Wednesday, May 23, 2012

From Dead To Worse by Charlaine Harris

(Sookie Stackhouse series, book 8)
After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the man-made horror of the explosion at the vampire summit, Sookie Stackhouse is safe but dazed, yearning for things to get back to normal. But her boyfriend, Quinn, is among the missing. And things are changing, whether the Weres and the vamps in her corner of Louisiana like it or not. In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death…and, once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood has ceased flowing, her world will be forever altered…

Holy biscuits. This book is jammed packed full of storylines, which I can only assume are all leading up to the following books. I understand the need for a transition book in a series, but this one was almost a little too much. There is a war between the vamps for control of Louisiana, the Weres of Shreveport go to war against rogue Weres seeking to overtake their pack, Sookie learns where her telepathic powers come from and discovers a long lost relative, Quinn reveals information about his family that could jeopardize his relationship with Sookie, Sookie stops all communication with her brother, Jason…whew. I need a breather. None of the storylines flowed together, and I actually found myself annoyed for the first time during this book.

Alright, grab some popcorn and take seat. In a nutshell, Felipe de Castro, the vampire King of Nevada, begins a campaign to gain control of Louisiana and Arkansas. In the aftermath of the explosion at the summit, Sophie-Anne, vamp Queen of Louisiana, is unable to protect her land due to injuries.

Sookie witnesses the war between Were packs, where Alcide is named pack leader. Um…the ritual after someone is promoted to pack leader is so strange, and after seeing it I can understand why Sookie feels differently about Alcide. She also finds herself drawn to Eric, mostly due to the blood exchange that took place in the previous book. Nevertheless, she has to decide if she wants to stay with Quinn after learning about his family problems, or tell the weretiger to kick rocks and act on her feelings for Eric.

Some messy stuff goes down in the werepanther community between Jason and his wife, Crystal, that puts Sookie in a terrible situation which forces her to stop all communication to her brother. I never understood her rage towards Jason in this situation; he wasn’t the problem, Crystal was.

I can’t go into too much detail regarding the information on why Sookie has telepathic powers, but I’ll just say I wasn’t really surprised. It seemed to make sense considering some of the other characters we have been introduced to in the past books.

 This was my least favorite book so far. There were just too many storylines packed into this one book that it felt like the second I was getting into one plotline, Harris killed it and started another plotline. Sookie also seemed irritated throughout this whole book, which is very unlike her character. I get that she has a lot on her plate, but that has been the case since the beginning of the series and she has never reacted like this; she usually takes it with a grain of salt and maintains her sweet self. I don’t care for the new Sookie attitude. Here’s to hoping the next book gets my excitement about this series back on track. 



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