Review: True Blood: Dead Until Dark (Southern Vampire Series 1 Sookie Stackhouse) by Charlaine Harris
I recently started watching True Blood on HBO on demand and heard about Charlaine Harris and her Sookie Stackhouse novels by watching the show. I thought the show was kind of campy but it had all the elements of great vampire stories from the blood tears to the can’t come out in the day light phenomena. I then decided to pick up all the Southern Vampire Series books and I ordered a box set from Amazon, and got to reading. The first book in the series is Dead Until Dark. I realized almost immediately that the show on tv was very loosely based on the book. If I thought the show was camp, I was in no way prepared for the novel.
Let me start off by saying, the book read easy and flowed well. There is a mystery to be solved and it was written well. I don’t want to give too much away on that, but the mystery was the only reason I could even continue reading this book. Maybe the book is supposed to be like a vampire romance novel, the kind of stuff where Fabio is on the cover only with fangs. If that is it then yes the book was inside it’s genre. I have been reading vampire novels since I was a teen, this had all the old cliche’s and the familiarity of that was great. I was very disappointed in the main character, I thought she was a bit slutty to be constantly throwing this purity thing around. Also as the series continues, Sookie, who doesn’t seem to be the brightest light in Bon Temps has way too many suitors to keep up with. While there isn’t much trashy sex and the word cock isn’t mentioned once (thank the gods) I felt the book had this childish theme.
Review: Twilight (Twilight Series) by Stephanie Meyer
I picked up Twilight at a book store display about a year and a half ago. I had no idea how popular Stephanie Meyer’s book was at the time, just that I wanted something to read and the book was thick and big with an engaging cover image. I started reading it immediately and by chapter three I was hooked. This book is an amazing start for a first time author.
The plot lines in the book are very simple and there is a bit of a mystery but mostly everything is spelled out in a pretty good detail making for an easy and fun read. If you are looking for depth, or want the usual sexy , trashy supernatural novel you are not going to find either in this book. The plot focuses on Bella Swan a teen moving in with her dad to Forks Washington due to the fact her mother recently had married a baseball player and wanted to go on the road. Bella is not really looking forward to moving in with her father she simply calls Charlie, but soon warms up to him and Forks.
Charlie bought Bella an old truck from a friend of his living on the local Indian reservation. Billy Black and his son Jacob deliver the truck to Bella before she began school. Jacob and Bella have a complicated relationship through the book, Jacob is a year or two younger and has a crush on Bella, he is a great mechanic and eventually helps Bella realize her boyfriend may be a vampire and that other supernatural entities exist in the world.
