Anyone wanna fill me in on what “Southern Vampire” is all about?
Supposedly, it is being turned into an HBO show called “True Blood” and is being “created” by Alan Ball (of Americn Beauty and “Six Feet Under” fame).
http://www.charlaineharris.com/trueblood_press.html
Fake blood, “out” relationship with humans. What’s the tone? Dark? Humorous? Good characters.
I’ve never heard of SV before.
Also, when is it going to be airing? I haven’t seen any promos, just word of mouth.
I just finished reading the first book of the series, “Dead Until Dark”, after a friend had been recommending it for the past two years. The general tone is humorous, although the overall plot does have some pretty serious elements involved (a series of murders, as well as the developing relationships). I’ll be buying and reading the rest of them ASAP. Unfortunately I don’t get HBO, so I won’t be able to watch the series unless it gets rebroadcast online. The last I heard, it’s supposed to start airing sometime in January
Oh, and to answer more of the questions asked…
The setting is a small town in Louisiana, Bon Temps. Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress at a bar, can read minds, an ability that is more aggravating than pleasant (imagine going through life having to make a conscious effort not to be bombarded with the thoughts of everyone nearby). Vampires have recently come “out of the coffin” with the development of artificial blood which satisfies their nutritional need, although there are vampire groupies (fangbangers) who are eager to supply vampires with the real thing. Bill Compton is a vampire who is trying to “mainstream” and live with humans as much as possible. A relationaships develops between him and Sookie, partly because she can’t read his thoughts.
The writing is good, and there are a lot of interesting characters. Harris does a good job of exploring the ramifications of vampires being more or less accepted by society; the “official” explanation is that vampirism is a disease caused by a virus, although there are hints that this may be a cover story. I’m interested in seeing how this develops, as well as a few other things we find out about some of the characters. For example,
the owner of the bar where Sookie works turns out to be a shapeshifter, and is more or less in love with her, but never had the nerve to tell her until she started dating Bill. And then there’s Bubba, who Sookie recognizes when she meets him as “the man from Memphis”