Title: Dead Until Dark: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel
Author: Charlaine Harris
Publication Date: 2001
Book Description: First book in the Sookie Stackhouse series that the HBO series TrueBlood is based on.
About half way through the 2nd season of TrueBlood a friend of mine introduced me to the show. I had never seen it because I don’t have HBO, so we watched a couple of episodes one night – I was hooked! I ended up getting the rest of Season 1 through Netflix and then started watching Season 2 when it became available. Life got in the way and I never made it past about the middle of Season 2. Since I’ve been reading so much lately I’ve been looking for new books to read and came across the Sookie Stackhouse series that TrueBlood is based on. I thought since I enjoyed the show so much that I would give them a try.
Since I had seen Season 1 of TrueBlood I knew what was going to happen in the book, but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. I had to work on Sunday and ended up reading the entire book during my shift. I always worry about vampire books because even though I like them, I always worry about them being a bit too gross for my taste. This book was the perfect amount of gross. The author goes into enough detail to give you an image of what happened without leaving you sick to your stomach (HBO takes care of that for you in the show). It was also interesting because since I had seen the first season of the show, I had an actual image in my head of what the characters looked like (at least on the show). Usually I like being able to come up with my own ideas about what characters look like, I mean that is part of the fun of reading, but with this book I think that mental image I had made things flow along a bit better.
On the downside, I got that “this was written to be a movie/show feeling” while I was reading the book. I know that wasn’t the intention (I think) when she wrote these books, but since I know they ended up being a show it was hard to push that out of my mind. Since there are more books in the series I have no clue how I will push that idea out of my head and keep it from impacting my view of the books. Maybe since I haven’t seen any more of the series it will be okay. We shall see when book 2 is available at the library huh?
