Deadlocked (Sookie Stackhouse, #12)

by Charlaine Harris

[inlibrisveritas]

I stopped reading Sookie Stackhouse years ago and totally forgot that I even had this one still on the shelf until I was doing a bit of purging. I didn’t want to get rid of the series without at least trying to read it, so I sat down and gave it a shot. I’m thankful the books move so quickly because I had a ton of problems with this one.

Book eleven, Dead Reckoning, gave me a lot of problems and just fell flat…so I expected much of the same from Deadlocked, and I was right. You can tell that Harris never intended the series to last this long, because the stories have become sort of tired feeling. Sookie even sort of shrugs off somethings that would have truly bothered her before, because at this point in the game she’s really use to people dying and weird crap happening. She’s also become incredibly moody, and a lot of the problems she has with other people doesn’t really present itself outside of her own thoughts until about half way through. In fact other than the standard murder mystery that sort of causes problems for the werewolf and vampire community nothing really happens. We get some introduction to the problems Eric is having with the current ruler of Louisiana, which I thought would take more of a precedent given the events of the previous book…but that’s not the case, we get to see them talk about it but much is left in the air as the characters test each other and heir loyalties.

Sookie’s relationship with Eric was one of my favorite things about the last book, granted it wasn’t spectacular but I really like him and he had his crap together enough that I didn’t see him being an out right issue in her life. But that’s changed, and for some reason they are becoming distant with each other and we don’t find out why really until about half way through.The whole faerie thing has run it’s course and gotten old, and even Sookie is completely tired of it. And by the end of the book things have been completely tided up. It’s like the whole plot was basically a giant broom and it pushed all the problems everyone was having right under the rug, so that we’re basically starting with one singular problem for book thirteen.

I’ll probably read the last book, since it is the last one, but I am in no hurry whatsoever. Harris’ writing style is still one of my favorites and it has that comfortable feel to it, but the story itself is really ready to be done with by this point and I can see why so many people started to fall off the bandwagon with these last two books. I just don’t see what could possibly happen in the next book, there just doesn’t seem to be much left to do.