All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris

Here was the truth of it: I'd had so little chance of having the kind of life my classmates had achieved - the kind of life I'd grown up thinking was the ideal - that any other life I could shape for myself seemed interesting. If I couldn't have a husband and children, worry about what I was going to take to the church potluck and if our house needed another coat of paint, then I'd worry about what three-inch heels would do to my sense of balance when I was wearing several extra pounds in sequins.

-All Together Dead

Gosh, I love Charlaine Harris.

The story of All Together Dead begins at a difficult point in recent American history, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Our Sookie is not so directly affected, living in northern Louisiana, but in Harris's world the disaster had a dramatic impact on the supernatural community. It may seem silly to think about the ramifications a real-life event like Katrina would have in fantasy fiction, but Harris has made New Orleans so central to her vampire world that it would seem far weirder to ignore it. She handles it with appropriate gravitas and her approach never seems exploitative. It's simple and matter of fact: this happened, it was terrible, and here's how we're coping.

So, given that background, the political state of vampire Louisiana is pretty much a shambles when we pick up the story. The Queen of Louisiana, Sophie-Anne Leclerq, who featured heavily in the previous book, is suddenly vulnerable in the wake of Katrina and her ill-fated marriage to the King of Alabama. The latter, you may remember, came to an inauspicious end with his sudden death in Definitely Dead. Sophie-Anne has hired our favorite barmaid to accompany her to a vampire summit in Rhodes, where she hopes to use Sookie's telepathic powers to her advantage.

The whole merry gang - Sookie, Queen Sophie-Anne, Eric, Bill, Pam, and assorted other hangers-on - treks to Rhodes via the vampire-friendly Anubis Airlines, hoping to reestablish some of Louisiana's former power. Of course, readers of this series learned long ago that Sookie can't go anywhere without troubles being close on her heels. Things in Rhodes quickly get very, very dangerous for our heroine and her vampire pals. In addition, Sookie has to cope with an interesting development in her relationship with Eric, which I loved. It definitely drew me in more than any part of her relationship with weretiger Quinn has.

I found All Together Dead to be, in terms of plot, one of the more complicated and interesting Sookie Stackhouse outings. Although Harris was a bit heavy handed in some of her foreshadowing, I remain impressed by her ability to create such a rich, exciting, and often just plain fun world. While on some occasions I have been perfectly happy to allow some time to pass between reading books in this series, in this instance I was very glad to have From Dead to Worse at my disposal.

Up next: From Dead to Worse, clearly.