The latest instalment of Charlaine Harris’s chatty, witty and hugely enjoyable Sookie Sackhouse novels comes with a clonking great fib on its front cover.
Having spawned the just as enjoyable hit TV series, True Blood, the TV cast adorn the book’s cover despite, in this universe, one of them being dead and another not existing.
But no matter. What will matter is fans of the series launching into this one which would be a colossal mistake given this is number 10: Sookie’s story is miles ahead from the TV series, featuring fairies, werepanthers and others supernatural beasties that haven’t so much as shown up on the box yet.
So while fans of the show should head for the earlier novels (not to worry, they’re so crack-like you’ll rocket through them in a week), Dead in The Family is absolute bliss for established Sookie nuts.
This is a relief more than anything. Harris is a brilliant writer, but ten books is ten books and I was gnawing my nails with worry that, by now, she might have been hit by burnout and expectation (Janet Evanovich’s wonderful Stephanie Plum novels stopped being wonderful around book 10 and yet – grimace – they keep coming).
After the torture, war and general upset of last year’s Dead and Gone – like Evanovich, Harris has cursed herself with a ‘themed’ series title – the pace is much slower, with Harris allowing readers the luxury of a gentle stroll through Sookie’s world without that much torment getting in the way. The ravages of previous events have certainly taken their toll on our lovely heroine, but it’s her new habit of swearing that jars the most. Sookie using “fucking” as an adjective is rather sad: such a sunny character, but one who’s seen too much.
The more sedate pace means that this is the one Stackhouse book where you aren’t immediately lunging for your house keys the moment you finish reading in order to go out and buy the next one. It’s a more thoughtful book than we’ve read before and serves as a welcome lull in what’s been a frenzied series of action, rather complicated supernatural histories and multiple deaths.
For the hooked reader, it’s also rather lucky there’s no cliffhanger because there’s a whole year to wait until number 11 comes out, making that something to look forward to rather than resent not having it immediately.
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