REVIEW: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Dead Until Dark (South­ern Vam­pire Mys­ter­ies, No. 1) by Char­laine Har­ris, pub­lished in 2001, is the first book in the South­ern Vam­pire mys­tery series. Sookie Stack­house, a bar­maid from Bön Temps, Louisiana, nar­rates the story.

Sookie has a gift: she can read minds. She con­sid­ers her telepa­thy a dis­abil­ity because many of the towns­peo­ple con­sider her crazy. How­ever, read­ing other people’s thoughts is not as easy as it sounds nor is it any fun. It is some­times indis­tin­guish­able chat­ter mixed with emo­tions, feel­ings and unwel­come thoughts. She avoids using this “gift” when­ever she can.

Sookie doesn’t date much because of her gift (or curse). She stays with her grand­mother and works at a bar called Merlotte’s. Her life is rou­tine until Bill Comp­ton steps into the bar one night, a vam­pire more than a cen­tury old. The events of the night take a unex­pected turn for the worst for the vam­pire, how­ever. Sookie res­cues him from a cou­ple who are try­ing to drain him for his blood to sell on the black mar­ket. Vam­pire blood is highly sought after because of its med­i­c­i­nal prop­er­ties. She helps him heal and a mutual attrac­tion sparks up between them.

Bill is a recent res­i­dent to this small Louisiana town and the only vam­pire in res­i­dence. Thanks to Anne Rice, the city of New Orleans is a more of a pop­u­lar vam­pire mag­net. Despite gov­ern­ment pro­pa­ganda sup­ported by most vam­pires in explain­ing how a virus causes vam­pirism, most peo­ple give them a wide berth. Their pale looks and super­hu­man strength causes much fear within the human community.

In addi­tion to that, not all vam­pires are will­ing to set­tle into the com­mu­nity qui­etly. Some nest in groups and are a nui­sance to their human neigh­bors. How­ever, Bill is dif­fer­ent. He drinks syn­thetic blood (made by a Japan­ese com­pany) and has decided to “main­stream” it with humans and abide by their rules. Syn­thetic blood doesn’t pro­vide all the nour­ish­ment that vam­pires may need to stay well fed but sub­sti­tut­ing it for the real thing helps to keep the “mur­der rate” low.

Bill and Sookie become a cou­ple dur­ing the worst crime spree the town has ever seen. There have been two unsolved mur­ders with sus­pi­cion thrown on a cou­ple of res­i­dents that includes Bill and the vam­pire pop­u­la­tion in gen­eral. These unfor­tu­nate events cre­ate fur­ther dis­con­tent between the human pop­u­la­tion and their super­nat­ural coun­ter­parts. The vic­tims were women who were fang-bangers or vam­pire groupies who had bite marks on their thighs and lig­a­ture marks around their necks. I guessed the killer early on but your mileage may vary.

The main story arc fol­lows the mur­ders but there are sev­eral sub­plots that made this story a page-turner. First, there is the romance, which is hot and a major sub­plot of the story. The sex is explicit which was sur­pris­ing and the chem­istry between Sookie and Bill was hot. Then there is the vam­pire pol­i­tics and hier­ar­chi­cal power struc­ture within their com­mu­nity that promises to chal­lenge the couple’s relationship.

Also, there’s another vam­pire even stronger and older than Bill who has an inter­est in Sookie’s super­nat­ural abil­i­ties. Sookie finds her­self spend­ing a lot of time in Bill’s world. She is fright­ened of his friends, some­times she is fright­ened by Bill who gets down­right scary when he’s angry or in blood lust. There’s an unex­pected plot twist where Sookie finds her­self the tar­get of a killer and the only com­mon­al­ity between her and the other two vic­tims were their asso­ci­a­tions with vampires.

The col­or­ful char­ac­ters of this south­ern vam­pire mys­tery kept me turn­ing the pages quickly. Sookie comes across as a believ­able char­ac­ter. She is a young lady with south­ern man­ners who often hides her feel­ings behind a tight smile. She is very pro­tec­tive of her fam­ily and friends. She has her moments of vul­ner­a­bil­ity about life and love.

After meet­ing Bill, her life has become much more inter­est­ing com­pared to the life she had pre­vi­ous. One of the bonuses for dat­ing Bill is that she can’t read his thoughts. His vam­pire tricks don’t work on her either. Also, he teaches Sookie how to use her gift and how to con­trol it. It isn’t until Bill takes an inter­est in her that some­one else steps up to lay claim to her heart, too. I sin­cerely hope that thread doesn’t go any further.

Many of the towns­folk deem Sookie as being not only crazy but a lit­tle slow which she goes on to prove is quite false. The girl is quite smart, almost always opti­mistic and always want­ing to help oth­ers. I liked her a lot. Other sec­ondary char­ac­ters like her older brother Jason (god’s gift to women), her boss and bar owner, Sam, fel­low wait­ress and friend Arlene and the three trou­ble­some Mon­roe vam­pires along with many of the other cast of char­ac­ters made many of the scenes of this book fly by quickly. There are sev­eral other scenes worth dis­cussing but I don’t want to spoil it all for you.

After clos­ing the last page of this book, I came away excited in dis­cov­er­ing yet another series to indulge in and came away sur­prised at how much I enjoyed this story. I bought Dead Until Dark when it first came out 7 years ago. I remem­ber many read­ers enjoy­ing it but I remem­ber I couldn’t get past the first chap­ter. The prob­lem I had was with Sookie’s “south­ern” voice, which kept throw­ing me out of the story. I was pre­pared for it this time and man­aged to get past it.

The super­nat­ural crea­tures and events that the com­mu­nity is now faced with is still a work in progress. Two years after vam­pires have been legally rec­og­nized and accepted into soci­ety there is still prej­u­dice and mis­un­der­stand­ing. There will always be the few bad apples to spoil it for oth­ers who choose to main­stream it. But those things will only add more ten­sion and excite­ment, which is good.

The super­nat­ural com­mu­nity has thus far intro­duced a shape shifter and a com­mu­nity of vam­pires but I’m sure this shall expand fur­ther. As for faults – I don’t care for Sookie attract­ing so many dif­fer­ent suit­ors. Any­way, I read this book in one sit­ting and have already fin­ished the sec­ond book in the series.

Dead Until Dark was my TBR pick for March and my grade, B+ because the begin­ning chap­ters were a bit slow in gain­ing this reader’s atten­tion but once I was hooked, I couldn’t put the book down until I was fin­ished. A strong rec­om­mend for read­ers who have yet to start this series (do I hear a echo in here?). If you enjoy urban fan­tasy and have over­looked this series like I have or you have a copy in your TBR pile — pull it out of there and read it.

Other sim­i­lar authors I’ve enjoyed: Patri­cia Briggs and Lau­rell K Hamil­ton (first eight Anita Blake books only)

Note: Make sure to check back later this evening for Sonia’s review for Danc­ing With Were­wolves by Car­ole Nel­son Douglas.

Note: Please check out the other par­tic­i­pants of TBR Day here! Enjoy!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Sookie Stack­house series, Char­laine Har­ris, Vampires

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: ‘Club Dead’ by Char­laine Harris
• Dead to the World (Sookie Stack­house No.4), Char­laine Harris
• REVIEW: ‘Liv­ing Dead in Dal­las’ by Char­laine Harris
• REVIEW: ‘Blood Bound (A Mercy Thomp­son Series)’ by Patri­cia Briggs
• Vam­pire Knight Story & Art by Mat­suri Hino
• Reader’s Cor­ner: HBO’s True Blood (Sookie Stack­house Series): So What’s the Verdict?
• Neil Gaiman’s ‘Grave­yard’ Tells The Story of a Boy Raised By the Dead
• REVIEW: Blood Alone by Masayuki Takano (vol.4)
• REVIEW: The Soci­ety of S, Susan Hubbard
• REVIEW: Mid­night Ris­ing by Lara Adrian (Mid­night Breed #4)

Tagged as: Charlaine Harris, Louisiana, Shapeshifters, Sookie Stackhouse series, Vampires