Charlaine Harris: Dead to the World

Ace Books (Paperback), ISBN 0441012183

I liked this book before I even started reading it. Why? Because the cover art kicks ass. We see a vampire — pale skin, blond hair, barefoot, with little white fangs — flying across the giant ball of the moon carrying a woman on his back. Beneath them, appropriately shaggy wolves howl amid the bumps of gravestones. The whole picture is campy and cute and absolutely on par with the tone of this book.

For those of you who don’t know Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire novels (I didn’t, until I read this one), the series focuses on Sookie Stackhouse, reluctant telepath, waitress extraordinaire and local Odd Girl. Several years before, fake blood became commercially viable, which allowed vampires to enter mainstream society. Other things, including werewolves and shape-shifters, bide their time in the background, waiting to see how society takes to the vampires. Sookie, as a telepath and sometimes vampire confidante, remains one of the few people aware of these other groups.

Dead to the World begins when Sookie spots a nearly naked man running along the side of a back country road well past midnight. Except he’s not a man. Eric the swaggering, self-involved vampire got hit with a spell that caused him to lose his memory. Suddenly Sookie must help track down the witches responsible, return Eric’s memory to him, and find her brother Jason, who suspiciously vanishes a day later. And in case Sookie needs one more thing to juggle, she finds this new, vulnerable Eric very, very attractive.

Living inside Sookie’s head for nearly 300 pages proves an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Her dry comments made me giggle on several occasions, and I found her to be equally capable of sleuthing out the fate of her brother as navigating the danger spots of her relationship with Eric. While the vampires at times seemed a little clichéd, and I needed to read through 15 pages of sometimes dry exposition to get to the good stuff, I would happily spend another afternoon with Sookie.

Katherine Yelinek

Kathryn Yelinek lives and writes in Pennsylvania, where she works as a librarian. Her articles have been featured in Sacred Journey and Flashquake, among others.