Book Review: Dead in the Family

There is more going on in this cover than I'm aesthetically comfortable with.

From Goodreads

 After enduring torture and the loss of loved ones during the brief but deadly Faery War, Sookie Stackhouse is hurt and she's angry. Just about the only bright spot in her life is the love she thinks she feels for vampire Eric Northman. But he's under scrutiny by the new Vampire King because of their relationship. And as the political implications of the Shifters coming out are beginning to be felt, Sookie's connection to the Shreveport pack draws her into the debate. Worst of all, though the door to Faery has been closed, there are still some Fae on the human side-and one of them is angry at Sookie. Very, very angry...

In the interest of full disclosure, I really enjoyed this book - the Sookie Stackhouse books have always been one of my guilty pleasures. However, there are a lot of reasons why this isn't a good book. If this review starts sounding schizophrenic, please don't be frightened. It's just my Inner Fan and Inner Critic are screaming obscenities at each other in my mind.

The Good:

As always, Charlaine Harris has written a book that is dark, morbidly funny, and in its own way thought provoking. I reviewed the series a few years back and what I said there still holds true. Sookie still has a strong voice, the characters are still compelling, and the increasingly tense political and social climate surrounding Supernaturals is getting more and more interesting.

The fan favorites - Eric, Pam, Bill, and Alcide - were in attendance, most of them with more than the short cameos that we've been treated to in past books. It was a treat to find out more about Eric's past, and as a history geek and all around awful human being, I got a cheap enjoyment out of turning one of the Romanov's into a vampire.

The Bad:

Dead in the Family read like two books shoved together and only one of those books got finished. I respect the theme Harris was trying to follow in this book - Sookie's family, Eric's family, Bill's family, and the families of pretty much everyone in Bon Temps - but we went from a possible murder conspiracy and took a hard left into the realm of dysfunctional family reunion. I was interested in both tales, but I would have liked them separately or at least better integrated with one another.

In a recent interview where Charlaine Harris announced the end of the series, she said, "I find myself wanting to bring back random people, just so I can say, 'Here they are. Here's what happened.' And then I think, it's not going to be a very cohesive book if I have all these guest appearances. I really have to stick to the core of the book[.]" I think this struggle is evident even in this earlier book. Of course, there was a time when this book was supposed to be the last. I suspect that parts of this book had been left as it was when it was still the finale instead of just another book in the series.

The Rest:

At the end of Dead and Gone, Sookie had been kidnapped and tortured by sadistic faeries as part of a war. Her physical injuries were extensive, as were her emotional and psychological trauma. We get glimpses of this at the beginning of Dead in the Family, but overall Sookie is -mostly- the same Sookie we've been reading with and about since 2001. Normally, this would bother me, the way an important character development is mentioned and dropped. Frankly it would piss me off...if not for that mostly. Sookie is Sookie. It's a fabulous testament to her character, which has always been resilient in the face of opposition, that she carries on. It's part of what readers and the other characters love about her. But whether it's immediately noticeable or not, she has changed.

Her experiences have hardened and hurt her, and she is more callous, more calculating for it. While it may help keep her alive, the growing ease with which she can consider killing someone and follow through on it disturbs even her. She suffers a moral problem which is very human and also very animal - she doesn't want to hurt people or cause death, but she will if her life or the lives of the people she loves are on the line.

This is an evolution of the character I've been wondering about for a long time and I'm glad that Harris has followed through on it. Even a character as bright, strong, and obstinate as Sookie can't remain unchanged in the face of all the darkness and death she's seen. Yet Sookie isn't the sort of person to succumb to that darkness either. Harris has respected the need for development while also knowing her character, convincingly showing the change in personality and morality as it affects this particular character, and I applaud her for it.

Final Thoughts:

Personally, I really enjoyed this novel and I'm looking forward to the rest of the books in the series, however there are a few technical problems in plot construction that I can't get over.

My Rating: 3/5 Mushrooms

Book Review: Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel

After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah Beaudonte, with the help of the handsome Rhode, has been able to realize the dream of all vampires – to be human again. Now as a raven-haired, sixteen-year-old, Lenah believes her greatest challenge is fitting in at her new school. But the challenges have only begun. The vicious coven Lenah once ruled is threatening the new-found pleasures of her human life, including the one guy who makes her feel most alive, Justin. Can this ex-vamp survive in an alien time and place, or will her past come back to haunt her…forever?

Infinite Days is one of my BEA books that I picked up without much enthusiasm. The editor promoting it did a wonderful pitch and it interested the heck out of me, but the bottom line was and still is that I am officially vampired out. I can't even bring myself to read the latest Sookie Stackhouse book! But Emma of Booking Through 365 was reading it and tweeting her reactions and asked me to give it a try and see if I agreed with her. What was supposed to be a quick skim to get a sense of the writing and characters, turned into me reading the whole book. And as soon as I'm done writing this review, I'm clicking the "delete all" button on that memory; because I'd much rather devote that people-ram to things like Zombies Vs Unicorns and Inception. You know, things that don't suck.

The Good: The Premise

Rebecca Maizel takes the vampire genre the next step further and explores what would happen were a vampire to regain her humanity (though I realize while typing this that the sixth Vampires Diaries book beat her to the punch a bit). Through Lenah, we see her rediscover humanity for the first time in 500 years. But more importantly, we see the collision of her previous existence with a new, normal, human life.

The Bad: The Execution

I think I said it all whilst "Tweeting While Reading:"

Maria_Disidoro

    I somehow expect a 500+ year old to be deeper than "I hope that jailbait guy in the next room is thinking about me cuz I'm thinking about him" 11:59 AM Jul 20th via web

The Voicing

Maizel's writing is better than much YA I've seen, but when it comes to Lenah's voice, she tries to strike a balance between old-world-vampire - ala Anne Rice - and contemporary teenager and fails at both.

Final Thoughts: I can't judge this book objectively because, as I said above, I am tired of vampires. And this book, while having the potential to be really interesting, trips up so much, in the voicing, the characters, the basic plot (when you're writing about subject matter - like vampires - that's going to be compared to another popular book - like Twilight - don't actively court those comparisons) that I have a sad now because of it.

But a few points that I couldn't file under Bad because it's strictly things that bothered me and which bother me in other novels as well.

How is shoving a girl who's been asleep for 100 years into high school supposed to help her adjust to modern living? Set her up with a laptop and digital tv, and we spare her the horror of cliques. By the way, why are all high schools in YA filled with 'Mean Girl' cliques? I know I was only in real high school for a year, but that was long enough to notice that we had no such things. Sure there were some popular kids and some less popular kids but we weren't The hills or Melrose Place or anything so stereotypically stupid. And friends who demand the group dress alike and have matching accessories; what's with that? Why is high school used as the standard of humanity? I promise all you people still trapped in high school that it's not.


Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel is set to hit book stores August 3, 2010

My Rating: 2/5 Mushrooms