Sookie's Back: Dead and Gone

Let's get this out of the way, I'm a big fan of Charlaine Harris. I love her earlier work on the Aurora Teagarden and particularly the Lily Bard and the Harper Connelly series. I have enjoyed her Southern Vampire series as well, and even though the current vamp trend is starting to wear kind of thin (Twilight-hysteria, anyone?) there are many new vampire/UF series that I have found because of it, so it's not all bad.

Now, Harris is an excellent writer and the latest Sookie Stackhouse (for me since where I live I'd better wait for the paperback prints) is a solid, entertaining book. I read it in one sitting which is not unusual with Harris' books and Sookie's adventures continue to be interesting. Some of the novelty and charm of the earlier books has faded, but that happens when a series gets to be as long as this. I hope Harris (and her publishers, really) knows when to draw a series to a close, she certainly has done it right with Aurora Teagarden and Lily Bard. I personally feel it's better to quit while you're ahead and leave the readers sighing for maybe just one more book than write too many and leave that bad taste in their mouths. Sort of like a TV-series that is forcibly stretched too far and becomes boring or silly because it should have ended years ago (you know which ones I mean...).

This installment was still okay, though, absolutely worth reading. Not the best one in the series by a long shot, but okay :) Do read Charlaine Harris, if you haven't tried her books yet, she does tell a very good story. For those against the current vampire/UF trend, try Aurora Teagarden and Lily Bard for wonderful, more traditional mystery-writing.

Kits!

One of my more recent discoveries is Faith Hunter. Her second Jane Yellowrock novel Blood Cross came out not too long ago, but I only managed to get my hands on it a week ago. I enjoyed the first book in the series, Skinwalker, very much, so I had rather high expectations. Hunter delivered. The shape-shifting Jane is one of the coolest heroines I've ever read and her constant dialogue with her inner Beast is wonderfully written and often surprisingly endearing. The action is nonstop and the spiritual elements are engaging, as is the exploration of Jane's Cherokee heritage. I particularly like the detail of Hunter's descriptions on various rituals, environments and sensory perceptions, both through Jane's and Beast's eyes. One of the sweetest things in the book(s) is the way the ferocious Beast relates to children. To the Big Cat, children are kits and they need to be protected.

An interesting take on the usual horror/fantasy characters (vampires and shape-shifters) and an excellent urban fantasy novel. Warmly recommended to anyone who enjoys slightly darker urban fantasy with a good helping of mystery thrown in. Vampires are featured, but since Jane is a vampire-hunter by trade and good at her job, Twilight this is not.

To Live is to Read and Watch Films

I've always been the classic complusive reader. I read a lot, all the time. I honestly have at least four books going at any given time. That's the minimum. Some of them are re-reads, of course, things that I love to return to. I'm more or less omnivorous when it comes to genre and while I buy a lot of books, I also use the services of the local libraries and borrow books from friends. I also write a lot, mostly for my own amusement. On this blog I'll be discussing the books I've read, the writers I enjoy and whatever is going on with me reading-wise.

Films are another thing for me. When I'm not reading or writing in my spare-time, I'm probably at the cinema or watching a DVD at home. I've got more than my share of DVDs and I go to the cinema often, but I rarely rent movies these days; there are plenty of other film-buffs among my friends and in my family, so we really just swap stuff and save our money a bit. As with books, I have some films that I return to again and again.

So, welcome to a completely personal and utterly biased blog on books and films :)