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Dead Until Dark (A Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mystery) by Charlaine Harris
01/04/2004 . Source: Donna Jones 
pub: Orbit/Times Warner. 326 page paperback. Price: £ 5.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-84149-299-X. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.OrbitBooks.co.uk and www.TimesWarnerBooks.co.uk
Sookie Stackhouse is a waitress at Merlotte's Bar and Restaurant. She lives with her elderly but sprightly grandmother in Bon Temps, Louisiana and has a particularly surprising secret.
Sookie can read minds, her disability has her by the throat and desperately wishes that she could turn off all the noise. One night, Sookie meets a vampire in the bar. She wanted to meet one for a very long time and now its happened, realises something amazing, she can't hear a single thing from his mind.
Sookie finally finds her peace within the arms of a vampire, but her life is torn apart by the murders that have plagued Bon Temps. Her brother is the prime suspect along with Bill, her vampire lover. Sookie desperately tries to solve the murders in dealing with the antisocial undead, a death in her family and the realisation that her power is not something to see as a disability but a gift that is a blessing. Sookie slowly understands that she can actually help far more than she believes is possible.
Charlaine Harris is most notably known for her murder mystery series 'Aurora Teagarden Mysteries' and 'Dead Until Dark' sees her branching into murder mystery, vampire-style. It is more mystery than vampiric horror and this lends a stable format to the author to write from. The plot is full of twists and turns that carry Sookie on a roller coaster ride into the supernatural.
She was naive to the world, but now she sees that her disability is one of many affecting people she hadn't noticed before. You have the chance to meet with vampires and vampire drainers who are regular humans (vampire blood has healing and sexual potency side effects, not to mention that it makes your overall strength better) and strange shape-shifters. Sookie is an easy character to listen to in the first person narrative.
She is straight-forward, unassuming and uncomplicated, much like the style of the book. There are no detailed descriptions of how the moon looks or how the trees react when brushed with the wind. It is a very easy going read. Simplistic in its writing which makes it a great beach bumming title to take on holiday. My first impression of the book? Weird! It was the only word that kept racing through my brain waving its arms around in a frantic attempt to get my attention. The story is a murder mystery with the added vampire to spice things up. That said, the undead act like humans and really aren't that much of an oddity.
The way that Harris melds this parallel into the book in such a matter-of-fact way was hard to swallow, but it works quite well in the end. Vampires are out of the coffin, they walk among humans and co-exist. There are the usual groups that object to them even being allowed to walk the Earth as any minority would experience. Set in Southern America, the usually expected intolerance of minorities prevails and fits into the overall story neatly.
Sex is scattered through the book, it's to the point and doesn't muck about so it rather fits in well with the matter-of-fact style already in place. If anything, this is a romance mystery. Which is all well and good, but it is being marketed as a horror book. Sookie's character eventually gets a little tiresome. She resorts to tears an awful lot. You almost want to shake her up and say, 'Deal with it, girl!' I wonder if this will change as we progress through the series? Perhaps Harris will steadily evolve her character to keep the interest in her, if not, we may all want to shake Sookie up.
Bill the vampire seemed to me a little shallow. Then again, his character may develop in the next books in the series much as I hope Sookie's character may. Harris has a vast scope to work with him and he could be far more smouldering in the bedroom department, too. This reminded me of the kind of books I read as a teenager, while 'Dead Until Dark' is classified as horror, it pales into a shadow of its proposed self.
The gore is the only element of fear and, at times, it is funny rather than scary. The whole idea that vampires have an honour code among themselves was probably the best slant on the creatures of the night part within the story. I have a feeling a certain vampire called Eric has his sights on whisking Sookie away from Bill, even though that would go against these rules!
I'd recommend this book for teenagers exploring the whole sub-genre of vampiric horror. The funny thing is all I could think about while reading it was the word 'chick-lit'. If you're male and fancy it, try something with a little more balls.
If you're female and below the age of about twenty-five, this book is a dead set winner for airport reading. A bit of light entertainment never hurt anyone. A bite of light entertainment, well that's another matter!
Donna Jones 
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