Deadlocked
Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampires, Book #12
By Charlaine Harris

Review brought to you by OBS staff member Heidi

Deadlocked is the 12th installment of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris.  In this one, Sookie is still working at Merlotte’s and has actually helped Sam financially to keep the bar afloat, making it to where she owns part of the bar now.  Claude and Dermot are still living with Sookie.  She and Eric have just been going through the motions as far as their relationship is concerned.  The vampire king of Louisiana has been visiting along with his entourage and everything is still undecided as far as Eric going off to marry the Queen of Oklahoma, Freyda, as the contract his maker signed before his death states he must.

Sookie has been summoned to go to a gathering at Eric’s house where they are supposed to meet with the king and discuss Victor’s death as the king is still deciding whether or not to bring charges against Eric.

When Sookie arrives she finds Eric drinking from someone else (someone with the scent of fairy blood on them making her irresistible to vampires) and after he and Pam force the girl out of the house, she is later found dead on his lawn.  Now the cops are there and suspecting him of murder.

I was really excited to start reading the latest installment of Sookie,  and I was hoping her and Eric’s relationship problems would be solved in this one as I am team Eric all the way.  Unfortunately, that was not the case with this book.

First off, I thought this installment had an incredibly slow start and found the first three chapters to be torturous.  A majority of it was reminding the reader of what was going on, which some of it I was thankful for as I haven’t read Dead Reckoning (Book #11) since it came out almost a year ago and I forgot some key details.  But I think the amount of reminding us in this one was overkill….not to mention the slow-paced scene at the strip club (how could a strip club scene be THAT boring?).  Needless to say I was happy with the story actually got going.

Being on team Eric as I mentioned earlier, I was extremely disappointed in the lack of Eric in this book.  And when he did appear, he didn’t really make me like him too much.  I felt he treated Sookie like a possession, but nothing that he really loved or even liked that much…..almost like an obligation he was hoping to pawn off on somebody else soon.  Not to mention that it was obvious that he wanted her to fix his whole wedding problem now that he knew about the cluviel dor.  Granted, before this book I totally wanted her to use it to fix their relationship as well, but he just wasn’t putting forth any kind of effort in this novel, which was just sad.  Where is the passion, excitement and undying love?  Still in my heart of hearts I was hoping all their problems would be corrected once Eric’s visitors left.

I wasn’t really all that surprised that Claude was up to no good, but I thought it had more to do with the lack of fairy babies than it did his dreams of overthrowing Niall.  I am glad to see that all the fairies are gone from the series now as I don’t see anything positive that they bring to the story.  I just hope they stay gone!

And what was up with all the fast food plugs in this one?  Sonic, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen…Is Harris getting royalties to mention them (LOL)?

I really didn’t like how this book ended mainly because it really makes it sound like Harris is setting up Sookie’s happily ever after to be with Sam.  I didn’t like at the beginning of the series when he was hot for her and I don’t like the idea of them being together at the end any better.  I think I’d even rather her take Quinn back or hook up with Alcide than be with Sam.  I guess I just feel that she and Sam should be friends not lovers.  So I can only hope that Harris isn’t going in that direction after all, but I’m just not feeling very optimistic about it.

Overall, I thought this book was mediocre and wasn’t Charlaine’s best.  It’s one that left me wondering if she’s just really tired of this series and is just trying to wrap it up as quickly as she can while still meeting her contractual agreement of 13 books.  This series is dying and taking everything I love with it on its way out of this world.