Author: Charlaine Harris
ISBN: 978-057-509-7087
RRP: $22.95
Sookie Stackhouse finds herself in hot water, yet again, in Definitely Dead; the 6th book in Charlaine Harris’ series. Sookie seems always to be in hot water, it’s only the depth that varies. I don’t know what direction the series would have left to take if Sookie wasn’t forever finding herself in tricky situations.
A new volume, a new supernatural creature – as has become the case with every book if I remember correctly. Not to mention a new love interest for sweet inexperienced Sookie. I wonder how long this can go on before we run out of available male suitors and new supernatural beings?
Definitely Dead offers us a change of scenery from Sookie’s home town of Bon Temps, she spends half of this book in New Orleans. Hadley, Sookie’s estranged cousin and consort of the Louisiana vampire queen, has been murdered and left all of her possessions to Sookie as one of her few remaining relatives. Sookie is required to travel to New Orleans to clean out her apartment and finds herself embroiled once more in vampire politics.
All of this while she is trying to nurture a budding new relationship and stop herself from getting killed. It seems that when Sookie is out with her new beau they are targeted by weres. It isn’t until the second instance, when they are ambushed by 9 weres and kidnapped that Sookie realises who is signing the checks for the attacks.
Lets go back to the budding new relationship for a moment, shall we? Sookie is visited, and courted, by Quinn; the very large and well built weretiger Sookie met while he refereed the rites for the Shreveport packmaster. Quinn travels to Bon Temps on an errand for the queen and takes the opportunity to begin courting Sookie. They spend a lot of time together in Definitely Dead and get to see many different sides of each other that would normally be saved for a much longer acquaintance. It will be interesting to follow what effect that may have on their future together.
Definitely Dead delves deeper into the lives and pasts of some of the people surrounding Sookie, and much to poor Sookie’s dismay she finds out a lot more about some of their motivations. This will have you empathising with poor Sook about just how much this small town telepath is going to have to endure before she discovers her happy place. Her telepathic abilities aren’t much help with the supernatural crowd and they have allowed her to be manipulated in ways that will take her a long while to heal from.
Not being able to read the minds of supernatural creatures hasn’t effected Sookie’s ability to get to the bottom of situations and save the lives of many a vampire in the new Sookie Stackhouse book, as with all the others. Definitely Dead describes to us how those same telepathic abilities CAN show her, quite clearly at times, what is in the minds of living supernatural creatures, as opposed to vampires.
A fun and fast paced read that will acquaint you with some new faces I am sure we will be seeing more of, and reacquaint you with some you didn’t think you would see again. A volume that will reveal some secrets best left hidden and give us information that ties a lot of things together. Information that has just come to light in the HBO series True Blood.
I devour books, vampires and supernatural creatures are my genre of choice but over the past couple of years, I have broadened my horizons considerably. In a nutshell – I love to write! I love interacting with a diverse range of artists to bring you interviews. Perhaps we were perfect before – I LOVE WORDS!