Club Dead (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 3)

Alcide Herveaux was to be Sookie's contact/guide. He was a werewolf. With his help, Sookie could enter places that mere mortals seldom dared tread, such as Club Dead. The vampire king of Mississippi (yes, readers, you read that correctly) was Russell Edgington. Russell took interest in Sookie very quickly. Eric arrived on the scene, in disguise as usual. Several attempts were made on Sookie's life and Bill was caught in an act of serious betrayal against Sookie's love. Sookie was not sure whether to save Bill or sharpen a few stakes of her own!

***** Much better than book two. Again, this mystery could be read as a "stand alone" book. But the main and secondary characters remain the same. The love triangle between Sookie, Bill, and Eric gets much rougher. That triangle is enjoyed more by those who have read the first two previous books though.

This entire series, thus far, is humorous, fun, very sexy, and highly recommended! *****


Club Inconsistent.   May 10, 2003
M. Friday (K to the Ansas)
24 out of 27 found this review helpful

The enjoyment factor on the Southern Vampire series is high. The consistency level on this particular novel is remarkably low.

The authoress, in her previous two novels, introduces characters that (I assume) are important to the progress of Sookie's life. In Club Dead, many of them are insignificant. Take Sam (my favourite Collie), for example- she spends two novels creating a grand tension between he and Sookie and then completely NEGATES his value in novel three. He makes more of a cameo appearance than anything else. Furthermore, we're introduced to Alcede (another lycanthrope), who acts as a sort of "red herring" in the romantic sense. We've still got Eric ( an old, lusty vampire) hot for Sookie's pants AND Bill to account for, not to mention the almost non-existent Sam. The threads begin to unravel at the onset of so many viable guys.

Which brings me around to another fine topic; what of Bill? Bill, Sookie's boyfriend and cheating, devious vampire lover (I've never liked Bill). He runs off to complete a secret mission (which is another definite lack of cohesion) and then-BAM-he falls back in love with an old flame-Lorena the Vampire. This is the second of a major incoherence-We're told NOTHING of Bill and Lorena's past. Since we aren't given an opportunity to understand the ties that bind them to one another, we're left in the dark about events that precipitate the motion of the plot. We only see Lorena, very briefly, when she and Sookie have an "encounter". So, to the reader, it seems as if Bill has simply run off (with no depth of complexity or reasoning) with some other chick. It's another loose thread that, sadly, accounts for many character motivations.

I can only hope Harris wraps Sookie's life a little tighter to home with the next novel. The charm is in the South, with familiar peoples, whom we've grown to know by now, and a tighter plot line. I'd love to see her easy, sweet style find its roots again.


I still love this series, but careful....rise of AB Factor   June 13, 2003
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

I can't tell you how much I looked forward to this book, more than I've looked forward to books in a long time.

However, I was not as happy with this one as I could have been.

Of course, I still enjoyed it, read it in one sitting even. And i absolutly cannot wait for the fourth book (Anyone know when it will be?

But, some things to consider:

Watch out for the AB Factor. The AB Factor is the Anita Blake factor. I used to love the Hamilton series about the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. However, after about oh, book four, Anita became quickly, EVERY other person's object of lust in the vicinity. Human, nonhuman, straight, gay, bi...whatever. EVERYone wants to *bleep* Anita.

Well, it appears in this book that this same factor is creeping into the Harris series. Please, oh please, Ms Harris...don't make Sookie the object of lust to everyone...please?

I wish the book had kept the men wanting Sookie to either Bill or Eric. Adding in Alcide, and the Weres, and such..well, it was just too much. Part of the charm of Sookie is that I can see her as EVERYwoman.

I loved that she sent both guys out of her house at the end, and I loved too that she acknowledged to herself that since dating Bill, she's been beaten more than any person ought to have to endure. That's a very telling factor of her life. It's gotten out of control.

I did get a tad annoyed that she's constantly being beaten up or threatened in this book....readers barely catch their breath before another attack happens.

I wanted more details too on Bill's infidelity....I'm shocked...what happened?????? What the heck is his deal? For an "old fashioned" vamp, he's definitely changed.

Please, hurry with the next one.....I need some closure...this book left me hanging and I need more :)

K.


Elvis the Vampire???   January 26, 2004
Marc Ruby™ (Warren, MI USA)
18 out of 22 found this review helpful

Elvis the Vampire???

This is the third volume in Charlaine Harris's series about Sookie, a rural Southern telepath and her vampire boyfriend Bill. At the start of this series Harris started out by breaking several vampire story taboos. For one thing, Sookie is just-plain-folks, who happens to have an inconvenient talent and an odd boyfriend. In Harris' alternate reality the invention of artificial blood has enables vampires to come out of the coffin. In the U.S. especially, they are trying to enter mainstream society - with mixed success.

Sookie's wry, humorous story-telling shows us what happens to someone who has one foot in both the human and the supernatural world. Vampires and werewolves traipse thought this story with all the grace of a road crew - frequently leaving Sookie upset, angry, and just a little bit trashed. Not all vampires are willing to give up their old ways, and the conflicts this creates are the meat of Harris' stories.

This time, Bill has disappeared while working on a vampire data base for the Queen of Louisiana. She discovers that Bill left to start up an affair with an old vampire lover, who then sold him out to a competing vampire clan. Sookie sets out to rescue Bill with the aid of Alcide - a werewolve in the construction business. The interplay between Sookie's anger at Bill and her attraction to Alcide (and Eric, yet another vampire) make this a romantically complicated story. While there is plenty of action, it clearly takes second place to the emotional content, and suffers from a bit of discontinuity as a result.

While the story is quite enjoyable, it is a far cry from standard vampire fare. In addition, the complex relationship between a human, a werewolf, and a vampire - with the required graphic bits - echoes Laurell Hamilton's plots a bit too much. Although no one would mistake Hamilton's writing style for Harris'. They are differnet, but there are moments when I think that someone may be trying to convince Harris to to make Sookie Stackhaouse a bit too much like Anita Blake. I hope not - Club Dead is a delightful confection. It provides some needed light entertainment in the usually dark morass of vampire fiction.


Going downhill...   September 18, 2003
Dr W. Richards (Canada)
14 out of 19 found this review helpful

This is the third book in Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire series. Sookie's boyfriend, Bill, has been rather odd lately: distant and uncommunicative, and certainly not as affectionate as she needs him to be. And then suddenly he announces that he's going away, he can't - or won't? - tell her why, and that if for some reason he doesn't come back she is to hand over certain documents to Eric, his vampire boss.

Next thing, Eric arrives on Sookie's doorstep and tells her that he's afraid that Eric is dead as the result of a dispute with the king of Louisiana. Which - apart from anything else - tells Sookie that Bill lied to her, as he'd told her that he was going to the west coast. Plus, Eric tells Sookie that the reason Bill left her in the first place was that he'd hooked up again with a former girlfriend, another vampire. And that he'd left instructions with Eric to give Sookie a payoff.

Well, Sookie is, not surprisingly, furious. She goes, at Eric's request, to Louisiana to try to find out what's going on, and is assisted by a rather nice werewolf, to whom she is attracted - well, our Sookie seems to find herself being attracted to a lot of strange men, as we've seen, what with kissing Eric in book 2 and Sam in book 1.

Anyway, Bill, of course, isn't dead. But - and this is one of my problems with the book - he has treated Sookie abominably. In fact, in this book I liked Eric an awful lot more and I found myself wishing that Sookie would dump Bill for Eric. Although I've finally accepted that Harris isn't writing a romance series here, and there was far from enough romance in this book to keep me happy, there were some scenes with Sookie and Eric which were verging on the romantic - and Eric takes far better care of Sookie when she's hurt (and even when she isn't) than Bill does. Bill, it's clear, is simply taking her for granted.

The book is somewhat inconclusive in the end, however, which does indicate that there will be a fourth, at least. However, I will have to read the reviews of the next book before deciding whether to buy it. Club Dead was unevenly-written, shorter than either of its predecessors and contained developments of the characters which I didn't like - and I now no longer like one of the principal characters in the series. So Harris has some work to do if she's going to keep me as a reader.

wmr-uk