Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse No.4), Charlaine Harris

Dead to the World is the fourth book in the South­ern Vam­pire mys­tery series set in Bön Temps, Lou­siana and fea­tur­ing Sookie Stack­house. She works as a bar­maid at Merlotte’s and is gifted (or cursed) with telepa­thy. Ever since she hooked up with vam­pire, Bill Comp­ton, life has ceased to be dull.

In Dead to the World, Sookie finds her­self drawn back into the super­nat­ural com­mu­nity when it is revealed that a coven of witches have taken up res­i­dence in Shreve­port. Vam­pire bar owner and entre­pre­neur, Eric Northam seems to be their tar­get. Nego­ti­a­tions between the witches and the vam­pires was a major FAIL, lead­ing the Area Five sher­iff and mas­ter vam­pire stripped of his mem­ory. Wanted posters are put up with a $50,000 reward for his capture.

Sookie steps in to pro­vide Eric with a safe place to stay in Bön Temps while his fol­low­ers, namely Chow and Pam regroup. Sookie finds this new Eric much harder to resist espe­cially since he’s been stripped of his self-identity. For the last three books Sookie’s fought Eric’s charms, but now that he’s vul­ner­a­ble, her resis­tance to him is weak. The dynam­ics of their rela­tion­ship changes a lot in this entry. Sookie is inde­pen­dent and doesn’t like peo­ple to con­trol her. It’s reveal­ing to me that she admits that she could resist Eric if he had been his usual, con­trol­ling self but when stripped of his per­son­al­ity, she falls hard.

There’s a side-story involv­ing Sookie’s reck­less and kinky brother Jason, who dis­ap­pears after New Years. His date was a shifter, only he didn’t know it. Bön Temps law enforce­ment searches for him as well as the com­mu­nity. Sookie is even­tu­ally led to a small com­mu­nity called Hot­shot. Sam, her boss, alludes to the fact that the res­i­dents of Hot­shot are an inbred and “older set­tle­ment of peo­ple” who like to keep to themselves.

So Sookie has to shuf­fle between Eric being cursed and hunted by a band of evil witches and her brother being miss­ing. That’s a lot for a girl to have to deal with alone espe­cially since she’s human and lack­ing super­nat­ural strength. Need­less to say, Sookie doesn’t get beaten up too bad in here com­pared to the last book. But she does find her­self faced with a cou­ple of moral dilem­mas when the story ends.

I’ve been really enjoy­ing this series, espe­cially see­ing how the vam­pires are sup­pos­edly assim­i­lat­ing them­selves into human soci­ety. It’s almost even believ­able, in that the gen­eral pub­lic has come to tol­er­ate vam­pires in the com­mu­nity. Like any other oppressed peo­ple, there are those who seek to do vam­pires harm like the drain­ers. The name is self-explanatory. Cer­tain rights are still restricted for vam­pires like mar­riage. In the end, vam­pires pre­fer to nest with their own kind and rarely do you find a vam­pire liv­ing among humans, alone.

It’s inter­est­ing in that the fur­ther along this series goes, the more lay­ered the super­nat­ural com­mu­nity becomes. For instance, the were­wolves con­sider them­selves much more supe­rior than those who are two-natured or “shifters.” Within the super­nat­ural com­mu­nity, as Sookie says, there’s a lot of squab­bling amongst each other. The vam­pires can’t stand the were­wolves and vice versa. How­ever, humans can’t stand either one of them, thus there are laws set in place to pro­tect them.

There is a def­i­nite hier­ar­chy of power and pol­i­tics in play in this series that I enjoy read­ing. I like that the author has cre­ated a world where super­nat­ural beings inter­act with humans in a small town where there’s a Wal-Mart and only one vam­pire in res­i­dence. Then there is Sookie’s humor. I love it. Her unre­solved rela­tion­ship with were­wolf, Alcide Herveaux, who is again fea­tured in the story, is explained this way:

“We’d dumped a body together, and that cre­ates a bond.”

While Dead to the World is not my favorite of the series, it was still a good, quick read. My favorite is still Dead Until Dark and I pre­fer Bill Comp­ton, no mat­ter how bor­ing he may be to some of you (and you know who you are). I don’t see Eric’s appeal but that is of no import. I pre­fer Bill because he is more reserved and is more than will­ing to let Sookie be inde­pen­dent while Eric, I think, would cramp her style. Any­way, Dead to the World gets a B from me. I thought that the story had some slow spots espe­cially revolv­ing around Jason’s disappearance.

I also thought that the info con­cern­ing Hotshot’s pop­u­lace could have been revealed sooner but for some rea­son, that plot point was reserved for the end­ing. Guess the next big thing is what hap­pens with Jason after the events in this book? There are awk­ward turns of phrase = Sookie’s south­ern accent, which can be some­what dis­tract­ing. Her south­ern dialect was the main the rea­son why I couldn’t even begin this series but I’ve since got­ten used to it. My grade, B. Mov­ing on to the next book in the series, Dead As A Door­nail. If you are inter­ested in read­ing the Sookie Stack­house series, you should start with the first book, Dead Until Dark.

Here is a link from BN that lists all the books in the series and don’t for­get, Dead and Gone comes out next Tues­day, listed pub price $25.95 in hard­cover. The series has also been made into an HBO series called True Blood by writer, Alan Ball (Six Feet Under). All books in this series is avail­able in ebook.

For Fur­ther Reading

• Vam­pire Knight Story & Art by Mat­suri Hino
• REVIEW: Blood Alone by Masayuki Takano (vol.4)
• REVIEW: Dead Until Dark by Char­laine Harris
• Manga Review: Vam­pire Knight(Vol.3) by Mat­suri Hino
• REVIEW: Vam­pire Knight (Vol.1) by Mat­suri Hino
• REVIEW: Blood Alone (Vol.1) by Masayuki Takano
• REVIEW: The Sil­ver Kiss by Annette Cur­tis Klause
• The Trou­ble With Valentine’s Day by Rachel Gibson
• Scan­dal­iz­ing the Ton, Diane Gas­ton {Guest Review}
• Ain’t Mis­be­hav­ing, Jeanne Grant

Tagged as: Louisiana setting, Romance, small-town, Sookie Stackhouse series, Vampires