Club Dead (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 3)

I'm not really sure how to write this review. This was an ok book. Just ok. It was kinda a letdown for me after reading her first two books in the series. Sookie is again on the road in Mississippi this time. She was out of her element which could be good in some ways, but I think in this book it was bad. I just felt that a lot of the book didn't flow and wasn't reality based. Yes, I know that vampires aren't real so you have to suspend some thinking but come on...do you really think that little Sookie is going to go in and beat up on vampires. Anyway, I loved that Eric was a huge part of this book and I'm definitely starting to like him a lot better than Bill at this point. Sookie and Eric's interaction is building up to an explosion and I can't wait for that to happen. I did like the new werewolf that they introduced and hopefully he will continue in the series, maybe as Jason's boss. I really wanted to love this book, but I didn't. However, it wasn't bad. Just not great. I would recommend this book to anyone who has started the series and is looking for the next step in the relationships. It's not really a great mystery.

First I would like to say that the books in this series are fluff reading. Fun to read and then forget about. They don't have any depth at all. Nothing to ponder. No insight to the human condition. If you are looking for the Dune of vampires, this is not it.

That being said, I am disapointed that Sookie gets all slutty in this novel. If that trend continues, I will stop reading.

I've read the first 5 books, and Club Dead was my favorite. They are all wonderful, but in this book a new character, Alcide, is introduced. The books are very intertwined, but I find them all very entertaining!

Charlaine Harris has a great nack for writting. I have enjoyed all 3 books. This one was a wonderful blend of different cultures. I can't wait for book 4.

I liked the first Laurell Hamilton "Anita Blake" book; it seemed an interesting universe, for which she may owe a great deal to her writing-group, and an interesting lead character----I can ignore a clich\'e or two (my God, in "Foxtrot" comics, the teenage girl's idea of a French romantic lead's name is automatically "Jean Claude", and making him a coupla-centuries-years'-old _French_ vampire---come on, I'd think all right-thinking people had thrown out that moth-ridden rice years ago).

But in quick succession, the plots tended toward the romance novel and the heroine became over-confident and -desirable---every single straight male creature desires her on sight of her petite form, making her an obvious Mary Sue (viz also L.K.H.'s elf-girl books, where it's worse).

(L.H.K.'s denials of this, e.g. on "Hour Twenty-Five", are so funny I nearly lost the sphinctural integrity field.)

Why am I writing about Hamilton here? Simple: I find this book extremely reminiscent of Hamilton, but avoids her excesses. Sookie sound more like an human being, is not the character everyone loves, and does not live a physically luxurious life. O.K., it really sounds like the author was once a fairly-attractive-and-minorly-stacked waitress in the Deep South, who among us has not? That's an exaggeration---I, for one, never had the legs for it, and I can't stand heat or bars---but even so: the more like a normally problematic life the hero[ine] has, the less of a Mary Sue.

Similarly, there's sex here, but it's presented as something pleasant (or very pleasant) that real people (and Other Things) do, not as Mind-blowing Invocations of Universe-Rending Primeval Magicqk, which in my experience only happens only once in every three times at best.

Similarly, vampires can be attractive and seductive, but what I've seen so far doesn't exceed the humanly possible---they seem to operate at the [Adolph Hitler|Jack Kennedy|Charles Manson|Ronald Reagan|Barack Obama] level (note: I am not evaluating character or goodness here, just apparent attractiveness, though of course if you hate a pol's views [as I do Reagan's, Hitler's, and Manson's] it's a lot easier to see their popularity as stemming solely from mindless seduction).

And the evil gone against here is similarly less super-powered---the stakes are high for the heroine, but only bad writing needs to have much more in the balance (e.g., the execrable "James Bond" films, in which always The World is in Danger).