On the Bookshelf

Sookie Stackhouse doesn't have that many relations, so she really hated to lose one - but of all the people to go, she didn't expect it to be her cousin Hadley, a consort of New Orleans' vampire queen - after all, Hadley was technically already dead.

But Hadley is gone, beyond recall, and she's left Sookie and inheritance, one that comes with a bit of a risk - not least because someone doesn't want Sookie digging too deep into Hadley's possessions... or her past. Sookie's life is once again on the line, and this time the suspects range from rogue weres to her first love, the vampire Bill. Sookie's got a lot to do if she's going to keep herself alive.

Definitely Dead gives you everything that we have come to expect from a Sookie Stackhouse novel. There is action, mystery, and of course, eye candy. However, a few pages in you may start wondering if you have somehow suffered a bout of amnesia and forgotten some major plot points or perhaps somehow missed a book in the series. I can assure you that amnesia is not your problem, rather it is something called One Word Answer. One Word Answer is Harris' short story contribution to Bite (and is also now published in A Touch Of Dead, a collection of Harris' Sookie Stackhouse short stories), which also contained short stories from Laurell K. Hamilton, MaryJanice Davidson, Angela Knight, and Vickie Taylor. I cannot help but feel that if an author is going to submit a short story to another publication it should not play a major role in the readers comprehension of the ongoing series. I felt let down by the fact that Harris had been foreshadowing the introduction of Sookie's cousin, Hadley, only to allow readers to miss out on it and the events that set the scene for Definitely Dead. In the very least, the publisher should have directed us to the short stories and their place in the series inside the cover if they are going to be significant to the series. To Harris' credit, she does work these details into the story well enough that you do get the overall story in the end, but it makes it no less irritating.

Quinn, Sookie's current piece of eye candy is okay but I still prefer Eric as the more interesting love interest. I was also satisfied when my ongoing dislike of Bill was further justified in this book. There is no sex in Definitely Dead which I am going to say is not a bad thing at all - despite her complaining otherwise, Sookie tends to do a little too well in the dating department - but the dry humping scene is a bit... odd.

Also, it is just a bit weird that Sookie spends most of the book on her period and has to frequently remind us of this.


Definitely Dead is certainly not the strongest addition to the series put if you strip away its oddities and get to the core plot underneath, it is still a good story and seems like it is going to be significant in the setting up of events to come. I will keep on reading the series at this point, anyway.

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