5.23.2023 | Tuesday

Living Dead in Dallas

Item: Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse, #2)
Rating: 4
Author: Kim

category: Book Reviews
tag(s): adult
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title: Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse, #2)
author: Charlaine Harris
published: 26 March 2002
publisher: Ace
genre(s): paranormal, romance, thrillers
pages: 261
source: bought
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | StoryGraph | Goodreads

rating:

the blurb

Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is having a streak of bad luck. First her co-worker is killed, and no one seems to care. Then she comes face to-face with a beastly creature that gives her a painful and poisonous lashing. Enter the vampires, who graciously suck the poison from her veins (like they didn't enjoy it).

The point is: they saved her life. So when one of the bloodsuckers asks for a favor, she obliges - and soon Sookie's in Dallas, using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire. She's supposed to interview certain humans involved, but she makes one condition: the vampires must promise to behave and let the humans go unharmed. But that's easier said than done, and all it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly....

❗❗ content warning: some graphic violence ❗❗

a few notes

keywords/phrases: vampires, shifters, romance, paranormal
awards: Lord Ruthven Award for Fiction (2002)

my review

This is another fun read in the Sookie Stackhouse series, with a lot more humor! In this one, Sookie and Bill are sent to Dallas, on loan by Eric to Stan, the leader of the Dallas-area vamps. She’s in high demand because of her ability to read the thoughts of humans, a gift that is incredibly useful to the vampires. One thing leads to another, and they are faced with the Fellowship, a pseudo-religious cult that is fairly anti-everything, most especially vampires. Sookie, as a human, finds herself embroiled in some very dangerous situations. And if that isn’t enough, there’s a Maenad lurking in the woods near Bon Temps, demanding appropriate tribute.

I first read this series years ago, before the HBO series. I enjoy the books, and I enjoyed the visuals of the TV series. In a perfect world, there would be things about the books I’d have in the show and things in the show I wish were in the books. But to share them would be spoilery for either the books or for the show!

quoteables

So you want me to go to a human orgy, where I will not be welcome, and you want us to leave before I get to enjoy myself? ~Eric Northman

About Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris, who has been writing mysteries for over twenty years, is a native of Mississippi. Born and raised in the Delta, she began training for her career as soon as she could hold a pencil. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and (later) teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, and graduated to books a few years later.
After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris decided to establish a series. She began the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with Real Murders, which garnered an Agatha nomination. Harris’s protagonist, a diminutive Georgia librarian whose life never turns out quite the way she planned, kept Harris busy for several books, but finally Harris (and Aurora) grew restless.
The result of this restlessness was the much edgier Shakespeare series — set not in England, but in rural Arkansas. The heroine of the Shakespeare books is Lily Bard, a tough and taciturn woman whose life has been permanently reshaped by a terrible crime and its consequences. In Shakespeare’s Landlord, the first in the series, Lily is caught at a moment when the shell she’s built around herself is just beginning to crack, and the books capture Lily’s emotional re-entry into the world, while also being sound mysteries.
Harris’s latest venture is a series about a telepathic barmaid in southern Louisiana. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony for best paperback mystery of 2001. Each book about Sookie Stackhouse (and her dealings with vampires and werewolves and other creatures of the night) has gathered more readers to enjoy the books’ unique blend of mystery, humor, romance, and the supernatural. The Sookie books are also being read in Japan, Spain, Greece, and Great Britain.
In addition to her work as a writer, Harris is married and the mother to three children. A former weight lifter and karate student, she is an avid reader and cinemaphile. She is a member of the vestry of St. James Episcopal Church.
Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League. She is a member of the board of Sisters in Crime, and alternates with Joan Hess as president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance.