Romance – Page 2 – Diabolical Plots

BOOK REVIEW: Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead and Gone is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2009, the ninth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Before the series of books, the vampires of the world had publicly revealed their existence, but since then Sookie has learned of many other supernatural beings living among us as humans. Among them are the shapeshifters, including werewolves and wereanimals of other types. Now that they’ve had time to observe how the vampire revelation has gone, the shapeshifters have finally decided to make their big public reveal, outing themselves to the public both in a general sense and with individual members of communities revealing themselves at once. The reveal in Bon Temps seems to go pretty well, until Sookie’s werepanther sister-in-law is found crucified outside Merlotte’s where she works.

The King of Nevada has now conquered all of Louisiana, killing all of the vampire hierarchy there except for Eric who he has kept on as sheriff, so that brings its own set of conflicts.

And Sookie learns that her fairy great-grandfather Niall is engaged in a major power struggle.

Never a dull day in the life of Sookie!

I thought it was really interesting to see this book tackle another great life-changing event with the reveals of the shifters to the world. It makes sense, real worlds are always changing even if we’re used to them being somewhat static in book worlds. There are enough conflicts all going on in parallel that there’s never a chance to get bored, and you have the mystery of who crucified Crystal to keep the reader engaged as well.

(Only minor quibble, as with the last book, is the tendency to call any conflict a “war”, even if there are only a handful of participants and the conflict lasts only a short period of time)

BOOK REVIEW: From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

From Dead to Worse is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2008, the eighth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

After surviving the deadly bombing of the vampire summit, and surviving the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Sookie just wants things to get back to some semblance of normality. But her boyfriend Quinn (a weretiger) is missing, she learns that she is descended from fairies and meets her great-grandfather who is fairy royalty, she is recruited to help investigate a series of mysterious werewolf disappearances, and the vampire King of Nevada seeks to wrest control from the wounded and bankrupted Queen Sophie-Ann of Lousiana. So, well, I guess that is normality for Sookie.

Another action-packed book with a lot of threads all tied together in it. I especially enjoyed seeing the vampire power struggle because up until now the vampire hierarchy has been relatively stable despite knowing that vampires have a tendency for violent scheming. All Together Dead (the previous book) is a really hard one to top in the series, and I don’t think this one did, but it was quite good, interesting throughout.

My one pet peeve is that Sookie seems to have a tendency to call just about anything a “war”. A dozen werewolves get into a fight that is over in less than an hour? That’s a war, apparently (I would call that a battle). And so, when Sookie promises in the narration that there’s going to be a war, the result is anticlimactic, finished within a chapter.

BOOK REVIEW: All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

All Together Dead is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2007, the seventh in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie is invited to a national vampire summit as part of Queen Sophie-Anne of Louisiana’s entourage. Sophie-Ann knows of Sookie’s mindreading abilities and wishes to user her ability to give her an advantage in expected power struggles within the vampire hierarchy. Sophie-Anne stands accused of murdering her husband (during the events of the last book) and one of the events happening at the summit is her trial, with charges pressed by her husband’s second-in-command. Also at the summit is Barry, the only other mindreader she knows, who is now employed in a similar position as Sookie to use as an advantage in vampire scheming. The anti-vampire church the Fellowship of the Sun has been ramping up their hostilities against vampires lately, and so security is extra tight.

Given the premise, it’s no surprise that there’s a lot going on in this book. Vampires are known for their scheming ways, and so filling a huge hotel with the highest ranking vampires from opposing factions all across the country is bound to be tense and complicated and potentially violent. There are schemes on schemes and there is plenty to keep the reader occupied trying to predict who is behind what. In this book, you get to see quite a bit more detail about the internal vampire hierarchy, and there are a lot of other singular moments that let you get a better feel for the broader worldbuilding that we have typically only been able to get small glimpses of from only knowing a few vampires in small communities.

Easily the best in the series so far, by a longshot. And, major bonus, there is nothing resembling this book in the TV series, so it is all fresh even to a TV viewer.

BOOK REVIEW: Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Definitely Dead is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2006, the sixth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie heads to New Orleans to sort out of the affairs of her cousin Hadley who had been turned into a vampire and then killed. Hadley’s apartment has been placed under a stasis spell placed on it by Hadley’s landlord, the witch Amelia Broadway. Shortly after the spell is lifted, a newly-made vampire (the werewolf Jake Purifoy) rises within the apartment and attacks them. Sookie’s new boyfriend, the weretiger Quinn, is also in New Orleans on business, so he helps with the investigation. With the help of Amelia and her coven of witches they set out to discover how Jake came to be newly raised in that apartment on the same day that Hadley died.

This is where reading the book series become much more interesting to me. Like the previous book, this one has no season of True Blood that is based upon. But compared to the previous book I felt like this one was much less scattered. There was a central mystery that was the main goal of the book, and the characters actively worked toward resolving it, (and there were other major plots that tied into that that I’ll let you discover for yourself). I enjoyed the completely new characters like Amelia Broadway, and especially enjoyed her and her coven’s involvement in trying to discover the events of the night of Hadley’s death. And, it was good to see Sookie have a new boyfriend character I wasn’t familiar with, because I didn’t know what to expect from Quinn.

The biggest issue I had with the book had more to do with series planning than about the book itself. Each of the books in the series starts with some summary of the series and the last book specifically, which is fine, especially given that romance and mystery genre readers may be more likely to pick up a series in the middle. But, in this case, if you’ve just been reading the books in the series, this one is likely to be confusing because among that “past story” summary Sookie talks about finding out about Hadley’s death. But… that had never been in any of the novels, and so I spent the first several chapters wondering if I had accidentally skipped a book. I hadn’t. It turns out that there was a short story she had written that takes place between the two books and shows Sookie finding out about Hadley’s death and the cause of her death. This struck me as kind of poor planning to assume one is going to have read a short story in its proper place in the novel series with no way to tell that there even was a short story. At the very least, an editor’s note to explain what happened would have gone a long way toward alleviating confusion.

Despite that poor planning, it was easily my favorite in the series so far, a very enjoyable read.

BOOK REVIEW: Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead as a Doornail is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2005, the fifth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

Sookie’s brother Jason, bitten by a werepanther, joins the local werepanther pack that lives in the nearby close-knit community of Hotshot (where the werepanther that bit him came from). Sam Merlotte is shot by an unseen shooter, and so is Calvin Norris the pack leader of Hotshot, and Sookie learns that other shifters have been shot all over Louisiana. Colonel Flood, leader of the Shreveport werewolf pack, is hit by a car and dies, and someone shoots Sookie as well(presumably because she associated with shifters). Although the existence of vampires is now public knowledge all over the world, shifters are still a closely kept secret, and so the common element of these shootings is not known to police, but Sookie can’t really tell them the common element either.

For someone who saw the entire True Blood series before starting any of the books, this book is remarkable in that it is the first book which doesn’t have a season of the TV series largely inspired by it. so it felt new to me in a way that the first four books in the series didn’t, and it doesn’t invite one to play the “was the TV show version or the book version better?” question.

Even so, this one felt a little bit scattered to me. While it did have a main central question of “who is killing/hurting shifters?” there is so little information to actually pursue that question through most of the book that I didn’t really feel like I was able to be very engaged trying to figure it out. There was certainly a lot going on, even besides the central shooting thing, so I never got bored, and lacking a TV comparison I didn’t know what to expect, so that was good.

Overall, it was an action-packed read, even though I wished the central mystery had more supporting clues for me to work with to try to guess the shooter, and for my own engagement it was a relief for it to take a big split from the TV show so that I could read without feeling like I’d already been through the story before.

BOOK REVIEW: Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Dead to the World is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2004, the fourth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris, which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood–this book was used very loosely as the basis for season 4 of the show. The previous books in the series (in order) are Dead Until Dark, (reviewed here), Living Dead in Dallas (reviewed here), and Club Dead (reviewed here).

Sookie (fresh from a breakup with her vampire boyfriend Bill)comes across the vampire Eric Northman running down a deserted road, with no memory of his life before that moment. She finds out that he has been cursed by a coven of witches that have moved into Shreveport and have been threatening Eric and his business interests in order to extort money out of him. Since Eric is more vulnerable than usual, without his memories, Sookie agrees to hide him at her house for a time; her brother Jason negotiates a fee for her to do this since she is short on money. But, shortly afterward, Jason disappears and the local police can’t find a trace of where he’s gone. Sookie fears that he has been abducted by the coven as well.

This story was the best in the series yet. It had a lot of interesting mystery going on with the missing brother and trying to find out how to combat the invading coven. One thing that kept it more fresh for me was that although a season of the TV show was loosely based on it, the basis was SO loose that there was still a lot to surprise me, and so I didn’t have the same issue as I had in previous books with wanting to draw direct comparisons between events. Although that season and this book both involved an invading hostile witch coven, and Eric having his memory cursed away, that’s about where the similarities end.

I was a little worried going in that it would cast all witches as villains–I know a few Wiccans so I didn’t want it to be a blanket condemnation. But the book had no issue in that regard–the book does differentiate between Wicca as a religion and witchcraft, and there are both witches as allies and witches as enemies in the book, so I was happy to see that.

Also interesting was that, with Bill out of the picture and an amnesiac Eric secretly living in her house, for the first time in the series Sookie gets a real shot at another romantic partner. Which mixed things up a bit, to keep things interesting.

Like the previous books, it is a quick and easy read with a slight tendency to over-summarize previous books, but is entertaining and fun, and this was the best one yet I thought.

TV Review: True Blood Season 7

written by David Steffen

True Blood was an HBO horror/mystery/romance series based on the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris.

The series as a whole follows Sookie Stackhouse starting shortly after the major world event of vampires “coming out of the coffin”. Where, after a Japanese company perfects the production of synthetic blood branded Tru Blood, vampires reveal themselves to be real and begin to integrate with mainstream society. Sookie has always had mind-reading abilities which has made it difficult to keep a human relationship, so she is immediately drawn to the vampires which she can’t mindread.

True Blood Season 6 ended with a world-changing event, the release of the bio-engineered Hepatitis V virus. Based on a mutation of the Hep-D virus, which only weakens a vampire for a time, Hep V is a much more contagious and much more deadly strain. Humans who contract the virus show no symptoms, but any vampire that drinks their blood will also catch the virus which causes extreme weakening and eventually the true death. It was originally spread using tainted Tru Blood so not only are vampires in danger from the virus, they also have lost their synthetic food source.

The season starts 6 months after the end of the last season. Sam Merlotte has become mayor, and Hep-V infected vampires are roaming the countryside in packs. The human and vampire residents of Bon Temps make a pact to try to get through this difficult time in the hopes of finding a Hep-V cure and untainted Tru Blood production begins again–healthy vampires will protect humans from the ever-hungry Hep-V infected vampires, and the humans will in turn provide their own blood as a food source for the vampires. This situation, predictably, comes with a lot of tension built into it as many humans and vampires are not satisfied with the arrangement. A band of H-vamps crashes a human-vampire gathering in Bon Temps as the season begins, and drags away some humans for food.

Meanwhile, Eric Northman has been run off and hasn’t been seen again since the events of last season, and his progeny Pam is looking for him.

This being the final season of True Blood, the show does not pull any punches. Major characters die, and not always when you’re anticipating or in a way you might guess. There’s no telling who might survive and who won’t. The stakes are high as the rampaging H-Vamps are killing humans en masse just to survive, and any of the main vampires in the show could become infected and with no cure available that’s a death sentence. So much happens in just 10 episodes, and generally I thought they did well giving satisfying conclusions to the characters that felt internally consistent with their history. I’m not going to lie–I did cry in the final episode, and I’m not much of a crier.

DP Fiction #16: “The Weight of Kanzashi” by Joshua Gage

In order to prevent contamination on the space station, all the members of the shuttle crew have to be thoroughly sterilized. This means systematically cleansing themselves and their skin of all potential contaminates, including their hair. All crew members have to be completely shaved and waxed before launch. Despite this being her seventeenth mission, Yukino Kojima is always stunned at how easily her hair falls away beneath the barber’s clippers, gathering around her ankles like strands of silver fog and leaving a gray fuzz to be waxed off.

The launch is scheduled for her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, so she gathers a lock of the shorn hair and places it in a black lacquered inro with a sprinkled gold, silver, and mother-of-pearl design as a present for her husband. He insists that the launch day is auspicious, and will tell anyone who would listen how honored he is that his wife, the renowned solid-state physicist, will soon hold the record for most recorded flights and for being the oldest astronaut in Japanese history.

To fill their personal preference kit, each crew member is allowed to choose up to 650 grams of personal items. Most of the crew choose less than this–a tablet computer and a few pieces of jewelry or other mementos. Some crew members take a good luck charm, a kotsu anzen or Daruma doll. Kenta Fujioka, the pilot, jokes that he could smuggle a carton and a half of cigarettes on board. Nobuyuki Koizumi, commander of the mission, laughs, and asks what Kenta will smoke the other 340 days they are on the space station. Yukino’s tablet is loaded with not just the usual books and music, but also with photos of her and her husband together. This being her seventeenth flight, she has little else that she needs in the way of luck or privacy.

Therefore, she is surprised to find a package wrapped in red tissue paper floating weightlessly up from the nylon bag of her kit after the shuttle docks with the space station when the crew has time to settle in before getting to work. She finds out later that Kenta and Nobuyuki gave up some of their kit weight to smuggle in a present from her husband for their anniversary. With tears in her eyes, Yukino unfolds the paper, and finds a deep mahogany kimono of the lightest, most ethereal silk with a shochikubai design embroidered upon it. Yukino fingers the delicate pattern, the dark viridian swirls of the pine trees, the slender stalks of the bamboo, and the blushing blossoms of the plum. Along with the kimono is a lacquered kushi, a hair comb, along with a matching hana kanzashi in the shape of a deep pink plum blossom.

Yukino presses the silk of the kimono against her lips, feels its cool weft. Holding the kushi to her head, she opens her locker and looks in the small mirror on the back of the door. The comb’s smooth shell and the variegations of its teeth are cold and scratch the stubble that is already growing back on her scalp. She puts it back gently, then holds the hana kanzashi above her temple. The soft fabric of its petals is like wind against her skin, and she weeps, remembering the smell of the ocean, the warmth of her husband’s hand in her own.

Author’s Note: I was inspired to write this story when I learned about Kishotenketsu plots via the StillEatingOranges blog. I was intrigued by the idea of a plot without conflict, and wrote a few stories to attempt that. This was one of them. I love the idea that a story can move forward merely by juxtaposing two things against each other, as opposed to having them in conflict with each other. I think that idea really appeals to my poetry sensibilities.

medium_Joshua_Gage Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His first full-length collection, breaths, is available from VanZeno Press. Intrinsic Night, a collaborative project he wrote with J. E. Stanley, was published by Sam’s Dot Publishing. His most recent collection, Inhuman: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse, is available on Poet’s Haven Press. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, rye whiskey and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs.

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