From Dead To Worse by Charlaine Harris, Ace, ©2008, $24.95
    
        This is the ninth novel in the Sookie Stackhouse series.  Sookie is a telepathic waitress in a world where vampires, werewolves, fairies, and other supernatural beings exist.  A world where vampires have let the world know of their existence due to the creation of synthetic blood.
        The current novel is about the Were war and the vampire war. Sookie, the novel is written in the first person, tells the reader this on the very first page. The first part of the novel is about the Were war while the vampire war happens later in the novel.
        The characters from earlier novels are here, such as Sookie's brother Jason and her boss Sam, who is a shape shifter while her brother is a werepanther, one who was bitten not born.
        And there are new characters appearing like Olivia, who is the mentor of Amelia, Sookie's housemate.  Both of these women are witches.
        One of the more interesting new characters we meet is Sookie's great-grandfather Niall, who is a powerful fairy.  (It was noted that Sookie had fairy blood in an earlier novel.)  While Harris has written a lot about the politics of the Weres and the vampires, little has been revealed to the reader about the fairies.
        The meeting between Sookie and Niall creates what I see as the only flaw in the novel.  Niall gives Sookie a cell phone and tells her to call him anytime she's in trouble.  I'm expecting Sookie to call Niall sometime doing the novel, and Niall showing up to save her.
        Doesn't happen.  Sookie does try to call her great grandfather once doing the vampire war,

which mostly happens in her house, but the phone gets broken by Eric, one of the vampires of this book and earlier novels.  (Eric is the sheriff of area 5.  States are divided into areas ran by sheriffs while states are ran by vampire kings and queens.)
        Since this is a series and the cell phone does get replaced, I think it will come into a play later in the series, though I did expect it to see more use in this book.
        It's the King of Nevada, Felipe de Castro who decides to take over the weakened state of Louisiana.  Weakened both by Katrina and the fact that the vampire queen Anne-Marie lost both her legs in an earlier novel.  Vampires do regenerate limbs, but it takes a long time.
        There's a lot that happens here including some obvious foreshadowing into the future of the series.  It's mentioned here several times that the werewolves plan to reveal themselves to the world; they've been meeting on their website to discuss it.
        The coming out of the Weres is mentioned so often I'm sure it will happen in the next novel, or maybe the one after that, but it's going to happen.
        It's not the things I know are going to happen in the series, but the characters that keep me coming back for more.
        It should also be noted this series of novels is now a HBO series titled "True Blood."
  
  
To provide feedback or offer ideas on future columns, contact Mark at:

markfewell@earthlink.net  
  
or visit his web site at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~markfewell