Dead As A Doornail by Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse #5)

I’m now on a flight back into the UK, slowly beginning its descent after many hours in the air since Mumbai. (A more direct route back than I took out to Varanasi). Returning, alas, to old bloody England and its (and my) many problems, though of course this also means I’m returning to some old, close, friends (I mean the people (I mean one person and one dog) I share a room/bed with), so it only seems right that the last book I began to read, as I wandered through Varanasi for the last time a little over a day and a half ago, was another chance to hang out with some old, close, friends. No, I don’t mean that book my sister bought me a few (many!) Christmases ago about my dog, I mean all of my best friends, my real best friends, living inside of Charlaine Harris’s Bon Temps:

Ya, that’s right, I’m talking about Sookie Stackhouse and all those effing sexy hunks.

This one is the fifth in the series, and it’s definitely the least plot driven (there is like a serial killer going around but it’s fucking obvious who it is and what their motives are and neither Sookie nor Charlaine Harris seem to care too much about it (neither did I!), and that means that rather than being dragged down into mystery and clue and investigation and all that kinda crap, Dead As A Doornail instead focuses much more on the gossip, on the soapy elements, on the relationships – not just sexual/romantic, but political/economic/social/favour-based – that exist between the various groups of magical creatures hanging out in rural Louisiana, all of whom Sookie Stackhouse is kinda involved in.

There are the fairies and the werewolves and the shapeshifters and the vampires, there are witches and there are were-panthers (in a big departure from True Blood (which I don’t think overlapped with the books, but I might be wrong on that?) Jason Stackhouse becomes a were-panther after being bitten by one) and there is even – briefly, though we don’t see him turn – a were-tiger, and all of these communities are given detail and structure and organisation (or explanation if they are intentionally non-structured groups).

Sookie watches a campaign for new leader of a werewolf pack unfold. She deals with a revenge attack sent due to a minor plot point in like book one of the series, she has to move house for a bit due to arson, she doesn’t bang anyone but she does make out with like loads of sexy guys, she gets shot, she confesses to Eric about the shagging and the hiding a death they did together while his memory was wiped, and she accidentally reveals the existence of even more supernatural creatures to local law enforcement. She also helps a fellow fangbanger friend of hers get out of a relationship with a vampire who isn’t as down with mainstreaming as the much more fuckable Eric and Bill.

Alongside this, Harris introduces further brands of synthetic blood and the sociocultural contexts of what it means when vampires order anything but the best (the best is “True Blood” (and True Blood is the best ammaright???)), and the world building continues beyond this, with lore and detail that doesn’t feel clunky or needless, but rather helps to create a deeply engaging fictional society filled with rounded, emotive and emotional characters who I thoroughly enjoy returning to.

This is the fifth one of these I’ve read since early July, and there is absolutely no way I won’t continue to find myself crawling (not, no crawling, strutting) to this series every month or so until they’ve all been drained for my pleasure.

If you liked the TV show, I can’t recommend these books enough. If you even kinda slightly like vampire fiction that isn’t shit, then I also think you should give them ago.

Really fun stuff. And not frothy or vapid, either, there’s a real sense of reality and consequence throughout that makes these far less simple than a snob might expect going in.

Sookie Sookie Sookie!

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Update re: my key question for the series as a whole (“do the vampires ejaculate blood?”) – no answer here, as Sookie doesn’t get further than first base in this book – but she’s not complaining, first base with this many hunks is basically a shag, ammaright?????????