In Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris, we learn that Sookie's cousin Hadley has been killed. This was after Hadley was turned into a vampire by the vampire Queen of Louisiana. (This story line can be read in a short story titled "A Touch of Dead.") Hadley was the "favorite" of the Queen. Yep. That means exactly what you think it means. Anyway, Sookie has to go to New Orleans to clean out Hadley's apartment. Sookie is kind of reluctant to go. She wasn't close to Hadley and hadn't seen her in years. And she has other things to worry about: like what to wear on her date with Quinn!
Quinn takes Sookie to see a musical and tells her that the Queen has requested her to work for her during a summit of all the regional vampire upper echelon. When Sookie and Quinn leave the musical they are attacked by newly turned, bitten werewolves. It's illegal to make a Were by biting, and the kids that attacked Sookie and Quinn were only after them. Add that to the fact that the teens were killed in jail shortly after being booked, and Sookie knows something is up.
The next day, Debbie Pelt's family ambushes Sookie at work to try to get some answers regarding Debbie's whereabouts. Not cool. Sookie tells them that there is nothing more to say. She talked to the Shreveport Were Pack, the Pelt's private investigators, and now this. She's exasperated. Of course, her knowledge of how Debbie died at her hands, makes it difficult to keep calm. But Sookie is just tired of being pushed in a corner. They leave empty-handed and not at all satisfied.
Sookie, the man-magnet, gets a visit from Calvin Norris with a real proposal. He wants to settle down with her, have her move to Hotshot, and he wouldn't have to sleep with the other pack members. What a dream. Sookie turns him down for good. She can't see herself living at Hotshot surrounded by Calvin's were-panther children and scary family. He leaves, but Sookie is not yet done with the Hotshotters.
The Queen's lawyer, Mr. Cataliades, half-demon, comes to pick Sookie up to take her to New Orleans, and she calls Bill to invite him. Bill requested that he get to go with her, and while Sookie doesn't want to start up a relationship with Bill again, she figures she can be nice. So Bill, Sookie, Cataliades and his niece Diantha load up in the limo and head to New Orleans.
Sookie meets Amelia, the witch landlord for her late cousin Hadley. Amelia always speaks her mind, which is pretty nice for Sookie since she knows she doesn't have to keep her mental guard up constantly. Amelia tells Sookie that she placed the apartment under a stasis spell to hold everything in the apartment just as it was when Hadley died. That includes the werewolf-now-turned-vampire by the name of Jake Purifoy in the closet. When Amelia lifts the spell, the vamp rises for the first time after being turned and is so blindly hungry that he attacks Sookie and Amelia. They're hurt badly enough to go to the hospital. Bill and Eric show up at Sookie's bedside. Eric compels Bill to reveal his real reason for going to Bon Temps and for getting to know Sookie: the Queen ordered Bill to go to Bon Temps and find out if she had telepathic powers including seducing her if necessary. Turns out cousin Hadley had told the Queen about Sookie's ability and the Queen wanted to add Sookie to her entourage. Well it definitely worked. Sookie of course is devastated and orders Bill and Eric away. Harris does an amazing job of conveying Sookie's heartbreak. I was crying as I read Sookie trying to make sense of her feelings. Harris can so easily draw the reader in and create a deep sense of empathy. Sookie's conflicting shallow and deep feelings, her confusion, rage, and agony are so palpable and so real that it is impossible not to join her in her sadness.
The next day, Sookie meets the Queen, Sophie-Anne Leclerq and her new husband the King of Arkansas, Peter Threadgill. Things are tense between the two, and it's obvious that it was a match of substance, not of love. Upon hearing about the new Were-turned-vamp (a shunned, if not revolting, anomaly in the supernatural community), the Queen comes back to Hadley's apartment with Sookie. Amelia gathers some witch friends and do what's called an endoplasmic reconstruction of the night before Hadley died. During this they learn that a vampire tried to kill Jake who was acting as Hadley's escort to the Queen's engagement party. Before Jake can bleed out, Hadley decides to turn him into a vampire to save his life. Hadley was upset about Sophie-Anne getting married, so it's possible the she was also rebelling by making a were-vampire. Anyway, Sookie learns that she is part fairy. And it's like a knife to her heart that maybe that's why Bill liked her so much to begin with. Poor Sookie.
The next day, Quinn is helping Sookie pack up Hadley's things when they get abducted by werewolves. Though they're tied up in a van, they manage to get most of a cell phone call out to alert Eric, who can track Sookie since he's had her blood. They manage to break out of the van before they reach their destination, and Quinn morphs out and turns into a tiger which is really really really awesome. They escape into the surrounding swamps a little confused about who in the Were community would be trying to hurt them. Then Sookie figures it out. She and Quinn double back to where they think the captors were taking them and SPOILER ALERT surprise the Pelts. They weren't satisfied with Sookie's answers when they approached her the first time and were using drastic measures to find out what they wanted to know. Since Sookie has the upper hand, she bargains with the Pelts. They'll leave her alone if she tells them what really happened to Debbie. Sookie tells them everything, and they believe her. So hopefully, no more drama from the Pelt side of the world.
The next night is the wedding celebration for Sophie-Anne and Peter. Sookie can sense something is going to go down, and it does. SPOILER ALERT Peter starts a small war and tries to kill Sophie-Anne. However, his plan backfires and in the aftermath of the bloody mess is pretty much a dead Arkansas. Everyone from his "kingdom" that was there is killed, and Peter himself isn't saved. When he threatens the life of Sophie-Anne, Andre, the Queen's right hand man, stakes him. Sookie is the only witness to the Peter's death. Good for her... I'm sure that won't come into play later. Finally, Sookie can go back home to her semi-normal life as a telepathic waitress. But things won't really be the same. Amelia somehow changed her new boyfriend into a cat (a pretty big no-no among magic users), and needs to lay low for a while. She becomes Sookie's new roommate back in Bon Temps.
There was a lot of action in this book! Add vampire war and were-tigers, and the testosterone levels were soaring. Fast-paced action made up for the slow moving relationship between Quinn and Sookie. They never seal the deal in this book. However, after the last book in which every man Sookie knew wanted a piece of her, maybe Harris was trying to let Sookie be alone for a little while. Maybe it's just character development. The point is, even though you don't get a lot of Quinn and Sookie there is so much more going on that you almost don't even notice. We learned more about vampire politics and the witch community in this book. And Sookie makes a new friend that isn't a guy! Amelia is a fun character and pretty cool chick. I hope they write her into the tv show. They didn't write in Quinn, so who knows?
In the next book, Sookie joins the post-Katrina Louisiana vamps to the vampire summit in Rhodes. LOTS of stuff happens. Not hardly any of it good for our friend Sookie.My synopsis of All Together Dead, book 7 of the Sookie Stackhouse novels will be up soon!
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