‘Dead until Dark’ – Charlaine Harris (Gollancz)

When I read Charlaine Harris’ ‘A Touch of Dead’ short story collection I had a couple of comments saying that if you liked cheesy or ‘camp’ stuff then ‘True Blood’ wasn’t a bad show to watch (the flip side being that if you didn’t like cheesy shows then...) I still haven’t seen the show but have read ‘Dead until Dark’, just haven’t got round to reviewing it here. (What? Other books got in the way...) Just over a month on and I’ve finally got round to writing something up, better late than never right? :o)
From what I’ve read so far, Charlaine Harris’ ‘Sookie Stackhouse’ books have got a lot going for them (in terms of what I like) but I wouldn’t be too bothered if I never picked another one up ever again. Weird isn’t it? Let me explain...

Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in small town Louisiana. She’s not just any old cocktail waitress though; what marks Sookie out from the rest of the pack is her ability to hear what people are thinking. This ability does have it uses but the one thing it has done is make Sookie undateable. Until Bill comes along. Not only is Bill a good looking guy but Sookie cannot hear a word he’s thinking; this is because Bill is a vampire...
Bill is a laid back kind of vampire but his friends aren’t and Sookie’s home town is about to find this out. And when people start dying... that’s when things get really interesting.

What really got me into this book was the character of Sookie herself; I don’t think that I’ve ever met a more down to earth character in the whole urban fantasy sub-genre! There’s no mucking around here, Sookie just gets on with her life and this is really refreshing to see. While there is some agonising over her ‘power’, Sookie doesn’t let it get in the way of what she needs to get done, living her life and just getting on with things. When she finally meets Bill, you actually get a real sense of what it must be like for a regular human to hang out with a vampire for the first time. No mucking around with ‘sparkling’ or long discussions over the perils of dating an immortal, just the beginnings of a relationship between two people with slightly stranger issues than normal.

This ‘earthiness’ made it a lot easier for me to get into the mystery that forms the main part of the plot. Harris spins a interesting tale here, full of paths to follow that may or may not lead anywhere. It kept me thinking about how the conclusion would pan out and threw up as many questions as it answered. The finale isn’t exactly explosive but it still managed to throw a couple of surprises my way.

However, while the earthy tone kept my interest it also contrived to throw me out of the story entirely. I think there can be a real danger of losing the spark that lights up a piece of fiction if you try to keep things too real and this is what happened for me in ‘Dead until Dark’. Harris gives us a world where vampires are slowly integrating into modern society but the ‘vampire spark’ was lost under just how plausible it all was. This is where it got a little confusing for me. The down to earth style made a real change from ‘sinister yet alluring vampires’ but I found it hard to get a sense of the ‘Other World’ that sets off the spark in other Urban Fantasy books. You can’t have it all I guess...

So there you have it, a book that kept me reading and yet also managed to make me think meh’ at the same time... I would read more of these books (to see where the story goes, although ‘A Touch of Dead’ dropped a pretty big hint) but what you won’t see is me running out to find them. You may see more ‘Sookie Stackhouse’ reviews here, you may not...

Seven out of Ten