Dead Reckoning, Charlaine Harris

I've enjoyed the quick-reading frolics of the True Blood books (and am a big fan of the TV Series), and always read along when a new one comes out.  It feel nicely into my "let's not strain my brain" books which is all I've managed lately. Sure, Dead Reckoning furthers the series' story (kind of) and there's the usual sassy Sookie (though now, apparently, with less sass), complete with supernatural adventures, and sexy vamps.   But this installment falls very flat.

Plotwise, well, if you haven't read the series yet, you're probably not interested.  If you're a fan of the series, there are no big reveals here, things are plodding by as usual (though Bill and Eric seem to have swapped personalities).  So, I'm just gunna whinge in a spoiler-y way: The whole Pam sub-plot was just odd, completely out of the blue, and seemed to go nowhere and serve no purpose.  There was yet another evil boss vampire to vanquish.  There was a WTF moment with Alcide.  The faerie stuff was all over the place, and didn't mesh with the rest of the plot. Why was Hunter in this at all?  WTF was going on with the whole de-bonding thing?  The whole book was jumpy and lacked cohesion, and there were more unnecessary subplots than I can list (yes, there were more than those above). 

This book feels like Harris is just phoning it in.  Dead Reckoning was wooden, predictable, more than a tad confused, and not at all original.  Even Sookie was not on her game, I like her more tough and sassy and less Christian moralistic and weepy.  The True Blood series has been a nice addition to the vampire/supe canon, but this installment was lacklustre.  Sure, we've all still gotta read it, and I may as well confess I'll still read the next one, too, when it comes out, but it wasn't as fresh as the rest of them (mostly) are.

Verdict: more than a tad stale.  Only read it if you've got this far in the books already (and we all know you just have to keep going, no matter what).

Oh, I read this great review on Goodreads while looking for a picture of the cover, and can't resist a link.

5/10

This was a Kindle for iPad read.