Review: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

by Catherine
Dead Until DarkDead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Series: Southern Vampire Mysteries #1
Publication Date: May 1, 2001
Pages: 304
Genre: Mystery, Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Ace

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Bon Temps, Louisiana. She's quiet, doesn't get out much, and tends to mind her own business—except when it comes to her “disability.” Sookie can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too dateable. Then along comes Bill Compton. He’s tall, dark, handsome—and Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting for all her life...

But Bill has a disability of his own: he’s a vampire with a bad reputation. And when a string of murders hits Bon Temps—along with a gang of truly nasty bloodsuckers looking for Bill—Sookie starts to wonder if having a vampire for a boyfriend is such a bright idea.

It has been just over ten years since I last read a Sookie Stackhouse book. How do I know? Well, the thirteenth and final book in the series, Dead Ever After, was released in May 2013. The general vibe of the series’ ending did not surprise me, as I’d seen a lot of it coming, and I had literally closed the book on the series since.

So coming back to it after all these years was a bit of a trip. The world of Sookie Stackhouse is so vibrant, so well-drawn that it is easy to fall back into the town of Bon Temps – a Bon Temps having its first open brush against the world of the supernatural. And while I will have to check as I continue on with a re-read of the series, that is the real strength of these earlier books. That basic conflicts – natural vs supernatural, ancient vs modern, insider vs outsider – are baked into the setting of the books, so every encounter is rife with at least one source of drama potential. Oftentimes more. Danger can come from anywhere, and humans are their own kind of monster.

Going from Harris’s cozy mysteries to something darker, sexier, and monstrous seems like it would be a strange match, but Dead Until Dark pulls it off very well. Throughout the length of the book the core mystery is tossed between two possible options – supernatural or mere mortal – with various levels of weight and arguments for the characters (and readers) to follow. Some lines are more obviously red herrings, but even the most ridiculous arguments (to me, as the reader) characters made still had at least some sense with their own internal logics. Would I have liked Sookie to have been more involved in the mystery, rather than mostly existing around it? Of course. But it was also her first introduction to, well, everything, and it was clear that there would be a next time, and a time after that.

That said, there are some things that I pick up on now that I am older, now that I am of an age closer to the Sookie’s at the end of the series rather than her age in this book. For all that she comments on other people’s thoughts being mean and uncharitable, there is an undercurrent of her own being just as mean and judgmental. Her attitudes towards other female characters have notes of slut-shaming, with Sookie looking down upon the victims at the centre of the mystery. Given the sexual nature of their untimely deaths, and the misogyny of the killer, Sookie’s hypocrisy did not sit right with me and was uncomfortable to watch. Sookie is a good girl (unlike the others) and Jason is just a stupid boy (for making tapes with those girls). When Sookie sleeps with a vampire, it’s different.

Not.

Overall, Dead Until Dark is a solid introduction to both a mystery series and a supernatural world, and for the most part holds up very well ten years after I first read it (and twenty-plus years after first publication). Still, it displays an uncomfortable level of distaste and shame towards female characters who are not Sookie, which overall lowers the rating in my eyes. Recommended, just not highly so, and with that caveat.

(Best scene: Sookie’s violent reaction to no longer being able to convince herself Bill is just a man affected by a medical condition, and that yes, she has indeed slept with a dead man.)

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