#CBR5 Book 52. "Dead Ever After" by Charlaine Harris

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 3 stars

This is the thirteenth and final (whoo!) Sookie Stackhouse novel, the series on which the HBO series True Blood is now only extremely loosely based. This is absolutely NOT the best place to start if you've not read the books before. Better go back to the beginning and start with Dead Until Dark. This review will also contain spoilers for the ending of book 12: Deadlocked, so if you want to avoid that sort of thing, look away now.

Still here - then spoilers be on your own head. After literally bringing Sam back from the dead at the end of the previous book, using her magical fairy artifact, Sookie was sort of hoping that he might at least be a bit grateful. Instead, he seems mostly out of it. Eric is furious with her, as she could have used her "make any wish" bling to get him out of his wedding contract with the Vampire Queen of Oklahoma. Now, when Sookie goes to try to talk to him about it, she gets banned from Fangtasia.

Soon Sookie has bigger worries than the fact that her boss and close friend seems to want to avoid her, and her imperious vampire husband is about to divorce her and marry another. Arlene, former barmaid at Merlotte's and once Sookie's good friend (until she tried to lure Sookie into the hands of people who wanted to crucify, torture and murder her), has been released from prison on bail, and arrives at the bar to ask for her job back. Now, the answer is clearly no, but the fact that she was seen storming out of the bar looking angry certainly doesn't help Sookie's case, when Arlene's body is found in the dumpster behind the bar, strangled with one of Ms. Stackhouse's scarves.

Sookie's only alibi is verified by a vampire, not something necessarily helpful in a court of law. Luckily, she has made a lot of influential and resourceful friends over the years, who all turn up to help her clear her name.

I honestly can't remember whether the early books in the series (which I started reading nearly ten years ago) went into quite as much tedious detail about every aspect of Sookie's life as these later ones do. In the last one, very little of any consequence happened, and I was ready to tear my hair out if I had to read more about how Sookie shopped for groceries and pottered about around her house. There is still a fair bit of "and then I got dressed, and put on make-up and put my hair in a ponytail and drove to work" to this one, especially in the first half of the book, but there is also clearly a tying off of threads, and closing doors and saying goodbye to all the various characters in these books.

There are a lot of very angry fans out there on Goodreads and Amazon. So many people feel cheated by the way Harris chose to end her series. Frankly, after the last book, I was pretty much determined to read this book just out of stubbornness, because I'd stuck with the previous twelve. I don't want to spoil the ending (there's more than enough sites out there on the internet that will, though), but I can tell you that it didn't end, as I'd hoped, with Sookie simply choosing herself. God forbid that a woman in a paranormal fantasy series come to the conclusion that she's actually fine on her own, without a man to lean on. I can see why some people are pissed off, but considering the way the character development of certain prominent characters have been handled in the last few books, there really wasn't any other way for this to go. I'm sorry there wasn't more Pam in the book, she's always been my favourite character. All in all, I'm just glad the series didn't end with Deadlocked, and went out on a bit more of a high note.

And with that, I finish second in the race to complete the first 52 books of the CBR5, after the incomparable Jen K. Let's see if I can beat her to 104, shall we?

CBR2 Book 48: "Dead in the Family" by Charlaine Harris

Publisher: Ace Hardcover
Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: May 6th, 2010
Date finished: May 7th, 2010

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE PREVIOUS SOOKIE STACKHOUSE NOVELS, ESPECIALLY DEAD AND GONE

Sookie Stackhouse is slowly recovering from her near-death experience in the previous book. She realizes that she has a lot of pent up anger, and she has certainly changed from the innocent, rather lonely young woman of the first books. Now she's in a relationship with a very powerful vampire, but she also worries that their connection could be weakening his resolve in the continuing power struggle with the vampires. She is also still not entirely safe, some may try to threaten or kill her to get to him.

She is no longer so alone, though, and realizes, partially through examining the losses of all those who have died around her, that she has many close ties, to both the human and supernatural community. Her recently widowed brother seems to have found happiness again, and has become a lot less self-centred as a result of his losses. Two of her friends are pregnant, and while not everyone is delighted at the recent coming-out of the werewolves and other two-natured creatures, Sookie is loyal and fiercely defends her boss and other friends.

Her previous roommate moves out and goes back to New Orleans, but she acquires another, in the form of her super hot strip club owning faerie cousin, who claims he feels lonely after the death of his sisters. Claude is not the only faerie left around after the recent war, and Sookie is worried when she is told there are clear signs of unknown faeries in the forest around her house. Then a fresh body is discovered, and someone has clearly buried it there to get her in trouble.

Added to all this, her boyfriend's maker and his new protegee shows up in town and creates all manner of trouble, both for Sookie and her undead lover. Her boyfriend's "brother" was turned when he was 13, and has a very troubled past - which seems to have turned him insane.

I preferred this book to Dead and Gone, possibly because I like my Sookie Stackhouse books to be a lighthearted entertainment, and the main character of a book being kidnapped, tortured and nearly killed does not spell out lighthearted to me. In this one, Sookie has both physical and mental scars, but has emerged safe and strong, if a lot less innocent and kindhearted. Dead in the Family was one of the better of the ten books, but Charlaine Harris does seem to like end her books very abruptly. I almost wondered if there was a page or two missing when I got to the end, before I remembered that she often ends her books that way.