This is the 11th book in the Sookie Stackhouse series, so I’ll put the disclaimer in now: there will be spoilers regarding the previous books in the series.
This book picks up right where the last one left off: Eric’s maker, Appius Livius Ocella, and his out-of-control vampire, Alexei Romanov have been killed and Sookie is picking up the pieces and trying to get her life back in order which, as we know, never really happens for her. There are three main storylines here: Sookie and Eric’s tension in their relationship (due in large part to Ocella’s interference), Eric’s conflict with Victor, the regent of Louisiana, and Sandra Pelt’s renewed attempts to track down and kill Sookie. There are number of smaller side plots as well, but those are the main driving points of the book.
I enjoyed this book, but like the one before it, I felt it had a hard time deciding which direction it wanted to go and ended up with less action than we’ve previously seen. This isn’t a terrible thing; I still very much enjoy the characters in Sookie’s world, and Sookie herself. I think that the issue with these books is that Harris has introduced a lot (seriously, A LOT) of characters and storylines and she continues to try to fit them all into every book. At this point we have telepaths, witches, vampires, fae, werewolves, other were animals, demons and then regular old humans. It can be very tricky to keep everything (and everyone) straight. Another small nitpick is that two of the three storylines seemed to get a significant amount of page time compared to the third, which is all well and good, but perhaps the third should have been (and easily could have been) delayed until the next book. Despite all this, I was happy to catch up with Sookie and company again. I think Harris’s biggest strength is her unique characters, and they are always a delight to read about.
If you’ve read the rest of the books and enjoyed them, I would say this book should be a good read for you. All in all, a decent entry in the series, but not her best one.
