From Dead to Worse (Charlaine Harris)
I adored the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, and rushed out to pick up the second. As the series progressed, the novels have tended to have one large plot arc, ending in some cataclysmic conflict. "Plot" here should be taken literally: the action is usually driven by some person or group's political machinations. I've found this less and less engaging, and From Dead to Worse sat on my "to read" shelf long enough I don't remember when I bought it. I needn't have worried, as it broke from this tendency in a way I found extremely satisfying.
If you're a small-town waitress who mostly just wants to live your life, constantly being a player in supernatural politics eventually becomes just another kind of thing that happens, albeit more likely to kill you than other dramas. But in From Dead to Worse that doesn't mean it's more meaningful to you. The personal story and the struggles of the supernatural world are no more guaranteed to flow at the same pace than a normal person's work and home dramas.
In From Dead to Worse there are two major "plot" arcs in the sense I used above, and they're both largely complete (except for an incident which is more setup for future plots than closure on events in this book) shortly after the halfway point of the book. Even while they're going on, more pages are spent on the (admittedly supernaturally tinged) events of Sookie's personal and family life, and these events occupy pretty much the entire rest of the book.
This isn't to say that Harris isn't visibly moving pieces around to set herself up for many more supernatural plots in the future, but that action feels fairly unimportant, in exactly the same way that Obama's election or health care reform fade into the background behind the immense importance of our friends and family and office dramas. This is what was so engaging about the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, and I'm thrilled to see it back. I'm now impatient for the next book to come out in paperback.
If you're a small-town waitress who mostly just wants to live your life, constantly being a player in supernatural politics eventually becomes just another kind of thing that happens, albeit more likely to kill you than other dramas. But in From Dead to Worse that doesn't mean it's more meaningful to you. The personal story and the struggles of the supernatural world are no more guaranteed to flow at the same pace than a normal person's work and home dramas.
In From Dead to Worse there are two major "plot" arcs in the sense I used above, and they're both largely complete (except for an incident which is more setup for future plots than closure on events in this book) shortly after the halfway point of the book. Even while they're going on, more pages are spent on the (admittedly supernaturally tinged) events of Sookie's personal and family life, and these events occupy pretty much the entire rest of the book.
This isn't to say that Harris isn't visibly moving pieces around to set herself up for many more supernatural plots in the future, but that action feels fairly unimportant, in exactly the same way that Obama's election or health care reform fade into the background behind the immense importance of our friends and family and office dramas. This is what was so engaging about the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, and I'm thrilled to see it back. I'm now impatient for the next book to come out in paperback.