Author: Charlaine Harris
Publish Date: May 28, 2011
Pages: 336
Goodreads Synopsis:
"With her knack for being in trouble's way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is now known to be two-natured, suspicion falls immediately on the anti-shifters in the area. But Sookie suspects otherwise and she and Sam work together to uncover the culprit - and the twisted motive for the attack. But her attention is divided. Though she can't 'read' vampires, Sookie knows her lover Eric Northman and his 'child' Pam well - and she realises that they are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master. Gradually, she is drawn into the plot -which is much more complicated than she knows. Caught up in the politics of the vampire world, Sookie will learn that she is as much of a pawn as any ordinary human - and that there is a new Queen on the board..."
Eric is becoming moody & temperamental, Sookie is struggling over the same fundamental issues over and over, no new and exciting characters were introduced, the big reveals weren't momentous, in fact I had to re-read the page to decide if the secret of Sookie's telepathy was even relevant.
The book was childish. "I love you, my wife" blah, blah, blah. Sookie and Eric are soo in love but they never see each other, never sleep over, and only have one (maybe two?) unmemorable sexual encounters in the whole book. And if they are in love, why is everything treated like they don't even care about each other, or think about the other when making decisions? They don't even fight like a couple. I rooted so hard for Eric, and the boy is just letting me down.
Bill is mooning about, and there is so much going on, that nothing gets said or elaborated on. The book is filled with event after event, so that you are almost tired of reading, but once your are done you look back and can almost convince yourself the book had to be awesome, just because it was so packed with action and events. Pssshhh... Pull out half the events, make the rest meaningful, and this would have been a lot better. Things slid by so fast, you didn't care that they happened at all.
That bit of rant out of the way, it wasn't by any means a bad book... I just wouldn't recommend it to someone who wasn't devoted to the series already. We got a lot of the old favorites paraded in front of us. Alcide, Jason, Amelia & Bob, the Faries, Mr. Cataliades, Bill, Bubba, Eric, Pam, the Fangtasia crowd, Sam and the Merlott's crew, Remy & Hunter, Victor and his bad guys, - even the private detectives hired by Sandra Pelt.
You get to find out back stories like the truth of where Sookie's telepathy came from, and what Gran really knew and thought about Fintan and the 'fairy' situation. Sookie works out if she is really in love with Eric, and the issue of Victor is dealt with at the top level - but boy could that stir the pot for the next book. Oh, and did I mention that Eric might be getting married?
Lots of death, lots of reveals - a must for the Sookie fan. :)
