book 11: dead until dark

Book one of the Sookie Stackhouse Novels is kind of sweet and chatty and rambly, and follows the same basic path as the first season, but doesn't quite take the same path to get there. Things are rearranged some, and happen in different ways, and it's entirely inside Sookie's head, whereas the show gets the luxury of being in other peoples' points of view as well. Most of what I thought about the book was in the Notes I posted about it before, but here's a bit more, now that I've reached the end and I've had an hour or two to go over it in my head:

- I don't really understand what Sookie and Bill see in eachother, other than the fact that she wanted to fall for a vampire and they were obviously written to be together. Book!Bill explains much less to her than TV!Bill does, and so we never really know what he's doing, what he means when he says things, what he's thinking-- this last is part of why Sookie likes him, but it makes it a little frustrating in the reading, when we can know everyone else so much deeper, and it makes me wonder why it doesn't bother Sookie more. On top of this, Bill treats her like a doll and an invalid through most of the book, and that doesn't seem to bother her much, either, which annoys me, and when she does complain, she sort of still lets him be like that, so it's a moot point.

- I'm not sure why Vampires would want to be in the South; there's so much sun here. It's like vamps in LA or the Mexican desert. It makes no sense. Vamps in Alaska or Sweden? That makes sense.

- The ending of the show is more effective, I think, but both sort of come out of nowhere. I don't know how long ago this book was written, and how early in her career it was, but there wasn't alot of foreshadowing-- which might have made it feel more like it makes sense.

- I missed all the side characters that were much more fleshed out in the show, which I think benefitted from being visual instead of just trapped inside Sookie. Especially Sam and Hoyt, who are some of my fav characters in the show.

- Okay, if vampires cry blood, does blood replace other fluids in their bodies? Sex with them must be really gross, and the biting is kind of weird even as it's hot-- and Bill's pillow talk better get more tender and less clinical or I'm going to wind up checking out of this series before the end.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I think I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't already seen the show-- and maybe if I hadn't already read a book that was much tigher in plotting and pacing than this one. But Sookie is pitch-perfect as a character, even when the plot has no idea what it's doing and even when various motivations are suspect, and she sort of wins me over when I'd otherwise have gotten bored with the book. And I'm actually looking forward to the next book, though who knows when I'll get to buy it.

in-reading notes: dead until dark

I loved True Blood, and I wanted to read the books it was based on, and so far, it seems like the first book is basically the same as the first season, but there's some differences, too: No Tara, for one, which makes some of the scenes where she's picking fights either much calmer or non-existent, and makes Jason less of a character overall, and there's alot less sex because of it. LaFayette is hardly there at all, not even mentioned until almost half way through the book, which means his drug-dealing subplots are gone / never existed. Bill is much darker and stranger and more opaque, and it's harder to tell why he likes Sookie then it is in the show. Terry was in Vietnam, not in Iraq, and is much older, and he and Arlene apparently had a fling once, which isn't in the show. It's not quite a chapter per episode, which sort of makes things seem a little fast when you're thinking of the show, but it makes sense to the pacing of the book and shows just how quickly things do happen-- in the show, it seems like more time passed between the Meeting and Gran's murder, for instance. And there's alot of discriptions that aren't the same at all: Sam look different, Bill looks different, Sheriff Dearborne, Mike the Coroner, everyone is about as different in description as they can be except Sookie-- but the characters are right. Pretty much spot-on. Eric is exactly the same so far, but Pam is supposed to have looked like a milkmaid, and may have been combined with another woman called the bouncer at the bar; in the show, it's the same one.

I'm liking the book, but it's like I've seen it all before because I have-- there's kind of a feeling that things might turn out different in the end because of the changes the show made, and that'd be pretty sweet, a nice payoff for reading the book. The unrelenting southerness gets a little annoying, but as they're largely commenting on that, I can deal. And I am enjoying the read so far.