Okay, not just her. The books as a whole. Well, not all of them, I’m not even done with the first one, Dead Until Dark. It wasn’t the best written book but it was fun enough. Until I got to the sex scene.
White with gold streaks? Seriously?
Ugh. Tell me again why the Vampire Bill (yes, BILL) is better than Edward.
Truly mud people. Really? REALLY?
I refrained from vomiting but I don’t know if I’ll be able to refrain from breaking this book’s spine.
I gave up on the series after the second book. Yep, I get it. Vampires are all sexy and great in bed and they all lust after the uneducated but spunky busty blonde waitress. But I’m here for the plot, not the soft porn, thank you.
Not only that, but magically gifted heroine in a love triangle between hot broody vampire and studly, salt-of-the-earth were canine? Lauren K. Hamilton should sue her ass.
Are those actual quotes? God, they sounds like amateur fanfic. From an 8th grader.
Yes. Yes, they are.
I really wanted to like these books. HBO is a quality channel. They’d only select good books to make into series…right? Right? Or not.
Oh well. There’s always Let the Right One In. From what I can tell, that’s a genuinely disturbing book.
When I read the first book I decided that Charlaine Harris was doing a great job of writing in Sookie’s voice and that’s why the books sound like they were written by a 15 year old. The plot was solid, the characters were actually fleshed out, I had to think it was a choice to write that way. Ok I could get behind that. So I read the second book. The plot had sort of gone off the rails and the characters started behaving…not like themselves. Ok, so not everyone is able to write a solid second book. But the series has a whole bunch of books in it, so she probably got back on track.
I don’t think I finished the third book. I feel bad for convincing myself that the writing style was a choice.
I tried to convince myself of that when I first started the book, and it was working till she lost her virginity to Bill. Then I was cringing so hard I couldn’t read. I guess it could be a choice, just not a very good one. Maybe Charmaine Harris thinks this is genuinely good writing.
I guess I just really wanted to like it because I haven’t been excited by a new fiction book lately and if I liked this, I’d have a whole series to dive into.
Maybe she sees her orgasms as clean and pure (white with gold) because she’s rutting in the soil with the mud people? Perhaps orgasms are a spiritual fulfillment for her–she has transcended her baser nature and moved to a higher plain?*
She sounds like she might need some intense therapy. Or meds. Or both. I wasn’t planning on reading those books (Anne Rice and Meyers killed any possible vampire interest for me, not that I had much to start), but now I will make sure I don’t.
*If that sentence could be chemically transformed from pixels, there’s enough fertilizer there to cover several lawns.
I found the first book at an airport and read it. I even posted a thread here askin gif it was a romance novel and if I was damned.
It’s not deep reading but it is fun. I’m still holding onto what you discarded in that it is the author being purposeful in writing from Sookie’s viewpoint (I’m in the 4th book). Sookie IS very immature. She was essentially isolated from human contact all her life and is stunted. Reading the book really does sound like it is in Sookie’s voice and I will continue to think it is deliberate writing damn it! 
It is similar to the Rachel Morgan series where the ‘voice’ is of a complete screwed up ditz…and fun to read.
It’s not so much the fact that she’s immature, but just that the sex scenes were SO awful.
Did I mention the part where Sookie’s still sore from getting her cherry picked so Vampire Bill bites himself, dips his finger in the blood, and then dips the blood in her vagina so she can have sex again right away? Okay, it’s not as bad as sparkling, but ugh.
Is Sam a very big character in the books? He’s my favorite on the show. I’ve been thinking about giving the books a try, since I like True Blood pretty well, but based on this thread, I might just pass on them.
I also just read the book (because of the tv series).
Sookie doesn’t make sense. Her power make even less sense. (can’t work anywhere but a bar because there are too many people? but there aren’t in a bar? huh?)
And the vampires don’t make sense - though at least they don’t sparkle. It’s nice to know it doesn’t get better.
The books were interesting. She does have a pretty crappy writing style and I pretty much skipped the sex scenes but the rest of the stuff kept me entertained.
Actually, the worst part of the series was having her explain things over and over and fucking over again.
I’m on the 8th book now I know of true blood, vampire blood, the fellowship and anything else that was covered and repeated in every god damn book of the series.
The 10th book is coming out in May. I’m pretty sure half of it is going to be spent explaining vampires, her special ability, her relationship to Bill and a bunch of other shit people who aren’t complete idiots should already know.
This is exactly how I feel about the books. When I first began watching the series on Netflix, I wanted to catch myself up on the books - I hadn’t read the first ones in several years. I did, and they were fun but the writing style really sucked. And it gets lots worse the further along in the series you get for exactly the reasons mentioned above and also because she starts throwing in other supernatural characters.
I think I would’ve liked the whole series better if Harris had stuck to the vampires and weres instead of throwing in a whole menagerie of other supernaturals, then telling us about them over and over again at the start, middle and end of each new book.
Oh baby, you don’t know the half of it till you get to book four, and encounter the quivering breast puppies! (Personally, I’m not above savoring the sex scenes, especially when they cater to my 'shippy inclinations, but that, plus a reference to “Mr. Happy” killed what is otherwise a pretty hot scene.)
I was reflecting just yesterday that Harris’s books are really one very cool idea (mixing mystery, vampires, a rural LA setting, and some romance), with occasional pretty good ideas, surrounded by a sea of bad writing.
I got through book 6 on the sheer Pringle-ness of them, as someone described it in an earlier thread - “Oooh, these are bad - let me have another . . .” Book 7 finally convinced me to stop though. When they go to a vampire convention, and it’s every bit as boring as you would imagine reading about going to a convention would be, I knew it was time to quit. Not to mention the monumental stupidity of the characters, and imputed to the reader. Spoiler for book 7, but if you read it, you’ll twig to it as soon as it’s introduced anyway:The always-paranoid vampires, who go to special vampire hotels because they feel the need for extra security, don’t bat an eye when unidentified, unattended luggage turns up. Instead, they cheerfully pick it up and deposit it in their suites, where no one recognizes or claims it. And guess what? It turns out the luggage is bombs! Who would have ever thought such a thing possible?!
I just finished book four again and that was my favorite line in the whole novel. And I don’t think the terms “Mr. Happy” and “folded” should ever be used in the same sentence.
What’s the line? I gave up after 2 books.
My coworker is a library addict and made what to me seemed the most unusual decision a serious reader could make - she saw the sixth book in the series and decided to read it.:eek: When I :eek:ed at her, she said she actually wasn’t that lost, even though she had only seen the first few episodes of the show. That should’ve clued me in to the fact that the books aren’t really a proper series, where you have to start from the beginning.
And damned if I didn’t go ahead and buy them anyway. Jeebus, I wish I lived close to the damn library…
I agree, the writing is crap. The ideas in the stories are compelling for me, but the sex scenes are lame (to be fair, I’ve tried and writing a good sex scene is much more difficult than it sounds like it should be), and the thing I really despise is the detailed descriptions of Sookie’s outfits. Harris can’t seem to draw a character in any other way aside from making her a vapid teenager by describing every single outfit Sookie puts on. The annoying thing is, Sookie is like, 24 or 25. She’s no teenager. Who gets to their mid-20s and has never left the town she grew up in?
Lots of people who grow up fairly poor in fairly rural small towns and aren’t college material, actually. It’s the one thing about the books that really rings true. Growing up there’s not money for vacations/traveling, and then after high school you get a job. Usually that job is around home, because you could pick up and move away from all your family and friends to get the exact same sort of job somewhere else but it doesn’t make much sense to do so. And then you’re working the sort of job you can get right out of high school, and you surely don’t have the time or money to travel then. You’ve been to various towns in the surrounding counties for stuff, and to a city a couple hours away from time to time, maybe even to a larger more distant city for a special trip or two. Mostly, though, you’ve stuck around home.
Which pretty well sums up Sookie’s experience. She’s been to the various towns in her parish the ones closest to her plenty, she’s been to Shreveport periodically, and she even went to New Orleans on a school trip once. Mock the breast puppies and the mud people all you want, but on this one score Harris actually got it right.