As a sometime collector of vampire novels, I've been hearing about Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series of "southern vampire" novels, meaning novels set in a small town in rural Louisiana (as opposed, presumably, to vampire novels set in the equally southern New Orleans, of which there is not exactly a shortage.) After getting throughly sick of Laurell Hamilton's endless parade of sudsy Anita Blake novels, I was a little resistant to yet another vampires-become-legal-and-society-must-cope series, but a glimpse of the recent HBO television series adaptation, True Blood, last fall made me think perhaps I ought to at least try one. So I picked up the first, Dead Until Dark
(2001), at Lunacon. I was pleasantly surprised. While the basic elements of the vampire/human clash are not particularly original, the setting in a small rural town with a cast of mostly lower-class characters and a vampire who is not perfectly adjusted to human society and not reliably (and irritatingly) suave actually made the whole concept feel fresher than I'd expected. And while the vampires are preternaturally good-looking and -- of course -- spectacular lovers, Harris doesn't dwell on either aspect as endlessly and tediously as Hamilton does.
There were a few things that made me twitch, primarily because they were such obvious setups for a lengthy, Hamilton-like series: that there were more supernatural things than just vampires in the world (presumably we'll see them all in future books), the incipient love triangle, the loose ends left deliberately dangling. The heroine was reminiscent of Robin McKinley's magnificent Sunshine
(probably the best vampire novel I've read in the last decade) in having a special power (telepathy, in this case) that among other things makes her partially immune to various vampire abilities, but Harris did a good job in demonstrating what a mixed blessing that can be on a day-to-day basis. And her sex scenes do not tip over into the distractingly pornographic. I also have to give her points for Bubba the vampire, whose mind didn't quite make it intact through the transition to undead.
As a mystery, it's not brilliant -- it moves along too slowly, distracted by supernatural setup, and then all is solved in a comparative rush at the end. I was never convinced by her attempt to present a likely murderer as distraction, but I didn't figure the actual villain out early either.
I'm worried that the series will descend as deeply into erotic soap opera as the Hamilton books did, but this one was good enough that I'll read the next book when I come across it. I might also watch more of True Blood, though if it follows the books' plots, I think I'd prefer to do the reading first before getting it spoiled by the TV series.
Read for yourself:
I've read the others, and they haven't become too silly. Certainly far more intersting than Hamilton has managed to be, although the "continuing adventures of" format always has risks.
Posted by: fidelio | April 22, 2009 at 02:25 PM
Hamilton has accomplished the unlikely feat of making me groan at the prospect of a kinky sex scene.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | April 22, 2009 at 02:56 PM
The one Hamilton book that I read made me laugh aloud with how ridiculous and telegraphed the kinky sex scenes are. I mean, seriously, a faerie who can heal wounds, but only if he licks the injury with his tongue? It's easy to see where THAT's going...
Posted by: AJ | April 22, 2009 at 06:34 PM
AJ:
Well, in these books, vampire blood heals wounds, which does in fact come in as a plot point and as an, err, issue in a sex scene. I think I will not go into detail.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | April 22, 2009 at 09:00 PM
AJ... a faerie who can heal wounds, but only if he licks the injury with his tongue?
That reminds me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy and Marion are on a ship with the Ark, and she starts kissing all the places where he has an ouchie spot.
Posted by: Serge | April 23, 2009 at 09:44 AM
AJ... This healick also reminds me of Clifford Simak's novel City, specifically the part it is revealed that genetically engineered dogs can heal people by licking them. Yes, it does sound disgusting, in this context.
Posted by: Serge | April 23, 2009 at 02:01 PM
It makes sense for a dog to heal people by licking them, since that's how dogs care for their own wounds (and why one of my corgis had to wear a cone collar for a week). But it doesn't really make any sense for a person.
We did have someone in our gaming group who made a character who could re-animate the dead... but only by licking them.
Posted by: AJ | April 25, 2009 at 07:20 PM
AJ... a character who could re-animate the dead... but only by licking them.
Ewwwww.
As for Simak's dogs, they were quite unusual. For one thing, they could speak. And speaking of talkative canines, did you ever read Stapledon's Sirius? That was a sad story.
Posted by: Serge | April 25, 2009 at 07:42 PM
I've never read Stapledon's Sirius. Is it a novel or short story?
The licking the dead thing was played for laughs, at least. Pretty much everything is in our gaming group.
Posted by: AJ | April 25, 2009 at 10:20 PM
AJ... "Sirius" is a novel, the story of a dog who acquires sentience and speech thru experiments that wind up being unable to create any other like him. A sad story.
Posted by: Serge | April 25, 2009 at 11:50 PM
It's extremely common in vampire fiction for there to be some degree of handwavium science about the powers of vampire saliva. It has a certain internal logic: once the vampire is finished drinking blood, the saliva helps the victim's blood clot quickly so they don't bleed to death. Some books explain that vampire saliva contains a special fast-clot enzyme or something. But I don't recall seeing vampire blood as the healing fluid on anything other than the macro level (drink vampire blood, be "healed" by turning into a vampire yourself).
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | April 26, 2009 at 12:04 PM