Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

When small-town cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse sees her brother Jason’s eyes start to change, she knows he’s about to turn into a were-panther for the first time. But her concern becomes cold fear when a sniper sets his deadly sights on the local changeling population, and Jason’s new panther brethren suspect he may be the shooter. Now, Sookie has until the next full moon to find out who’s behind the attacks—unless the killer decides to find her first…---Amazon review

The author doesn't even know her own characters' names! How am I supposed to care about them?

As usual, the pacing is atrocious. I couldn't even tell you what the main plot of this book was either. I liked having a break from at least some of the forced romance Sookie has with every single male character, but I could do without the rehashing of every plot point from every previous book. I don't need every character's back story every time Sookie interacts with them. I obviously already know, having read the books. It's like Harris thinks all her readers are Eric when he was under the witch's curse. She does it with everything too, not just the characters! It's all so dang repetitive.

Apparently Sookie's only character trait is her word-of-the-day calendar.

Please, please stop with Bubba. It wasn't even fun in the first book. It's just so dumb, and it adds to the repetition. Every time he pops up we get the whole explanation again about the morgue, how it didn't go quite right, his name, his living situation, cats, his singing, the sightings, etc. Just stop.

I liked learning about the pack rules and ceremonies, and I thought it was interesting seeing Sam deal with the consequences of his injury. I chuckled at him finding ways to still watch over the bar and be the boss even with a bum leg.

This book was as great as the others.

Coming down off the better books in the series - Club Dead and Dead to the World - Dead as a Doornail is pretty dull. The central plotline - if it can be even said to have one - is not very tight or interesting, and there's too much unnecessary information. Normally, I like that Charlaine Harris keeps us grounded in Sookie's day to day life, but there was too much of that and not enough forward moving action. This book seems to exist more for the purpose of developing the relationships with the men in Sookie's life, which is interesting enough, but without a proper story to support that, the book doesn't really hold up as a complete work.

OK. Sookie Stackhouse books are not very far removed from porn. Vampirism is, of course, a metaphor for sex. And the way Sookie interacts with vampires and other supes is very porn like. She meets one, finds him attractive, 15 minutes later, he's licking her (as in licking blood off an open wound). I'm just saying.