Living Dead In Dallas: True Blood Book 2

Reviewed on February 17th, 2010 By James (administrator) & filed in the Book Reviews vault "This is my... BOOMSTICK!"

Books are a funny thing. At times they seem to live in their own secret world. A world known by a precious few who are able to savour and enjoy the little hidden treasures they uncover. In that world lies the Sookie Stackhouse books.

Although its been almost a decade since Charlaine Harris wrote Dead Until Dark most of the world were blissfully unaware of its existence until True Blood tore its way onto our screens. Offering sex, violence, romance, the occult and more sex. It’s not surprising the world sat up and paid attention. But there must be a reason why she has sold millions of copies and released pretty much a book a year. The reason is simple – they’re good!

And (I really must stop starting sentences with and!) she almost preternaturally led the vanguard in what seems to have become a mainstream genre which is being devoured by millions of romance-starved women. And (yep, done it again) she beat Twilight to the punch and arguably did it with more charm and genuine humanity and inventiveness than Stephenie Meyer managed.

Right. Time to blitz through the plot. Major spoiler alerts coming your way!
In the first few pages Lafayette is found naked and dead in policeman Andy’s car outside Merlottes. (It will be interesting to see how long he hangs around in the tv series now that they have deviated from the books so much.)

Soon after, Sookie gets attacked in the woods by a Maenad (like a dryad but more into booze than trees – and a lot nastier). Her wounds are poisoned and she is in mortal danger until the vampires come to her rescue and essentially give her a supernatural blood transfusion (basically they drink the bad blood and top her up with good). Sookie is now in their debt and agrees to Eric’s request that she be loaned out to another group of vampires in Dallas who need her psychic abilities.

Bill goes with her but only after she makes all involved agree that any humans implicated wont be harmed. So off to Dallas they go and hijinks ensue when a human anti-vampire league decides to take matters into their own hands. Along the way she encounters another telepath and gets saved by a group of werewolves. Job done they head back home.

Sookie then enlists Eric’s help to infiltrate the local sex party scene and they find the culprits who killed Lafayette. In the process persuading the Maenad to move on (which is good as Sam was having icky sex with her/it). And roll credits…

Ok, so that’s a really boiled down version of the story. Now let’s examine the good and the bad:

Good – lots of action, further development of characters (Eric in particular is becoming really likeable), expansion into the secrets of the vampire world and lots of sex.

Bad – big chunks with not a lot happening, token plot threads, too many supernatural beings crammed in and lots of sex that I suspect only a female reader will get something out of.

On final balance the good definitely outweighs the bad but it feels distinctly like a book which was rushed out. Maybe the success of the first was greater than expected and instead of letting a sequel appear naturally perhaps someone applied pressure to get something on the shelves quick. There is definitely something about it that feels like the author was in over her head.

Lafayette’s death and the mystery surrounding it should be the most important part of the novel but for close to 200 pages in the middle it isn’t even mentioned. Charlaine Harris clearly was starting to enjoy her characters at this point and there are some genuinely funny and touching moments in this installments but it is slightly marred by the throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach.

Truth be told if you removed the Maenad and the werewolves it would probably be a better book and I didn’t see any great reason in moving the action to Dallas as the location seemed to add little to the story. At least back in the Bayou we have the ready-made, rich southern charm to help bring that world to life.

But it moves at a fairly brisk pace and advances the underlying story, although at times you will find yourself wishing she was providing answers to the questions you were actually asking.

I am inclined to chalk this one up to a fairly inexperienced writer who has grabbed the tiger by the tail and doesn’t know what to do next. I suspect she will have learned from this installment and I have high hopes for book 3.

All in all it’s a good read and will happily set you up for more but you may ever-so slightly feel disappointed as the story is less disciplined than the original and suffers from not having the impact that a first book in a series will always have.

I would like to give this 6.5 but the rating system won’t allow me to (and yes it was me that built it) and so I will be generous and give it 7 out of 10. If I were a girl I may even mark it higher but nekkid men don’t really float my boat

Author: Charlaine Harris
Published: 2002

(3 votes, average: 8.33 out of 10)

 Loading ...

3 Responses to “Living Dead In Dallas: True Blood Book 2”

comment from: Jigsaw written on February 21st, 2010 5:15 am I must admit I cracked and began reading the books despite wanting to keep the tv series fresh. I have read the first two and am halfway through Club Dead. What suprises me is how different they are to True Blood and heres a SPOILER WARNING I have seen season two of True Blood and was shocked to find in the books Lafayette killed off as the show kills off a different character. From this point on I could enjoy both as their are major differences between this book and Season 2

comment from: James written on February 21st, 2010 12:30 pm That’s a good point. I gave up being stressed about the differences a while back although I don’t understand why they have deviated so much as there is a lot of solid storytelling in the books as it is. I will trickle out the book reviews for the rest of the series to avoid getting too far ahead of the show (although it is inevitable) and potentially frustrating any readers/viewers.

1. rippedfromthecrypt.com review » Club Dead: True Blood Book 3

Post a comment