Club Dead
Charlaine Harris
Southern Vampire/Sookie Stackhouse 3
Ace Books, 2003.
ISBN-13: 978-0441010516.
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Charlaine Harris’ Club Dead is the third in her series of “Southern Vampire” novels, preceded by Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas, both of which were previously reviewed for Green Man Review by my colleague Michael M. Jones. As Michael makes clear in his well-done reviews, these books are not your standard vampire books. The heroine, Sookie Stackhouse, a barmaid in rural Northern Louisiana, is self-educated from genre books and her word-a-day calendar. She’s also a telepath, something which in general she views as a disability.

Sookie is not an Anita Blake clone, though if you like Laurel K. Hamilton’s books, you’ll probably like Sookie. She’s an interesting, strong and self-aware character and not at all derivative. She struggles with her sometimes rough relationship with “Vampire Bill” Compton, a Civil War veteran who first attracted Sookie simply because she couldn’t read his mind. That said, Club Dead, while quite capable of standing on its own, does suffer from “series-itis” in that it doesn’t end with all the issues solved—the book begins with Sookie and Bill’s relationship in trouble, and that issue isn’t resolved at the end, though the related mysteries and murder that bookend Bill and Sookie’s relationship are neatly tied up.

At the start of the book, Sookie is a bit miffed because she comes home from a hard day’s work at Merlotte’s bar in Bon Temps expecting to find her vampire sweetie Bill ready to lavish her with attention, but Bill can barely tear himself away from his computer to grunt “Hi,” or even clean up the bottles of synthetic blood he’s been drinking. It’s been like that for the last couple of months. But then Bill is kidnapped because of a secret project he’s been working on (for no less than the vampire Queen of Louisiana). Sookie is convinced by Eric Northman, the vampire leader of “Area 5″ of Louisiana and Bill’s boss, to go undercover and “listen” to see if she can pick up any leads about Bill’s precise location in Jackson, Mississippi.

He also tells Sookie that Bill has been unfaithful to her, carrying on a clandestine affair with another vampire (and a former amour) named Lorena, for several weeks. It’s not really acceptable for two vampires to have a sexual relationship, but Bill apparently found Lorena irresistible. Knowing he’s been cheating on her, and had plans to provide for her financially when he broke off their relationship, doesn’t make Sookie feel any better about the way Bill seems to have abandoned her. Nonetheless, she is infuriated to learn that Lorena is the one who betrayed Eric to the Jackson vampires, whose king is keen to acquire Bill’s secret project. The king is keen enough, in fact, to have sent a Werewolf and gang member after Sookie in a kidnap attempt that is only just foiled by Bubba, the slightly dim vampire better known in life as a musician from Tupelo.

In the meantime, where’s Bill? . . . and Lorena, for that matter?

Sookie grows as a character in Club Dead, becoming stronger physically and metaphysically, but largely growing as a person. She still struggles with ethical questions, with the reality of loving a vampire, and with her “disability,” as she still thinks of her telepathy. Harris, a talented writer of three other mystery series, has something very unusual in Club Dead and the rest of the “Sookie Stackhouse” series (as Harris thinks of the books generally referred to as the “Southern Vampire” series). These books, as Michael M. Jones points out (in the reviews mentioned above), are “that rarest of mixed genres: Southern romantic vampire mystery.” It’s a blend that works in Harris’ case, with a heroine who is down to earth, smart, funny and interesting, with enough fantasy world-building in terms of genuinely “other” vampires, Were, and shape-shifter sub-cultures to create abelievably Fey reality.

Reprinted with permission from The Green Man Review. © Copyright 2003 The Green Man Review.

Bull, Emma.
War for the Oaks.
Orb Books, 2001.
ISBN: 978-0765300348

“Urban fantasy” is relatively new as a fantasy sub-genre. Certainly my first exposure to urban fantasy was via the deserved popularity of the Borderlands shared universe. Borderlands essentially
created a new genre space for heroic fantasy in an urban setting. Bull’s work is often cited as an example of “urban fantasy,” but in War for the Oaks she makes Minneapolis as full of wonder as Tír nan Og. War for the Oaks is about an otherworld intruder, a pooka who shape-shifts into a large black dog, and Eddi McCandry, a mortal musician who becomes an unwilling pawn in a fairy civil war.

Bull draws on fairy folklore throughout her novel, and uses it to create fully realized characters rather then mere types. Bull begins with a solid foundation of traditional fairy folklore and makes it new, in large part because she has interestingly real characters. Eddi McCandry isn’t another calque on Janet from the ballad of Tam Lin; she’s Eddi McCandry. And the Pooka isn’t exactly like anything or anyone else either. Bull has also captured the essence of Fey game-playing and ethics here, and all of it in fabulous dialog. This is a book that you really should read if you have any interest in contemporary fantasy at all, since it has very much helped shape the genre. Plus, it’s really really good.

Emma Bull and Will Shetterly have co-written War for the Oaks: The Screenplay. I keep hoping someday Bull will record all the songs.

McKinley, Robin.
Sunshine.
Berkley Trade, October 2008.
ISBN: 0425224015

It’s not that any of the Others are really popular, or that it had only been the vampires against us during the Wars. But a big point about vampires is that they are the only ones that can’t hide what they are: let a little sunlight touch them and they burst into flames. Very final flames. Exposure and destruction in one neat package. Weres are only in danger once a month, and there are drugs that will hold the Change from happening. The drugs are illegal, but then so are coke and horse and hypes and rats’ brains and trippers. If you want the anti-Change drugs you can get them. (And most Weres do. Being a Were isn’t as bad as being a vampire, but it’s bad enough.) And a lot of demons look perfectly normal. Most demons have some funny habit or other but unless you live with one and catch it eating garden fertilizer or old combox components or growing scaly wings and floating six inches above the bed after it falls asleep, you’d never know. And some demons are pretty nice, although it’s not something you want to count on. (I’m talking about the Big Three, which everyone does, but “demon” is a pretty catch-all term really, and it can often turn out to mean what the law enforcement official on the other end of it wants it to mean at the time.)

Robin McKinley. Sunshine.

Sunshine is a baker. Sunshine is a very good baker, locally known for her cinnamon rolls as big as your head.

She is also the only person known to have survived a vampire abduction, not to mention having escaped with the aid of another abduction victim, also a vampire. In the middle of the day.

So yes, Sunshine’s unusual. To those more familiar with McKinley’s juveniles, this isn’t a juvenile. This is not your standard vampire book. Sunshine is a fully realized character without being truly like anyone else. She’s no Buffy, no Sookie Stackhouse and no Anita Blake clone. She’s completely herself. That said, well, yes, this is an “urban vampire” novel, and yes, I suspect “Buffy, Vampire Slayer” was an influence, but so were Bram Stoker’s Dracula and “Beauty and the Beast.” In Sunshine McKinley has, again, taken old myths and reshaped them. The vampires, and Sunshine’s world, are different from other vampires and not-quite-this-universe worlds. In addition to McKinley’s gift for story and character, we have her flexible prose, which is fully exploited to give Sunshine her own voice. It’s an interesting voice, and a very real voice, though not always an easy one to listen to.

One of the things I love about Robin McKinley’s books is that I can count on her to surprise me, and she did with this book. I’ve read Sunshine twice, and am looking forward to a third reading. This may be my favorite of McKinley’s books, (so far) but I really wish she’d included recipes for some of Sunshine’s bakery creations. Especially the cinnamon rolls.