"He wasn't working last night," I said. "Anthony was working, Anthony Bolivar."
"Who is that?" Alcee's broad forehead wrinkled. "Don't recognize the name."
"He's a friend of Bill's. He was passing through, and he needed a job. He had the experience." He'd worked in a diner during the Great Depression.
"You mean the short-order cook at Merlotte's is a vampire?"
-Living Dead in Dallas
Remember what I said in the Bleak House entry about having trouble finding a good quotation sometimes? Yeah, it's like that here. I'm not reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels for the prose. I do like the idea of a vampire who worked in a diner in the Great Depression, though. I think one of my favorite things about vampires is all the history they've experienced. They're like one-way time travelers!
When we last left Sookie Stackhouse, the telepathic waitress dating vampire Bill Compton, she was recovering in a hospital bed after a nasty fight with the serial killer who had been preying on local women. The fate of that killer, who was hanging between life and death at the end of Dead Until Dark, is curiously never mentioned in this book. I mean, he was well known to Sookie and her friends, so you'd think it might be interesting to see how his death/recovery/existence in general had affected them. No dice. Forget he was ever there.
Instead this book expands Sookie's universe considerably. After the death of another one of her co-workers, as well as another brutal attack on her, Sookie is whisked off from the tiny town of Bon Temps, Louisiana to Dallas. There, Sookie is expected to fulfill certain professional obligations: she must use her telepathy to find a missing vampire. Along the way she has quite a time with the frightening Fellowship of the Sun church and begins to more fully understand the ways in which Bill is not human. She meets some shapeshifters, ends up in the hospital again, and manages to get home in time for a football game and a hasty resolution to that co-worker's murder.
This was a very strangely paced and organized book. Now, granted, I may feel that way because I've just finished watching season 1 of True Blood (which I plan to get to in another post). For 75% of the novel, Sookie is in Dallas, which means the only familiar characters she is interacting with are Bill and charismatic vampire leader Eric. True Blood regulars Jason and Sam are barely on the radar. Not to mention the fact that the book opens with a murder, which could have propelled the story in and of itself, but instead is dropped as a plot until Sookie returns to Bon Temps in the last few chapters. I felt like the entire time Sookie was in Dallas, I was waiting for the story to get started, until I eventually realized that Dallas was the story (yes, the title should have been a clue). As far as stories go, it was okay, but I don't think it used the characters to their best advantage.
I still love the prim and plucky Sookie, but I felt the characterization faltered a bit in this one - again, this could be in comparison to the show. Bill came off as too possessive and controlling (shades of Edward Cullen, yuck) - I can't tell if this is because he's 150 years old, he's a vampire, or if he just has no idea when it is appropriate to give a lady topaz earrings. (Hint: always better to err on the side of not giving gifts to match the outfit in which your lady friend just survived a massacre. Chances are she's not wearing that dress again.)
Then there's the newly introduced Tara Thornton. Tara is possibly - probably - my favorite character on True Blood. There is a character by the same name in Living Dead in Dallas, but she's so far below Tara's level of awesomeness that they're really not comparable. Or if I were to compare them, it would just be to bemoan how lame book Tara is.
It will be interesting to see how much of this plot they use in season 2 of True Blood, and how much they'll go off in their own direction - I'll get to this more in the promised True Blood post. In the meantime, I have to say this has put a bit of a damper on me reading more Sookie Stackhouse books right away, but I'd be surprised if I didn't get to the next book eventually.
Up next: I've decided to go for the sequel to The Mysterious Benedict Society, which has been sitting on my shelves long enough.
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