DEAD RECKONING

TITLE: DEAD RECKONING

AUTHOR: CHARLAINE HARRIS

Pages: 325

Date: 24/07/2012

Grade: 4-

Details: no. 11 Sookie Stackhouse

Library

As always there isn’t a boring moment in Bon Temps for our favourite cocktail waitress, Sookie Stackhouse.

Everything starts with an attack on Merlotte’s, the bar where she works. While the bar’s owner Sam and Sookie are able to stop the fire before it spreads, the big question is who threw the Molotov cocktail and why. While suspicion initially falls on those who have issues with Shape-shifters like Sam, Sookie can’t help feeling that the attack could also have been aimed at her. After all, consorting with Vampires, Were-creatures and Faeries has brought her a fair amount of enemies of her own.

But there are more problems. Eric, her vampire boyfriend/husband is facing huge issues with Victor, the local ruling vampire. And Victor seems determined to provoke Eric into doing something rash so that he will have a reason to end his undead existence. And more than that, Eric and his ‘child’ Pam appear to be hiding something from Sookie, something that could change everything in her life. And of course having two faeries staying in her house brings a whole set of problems of its own. And really, that’s only the top of the iceberg.

Sookie finds herself facing a set of circumstances that will force her to reassess herself, her attitude towards the life she is leading as well as her relationships with those around her.

As always this book brought me a nice balance of supernatural action and more mundane events. With Sookie always trying to strike a balance between all the supernaturals in her life and living an everyday life like most people around her, these stories feel as if they are set in the real world, which makes it easier to relate to them.

On the other hand I do get a bit fed up with Sookie. You’d think that after 11 books she’d either have gotten, if not comfortable with than at least used to all the plotting, killing and animosity around her. Yet it feels as if she’s rediscovering what all the creatures around her are capable of and consider normal all over again in every single book. By now I’ve reached the stage where I want her to either get out of the game or decide that since she’s in it she’s going to deal with it once and for all, and yet she doesn’t.

Having said that, these are easy and comfortable books to read and I do still enjoy catching up with these characters. So I guess that at least for now I will continue to bring these books home from the library for as long as I can find them there.