So after reading a George Eliot and feeling all smart and sophisticated and stuff I thought my brain deserved a vacation. So I read another Sookie book. I still love them. In general, I'm not a fan of the first person narrative. As a writer I find it too limiting and there are times when, as a reader, I find those limitations in books to be frustrating. However, I think Harris uses it pretty effectively. There's never a moment when I wish I could have seen something that happened off-screen or from another character's point of view - mostly because of Sookie's telepathic ability. Despite all of her whining about it she's always willing to use it when it comes in handy. I particularly enjoy Harris' use of first person narration in creating the tone for the books. It feels very conversational and, I might be in the minority here but, I like that.
A heads-up to those of you reading the series who haven't gotten this far yet: there's a short story called "One Word Answer" that Harris wrote about Sookie and the events in that story are relevant to what happens in this book. Harris is pretty good at recapping so I wouldn't say you have to read the short story before reading this book, but I would highly recommend it. Also Bubba reappears in the short story and who doesn't love Bubba?
Overall, I liked this book for the same reason I like all the other Sookie books. It's light and fun and easy to breeze through in a week. It's full of action and suspense (both things Harris does well) and we get a new love interest for Sookie. Personally, he's my favorite so far. I hope he sticks around for awhile. We also get a closer look at the politics of the supernatural underworld which is both fascinating and terrifying (terrifying for Sookie, fascinating for us since we're safely on the other side of the page). And we get still more of Sookie's past, which helps us to know more about her and helps her to look at a relationship in a very different way - actually two relationships but I don't want to spoil anything for people not watching the show.
Man, now I have to catch up to you again. :P
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