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I listened to his commentary on the first episode, and he spoke of the book with respect and genuine love. My tastes have grown more selective over the last seventeen years, and it is only on the rarest of occasions I find myself reading a mass market paperback. I won't bore you, or myself, by rehashing the details of this silly little book. Yes.
There is so little development of plot and character, there is plenty of room to spice things up. I am a book snob. Alas, I found HBO's first season of True Blood, fresh and exciting, and was completely drawn into creator Alan Ball's re-working of Dead Until Dark. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for vampire tales, due to my teenage crush on the vampire novels of Anne Rice. It has nothing new to offer the vampire genre, nor is it notable for any other quality. I was dead wrong.
I can tell you, however, it's written in a simplistic style, the characters are one dimensional, and it contains bodice ripper sex scenes. I sped through the story; it's an easy, albeit, unenjoyable read, and I can see why and how a writer for television found it ripe for reinterpretation.
It's a bubble bath book at best. If a book is popular enough to appear at Target, more than likely, I won't be reading it.
If I had to read one more description of Sookie's clothing or hair, I might have ripped the book in two and thrown it across the room. I found a copy by chance at a thrift store and decided to see what the fuss was all about.
I assumed if I loved the show, I would certainly find the book even better: richer, multi-layered and textured in a way that cannot translate from novel to screen. Reading Dead Until Dark was an absolute waste of my time.
One dim star.
I have heard so much hype about the Sookie Stackhouse books so I went about collecting all of them and I finally got around to reading the first one. I don't know. The plot definitely got me though. Don't get me wrong--I enjoyed it. I had several guesses, but none of them were correct. But I didn't fall in love with it.I'm not sure how I feel about Sookie. And maybe because there was so much hype about them and my expectations were so high, but it just wasn't that spectacular to me. But I did like Bill, the vampire, and Sam the bar owner.
I didn't really like her all that much. Maybe she's too "hard" or "tough" for me. Often, I can peg who the killer is but not in this book. I love books like that.I look forward to reading Living Dead in Dallas next.
after watching the first season of true blood, i figured i would read the book that started it all. charlaine harris really draws you in to this tale and doesnt let you go.
There is a major difference in the tone of the show and the book. Open-minded adult readers probably will enjoy the series as well, but the prose can be a bit dull as the author writes with a vocabulary appropriate for its target middle school/junior high audience. Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 1) is the debut novel of the series from which True Blood: The Complete First Season (HBO Series) was born. Both are about Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress and (sometimes) vampire lover in a small town two hours from New Orleans. The content is easily more graphic on the small screen than in Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 1). The show is clearly for adult audiences and wildly inappropriate for a younger audience. Girls who have little or no interest in vampires will adore the book because they can relate to Sookie's outsider status as an insecure-but-special girl in an unfamiliar world.
Warning: Parents thinking about buying the series, don't gift this to the kids if you're uncomfortable with brief sex scenes, violence or innuendo. I picked up a box set of the series as a gift for my wife, though we're both fans of the show. Those preferring adult vampire novels should Anne Rice--Charlaine Harris's youth fiction is a genre unto itself. The books were tailor-made for the 12-14 set that has outgrown Hannah Montana. But where the series is plot-driven with strong messages of tolerance for gays and other minorities, Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 1) is at heart a young adult romance in which you get to know the female protagonist more intimately than the Sookie of HBO. There's far more yearning than bedding in Book 1. Mature teens should handle it well, adult readers who are fans of the show may be disappointed.
Compared to tv Bill, he is more gruff & mysterious & other major characters in the show e.g. Charlaine Harris expands on the vampire canon in new & interesting ways, she makes each character stand out (moreso in the later novels in the series, reviews to come) & although we don't come to understand vampires completely, we get an idea that part of their humanity was never lost.
It soon becomes clear that Sookie has the extraordinary ability to read minds which will come in handy, but not until she meets her first vampire Bill Compton. In the first Sookie Stackhouse novel (formerly the Southern Vampire Mysteries), we meet a twenty-five year old southern waitress who leads an ordinary life in the small town of Bon Temps, LA & suffers from a disability.
While Sookie's mind is constantly working to block the noise & images she receives from other human's thoughts, Bill's mind is silent to Sookie, which allows her to relax around him & embark on her first romance, much to the chagrin of certain people.A murderer is taking the lives of women who have previously been involved with vampires & when Sookie's brother Jason is implicated in the crimes, it's up to her & Bill to find out who the killer is. It's been a couple of years since vampires `came out of the coffin' to let the world know of their `virus' since a Japanese company invented synthetic blood bottled known as TruBlood.
(In every type, though they are supposed to not be as fully satisfying as the real thing). And that human beings are capable of the worst crimes imaginable which makes their fear & prejudice towards the supernatural hypocritical.Fans of `True Blood' who haven't read the books may be slightly disappointed with the storyline, but overall it contains much of the same plot as season one with a few major differences.
Tara, LaFayette, & Eric, do not figure prominently yet in the series.
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