Dead as a Doornail

Moving onto the 5th book in the Sookie Stackhouse series, we get a "build up" book. Does everybody remember Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where the movie was a total kick ass thrill ride, but it didn't move the story at all forward from the end of Goblet of Fire? Yeah, Dead as a Doornail is the same concept. Plotlines from previous books (actually quite a few of them) are being brought together to warm up for something big, instead of actually moving anything significant along.

So how does this book fare in the usual plusses and minuses I find in these books?

Sex: Sookie has sex with no one! Huzzah! I'm have totally resignated myself to the fact that these books cater to a primarily female audience, and are, more or less, romance novels. As such, I am actually beginning to enjoy the show True Blood more and more, as it doesn't have the same issues, and actually I think presents the story as a whole a lot a better.

Fantasy Creatures: No one new. Ever since Charlene Harris introduced shapeshifters (technically introduced in book 1, but outed in book 2), she's been stuck there more or less, just thinking of new animals for the shifters to turn into. Still a lot of werewolves in this book, although there's a heavy focus on the Hotshot Werepanthers community, and the introduction of Quinn, a weretiger.

Mystery: If you never believed me before, then you've got to believe me now. The mysteries in these books are more or less an afterthought. Harris' books have a simplistic formula: present mystery/danger, spend 90% of the book in trivial character interaction, quickly unravel mystery/danger, end book. This is also now the 5th book where we have the whole "Who's really the monster" motif, as for the 5th time (with a bit of complicity from a vampire), the "evildoer" is a human.... well, more or less.

I don't know if I've grown numb to these books or what, but this one was a quick read, and I have no strong feelings either way. With the Harry Potter "buildup" movie, I expressed some discontent to the fact that it didn't advance the plot significantly, but books work differently than movies, and I think this book actually served it's purpose to push me onto the next one, as I certainly couldn't just stop at this point.