Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse #2)

This is the second of Charlaine Harris’ novels about the telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse and her various sexy adventures with the sexy vampires (and other supernatural creatures) of Northern Louisiana and various other places. As you can maybe guess from the title of this one, one of those other places is Dallas, a town in the fictional state of Texas, which functions as a satire of non-American stereotypes of the United States.

Sookie is summoned by some vampires to go and investigate the disappearance of a cowboy vampire, who it turns out has been kidnapped by a millennia-old reformed/regret-filled/remorseful murderous paedophile vampire who has joined an anti-vampire fundamentalist Christian organisation called “The Fellowship of the Sun” and plans to commit ritualised suicide (being burned to death by the sun – which is fatal to all of Harris’ vampires) and take as many other vampires with him, regardless of their interest in self-immolation. Oh, and before she heads to Dallas, Sookie’s friend Lafayette (a main character until pretty late in the TV series, unless I’m misremembering!) has been violently murdered by a secret sex cult, a Maenad is on the loose and hungry for tribute, and Eric – the character played by Alexander Skarsgård in the HBO adaptation of course – is absolutely desperate to shag her: life ain’t easy for Sookie Sookie Stackhouse.

So, yes, here there are more shapeshifters as well as ancient spirits, there are werewolves and people who turn into bats, there is another telepath who Sookie can communicate with like making a phone call, there are hotels for vampires, airlines for vampires, there are vampire hunters (including people who are very violent and cruel and one of them tries to sexually assault Sookie who is only saved by the remorseful soon-to-kill-himself vampire who’s like “I’ve done enough of that in my time to not want to see it again” kinda thing and so on and so on … )

It’s strange/troubling that Harris chose to kill off the only Black, queer character in book two of a 13 (I think) book series, although I don’t know if that death will be permanent – there are lots of characters here who have previously died (they are vampires), so this is definitely a world where resurrection is possible. Who knows?

Anyway, Sookie gets to make out with multiple hunks with magical powers, she has some very effective sex with Vampire Bill, and most of the bad people get punished (i.e. killed) and the good people (well, morally neutral upwards) get to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh as a reward for not being evil.

It’s not complicated, but it’s fun, it’s sexy, it’s silly, it’s camp, it’s playful and it offers a great opportunity to think beautiful thoughts of beautiful people doing beautiful things, beautifully, to each other.

What it doesn’t do, though, is answer the most urgent question raised by the first book, though hints at its answer by clarifying that, like Le Chiffre, vampires cry tears of blood:

is vampire spunk nothing but blood???

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