Randomize ME

Book Description:

The 12th Sookie Stackhouse novel from the Anthony Award-winning Southern Vampire series – and the basis for the HBO series True Blood.

It’s vampire politics as usual around the town of Bon Temps, but never before have they hit so close to Sookie’s heart…

Growing up with telepathic abilities, Sookie Stackhouse realized early on there were things she’d rather not know. And now that she’s an adult, she also realizes that some things she knows about, she’d rather not see—like Eric Northman feeding off another woman. A younger one.

There’s a thing or two she’d like to say about that, but she has to keep quiet—Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), is in town. It’s the worst possible time for a human body to show up in Eric’s front yard—especially the body of the woman whose blood he just drank.

Now, it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s set out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down.

*

Deadlocked, the 12th and latest book from Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series, is thankfully the second-to-the-last book we can expect from Ms Harris (she recently announced the happy news). One last more, and we shall all be FREE (both author and masochist reader!) Yip Yip Hooray!

So why do I continue to read the Sookie Stackhouse series, you may ask, if the recent ones have been such stinkers? I don’t know anymore – maybe I want some closure, maybe I’m hoping (against hope) that Ms Harris would redeem herself – but the thing is, I’m stuck. I did love the series and I wanted to find out where the characters end up. Well, with book 12 Deadlocked, apparently, nowhere I wanted them to be 😦

Charlaine Harris has shown before that she has a good imagination (able to think up a fully fleshed vampire society that readers loved), and can write funny interesting characters readers loved to hate (or hated to love).  I didn’t see any of that in this installment. There isn’t much story at all in Deadlocked, with all the characters seemingly to be in some kind of stasis. Where did proactive Sookie go? All we get is Sookie playing passive-aggressive with her vampire-husband Eric. Where did Viking god Eric go? Honestly, I could not see any trace of previous books-Eric in present book-Eric. He’s indecisive, passive, dependent, and apparently, has dropped more than a couple of IQ points.  The big mystery plot here was who could have been behind the death of the young woman found on Eric’s front yard. And yet it never occurs to Eric to have it investigated (by Bill), until Sookie suggests it. When did Eric turn into a clueless idiot??? I now get what the Bill fans got so mad about in earlier books… when Ms Harris wants a book-relationship to end, apparently she finds it easiest to do it by killing everything  fans might love about the characters.

And everything else in the book was just as boring or rather – it felt like Ms Harris couldn’t be bothered to make it more interesting . For example, the whole ‘faerie-brethren of Sookie’ storyline was just dispatched suddenly, without so much as a by your leave. I wasn’t a big fan of the fairies, but great-uncle Dermot has grown on me, so I went – huh? That’s it? Jeez.

At least there’s Season 5 of True Blood on HBO to look forward to!

Deadlocked  by Charlaine Harris is available on Amazon as a Kindle edition, Hardcover edition, Paperback edition and Audible Audio.

The eBook is also available at B&N, Apple iBookstore, Kobo books and Sony eBookstore.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by RSS Or by Email.