-Southern Vampire Mysteries Series, Book 1-
(New York: Penguin Books, 2001)
Paperback, 292 Pages, Fiction
“I’d been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar.” (1)
From the Cover: 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: I’m not sure exactly what compelled me to pick up Harris’ novel. Curiosity, more likely than not, and the fact that after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma I needed brain candy, and boy-howdy is Dead Until Dark brain candy.
There is not much here. The plot is pretty simplistic (I had actually pegged the villain of the piece about a third of the way into the book) and there were no real surprises. Harris is a mediocre writer at best that has managed to tap into the current literary vogue: vampire porn. What’s more is that it took Stephenie Meyer’s teenage version of Harris’ story to bring Harris’ novels into the limelight. Dead Until Dark was written a full four years before Twilight and yet Harris has not hit the mainstream, to the best of my knowledge, until recently. I guess the HBO series True Blood, which is based on Harris’ books, can also be attributed to bringing Harris into the limelight, but even that getting green-lighted at HBO can probably be attributed to Meyer’s success.
Perhaps it is the fact that, deep down, this is in fact a bodice ripper meant to fulfill the fantasies of frustrated housewives, but the book did nothing for me. Sookie was annoying, Bill dull, and the conflict—vampire “coming out of the coffin” and all that that implies—was so anticlimactic that I was able to blow right through the book without much resistance. Really, though, it was with the character of Vampire Bill that I had the most problems.
When I was in New Orleans this last April for the annual PCA/ACA conference, I attended one session that was devoted to vampires. I was curious to see what the academic community made of the recent surge in popularity of vampires in the popular culture. What I wasn’t prepared for was the lengths to which people went to bring a scholarly approach to Harris and Meyer, and in all honesty … none of it was convincing. I left in the lull after the second presenter finished and before the third began. That was all I could take.
Most of the talk centered on the idea of the “Bad Boy,” and how popular the “Bad Boy” was in pop culture. In particular the “Bad Boy” as represented by Edward Cullen, Vampire Bill and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The general consensus was that Edward was not a “Bad Boy” and that Vampire Bill and Spike better represented the allure to women of the untamed rebel. After reading Dead Until Dark, I do not get that argument. Listening to these presenters speak, I was expecting Vampire Bill to be some kind of mix between Spike and Dracula, with a little bit of Robert Downey, Jr. thrown in for good measure. What I did not expect was a vampire who wants to “mainstream,” drink faux-blood, has problems with contractors and runs for public office. Is this the “Bad Boy” image I’ve heard so much about? The only “Bad Boy” aspect of Bill seems to be that he bites Sookie on the neck and sucks her blood in the throes of sex, other than that, he is a pretty bland character, described in only the most generic of terms: dark hair, pale, shining skin, brooding eyes … fangs. Oh, and apparently, sex with a vampire is supposed to be spectacular, and Bill is apparently the Don Juan of vampires.
The fact of his vampirism is secondary to the fact that he is impossibly perfect for Sookie, take it away and he is no different than the myriad of other studs in similar romance novels that sweep the unassuming heroine off her feet and into the bed. The only difference is that Bill cannot show his face during the day, and even then, most of the action in any given romance novel happens at night anyway. (And even then, Harris’ novel is pretty mediocre in the sex department as well … lots of candle-lit hot tubs because, *gasp* Vampire Bill has a thing for warm water. Yawn.)
All this just illustrates the point I made above: Harris is a mediocre writer at best. I had no emotional investment in the characters and when the climax of the action comes midway through—with what I guess is supposed to be a shocking death—I was so uninterested in the characters that I did not care at all, Harris didn’t make me care about the characters, and so I didn’t care for her story, and so I was unmoved by the emotion. There is a subplot—though maybe B-Story is a better term—about someone killing women who get sexually involved with vampires but when the revelation comes it too is so anticlimactic (as I said I guessed, rightly, who was doing it very early on) and so formulaic as to be uninteresting.
Apparently there are nine books in the series with a tenth on the way in October 2009 and an eleventh in May 2010, but I think I will be taking my leave of Sookie and Bill and all the rest of the denizens of Bon Temps, Louisiana, here and not continue on any further. There are just too many better books out there to be wasting my (and your) precious reading time with this series for which I had some high expectations.
My friend over at reading by publight also reviewed Dead Until Dark, and much more charitably than I, I might add, and has gone on to review further installments in the Southern Vampire Mystery series.
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