True Blood Book Review: “Dead Reckoning”

The “Sookie Stackhouse Novels”, written by Charlaine Harris, are the basis for the hit HBO show True Blood.

Without further ado, how do you solve a problem like Sookie Stackhouse? If you’ve read any books in this series, you can readily surmise that we aren’t talking about an outspoken Julie Andrews and her feather-ruffling at her Benedictine Abbey. Far from that distant PG world, we are talking about Ms. Stackhouse, vampire politics, werewolf intrigue, and inter-species revelations all served up with a plethora of soft-core sexual dalliances.

With unbridled staying power that would be the envy of any boy-band, Sookie is still on everyone’s top 40 as she is, by far one, of the most sought after female/fae combos around. Book 11, entitled ‘DEAD RECKONING’, of this highly ‘˜suck’sessful series (terrible pun totally intended) picks up exactly where we left off from the last installment and in its own right is quite the page turner.

Since the portal to the fae world has been ‘closed’, Sookie and her other fae relatives are now living together at the Stackhouse family homestead, and if you take three faeries and put them in a house they will do exactly what you’d expect them to do: spring clean. While overdue by about 8 books, this task is much more emotionally daunting than it should have been for a healthy individual, leading me to believe that Sookie and her dearly departed, but equally horn-doggish grandmother, are literally inches away from appearing on Hoarders. Trust me it took immense willpower for me to refrain from renaming that wonderful TV show ‘Hoe-rders’but I digress.

While most episodes of Hoarders deal with the standard collections of very necessary ketchup packets and soy sauces, the Stackhouses have been hanging on to hundreds of years of terrible furniture, clothes and memories. On the advice of her conveniently ‘antiquing’boss, Sam, Sookie contacts a dealer, and inspired by Nic Cage and the Book of Secrets, discovers that Sookie has in her possession a Resolute-esque desk complete with a secret compartment. Dum, dum, dum…..

While Sookie is once again fixated on self-discovery, things are going down with other puppets in Sookie’s life. Sam’s business is facing competition from a new bar, Pam is getting refused a very personal request from the new vampire Regent, and yet another blast from Sookie’s past has shown up to ensure that Sookie doesn’t get the chance to live the dream that every human/fae wants to live: crazy passionate vampire sex in a clean farmhouse.

Oh, Sookie, we missed you.

Want to read chapter 1 of “DEAD RECKONING”? You can do so on Charlaine Harris’ website.