Review of Deadlocked – Book 12 of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris

Our favourite cocktail waitress, Sookie Stackhouse, is once more embroiled in another adventure… A young girl has died at a vampire party – and it looks as though her lover, Eric, might be responsible. Eric swears he didn’t do it, the police don’t believe him, and even Sookie isn’t so sure. Nor is she inclined to take his word for it, having caught him enjoying the victim’s blood minutes before she was killed.

But something strange is going on. Why was Sookie asked to come to the fateful party a few minutes early – just to catch Eric in the act? And why had the victim spiked her own blood before approaching Eric? Was it simply because she wanted to be irresistible, or was it something more sinister?  Sookie will have to find out… but it’s the worst moment to investigate, as her Fae family are having troubles of their own and Sookie is, inevitably, drawn in.

This is the penultimate book in the series, and I think even if you didn’t actually know it, there is a sense of Harris drawing together various storylines and starting to provide us with the concluding storylines for some of the main players in this popular, likeable series. There is a marked darkening in the overall tone of this book. Sookie is increasingly unhappy with her single status as her biological clock is chiming… There is also a significant lack of steamy sex in this book. Having turned 28 and experienced enough tumult in the last few years of her life to fell an ox (the two-natured kind, of course) Sookie is bound to be tired of constantly being in danger – and fed up with the lop-sided power ratio in her relationship with Eric. Even the most infatuated girlfriends start counting the cost when they have to continually drop everything to spend quality time with that special someone – and Eric is never going to do contented domesticity. While Sookie is, at heart, an intensely domesticated woman…

Hooray for Harris having the guts to shine a bit of honest relationship reality in amongst the supernatural murder and mayhem! So, does Deadlocked unduly suffer with Sookie so depressed? Well, the pace is certainly slower than the usual headlong rush – but that didn’t find me wanting to skim or skip. I was enjoying catching up with the other characters, while appreciating Sookie’s issues. It’s refreshing to find a feisty female protagonist struggling to cope.

Harris is clearly cranking up the overarching story climax ready for the final denouement in the final book of the series, Dead Ever After, due to be released next year. In the meantime, does the murder investigation in Deadlocked reach a credible conclusion? Yes, I think it does. Like many others, I’d already guessed who had killed the girl well before the end – but that isn’t the heart of this plot. The other issue surrounding Sookie’s unique qualities were being addressed in this book – I’m going to some lengths to avoid Spoiler territory, here – which was one plot-point waving in the wind that was starting to annoy me, anyhow. So I was quite happy to see Harris tie it into previous storylines and other characters, while providing yet more information on Sookie’s background. I happen to think that she is one of the most competently written main characters in urban fantasy and all that Deadlocked has done is confirm that opinion.

I know that I’ll miss my annual visit to Bon Temps, but the way that Harris is winding up the series makes some kind of crisis leading to a step-change in Sookie’s fortunes an inevitability. All I’m hoping is that poor Sookie ends up with someone who will ultimately make her happy – and I, for one, am not convinced that someone should be Eric…
9/10

Review of The Vampire Shrink by Lynda Hilburn

This is a slightly different take on vampires, told from the viewpoint of a professional who finds herself involved when a client starts talking about the vampire world.

Denver Psychologist Kismet Knight, Ph.D., doesn’t believe in the paranormal. She especially doesn’t believe in vampires. That is, until a new client introduces Kismet to the vampire underworld, and a drop-dead gorgeous, 800-year-old vampire named Devereux. Kismet isn’t buying the vampire story, but can’t explain why she has such odd reactions and feelings whenever Devereux is near. Kismet is soon forced to open her mind to other possibilities when she is visited in her office by two angry bloodsuckers, who would like nothing better than to challenge Devereux by hurting Kismet.

And suddenly Kismet is up to her chin in the vampire world. Hilburn tells this story with spark and flashes of ironic humour that kept me laughing throughout. I particularly liked the Miss Piggy slippers… The other thing that I enjoyed, was that it took an almighty long time before the heroine really believed that the vampires around her were more than deluded wannabes. I do get a tad fed up when supernatural creatures pop up in the middle of everyday situations and those around them completely fall in with the hurried explanation in amongst all the chaos that follows them. It was refreshing to find a heroine who didn’t believe until the proof was absolutely incontrovertible.

Any niggles? Well, what I did find jarring was that Kismet – who hadn’t had any kind of intimate relationship for two years – is then apparently willing to become sexually available to three men after her encounter with Devereux. I don’t think she worries nearly enough about this behaviour. It bothered me that the implicit explanation was that Devereux’s influence had lowered her inhibitions. Oh, really? And that’s a good thing? Graphic sex scenes are often part of the sub-genre, but they are generally in the context of a loving relationship – however, I wasn’t so convinced that this was the case in this novel. And – yes – for me that was a problem.

I’m hoping that this wrinkle is one that Hilburn will address in the next book, because I enjoy her irreverent humour and sparky writing style – and this series has potential to really take off.
8/10

Review of Blood Price – Book 1 of The Blood series by Tanya Huff

This novel is the first in the successful series by Tanya Huff featuring her female PI, Vicki Nelson, one of the earlier urban fantasy/horror offerings that helped to popularise the hordes of vampires and demons stalking our streets.

It began with blood and death. And Vicki Nelson, PI was at the scene. The victim had been brutally, inhumanly opened up. Messy work. She’d had to cover the corpse with her coat. It had sort of made her feel involved.

Now Vicki is caught up in the deadly pursuit of a mass murderer with an inhuman appetite for mayhem and destruction. And her advisor on the case is doing nothing to dampen her growing sense of foreboding. But then, with a being of unspeakable evil stalking the city, only Vicki Nelson would ally herself with Henry Fitzroy, the illegitimate child of Henry VIII and five hundred years a vampire.

When the novel opens, Vicki is struggling to come to terms with an incurable eye condition that is affecting her vision, bringing her career as a successful homicide detective to an end. Henry Fitzroy finds his daily routine is becoming lonely and boring in equal measure, tempting him to start taking silly risks. Until the headlines in the local Toronto papers start screaming about vampire attacks and he realises that if he doesn’t start using his superhuman speed and strength to hunt this creature, this unwelcome attention may well grow.

Huff deftly pulls the reader into this solidly constructed vamp tale. Vicki Nelson makes a satisfying protagonist with plenty of edges and a bumpy relationship with her former colleague and sometime lover, Mike Celluci. I also found Fitzroy a convincing vampire who has managed to carve out a niche for himself, yet still yearns for a closer relationship. Huff quickly builds a sense of tension as we gradually learn exactly what the nature of the evil is as the body count goes on growing.

I enjoyed the apparent contradiction between the apparent harmlessness of the instigator of all the mayhem and the damage he managed to inflict. Evil doesn’t always look coolly menacing, or revoltingly grotesque – it can just as easily be gawky and slightly pathetic.

The series was turned into the short-lived TV series, Blood Ties. However, don’t let memories of that lacklustre effort hinder you from seeking out the books – as is often the case, the screen version was a limp shadow of Huff’s characters and world. If you haven’t yet encountered this series and enjoy a good supernatural murder mystery, you’re in for a treat.
8/10

Review of The Radleys by Matt Haig

This intriguing take on vamps is one of the selections of More 4’s TV Book Club 2011. Although, I had to grit my teeth as Jo Brand et al hastily assured us with much eye rolling and disgust-gurning that initially the vampire aspect had them all terribly worried, as who’d be caught dead reading anything with vampires? I think Jo even shuddered… But once the unedifying spectacle of such literary snobbery was put to one side and our plucky panel actually picked up the damn book – surprise, surprise, they all loved it…

Life with the Radleys: Radio 4, dinner parties with the Bishopthorpe neighbours and self denial. Loads of self denial. But all hell is about to break loose. When teenage daughter Clare gets attacked on the way home from a party, she and her brother Rowan finally discover why they can’t sleep, can’t eat a Thai salad without fear of asphyxiation and can’t go outside unless they’re smothered in Factor 50.  With a visit from their lethally louche uncle Will and an increasingly suspicious police force, life in Bishopthorpe is about to change. Drastically.

Sookie Stackhouse it ain’t. Haig manages to encapsulate the sheer predictable dreariness of British middle class life for local G.P. Peter Radley and his stressed wife Helen. Meanwhile, Clare and Rowan struggle not to get bullied at the local comprehensive for being prone to headaches, skin rashes and feeling constantly sick in the sunshine. As Jo was at pains to emphasise – the vampirism of the Radley family is a cipher for any kind of difference within a community. Or not. I don’t really care.

What I do know, is that the writing is aptly sharp with a thread of black humour running through the book. Haig’s descriptions are vividly arresting, as the gripping storyline keeps the pages turning until you reach the end. If you wish to regard the vampires as some kind of extended metaphor because your literary friends will look down their pointy noses at you if you don’t, then by all means go ahead. I don’t get the feeling that Haig was sweating over such distinctions all that much – he was too busy having fun with wicked, wicked uncle Will, while peeling back the hypocrisies and misunderstandings of daily life, highlighted in stark relief as the protagonists stumble through their days and nights in the grip of a terrible addiction. The extracts from The Abstainer’s Handbook are funny and poignant. The ending is very well executed, providing a really satisfying conclusion to this dark edged drama and nicely tying up any trailing ends.

All in all, reluctant though I am to find myself agreeing with Jo Brand – this, after all, is the woman who claims 1984 is her favourite book, while professing to hate science fiction as a genre – I found The Radleys a highly entertaining, darkly enjoyable read.
9/10

Review of Dead Reckoning – Book 11 of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris

So… with the TV adaptation of this series by HBO acclaimed by both critics and fans and as yet another volume hits the bookshelves, the question has to be – has Harris managed to give us yet another slice of Sookie magic? Is she able to still deliver the freshness and appeal of our favourite cocktail waitress after she’s been through more scary adventures than you’d want in a lifetime?

Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. It’s a job that has its own challenges, but now the vampires and the shapeshifters are finally ‘out’, you’d think the supernaturals would get on with each other. But nothing is that simple in Bon Temps! …and Sookie has a knack for being in trouble’s way; not least when she witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte’s, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is known to be two-natured, suspicion immediately falls on the anti-shifters in the area. Sookie suspects otherwise, but before she can investigate something else – something even more dangerous comes up.

Sookie’s lover, Eric Northman and his ‘child’ Pam are plotting something in secret. Whatever it is, they seem determined to keep Sookie out of it, almost as determined as Sookie is to find out what is going on. She can’t sit on the sidelines when both her work and her love life are under threat – but as their plans gradually become clear, Sookie finds the situation is deadlier than she could ever have imagined.

And there you have it. As you’ll have gathered from the blurb, Harris is still capable of delivering a plot full of narrative tension and adventure as Sookie is plunged once more into the heart of vampire politics. As the plot drew me in and once more whisked me off into Bon Temps alongside Sookie, I was once more filled with admiration at how adroitly Harris avoids pitfalls other less able writers nosedive into. For starters, Harris doesn’t assume that everyone who picks up Dead Reckoning has read any or all of the previous books in the series. There is the odd explanatory sentence slipped in as to who all the characters are and a quick mention of a previous incident – also very handy for the more forgetful of her fans. And – even more importantly – Harris ensures right at the start of the book, there is a scene featuring Sookie in trouble to bond her with the readers, either for the first time or reintroduce her to those of us who have read one or three other books since the last time we lost ourselves in a Sookie adventure… It’s a neat trick. One I wish other multi-book authors would use more often (Jim Butcher, John Scalzi, C.J. Cherryh and Lois McMaster Bujold are among the honourable exceptions who also successfully employ this strategy). It’s exasperating to wade through a sequel with a boring protagonist I really cared about in the first book, because the author hasn’t made the effort to establish that main character with the readership, again.

I’ve always enjoyed Sookie’s character and the bone-dry humour threading through the books – and this book continues to deliver, as we see her on one hand wandering around with a handbag full of stakes while planning a baby shower for her friend, Tara. I enjoy the tension between all the supernatural happenings and Sookie’s efforts to keep on top of the housework and going to work. No one else manages to weave the mundane and weird together so well, heightening one with the everyday contrast and sharpening our sympathy with someone who also struggles to keep her house clean and tidy…

I was slightly startled to register that I plucked this book off the shelf marked ‘Horror’. Of course it is a judgement call – one person’s urban fantasy is another person’s horror, but I do worry whether the steamy, blood-soaked depiction of Bon Temps by the folks at HBO are skewing expectations of this delightful series. Yes, Sookie’s sexual encounters are described, but Harris isn’t anything like as graphic as many other writers in the sub-genre – and certainly doesn’t go in for a blow-by-blow account of the naked writhings HBO insists on showing us. While I do think that HBO have absolutely nailed the sense of the world and have managed to get Sookie, Bill, Eric and Pam physically very close to Harris’s creations, a lot of the humour that leavens the horror is missing.

While I’ll continue to tune into True Blood, I still feel that the TV series is lacking some of the best elements of the books. This is one of a handful of worlds I happily reread, and the latest offering, Dead Reckoning, still delivers Sookie with all her vivid Southern charm.

10/10

Review of Glass Houses – Book 1 of The Morganville Vampires by Rachel Caine

This is yet another urban fantasy vamp tale – but worth a serious look because Rachel Caine is also the author of the very successful and nicely plotted Weather Warden series.

Morganville is a small college town filled with unusual characters. But when the sun goes down, the bad come out. Because in Morganville, there is an evil that lurks in the darkest shadows – one that will spill out into the bright light of day.

For Claire Danvers, high school was hell, but college may be murder. It was bad enough that she got on the wrong side of Monica, the meanest of the school’s mean girls, but now she’s got three new roommates, who all have secrets of their own. And the biggest secret of all isn’t really a secret, except from Claire: Morganville is run by vampires, and they are hungry for fresh blood…

This tale is definitely aimed at the YA market. However, that doesn’t preclude many books from being an equally enjoyable read for those of us who a lot longer in the tooth – in a completely non-vampire way, of course. Authors such as Juliet Marillier and Trudi Canavan are often parked on the YA bookshop shelves, which doesn’t prevent me being a solid fan of both. The style and tone of this book did come across as rather young as it is written in Claire’s viewpoint and I did skim the sections where she is obsessing about the boy in her life. It isn’t a criticism, so much as an observation – I’m not, after all, the target audience this book is written for – and I was prepared to go with the flow as I found the storyline sufficiently intriguing.

One aspect I very much applaud is that Caine’s young protagonist is a highly gifted student who has been fast-tracked to college several years early. It makes a refreshing change to have an academically gifted heroine who is being seriously hazed for it, rather than the normal fashionably dumb girl very into clothes and/or shoes. It gives this fantasy a sharper, grittier edge to see school life through the eyes of this neglected minority, who after all have the potential and ability to shape our future society – and who are all too often singled out by their less able classmates.

The other aspect that sets this tale apart is Caine’s excellent pacing and atmosphere – this book hits the ground running and doesn’t let up. The initial action was all the more shocking for being committed by a gang of girls, and as Claire becomes ever more mired in Morganville’s dark side, a real sense of menace and danger is created. There is nothing remotely sexy or fun about Caine’s vampires in this book – they are lethal predators and those living alongside them are quite rightly absolutely terrified and cowed by them.

The plot twists were engrossing and the cast of characters well drawn, with several enjoyable surprises along the way. By the time we came to the cliffhanger ending, I was sufficiently hooked to want to get hold of the sequel and discover what happens next.

8/10

Review of Undead and Unemployed by Mary Janice Davidson

This is one of the fluffier offerings of chic-spec I’ve read. In a sub-genre that generally doesn’t take itself too seriously, this book is more firmly tongue in cheek than most – think Clueless rather than Buffy. For starters, the protagonist is a ditzy blonde with a thing for shoes. Nothing can make Betsy Taylor give up her shoe fetish – not even dying and rising as the new Queen of the Vampires. Only being royally undead doesn’t mean there aren’t still credit card bills to be paid. Luckily, Betsy lands her dream job selling designer shoes at Macy’s Department Store.

But then there’s a string of vampire murders in town and Betsy has to enlist the help of the one vamp who makes her blood boil: the oh-so-sexy Eric Sinclair. Only the last time she ran into Sinclair she accidentally fulfilled an ancient prophesy – and ended up married to him…

Written in first person POV, the story might be fairly light-hearted – but it is well crafted and the character is convincingly dim. Which I find endearing – and I am conscious that writing a stupid heroine isn’t as easy as it might seem, having tried it and thrown the result across the room in disgust…

If I have a niggle, it is that Betsy tends to go on and on about how much she dislikes Eric – while the reader knows that in stories of this type that means that it is a sure thing the pair of them will finally get together. I also found the liberal use of the f-word rather jarring. I realise that swearing and graphic sex scenes are par for the course in a lot of books in this sub-genre. But in this particular story, the swearing just didn’t seem to fit the chirpy and humorous mood – having said that, I’m conscious that I’m older by several decades than the target audience.

But do I celebrate the fact that this book – and a slew of others like it is out there? You bet. If only I’d had this sub-genre to fall back on years ago when I wanted to chill out from the grittier stuff – instead of tired old Mills and Boon! Young women brought up on a diet of quality fantasy want something ‘other’ than the clichéd staples of secretaries dating bosses… nurses dating doctors… in their light romances. And now they have it with vamp chicks strutting around, biting/agonising over human lovers and/or solving murders. The love interest might be just as trite – but at least the heroine is less annoyingly vapid and the hero is less worryingly chauvinistic.

And if your taste runs to this sub-genre, you could do a lot worse than Undead and Unemployed.
7/10

A Review of A Rush of Wings by Adrian Phoenix

This urban fantasy/crime whodunit is one of the plethora of vampire books that are currently flooding our bookshops. However, if you pick this one up expecting the chirpy humour pervading the likes of Undead and Unemployed, you are likely to be disappointed. Or not – depending on your taste. This book is gothic in feel and writing style, complete with plush prose and full-on emotional tone.

Dante is talented, beautiful and the star of the rock band, Inferno. He is rumoured to be the owner of the hot New Orleans nightspot, Club Hell. F.B.I. Special Agent Heather Wallace has been tracking a sadistic serial murderer known as the Cross Country Killer, and the trail has led her to New Orleans, Club Hell and Dante. But the attractive musician refuses to co-operate and claims to be “nightkind” – in other words, a vampire. Digging into his past for answers reveals little. A juvenile record a mile long; no social security number; no known birth date. In and out of foster homes for most of his life before being taken in by Lucien DeNoir, who guards mysteries of his own.

What Heather does know is that something links Dante to the killer – and she’s pretty sure that makes him the CCK’s next target. Heather must unravel the truth about this complicated, vulnerable young man – who, she begins to believe may indeed be a vampire – in order to finally bring a killer to justice. But Dante’s past holds a shocking secret and once it is revealed, not even Heather will be able to protect him from his destiny.

This debut novel from Adrian Phoenix is ambitious in its scope – and at times her inexperience shows. First, the good news. Phoenix successfully manages to establish the heightened atmosphere and emotional tone that she is aiming for, by a writing style rich in imagery and description – mostly without holding up the pace, which clips along at a reasonable rate. That, in itself, is an achievement in my opinion. The main protagonists are suitably complex and well-drawn and the various plot twists are mostly convincing. I also liked her original and somewhat startling take on God and where he fits into the world she has created. It will certainly raise a few eyebrows, but does work nicely within the development of DeNoir – who for my money, was a lot more riveting a character than Dante.

But there are problems with this book, particularly the first half. Written in multiple POV, there are a number of characters – alongside Dante – who also have hidden pasts and major secrets. Add to that the fact that three of them also have code names – and a third of the way into the story, I was seriously confused and debating whether to finish it. It does become clearer as the book continues, but I do think that initial muddle is seriously off-putting.

The other major issue I have is that the book starts with a bang and continues at full tilt. Phoenix writes with the brakes off – and while it is a treat in small doses, reading the book for any length of time is a bit like eating three ice-cream sundaes in a row. And if you have youngsters in the house, you might not want to leave it lying around. In common with many books in this sub-genre, the language, sex and violence are extremely graphic.

Having said that, I found the book a gripping and enjoyable read, once I got past the point of confusion. The final twist was pleasing in that I didn’t see it coming and I look forward to reading Phoenix’s next offering.
6/10