Review: Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris.

I mentioned that I bought these books a couple of weeks ago and finished both of them quite quickly – the first one within two or three days and the other one within the week since I was working and at university a lot. I don’t normally do book reviews, but I wanted to get my thoughts on these books out there – none of my flatmates have read them yet and it just needs to get out my head.

I’ve read Twilight. But then I’ve also read Interview With The Vampire. So it’s safe to say I know, and like, my vampire fiction – good and bad. I’m not going to get into my thoughts on Twilight in this post (good story, poor writer) or Interview (good story, amazing writer). This post is all about Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas – the newest vampire darlings, or TrueBlood.

I’m going to be honest – I was expecting something better. A lot better. There’s about 300 pages in each of the books but the font size is rather large – I could probably read a whole book in about 3 or 4 hours if I didn’t have other things to do. And the writing itself… well I can understand that Harris was trying to accurately portray the mind of a deep south waitress who can read minds. I really understand that. I don’t understand how she managed to get a 10 book deal with it though – I honestly think it’s worse than Stephanie Meyer’s writing.

The writing could also do with a bit more description and the story could do with being fleshed out a bit. Everything really happens quite quickly and there’s no explanation for it – one minute they meet and the next they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. There’s no in-between except for a poorly written sex scene.

But, and I hate myself for this, the story is good. It’s unique. The general public know about vampires and, to an extent, accept them. Add in a little bit of murder, mystery, synthetic blood and some action and you’ve got a story. The main character of Sookie is also a normal person who has normal worries – minus the mind reading thing obviously. You can relate to her in a strange way.

Would I recommend the books? Probably not unless you wanted a trashy read. I will admit that I’ve bought the next two and I’ve just finished the third one…

Has anyone else read them yet? Tell me what you think about them.