book review
Title: Deadlocked (The Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 12)
Author: Charlaine Harris
# of Pages: 336
Summary (from amazon.com): Growing up with telepathic abilities, Sookie Stackhouse realized early on there were things she’d rather not know. And now that she’s an adult, she also realizes that some things she knows about, she’d rather not see-like Eric Northman feeding off another woman. A younger one.
There’s a thing or two she’d like to say about that, but she has to keep quiet-Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), is in town. It’s the worst possible time for a human body to show up in Eric’s front yard-especially the body of the woman whose blood he just drank.
Now, it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s set out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down.
Opinion: I guess I should start off by saying I forgot that Harris was still continuing to write this series, there being quite a bit of a delay between reading Book 11 and Book 12 for me - almost a year. Oddly enough, even though I didn't remember all the details from the last book, I thought this book picked up just as well from where the previous left off, but didn't rely too much on continuity to be completely understood. Sure, you do need to be at least a loyal fan of the series to understand the dynamics between the characters and how their relationships have evolved over the series, which explains a lot of their actions throughout the story, but I thought the overall plot of this one was much easier to follow - it was a murder mystery. Thankfully, there weren't a ton of new characters, which I always found a bit of a flaw with these books because it became hard to keep track of everyone. That being said, when I got to the end of this book I could almost tell that Harris is trying to wrap up this series in some way. There was something about the ending of this book that gave me the hint that there might only been a few new novels left for Sookie before ending her story for good, and if it's heading in the direction I think it will (based on how this one ended), I certainly hope she goes for it. Considering how insufferable I found Sookie at the very beginning of the series, I find myself now - 12 books into her story - really liking her as a character, Harris' having stripped her of that MarySue and really put her through the ringer over the series. Naturally, I'll keep reading as long as she keep churning these books out, haha.
Now Reading: The Gates by John Connolly
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