Ahira's Hangar

I recently read through a five book (so far anyway - there's enough left hanging at the end of the last book for there to definately be more) series written by Charlaine Harris.

Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead to the World
Dead as a Doornail

They tell the story of a bar waitress from a small town in northern Louisiana named Sookie Stackhouse. She is a beautiful blond - smart but not well educated -- both tough and gentle as she needs to be -- and she can't get a boyfriend for love or money.

Sookie has this little problem -- she can read minds, and all of the local guys think of her as some sort of freak.

The one night a vampire named Bill comes into the bar where Sookie works, and she realizes that his is one mind she cannot read...

Meeting Bill leads Sookie on to string of adventures across Louisiana and neighboring states. An entire new world filled with vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, and witches opens up to her.

Some pretty good stuff, and some pretty funny moments (and Elvis sightings are explained once and forever). ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi at: 1/12/07 5:59 pm
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The latest book in this series, Definately Dead has just been released. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Ii read Definately Dead yesterday, and loved it. In this one, Sookie has to settle her cousin's estate. Her cousin was a vampire before she died the final death, and Sookie has to figure out what is in the cousin's apartment that is drawing so much supernatural attention and so many burglary attempts. Sookie's love life, which was left in a mess with lots of potential partners in the last book, is straightened out quite nicely. very enjoyable. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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rather than starting another Charliane Harris thread, I thought I would open up this one to both the books featuring Sookie Stackhouse and the new supernatural series she has recently been working on - the books with the word "Grave" in all of the titles.

I have only read the first of the Graves books thus far, but so far it looks like there is no connection between the Graves books and the Sookie books - though that can change. Harris has written a wonderful mystery series featuring a woman named Lily Bard. The Lily Bard books seem to happen in our everyday world. Yet, in one of the late Sookie books - suddenly Lily shows up as a minor character. And that really made me go back and think about the Lily books, let me tell you!

GRAVE SIGHT by Charliane Harris is the first book in a new supernatural mystery series. Harper got struck by lightning as a young teen. It not only has left her physically scarred, but it has given her the ability to find nearby dead bodies, and to know what killed the person/s. With the company and support of her stepbrother, Tolliver, Harper does her best to make a living of this strange ability. People hire her to find dead bodies, then quite often look at her in horror when she finds them. In this story, Harper is called to a little town in the Arkansas Ozarks to see if she can find the body of a missing teenaged girl. She finds the body, but it stirs up a hornet's nest worth of trouble. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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GRAVE SURPRISE by Charlaine Harris is the sequel to Grave Sight. Harper was struck by lightning when she was fourteen. ever since, she has been able to locate nearby corpses, and know what killed them. A professor at a small college near Memphis teaching a class on the supernatural has hired Harper to come to a very old cemetary on the grounds of the college and tell him (and his class) what killed the various people buried there (the priests in the old days kept very careful records, and Harper has had no access to those records). But she finds a surprise - one of the graves contains a second body - that of a young girl who was kidnapped from Nashville two years before. Harper had been hired at the time the girl vanishe dto see if she could find her, but could not. It soons becomes clear that the murderer had wanted the girl's body found, and in the most suspicious of circumstances for harper and her brother/helper Tolliver. But who would have killed a little girl, who would have set them up, and why??? ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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New Sookie Stackhouse!

All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris is the seventh book in her Southern Vampire Mysteries. New Orleans has been devastated by hurricane Katrina. This has eroded the power base of that city's vampire Queen... whom Sookie Stackhouse, heroine of the series, and our favorite mind reading bar maid from small town Louisiana, has promised to help out (for a boat load of money) at a big vampire conference and trial. A lot of people (both supernatural and mortal) would like to do damage to the Queen now that she is down and out. Can Sookie survive what could kill one of the most powerful vampires around?

While on the one hand, I really enjoyed it - on the other, Sookie's love life, which I thought was finally getting straightened out, seems to be getting messy again...

One other bit of Harris news: looks like the Sookie stories might be filmed by HBO called True Blood.



I cannot imagine that particular actress playing a hot busty blonde, but perhaps it is possible with a bit of Hollywood magic...

I hadn't heard of the series before. How would you characterize the Sookie series as far as gender perspective? (FYI, I enjoy many of Anne Rice's books)
I guess the subtext to this question is "will boys want to read it?"

dw

If you are someone who enjoys stories with a lot of characterization, you would probably enjoy Charlaine Harris.

While her Sookie books are the most popular (and I really like tham), I enjoy a little five book mystery series written by her about a woman named Lily Bard even more. Lily works as a cleaning woman in various homes in a tiny town in Arkansas, and as the series goes on, you discover that something horrible happened to her in the past to make her hide out in this little town, and that makes her so untrusting and antisocial. As the books go on, Lily learns how to be human again - and edges towards happiness despite herself.

So Harris is into making deep character studies and putting her characters through some hard times so they can develop - but she doesn't ever get to the point where things get all emo. either.

I do really like the Sookie books.

Sookie is a beautiful busty blonde bar waitress in a tiny town in Louisiana. She is intelligent, though not well educated, as her family did not have money to send her to college. She is sweet and supportive of her friends, but can also be tough if situations require that. Sookie also has a problem in that she was born being able to read minds. This puts her off relationships with human males, as she knows their (ahem) intentions.

And then she meets a vampire and realizes that she cannot read the minds of supernatural people...

There is some romance and sex in all of the books but Dead as a Doornail is probably the one that focuses the most on relationship issues, as several males wish to court Sookie.

But the romance angle is only part of it - there is plenty of action and adventure, and there is usually as much focus on Sookie's relationships with family and friends as there is with her various supernatural suitors.

Cool. I still have yet to read any, but my collection needs some (ahem) new blood.

dw