All Together Dead

Rating: 3.4* of five

The Publisher Says: Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse has her hands full dealing with every sort of undead and paranormal creature imaginable. And after being betrayed by her longtime vampire love, Sookie must not only deal with a new man in her life—the shapeshifter Quinn—but also contend with the long-planned vampire summit.

The summit is a tense situation. The vampire queen of Louisiana is in a precarious position, her power base weakened by hurricane damage to New Orleans. And there are some vamps who would like to finish what nature started. Soon, Sookie must decide what side she'll stand with. And her choice may mean the difference between survival and all-out catastrophe.

My Review: Too many threads with too much happening and the end result is I don't have any idea what it is this entry in the series is about: Sookie and Quinn, after his early trauma is revealed? Sookie and the vamp queen, after Sookie's defense of her succeeds and is repaid with treachery? Sookie and Eric, now that she owes him another round of gratitude? Sookie detecting another of her telepathic kind, and the major events of the nightmare religious cult the Fellowship of the Sun unfold?

I suppose every series has a problem with the transitional tales that need telling. Too many transitions in this one, at least for my little two-volt nervous system.


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

I docked a star from "All Together Dead" over the two or three BONEHEADED moves Sookie made this time around. If you read it, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. It was like shouting "Don't go in the basement!" during some horror flick, only more irritating because usually Sookie shows more sense.

The big reveal about Quinn's past was not as shocking as I thought it would be. And he still doesn't seem all that great.

I did enjoy the book overall, aside from the d'oh moments and the parts with Barry the Bellboy, which I found INCREDIBLY boring. Please tell me he doesn't show up again.

Now I have to leave this series for a week while I wait for the paperback version of numbah eight, I am so sad. ( )

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**

Again, I have to mention that this series is in desperate need of a decent editor. I mentioned this in my review of Book 5 (Dead as a Doornail):
"Jason's boss is Shirley (Catfish) Hennessey in Book 4, but in Book 5, all of a sudden he's Shirley (Catfish) Hunter. What?!?" In Book 7, we're now back to a version of Hennessey, although it's misspelled as "Hennessy".

This series as a whole, is interesting, mysterious and sexy. I feel the need to find out where this is all going, but this book certainly felt like it was missing something that contributed to the earlier books' "unputdownability."

Maybe it was Sookie and Bill's relationship, which I loved, that kept me wanting more. Even though I knew it couldn't last through the entire 8 book series (so far, anyway), I have held out hope for their relationship. There are hints that a reconciliation may be in the works, but it seems unlikely that will happen at this point.

The more I think about the later books in the series, the more Sookie frustrates me. She burns bridges before she's even crossed them fully, and cuts people entirely out of her life, for the silliest reasons I have ever seen. She holds grudges and makes off-the-cuff life-changing decisions that make no sense to me. Maybe it is her sense of pride that causes her to do this, or maybe she is jaded by being able to know peoples' intimate thoughts, I just don't know.

I still don't understand why she was so upset with Alcide. Please, someone explain it to me. Really. So he knew about Debbie. So? He had abjured her, and its not like he was going to turn Sookie in, or kill her. I think that Sookie was pissed at him for having the audacity to know what happened and still like her.

Or, how about this mystery... Why was Sookie angry with Quinn after finding out he was a fighter? Hmm? These things are lost on me. I don't get what the big deal is.

But anyway, I'm ranting. Nothing was resolved for me in this book like I had hoped at the end of the 6th book. I'll renew that hope for the 8th book, and also up the ante and hope that Sookie learns to relax a little and stop acting so damn high & mighty. She is not perfect herself, so I wish she would stop expecting others to be. *nod*
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4.5 stars

This one was a bit of a different experience for me since I listened to it on audio and didn’t read it. Sookie delves even deeper into the vampire world when she goes to the vampire Summit. Like the last one, this one was fast paced and I loved getting to know the vampire world. I also loved the love triangle in this one.

The audio version was awesome to listen too, but I didn’t like how the narrator did Quinn’s voice or how she made Sookie sound so twangy in some parts. I found it annoying to listen too during those parts. I also didn’t like it towards the end when the narrator made Sookie voice so shaky. To me it distracted from the story.
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Thanks to the hotel explosion, Andre's threats and demise, and the implosion of Sookie's relationship with Quinn, this ended up feeling much darker than the rest of the series, although still entertaining.

Previously read May 2007. ( )