Dead to the World

The 4th book in the Southern Vampire mysteries is starting to make me think my penis is a liability.
My common complaint with all the books up until this point has been the fact that they actually seem to be cleverly disguised romance novels. Club Dead and Dead Until Dark have pretty much followed the same formula mystery happens, supernatural beings are introduced, Sookie has a lot of sex with one characters, mystery is solved. Fantasy characters, pretty cool.... constant description of sex... not so much.
Let's face it, guys and girls tend to have a different medium for idealized sex. Guys it's porn, which is just hardcore sex, and girls it's a more romantic version... i.e. romance novels. Charlene Harris as a female author is obviously writing with the intention of having romance a prominent aspect in her novels... which as a guy bores me to tears.
So, I have to skim through that crap, or hope for novels like "Club Dead" where she actually refrains from having sex with someone for the entirety of the novel. The bright part that I've enjoyed about these novels is the fantasy characters, it's been interesting seeing them........... and THAT'S why this novel was so disappointing.

Charlene Harris is obviously all about the Vampires and the Werewolves/Shapeshifters, as this novel is dominated by them. The new fantasy addition is witches, which although they start the novel as a formidable foe fall apart suddenly... kind of like this book. Basically, a witch, cleverly named Hallow, wants to take over the vampire's economic empire in Shreveport, and attracted to Eric, wants him to be her lover (again, the feminine influence). Eric saying no, she erases his memory as a way to deal with him... he escapes although amnesiac, and is rescued by Sookie (who has lots of sex with him... blergh) and the vampires and the weres team up with some Wiccans to take on the witches.

Okay so let's break this down:
1) MORE constant sex this time with Eric. Hell, female readers of this book are starting to go all Twilight on these books, divvying up into Team Bill and Team Eric. Bad.
2) New fantastic creatures in this book are witches... who are shapeshifters and drink vampire blood, so they're not really adding much new to the table, and their spells pretty much suck... a "keep away" spell? A cloud so people can't see and breathe..... when fighting vampires? Amnesia? C'mon, hurl some fire or something.....
3) The other new character is a Fairy. She doesn't look like what you'd think.... she looks more like a supermodel, but little else is said about her besides that vampires LOVE fairy blood. This character seems almost thrown in as an afterthought.
4) Same deal with the end fight. An utter bloodbath, which definitely appeals to me as a guy, but again a lame ending for these witches who seem to never have posed any real threat at all.
5) There is a side story regarding Sookie's brother Jason getting kidnapped and bitten by a werepanther for revenge for stealing his woman.... but again, almost an afterthought.

NOW, there are two ways to interpret this: These books are getting worse, or these books are getting more series oriented, i.e. all the "afterthoughts" are actually just building towards future books in the series. Personally I fell if she'd just stop wasting time with all this relationship crap, which, let's face it, takes up most of the book, she'd have time to explore some of these things in ONE book... of course how would she sell more books?

I guess my real issue is that I'm probably reading the wrong type of book, I should be reading action books, but while I'm reading these books, I feel that Harris needs to be doing a better job keeping me gripped for one book before she tries to sell me on the next one.