REVIEW: ‘Club Dead’ by Charlaine Harris

Club Dead (2003) finds Sookie Stack­house and her vam­pire boyfriend, Bill Comp­ton, arriv­ing at a cross­roads in their rela­tion­ship. Remem­ber­ing all that they’ve been through in the pre­vi­ous two books, it comes as no sur­prise but I am a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed that things dis­solved so quickly in their relationship.

Twenty-six year old Sookie Stack­house lives in a small, rural town, north of Louisiana. She’s a bar­maid at Merlotte’s and the girl­friend of Bill Comp­ton, a vam­pire and Civil war vet­eran. Since hook­ing up with Bill, Sookie has been reluc­tantly drawn into the super­nat­ural community.

Need­less to say, she has a spe­cial gift that fas­ci­nates them: she can read minds. Her gift (or curse) of telepa­thy has made her an odd­ity within her own com­mu­nity and it’s a major deter­rent for her dat­ing reg­u­lar guys. Read­ing other people’s thoughts was a nui­sance for her until she met Bill. He was a god­send to her since she couldn’t read his thoughts. Through Bill’s instruc­tion, Sookie’s been able to con­trol her gift and even­tu­ally, she becomes sought after within the super­nat­ural community.

As a cou­ple, Sookie and Bill have weath­ered some stormy days together. How­ever, there remains the fact that their worlds are so vastly dif­fer­ent, and this dif­fer­ence makes their rela­tion­ship vul­ner­a­ble to the chal­lenges that face them from the out­side world.

What I enjoy most about this series, is that the author con­structs a soci­ety where vam­pires are rec­og­nized as exist­ing along­side humans but beyond that, they lack the rights that humans take for granted. There are the usual social issues of class dis­crim­i­na­tion, inter-species dis­con­nect, the usual hier­ar­chi­cal power struc­ture and pol­i­tics, ter­ri­tory and bound­aries that embody their world. In Club Dead, Sookie gets her­self entrenched fur­ther than she’s ever been, within this super­nat­ural world, in order to save her man.

Sookie’s been informed that Bill has been kid­napped right after learn­ing that he has lied and betrayed her. She is left con­flicted. He was work­ing on a secret project for another vam­pire, who hap­pens to be the Queen of Louisiana, before he was snatched. Sookie gets a quick les­son on what vam­pire has what ter­ri­tory in Louisiana and the com­pli­cated pol­i­tics that go along with it.

Eric, who is Bill’s boss, is a mas­ter vam­pire who runs a tourist bar in Shreve­port. Sookie’s worked for him before on a cou­ple of assign­ments. She learns that Eric was unaware of Bill’s project but aside from that mat­ters have become com­pli­cated. Bill was kid­napped by another vam­pire from another state. Thus, Eric can’t res­cue Bill with­out start­ing a war. So, Sookie finds her­self lulled back into the dan­ger­ous world of the super­nat­ural, allow­ing Eric to arrange for her an escort, a were­wolf named Alcide, to help her res­cue Bill. Together, with Eric work­ing under­cover, they go on a res­cue mis­sion that leaves Sookie bat­tered up good in this entry.

Another rea­son why I enjoy this series is because of Sookie and the sec­ondary char­ac­ters that make up this small, rural com­mu­nity. Their absence stuck out for me in this entry. Of course I missed Bill, too. He stayed mostly absent since he was kid­napped. There’s a bit of humor to lighten things up, espe­cially with the ongo­ing “inside joke” if you will relat­ing to “Bubba” the vam­pire from Ten­nessee, who bears a strik­ing resem­blance to Elvis Pres­ley (except you bet­ter not tell him that), who upon occa­sion, pro­vides secu­rity for Sookie, when Bill is away.

This series is all about Sookie. She is at times smart and charis­matic. I like that she pokes fun at her­self. She does come across as just a reg­u­lar per­son who has all these weird and extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences that some­times con­sumes her life. In Club Dead, she proves that she is pretty tough and that there is more to her than meets the eye. When all is said and done, Sookie will always try to do the right thing, but not always. I think the author has it right, in bal­anc­ing her strengths and weaknesses.

Of course, you can add my com­plaints with oth­ers who may find Sookie’s end­less list of wanna be suit­ors a tad bit annoy­ing. I really like Eric and find him very sexy but I hope that Sookie doesn’t end up with him. Also, I like the fact that Sookie has other issues to deal with out­side the super­nat­ural com­mu­nity and that the cause and effect of her work­ing for them is addressed in the story.

Again, the fan­tasy con­struct of Harris’s vam­pire com­mu­nity is uno­rig­i­nal and famil­iar. Har­ris did add one twist to her vam­pires in that they can be pho­tographed and that relates to Bill’s secret project, which I won’t elab­o­rate on fur­ther. Con­tin­u­ing on, you have the drink­ing of blood related to sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the power of vam­pire blood to make humans stronger (older the vam­pire, greater the potency), the blood as a heal­ing prop­erty, and last but not least, the sense of com­mu­nity with cus­toms, lin­eage, and tra­di­tions that make for inter­est­ing reading.

In the end, Club Dead was enjoy­able but it wasn’t a fast read nor will it be a favorite of mine in the series. I’m lean­ing more towards a solid B because the story is very read­able, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment was nicely done but there were some slow parts (mainly when Sookie is away from home) and I missed the Bön Temps com­mu­nity because for me, they make this series stand out from the other lame vam­pire sto­ries that seem to read alike these days. More impor­tantly, I like Sookie, because her South­ern charm has grown on me. Any­way, I look for­ward to read­ing the next Sookie Stack­house adven­ture. My grade, B/B-.

*****

This post is apart of the TBR Day event that me and my fel­low read­ers are par­tic­i­pat­ing in until Decem­ber 08. Please be sure to check out the other par­tic­i­pants and happy reading.