Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris - Book Review #47

Dead to the World

by Charlaine Harris

When cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse sees a naked man on the side of the road, she doesn't just drive on by. Turns out the poor thing hasn't a clue who he is, but Sookie does. It's Eric the vampire--but now he's a kinder, gentler Eric. And a scared Eric, because whoever took his memory now wants his life.

From goodreads.com

I think my apologies to Charlaine Harris are in order. I don’t think my reviews on first three books of Sookie Stackhouse series were too harsh, but I definitely didn’t give all the credit to Charlaine Harris she is entitled to.

First of all, I was thinking that all cute little details about Sookie Stackhouse world are belong to HBO and Alan Ball. Such details as vampire blood is used as a drug by some, or if a human will drink a vampire blood that vampire would be much more aware of this human whereabouts and feelings. I was thinking this because these details weren’t in first two books, but they were in the first season of True Blood. I was wrong these are the ideas that belong to Charlaine Harris. It’s just seems like when HBO was making a TV show, they read all the Sookie Stackhouse books that were available at that moment, which definitely makes sense, and presented us already developed world with all the details that they could get from all the books. Charlaine Harris, on the other hand, was developing her world gradationally, from one book to another, adding new details to her world in every book.

Second that I would like to apologize for to Charlaine Harris, is how I was bashing her imperfections in writing style and in story creation/development. None of us is perfect and only those of us who work on our mistakes can reach as close as it possible to the perfection and Charlaine Harris is definitely working on her mistakes. For me it looks like, before starting her next novel Charlaine Harris was reading all the criticism on her previous book, or she saw flaws by herself, and was trying to fix imperfections in her next book. For instance, at the end of the third book I had a thought (probably not much of a formed, solid thought, because I didn’t mention it in my review) that it is becoming annoying how in every book Sookie has at least one near-death experience. So what the fourth book is started from? Sookie is tired that she gets beaten up and almost dies every time, so she makes a New Year Resolution not to get beaten up or harmed physically in any other way. There are also many other examples like this one.

I don’t want to discuss the fourth book – Dead to the World – in details. I just want to say that I’m falling deeper and deeper for Sookie Stackhouse series and I’m off to order fifth and sixth books.