has come looking for Eric, and Sookie has rushed home to tell Eric to hide:

“You advise me to hide? To get back in that black hole below your house?” He sounded uncertain, but it was clear to me his pride was piqued.

“Oh, yes. Just for a little while! You’re my responsibility; I have to keep you safe. ” But I had a sinking feeling I’d expressed my fears in the wrong way. This tentative stranger, however uninterested he seemed in vampire concerns, however little he seemed to remember of his power and possessions, still had the vein of pride and curiosity Eric had always shown at the oddest moments. I’d tapped right into it. I wondered if I could talk him into at least getting into my house, rather than standing out on the porch, exposed.

But it was too late. You just could never tell Eric anything.

“Come on, lover. Let’s have a look,” Eric said, giving me a quick kiss. He jumped off the back porch with me still attached to him — like a large barnacle — and he landed silently, which seemed amazing.

…

Oh, I was doing a great job of hiding Eric. Here we were, bounding through the cemetery, going toward the Wicked Witch of the West, instead of hiding in a dark hole where she couldn’t find us. This was so smart.

This is a good example of what I love about Harris’s writing, and the world she has created. Sookie may have the supernatural advantage of telepathy, but even with vampires, whose minds are opaque to her, she’s very discerning and intuitive. That said, she’s often a beat too late, as she is here. Her self-deprecating humor, the Eric who is not Eric, the couple of words to perfectly capture what it’s like to ride on someone’s back — so many of the things I enjoy about The Southern Vampire Mysteries are in this scene, and I could probably pick out any scene and do the same kind of analysis.

A cynic could look at this as Harris’s cheap way of exploring the Eric/Sookie ship (to give fans what they want — especially in the sex department) without violating the internal logic of her fictional universe (the real Eric is capable only of casual sex. His business is his true love).  But I felt that the relationship, sexual and otherwise, that develops between Eric and Sookie during this period of memory loss was, while sweet, unsatisfying, because this tentative, protective, sensitive, supportive man is not Eric. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Harris intended to send a message here that is deeply antagonistic to that of most novels in the romance genre: “You can either have the alpha hero, and no relationship, or a relationship, but not with an alpha.”

There’s also a lot to say about personal identity with a storyline like amnesia. What is implied by the fact that Eric’s personality changes so drastically when he loses his memories? I think sometimes we think of our memories as like a bunch of snapshots in a drawer in our head, and our personality traits as someplace else, totally separate. But Harris suggests that our memories make us who we are. Eric is perhaps ruthless and power hungry because that’s how he’s been for hundreds of years, and not because of some internal trait?

And this question is related to the identity changes brought on by the vampire state.  Sookie often offers observations that are clearly meant to apply to all vampires: some are behavioral (they don’t shake hands, for example, and can’t stand garlic), and others are temperamental (they are direct to the point of rudeness, they have no ear for nuance and take things literally, they are incredibly self-interested, violence is always a viable option for dealing with problems, etc.).  Vampires think differently than humans. Most of the vampires Sookie knows well are very old — over a century — so I’ve never been sure whether these vampire characteristics occur more or less immediately after the transformation, or whether they are the natural result of decades of living in vampire society. A nature vs. nurture question, I guess.

I’m not sure the Eric situation answers these questions definitely, and even Sookie wonders, during a scene in which Eric literally clings to her, pleading to go home with her, “Was I seeing Eric’s true nature? Was his flash and assurance something he’d assumed over the years, like a second skin?”.

The scene when Eric’s memory returns, but we learn that he has forgotten the past few days with Sookie, is going on my list of “Moments in Romance that Broke My Heart”.  It’s typical Harris: there is almost no information given to the reader about how Sookie feels, and almost no mourning of it. But because, as a reader, I knew Sookie so well, and knew what it meant to her, I didn’t need to read the words, “it broke my heart when I realized Eric was back to himself.”

Instead we have Sookie reminding herself at the last second not to stroke Eric’s hair as she passes by his chair. To me, that was more heartbreaking than a page of internal monologue about how sad she is. Is that showing and not telling? Whatever it is, I love it.

I wasn’t surprised, of course, but that didn’t lessen my sadness that Sookie would be alone again, that her simple hope to be loved and cherished would, once again, be deferred.

Several people have criticized this series for Sookie’s supreme attractiveness to men. I think that is a very superficial view of the situation. Harris has done something really interesting in giving us a sweet gorgeous buxom blonde — normally catnip to human hetero men — who, because of her “disability” (as other humans view it, a view she has largely internalized, the way many targets of prejudice internalize their oppressors’ views) is barely tolerated in her community, feared and disliked by most men in equal measure, even when they appreciate her anatomy. It’s the vampires and the “two-natured” who find Sookie so attractive, yet they can never provide a good match for this human woman, and Harris is unrelentingly realistic about that. I don’t see Sookie as the stereotypical paranormal vixen at all, but as a tragic romantic figure. And this is how Sookie sees herself, too:

Regular men might have found my outer package attractive, but my inner package repelled them. If I ever began to get a swelled head, all I had to do was listen to the brains of some bar patrons to have my ego deflated.

(And I am indebted to earlier comments by Robin of Dear Author and Carolyn Jean of The Thrillionth Page for helping me to see this.)

I could go on and on, and already have. But I wanted to make a few more random observations:

1. I loved the introduction of the Hotshot shifter community. Basically, it’s Deliverance meets The Munsters.  Sookie’s search for Jason leads her to the neighboring town of Hotshot. It’s run by Calvin Norris whom Sookie constantly refers to as a solid man with a house and good job with benefits. (And that’s another thing — money is never far from Sookie’s mind, since she’s basically the working poor, and these books are shot though with a consistent working class sensibility.) I am terrified, as a selfish reader, that Calvin Norris will become a love interest for Sookie, but as a practical person, I know it would make a lot of sense for her.

I wonder how folks in the south who read this series feel about the fact that Hotshot really is inbred, that the citizens literally are animals. Does it exploit prejudices for literary gain? Or does it explode those prejudices (sort of like, “Here. You fear this type of community because you think they are inbred and beasty? Well, these folks really are your worst fears. Now watch me humanize them, make you care about them and respect them, and judge them as individuals.”)

2. I thought the mystery of Jason’s disappearance was really — er–mysterious, and I loved the development of Jason’s character. I thought that Jason’s intense anger at Sookie in book 1, when he found out their grandmother left Sookie the house, was a window into a very angry young man under the studly veneer, and I have waited in vain for more from him. After 3 books of Jason the Wonder Stud, his tomcatting around finally gets him in trouble (as you would expect in small communities like these), and he’s kidnapped and bitten into becoming a were-panther, like the rest of the Hotshots. Finally, something seems to have had an effect on him, and I’m looking forward to see what the future brings for Jason. (Now if only something more could be done with Sam…)

3. I really appreciated the horror elements in this one. I find it amazing that I can be laughing with Sookie one minute, and in the next Harris presents me with a violent or brutal image I won’t forget for a week. The climactic battle scene — witches, vamps, weres, and a few humans –  was fantastic. Here’s one quick textual example from a later scene:

My kitchen looked like I had been dismembering pigs, pigs that had put up a good fight.

Nice image, huh?

4. Some character notes: I love Pam, with the sweater sets and pleated pants and loafers, who is forced to wear goth clothing. And I am very intrigued by the introduction of Claudine, the fairy, and the vamps’ reaction to her. Harris is no fan of origin stories (always a bit of a disappointment to me — we don’t know how any of the vamps became vamps), so the origin of Sookie’s telepathic abilities has not been explored. There’s no way Sookie is 100% human. I suspect the fairies will become important as the series progresses.

5. And of course, there’s always lots to say about Sookie and her moral orientation, especially with respect to violence and sex. So far, she has been a bystander or victim of violence, but in this book she is violent herself, not just in the battle, when she is the “instrument” of someone’s death, as she puts it, but later, when, in self-defense, she shoots and kills Debbie Pelt.

[Edited to add: No. Wait! She did kill Bill's vamp ex in book 3. Hmmmm. Need to think more about this clearly inaccurate claim. Why does killing Debbie Pelt matter so much more?]

With characteristic lack of nuance, Eric says, “I can’t imagine a belief system that would tell you to sit around and get slaughtered”, but Sookie isn’t ready to give herself a pass. She is still dealing with her guilt several chapters in to Book 5, which I am now reading. Sometimes it is appropriate to mourn a life that needed to be ended, to feel bad about doing the right thing, to do the wrong thing in a bad situation, or to break a rule. Sookie isn’t sure what she has done, or how to categorize it, and she fears it represents not an exception to a rule but a shift in her belief system towards the views of the vampires, that violence is one acceptable problem solving strategy.

As for the sex, Sookie is a woman who enjoys sexual intimacy per se, and is finally beginning to admit that to herself with Eric.  She thinks about it, notes that they gave each other pleasure, that they can’t conceive or pass disease, that they aren’t pledged to others, and asks herself, “What was the harm?”

But she still views casual sex as second best to sex within a marriage.  She thinks that neither her Reverend nor God would be happy with this, but figures that “God gave her telepathy and could cut her some slack in the sex thing.” For Sookie, morality still represents an externally imposed set of rules. She hasn’t yet gained what we call moral autonomy, but she is definitely taking more responsibility for devising her own moral code.

Two things that didn’t work for me:

1. Bill — if you are going to bring back the boyfriend who was the source of so much emotion and grief, you can’t make him an extra. Either leave him out entirely, or give him something to do, think, or say that matters.

2. The witches — I just felt there were motivational pieces missing, given the strength of their hated and brutality.  Just some gaps there.

I could say more — much more – about this book. A lot of people rank it as the best, kind of like how Harry Potter fans feel about the Prisoner of Azkaban, or Star Wars fans feel about The Empire Strikes Back.  I just know that as a reader, I am never happier than when I am reading a book that makes feel and makes me think, and this one did both to the nth degree.

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