Dead Until Dark (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 1) (edition 2001)

After hearing the hype on this series for quite some time, I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about.

I've seen only clips of the TV series True Blood to date, but am not enticed by the casting. After reading this book, I've decided they got the casting completely wrong and I have no interest in seeing the series, except perhaps to see what they have changed from the novel.

I enjoyed this book much more than I expected to. Sookie is engaging as a character and Bill is intriguing. I had a feeling about Sam and was glad to be proved right as I continued to read this. Lots of killing takes place, but then what else would you expect from a murder mystery/vampire story. Overall I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next book in the series. ( )

The author
Charlaine Harris has been a published novelist for over twenty-five years. A native of the Mississippi Delta, she grew up in the middle of a cotton field. Now she lives in southern Arkansas with her husband, her three children, three dogs, and a duck. The duck stays outside.

The synopsis
Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out.... Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea.

The review
I will not say to much about this book. It is a very entertaining story fitting right on the Harlequin shelf with some vampires. If you really try hard you can make up some double layer meaning behind the story but I think that is more by accident.
Characters are properly described. Looks are obviously very important, more than character . There are various holes and flaws in details of the story. I will not be able to read all these books in one go. But they are entertaining enough to pick one up to fill up a hole or after some heavy books if I do not want to think to much about what I read. ( )

Trashy, needed a good editor and spell check. I could not believe the amount of attention given to some ridiculous parts of the book but when a major emotionally traumatic event happens it is dealt with in one short page.

There are some funny parts but really they are only funny because they are utterly ridiculous ( )

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of "disability." She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome--and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting for all her life....

But Bill has a disability of his own: He's a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of--big surprise--murder. And when one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next....

My Review: The first book in the iconic series of Sookie Stackhouse novels. Nothing like beginning as you mean to go on! Harris pitches us Sookie's unusual talent, reading minds, on the first page and in Sookie's own voice. It's refreshing, to say the least, to have the set-up done and dusted on page one.

Oh, but how much more there is to come! Sookie meets the vampire of her dreams, Bill; she suffers her first huge loss in the series, and it's a doozie; she suspects, with the rest of the town, that Bill might be involved in some nefarious activity; and she faces down an evil-doer who comes from a pretty damn close to unsuspected quarter.

Whee dawggie! This is the first book, too!

I got this book and devoured it maybe ten years ago, and the series had me utterly hooked in no time at all. I appreciate the storytelling chops Harris has, and I loved then the novel (!) idea of vampires coming out of the coffin (a phrase Sookie uses in this book that still makes me chuckle). Nowadays, it's refreshing when a book has no majgickq or paranormalcy to it. Then it was fresh and new and really, really fun.

Things do change. My response to the book now wouldn't be one of pleasure, I suspect, so I'm happy that it's a comfort re-read and not a first encounter.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ( )

I like Harris' ideas in this book--the synthetic blood, vampires "coming out of the coffin," etc. But she is not a very good writer and I found her unnecessary detail really distracting. I can't tell if she was trying to be funny with her endless descriptions of Sookie's bad outfits (scrunchies, denim shirts, banana clips) and mundane day to day activities. Also, I've never been a big fan of mysteries (maybe i haven't found the right one, yet?), but I was completely bored by the unsolved murders in this novel and I thought the end, when the murderer was revealed, was rather anticlimactic. Also, the explanation for Vampire Bill's trip to New Orleans at the end of the novel: Also boring.
I think I like my vampire stories to be opulent and outrageous. Anne Rice, even Stephanie Meyer (despite the many, many faults of that series) were more fun to read. I'm still on the lookout for fun vampires stories, though, so if you have any suggestions.... ( )