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Book Review: Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King
Summary:
Something evil is haunting the small town of Tarker Mills, Maine. Every month another person is found dead, brutally ripped apart. Can they solve what is haunting their town before the terror consumes them all?
Review:
I picked this up in a used book basement because I’m generally trying to read most everything Stephen King has written, and this particular print book was beautifully illustrated. Each chapter (or month…or murder) had at least one full-color illustration, and that just spoke to me. The story itself wound up being rather ho-hum to me, but part of that may be due to the fact that I’m rather hard to shock these days.
My favorite part of the book is that it opens with a note from King stating that astute readers will notice that the full moon couldn’t possibly have fallen on all of the big holidays he has it fall on, but that he’s taken artistic license to make it do so. The passage reads like it has a wink at the end, and I like that King assertively addresses what could bother some readers or be a controversy and acknowledges that his facts are wrong, but he did it for artistic reasons. Personally, I’m not a fan of books that take artistic licenses, but if you’re going to, this is the way to do it. Acknowledge it (don’t hide from it) and move on.
This feels like an early Stephen King book. The usual small town New England stock characters are there, but they’re not fully fleshed-out. There’s even a spunky kid in a wheelchair who reminds me of an earlier version of Susannah from The Dark Tower series (the book about Susannah was first published in 2004). The stock, rather two-dimensional characters work in this book, since the storytelling approach is basically one of folklore. We don’t need to know much more about these characters than we see on the surface, and that’s fine.
Each chapter is a different month in the year, and they sort of feel like connected short stories. By the last half of the year, the reader starts to know what’s going on, and the “short stories” become even more connected.
Fans of an underdog hero will enjoy who ends up battling the werewolf plaguing the town, as will those who enjoy seeing the trope of a trusted citizen being someone who should not be trusted. (That’s as much as I can say without being too spoilery).
This all sounds rather positive, so why did I feel ho-hum about it? The tension building didn’t work for me. Nothing that happened really scared me. The character in the wheelchair feels like a less bad-ass version of Susannah, and what I would want would be Susannah. This is perhaps unfair of me to say, since Susannah came about further down the line, but I do think it points to how King’s writing improved with time (as does everyone’s). I also just found the villain to be rather expected and cliche, although I’m sure it wasn’t when the book first came out. In general, this book just doesn’t feel like it aged particularly well, especially when compared to other older King books.
Overall, if a reader is looking for a quick, beautifully illustrated folklore style retelling of a werewolf story, they will enjoy this book. Those looking for high levels of tension or gore or in-depth character development will want to give it a pass.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 128 pages – novella
Source: Brookline Booksmith, used books basement
Book Review: Bits of Bliss – Volume 1 by Andrea Trask (Series, #1)
Summary:
A collection of nine erotica short stories, mostly featuring elements of fantasy. Covering everything from fairy tale retellings to vampires to a bit of scifi.
Review:
This erotica short story collection was quite hit or miss for me. The stories that excelled were creative and unique, but the stories that did not featured some problematic elements that prevented me from enjoying the erotica.
When I read a short story collection, I always individually rate the stories. My rating of the collection as a whole is just the average of those ratings. The highest rating any story in this collection received from me was four stars. There were three stories I gave four stars, and two of them were the first two stories in the collection, so it definitely started out strong for me. One is a F/F story featuring a woman who is also a flower (or a flower who is also a woman). It is poetic and heart-quickening. The second story features a sentient house that has missed its owner and demands attention. This made me laugh, and I enjoyed the oddity. It read like a lighter-hearted, erotica version of dark fantasies where there is an evil house–this one is just horny. The third four star read was enjoyable for a different reason. It’s a scifi erotica where two lovers are in a spaceship that is running out of air. They decide to make love, even though they will die quicker. It was so heart-breaking and beautiful that I wished it was a whole book.
Four of the stories received three stars. In each case I felt the story either didn’t take an idea far enough or the story wasn’t long enough to tell the story. Take it farther, and these all could be just as good as the first three I discussed.
Unfortunately, there were two stories that were big clunkers for me, with each receiving only one star, and they both had almost the same problem. “Hunting Hound” has a woman mating with a werewolf. She meets him when she is out riding, and they start making out against a tree, with her a willing participant. Then this happens.
“Stop” she said, and his face darted in toward her own with a low growl. “Too late to stop.” (loc 1650)
He proceeds to penetrate her. There is nothing sexy about a woman asking a man to stop and him claiming it’s too late and proceeding to rape her. It is never too late to stop, and it’s never too late for a partner to change their mind. It really bothers me that this type of scene is still being presented as sexy. I know everyone gets off to their own thing, but this is such a clear scene of consent being removed and then ignored that I just cannot say to each their own in this case. I also want to mention that the book blurb claims that this story features “consensual sexual violence” but it definitely did not read that way to me.
“Summer Nights,” which also received one star, has a similar problem. This story features a woman who keeps seeing the same mysterious man at parties. She goes out to the woods behind the house at one of these parties, and he follows her. She finds out he’s a vampire. She stands in the woods talking to him, holding a wineglass, when this happens:
“he struck like a train, his swinging backhand sending the wineglass flying toward the treeline, and I faintly registered the tinkling shatter of it, perhaps hitting a rock, or a fallen log.” (loc 5654)
She finds the fact that he just hit a glass out of her hand to be massively sexy and proceeds to bang him. This is, again, something I feel like I shouldn’t need to say, but there is nothing sexy about a partner violently hitting something out of your hand. Nothing. Sexy. This is not a sign that oh man she should totally bang this vampire. It is a sign she should run because she is alone in the woods with a violent motherfucker. This could have so easily been foreplay if, instead of hitting a glass out of her hand, he said something like, “I want you now,” and he gently took the glass from her hand and tossed it away. Or if she said, “I want you so much,” and tossed the glass over her shoulder. It would be so easy to have the same erotica about a powerful vampire alone in the woods with a woman without it turning into problematic territory.
I truly wish these last two stories were not in the collection. The rest of the collection is creative, features some fun queer content (the F/F story and a gender-swapping story), and in the case of the best three stories, has some unique ideas. Where the collection flounders is, interestingly enough, with the two most mainstream stories that take the agency out of the hands of the women in them and instead retreats to the tired idea of violent men being sexy.
Overall, if a reader is looking for some quick fantasy erotica, most of the stories in this book will satisfy this need, although I would recommend skipping over “Hunting Hound” and “Summer Nights.” The reader who enjoys the other stories for their uniqueness will most likely be disappointed by the “sexy violence” in these two.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 53 pages – novella
Source: Kindle copy from author in exchange for my honest review
Mini Movie Reviews #2
Good Hair
USA
2009
PG13
Documentary
Public Library
5 out of 5 stars
This is one documentary you need to believe the hype about. Chris Rock decided to make it after his daughter (not even five years old yet) asked him why she doesn’t have good hair. This documentary then looks at the world and culture of African-American hair. It covers everything from perms to weaves to hair shows. Chris Rock interviews famous and not famous people alike with a certain charm and intelligence that gets them to really open up. I think the scene that best demonstrates the feel of the whole movie is when Chris Rock is interviewing a white male scientist about sodium hydroxide, which is the perm that African-Americans use to straighten their hair. The scientist has just shown Chris how quickly sodium hydroxide eats through raw chicken, and Chris says, “You know black people put that on their hair.” Horrified, the scientist says, “Really?! Why would they do that?!” Chris says, “To look like white people.” Epic. Silence. The documentary is smart, because it doesn’t run around blaming white people for this whole culture among African-Americans against natural hair. It kind of blames everybody, and it does it in a witty, intelligent manner.
The Wolf Man
USA
1941
PG
Horror
Netflix
4 out of 5 stars
Another from the 100 Horror Movies To See Before You Die list I’ve been working my way through. A wayward son of a British aristocrat comes home to hopefully reestablish himself in the little town. He starts to pursue an engaged gal, but while doing so, gets bit by a wolf. Naturally, he turns into a werewolf. I think what’s the creepiest about this film is how the main character goes about pursuing the engaged girl. He starts off by watching her through a window and then hitting on her in her father’s shop in possibly the creepiest manner ever. She resists….at first. But then doesn’t. The whole film sort of feels like a judgment on both him for being a creeper and the engaged girl for being seduced by the bad boy instead of sticking with her nice, stable man. Kind of a nice change of pace from more modern films, eh? The special effects aren’t as good as some others from this same time period that I’ve watched, but they’re still fairly decent. It’s a fun change of pace if you enjoy shapeshifters. Also the “British accents” are pretty much nonexistent.
The House Of Usher
USA
1960
Not Rated
Horror
Netflix
5 out of 5 stars
When this movie started, I thought it was going to be cheesy. But I was very wrong. It turns out that this is an adaptation of a Poe story, and it is completely frightening, even with outdated special effects. Essentially, this guy wants to marry this girl, but her brother insists that the Ushers need to let the family die out. He also claims the house itself is evil. I won’t tell you what happens from there, but suffice to say the tension builds perfectly until you are on the edge of your seat for the climax. Vincent Price plays the brother and let me tell you, he is a legend for a reason. When I finished this one, I was actually nervous to go to bed. Which never happens to me.
PS There is a 2007 remake. Ignore it. Ignore it so hard.
Party Monster
USA
2003
R
Biography
Netflix
3 out of 5 stars
This is based on the true story of a murder during the 1980s ecstatic clubbing days (see what I did there?), which was written about in Disco Bloodbath
Dracula
USA
1931
Unrated
Horror
Netflix
5 out of 5 stars
This movie really doesn’t need much explanation. It’s a classic (chosen for preservation) for good reason. I have read Dracula, and I was flabbergasted at how good the adaptation was. Modern film adaptations could learn a thing or two from this production. Bela Lugosi as Dracula is still deliciously creepy, instilling chills. Two cool things to know. One, originally there was an epilogue in which the audience is told vampires are indeed real that has been forever lost so the ending does feel a bit abrupt (because it’s not actually the ending). Also, the entire movie was shot simultaneously on the same sets in Spanish (with Latin* actors).
Book Review: The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice
Summary:
Reuben Golding is a talented new journalist who feels as if he is floundering around with no direction in his family of wealthy, talented people. That all changes when he’s bitten in a mysterious attack while writing about an old house on the seacoast. He shortly discovers that the bite has turned him into a man wolf–like a werewolf, but with the ability to change every night. Oh, and also he has an insatiable desire to devour those who smell like evil. His quest for answers about his new situation will open up a whole new world to him.
Review:
It needs to be said that having read only Anne Rice’s earlier books, I somehow missed the memo that she went from atheist to Catholic in the early 2000s. As an agnostic myself, one of the things I love about her earlier novels, beyond the poetic writing, is this search for meaning without belief in a god that the characters demonstrate. So. I was less than thrilled to find god all up in my werewolves. *growl*
But it of course is more than philosophical differences that make this book bad. The writing is just….not what it used to be. The pacing is off. Parts of the novel wax eloquent about the redwood forests, but then action sequences feel like Rice was trying to mimic the style of pulp authors like Palahniuk. (Something that she does poorly, btw). I get wanting to try a new style, but you need to pick one or the other. The up and down almost randomness of the style changes made it difficult to get into the story.
Then we have the story itself. If Rice had gone just slightly more absurd, this would make an excellent humorous novel. Of course, it’s not meant to be. A perfect example is one scene that I keep thinking over just for the giggles it gives me. The scene, is supposed to be one of the pivotal, more serious ones in the book, naturally. Reuben is in his wolf form and having just run through the forest eating animals, he stands on his hind legs and spins in a circle while singing the Shaker song “Simple Gifts.” And then a woman in a cabin sees this and naturally they have the hot hot beastiality sex. (Note: I do not actually find this scene hot at all. In fact I find it really fucking disturbing, and I don’t find ANYTHING disturbing usually). It isn’t like scenes of sex and violence in other novels that are part of an overall narrative designed to help you understand something. It’s not an allegory of anything either. It just is there because….yeah, I don’t know why it’s there, actually.
Then we have the wonderful presence of an atheist character who is clearly there so Rice can lecture atheists via her book. Oh you silly atheists! Of course there’s a god! The whole of nature is reaching toward him and yadda yadda yadda *eye-roll* This is just bad writing. It’s such an obvious attempt to be able to directly lecture the readers that it’s painful to see. Particularly after knowing that Rice is capable of actual eloquent writing.
Also the whole entire concept of having werewolves actually be evil-fighting do-gooders is like a furry version of Batman. And who wants that? Nobody, that’s who.
Speaking of Batman, if I have to read one more book about a poor little privileged white boy, I’m going to lose my mind. Aww, poor Reuben, he has a high-achieving lawyer girlfriend who loves him, a surgeon mother, a giving brother, and a professor father, but Reuben is bad at science and everyone tells him a 23 year old can’t write. People need to take him seriously! Poor Reuben. And Reuben claims he changes after getting the “wolf gift” but he really doesn’t. He still whines to anyone who will listen and runs around trying to tell everyone else what to do but never bothers to actually force himself to grow up. He could have been an interesting main character if the wolf gift actually challenged and changed him. But it doesn’t. He’s still the same, whiny, privileged rich kid. Only now he’s surrounded by the slightly creepy doting wolf pack.
Oh, and Rice? Wolf packs don’t consist of only one gender, idiot. Research? Have you heard of it?
Overall, this was an incredibly irritating and frustrating read that I disliked so much I’m not even going to do my usual of passing on my reviewer’s copy to my dad. This one is going in the recycling bin. And you all should give it a pass as well.
1 out of 5 stars
Source: Copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
Summary:
Jacob Marlowe finds out he’s the last werewolf living and has just been informed by the WOCOP that they plan to kill him during the next full moon. That’s just fine with him. He’s been living for almost 200 years and is just plain tired of it. So he plans to let the WOCOP’s tails follow him and just let the death happen. The fates don’t quite see it that way, though, and nothing quite goes according to Jake’s plans.
Review:
Think of this as what would have happened if Anne Rice chose to write about werewolves instead of vampires. The Last Werewolf reads very much like Interview with a Vampire only with the characteristics of werewolves instead of vampires of course. By this I mean that the sentences and story structure are incredibly literary while addressing the highly genre topic of werewolves.
Unlike vampires, werewolves must eat a human during each full moon or they become ill. Animals are no substitute. They cannot take a bite and leave the victim alive. No, they must completely ravish the victim. This is no weak True Blood style werepanther or werewolf that can simply shift at will and avoid killing people. Jake is affected by The Hunger and must eat and kill to stay alive. The rest of the month when he’s not in wolf form he has to come to terms with his actions. The crux and root of the dilemma at the heart of the story is this:
We’re the worst thing because for us the worst thing is the best thing. And it’s only the best thing for us if it’s the worst thing for someone else. (page 197)
It’s quite the moral conundrum and is addressed eloquently in the story.
There is also of course Jake’s suicidal mentality. He wants to die, but he doesn’t want to be the one to do it. He’s completely over life. Life is boring and pointless. There are absolutely some beautifully depressing passages about the emptiness of life that both perfectly depict depression and remind me a bit of the Romantic period of poetry. Think of Lord Byron. That type of thing. Beautifully suicidal. That may bother some readers. To me, it’s often a part of great literature. This overwhelming sadness and feelings of helplessness. They’re common human emotions and lend a great force to the narrative.
Now, I was sent this for review due to how much I enjoyed American Psycho in January, so I was expecting it to be graphically violent and sexual and have the two mixed-up. It is all of those things but–dare I say it–it wasn’t quite violent enough for me. I was expecting something shocking, due to the American Psycho connection, but I can see a lot of people reading this and not being put-off by the amount of violence. Compared to your average R rated action flick, it’s really not that bad. On the other hand, a lot of people are profoundly disturbed by the violence in American Psycho. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the level of violence in this book, and I think Duncan was probably smart in that, since it will have a wider appeal. What can I say. I was looking forward to something incredibly gross and twisted and instead got a lot of beautiful prose with the occasional murder. It was a happy surprise, absolutely. I just want to make it abundantly clear to potential readers that if you can handle an R rated horror movie, you can definitely handle the violence in this book, so don’t be turned off!
So the prose is beautiful and the topics addressed and discussed are important or at least interesting, so why am I not raving? The ending left me disappointed. It felt rather cliche and expected, and I didn’t like what became the focus in the end. There are so many other ways the ending could have gone that would have been amazing and powerful, but instead I finished this book and basically said, “AGH not this shit again.” *mini-spoiler* It includes pregnancy and babies, and ya’ll know how I feel about that. *end mini-spoiler*
Overall this is a literary take on a genre theme. It is violent and sexual, but not disturbingly so. Recommended to fans of Anne Rice.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review
Book Review: It by Stephen King
Summary:
In the late 1950s in the small town of Derry, Maine, children are being mysteriously murdered. Seven misfit and outcast kids band together to face It, and they think they’ve beaten it, but 27 years later, the murders return. Vaguely remembering a promise they all made, the now adults return to their hometown of Derry to face It again.
Review:
This tale is largely known in the States as “that scary clown story,” so for years I avoided it. I’ve been terrified of clowns for as long as I can remember. My parents tell me that the first time I ever saw one, I screamed uncontrollably. My only encounter with Stephen King’s It (as it’s known in the States) was with a diorama of the clown from the movie in a haunted house I went through in Salem, MA. It scared the crap out of me, so I was a bit nervous to read this book. However, having read the Dark Tower series, I wanted to read all of the other stories that King lists as taking place in the same general universe, and It was one of them. So I manned up and read it, and boy am I ever glad I did.
This is not a cheesy scary clown story. What it is is first a character study and second a commentary on growing up. The dual horror of being a kid and being excited and afraid to grow up and being an adult and being excited and concerned that you are grown up and may have lost a part of yourself in childhood. King very clearly demonstrates that being a kid isn’t all fun and games–most of the kids in the group of 7 have bad home lives–but there is an essential hope that children have that is hard to reclaim as an adult. A child is able to have a horrible experience with a shape-shifting werewolf or a bunch of bullies and then walk a couple of blocks and forget about it and be excited to see American Bandstand that night. Children are incredibly resilient, and King demonstrates that.
What makes the story though is the return to Derry 27 years later. King puts a hope in adults that although they may not remember exactly what it is to be a resilient child, they can still repossess that power in later life. Although the first inclination of kids to survive is to forget the bad, an adult can remember and still survive. For at the beginning, the characters don’t want to remember what happened to them as kids.
Did he remember? Just enough not to want to remember any more. (Location 1416)
Yet the characters are brave and face their childhoods. Yes, King personifies both the childhood evils and the remembering of them as an adult with It, but that’s part of what makes the story powerful. There’s a reason people refer to memories as personal demons. That’s how they feel. In the end, the way the characters grow and change and overcome is to find
A way to be people that had nothing to do with their parents’ fears, hopes, constant demands. (Location5631)
Beyond the excellent symbolism and allegory for the experience of surviving bad things in your childhood and facing them again as an adult, the horror itself is wonderful. It comes at just the right frequency so that the reader settles into a sense of security only to be blind-sided by a terrifically horrifying experience. There were sections that literally had me jumping at the sound of my own phone ringing in the silence. These are some of the better passages of creepy horror that I’ve read written by King.
Of course, the allusions to the universe of the Gunslinger are there. It gave me chills to recognize them as I read. Among just a few were the turtle, spiders, and other worlds than these. One particular line that gave me chills of recognition that other fans of the Dark Tower series will be sure to appreciate is
Eddie had drawn his aspirator. He looked like a crazed malnourished gunslinger with some weird pistol. (Location 20760)
Combining everything from the horror to the allegory of facing childhood demons to the allusions to the Dark Tower series make Stephen King’s It a remarkable read. I recommend it to fans of Stephen King, as well as anyone interested in the idea of childhood demons who feels they can handle passages of horror.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Book Review: From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris (Series, #8)
Summary:
Hurricane Katrina and the bombing of the vampire assembly at Rhodes have left the Louisiana supernatural community reeling and disjointed. This naturally creates the perfect atmosphere for attempted violent takeovers in both the were and vampire communities. Sookie finds herself smack in the middle, as usual, both due to her telepathic abilities and her desire to help her friends. Of course her telepathic abilities can’t tell her where her boyfriend, Quinn, has disappeared to. In the middle of all this, she also finds out some interesting family secrets.
Review:
Not only is Sookie’s character developing and changing, but the series is as well, and that’s what’s keeping it interesting this many books in. If you’ve stuck it out this long, then you’re clearly enjoying something that Harris is doing; however, I would say that the previous book and this one mark a stark change in the style of the series away from paranormal romance to just paranormal fiction. I’m actually not sure what exactly one would call this genre, but From Dead to Worse definitely reads like modern-day fiction just with supernatural characters tossed in. I really enjoy this partly because Harris’ sex scenes are cringe-inducing anyway, but also because it allows for that modern day connection but with problems that I will never have. This makes it a relaxing read.
Unlike some paranormal series, the main character of Sookie has gone through significant character developments. She went from a naive girl desperate to fit in to sadder but wiser woman who enjoys being different. In the first book, we see Sookie being cared for by her grandmother; in this one, we see Sookie caring for not only the witch, Amelia, but also an elderly woman, Octavia. It’s not just this that’s changing, however. Sookie’s experiences leave her wondering if she’s a good person or not, and frankly the reader is left trying to figure that out as well.
Some readers will be thrown by the absence of sex in this book. However, I enjoyed the various types of sexual and romantic interest tension Sookie has with the various men in her life. It is evident that she’s attempting to figure out which direction she wants to go in her life before settling on a man. Racking up this tension throughout one book is a great set-up for the next one.
My only gripes with this entry in the series are two-fold. First, I really don’t like the Jason/Hotshot storyline. Jason could be a very interesting character, as we know from the direction they’ve taken him in True Blood. He’s not used well in the books, though, and I hope Harris fixes this soon. I’m tired of cringing over the Hotshot scenes. Also, this book yet again features a northern woman who yet again is an evil bitch in Sookie’s eyes. This is obviously Harris’ own prejudice coming through as Sookie has been established as a person who is staunchly not prejudiced against anyone. What is with this hating on northern women? It says a lot about Harris that this prejudice seeps into her writing even when writing a character who is not prejudiced. I’m sick of seeing it, and it stings as a northern female fan of the series.
However, in spite of these short-comings, the series is still enjoyable. This book marks a distinct change in the writing from paranormal romance to simply paranormal. Readers who’ve stuck it out this far will either enjoy this change as I do or give up on the series due to its lack of romance. If you’re reading it for the characters and the world Harris has created, you will enjoy this entry into the series. If you’re reading it for paranormal romance, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Previous Books in Series:
Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead To The World
Dead as a Doornail
Definitely Dead
All Together Dead
Book Review: Club Dead by Charlaine Harris (Series, #3)
Summary:
Bill has been acting oddly distant with Sookie lately, so she isn’t exactly pleased when he announces he’s going to Seattle on a mission for the vampire queen of Louisiana. She soon finds out from Pam and Eric, though, that Bill lied to her. He’s actually been in Jackson, Mississippi with his one-time vampire lover, Lorena. He’s also been kidnapped. Something he’s been secretly up to has put them all in danger, so Sookie must put aside her anger for now and try to help the vampires free Bill and prevent a vampire war between the kingdoms of Mississippi and Louisiana. Along the way, Sookie gets to know a whole lot more about the werewolves–not to mention about Eric.
Review:
I have to hand it to Harris, I expected there to be trouble in paradise for Bill and Sookie, but I didn’t expect it this soon or this serious. Reading Club Dead made me realize this series isn’t about Sookie’s relationship with Bill, but about Sookie’s gradual entry into the supernatural world. Bill just kind of served as a door. I tend to be a bit of a romantic, but I’ve never really liked Bill nearly as much as the other supernatural guys, so let me just say–woohoo!
The plot is complex. There are multiple mysteries for Sookie to figure out on top of dealing with her emotions about Bill’s betrayal and her odd popularity among the supernatural guys. I enjoy the fact that she was never desired by human guys, but is among the the supernaturals. It’s akin to the awkward growing up girl finding her niche in her 20s. At first Sookie thought it was just Bill who has the major hots for her, but it turns out she’s a hot commodity with lots of the supernatural guys, but it isn’t just about her looks. They like Sookie for her personality. Something it seemed to me Bill never seemed to appreciate much.
Harris does a good job writing a unique werewolf world. Whereas the vampires are notoriously cold emotionally, the werewolves are hot-blooded. They’re passionate, strong, and animalistic. Harris has them mostly working blue collar jobs, but excelling at it. Sookie’s escort, Alcide, runs a highly profitable family general contracting business.
My only complaint is that Harris doesn’t seem to trust her readers to remember the rules of the world she’s created. We get told yet again that silver chains can hold a vampire down, shifters aren’t out yet, Sookie had a hard time in school, the Japanese created synthetic blood, etc… It’s annoying, and it makes it feel like Harris thinks she needs to dumb down the story for her readers. I understand a quick rehash at the beginning of the book to remind us where we left off, but as for everything else, I think the reader can be trusted to remember that silver chain nets are dangerous to vampires. Those parts are easily skimmed over though, and the res of the book makes up for it.
I originally was uncertain that Harris could keep Sookie Stackhouse’s world interesting for seven books. I envisioned repeated “Bill and Sookie solve yet another mystery” outings, but I am glad to say I was mistaken. As the books continue, more of the world is revealed, and Sookie’s life becomes more complicated. I’m looking forward to what she’s going to reveal next.
If you enjoy the gradual building of a world around a strong female character, you will enjoy the direction this series is headed.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Bought on Amazon
Previous Books in Series:
Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 