Just finished reading Deadlocked.  No.12 in the Sookie Stackhouse series of books.  I have enjoyed this series of books, they’ve been good fun, there’s been plenty of action, romance and paranormals and it’s just felt like a lovely indulgent reading experience.  I must say however that No.12 was not my favourite by a long stretch of the imagination.

In this book Sookie and Eric’s relationship takes a bit of a nosedive – not helped by the fact that Sookie finds Eric red handed drinking blood from a woman who not long after appears to be dead on his front lawn.  There are as usual a number of threads going on in this story, things taking place in the fey world, Niall returns briefly.  Sam and Janalynn are still dating but everything isn’t quite as it should be.  Political intrigue and posturing in the vampire world and kidnapping and potential tortures taking place.

I wouldn’t say that this book is bad but just that I didn’t love it.  Basically we have a litle bit of this and that in terms of most of the supes involved in the series but there feels like very little in terms of a real story.  Sookie has definitely lost her mojo and we don’t see her usual humour bubbling on the surface.  There is a lot of reflection about relationships and we seem to be having the way paved for a final decision by Sookie which seems to be fairly clear (to me at least) at this stage.

Having said that, it was a really quick and easy read, but it definitely lulled in the middle and I could have put the book down at that point and probably not had much incentive to pick it back up.

I think what we have here really is a setter-upper type of novel.  It feels like this story is being used to tie up loose ends and set us up for the next book.

Hopefully the next one will return to form and bring us back the Sookie we’ve all come to enjoy reading about.

So, I didn’t think this was the best read ever.  It doesn’t really feel as though Ms Harris enjoyed writing this one somehow so maybe she’s ready to finally conclude Sookie’s story.  It won’t put me off reading the next book however.  At the end of the day we’re 12 books down the line here – I think I can definitely forgive this blip and I want to see what the conclusion will bring.

Deadlocked