Review: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

“Dead Until Dark (Southern Vampire Mysteries, No. 1)” (Charlaine Harris)

This book gave me a relatively sleepless night last night. I had finished about half the novel over the past couple days, and last night it entangled me in its dark embrace and would not let go.

I’m not sure why, but I have a prejudice against vampire stories. Like so many forms of judgement, my prejudice isn’t well-founded. I haven’t read Anne Rice or any of the other classic vampire authors, and I have only a fuzzy recollection of the movie Interview with a Vampire. I did enjoy Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, but more as a commentary on the changing status of women in late Victorian England than as a vampire story.

Similarly, Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark rises above the lurid superficiality of many vampire stories thanks to its exploration of the social and cultural interaction between vampires and humans. Sure, there’s plenty of the requisitve staking, blood-sucking, and violent love-making to satisfy die-hard fans of the genre. As a reader I’m slightly squeamish, and some of these scenes were almost enough to discourage me from reading further. This, of course, is a testament to Haris’s powers of description. But for those looking for depth will find some good grist for the mental mill in these pages.

Whereas vampires in, say, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series live almost entirely underground, fling under the radar of human awareness, the vampires in Dead Until Dark are slowly assimilating into human society. The government runs synthetic blood clinics so vampires can sustain themselves without posing a threat to humans–in theory. Of course, vampires still prefer blood on vein-tap to this bottled variety. Blood-drinking, moreover, is a two-way street. Humans who drink vampire blood enjoy an increased vitality, a boost in sex drive, and rapidly increased healing rates. This has made vampire blood a precious commodity on the black market, leading unscrupulous entrepreneurs to engage in the illegal act of vampire draining.

Of course, there’s a lot of mistrust between the two cultures. The book’s setting in northern Louisiana, a hotbed of so much racial controversy in the past, underscores this inter-species conflict, though for the most part Harris is careful to avoid explicitly dwelling on the inspiration of this conflict in the Civil Rights era. As our likable mind-reading heroine Sookie Stackhouse strikes up a relationship with decades-old vampire Bill Compton, many inhabitants of her sleepy little town become suspicious, especially since brutal murders are occuring in the area with startling frequency. As with interracial relationships in the “real world”, the range of reactions runs the gamut from approval to acceptance to abhorrence.

On a more microcosmic level, the relationship between Sookie and Bill offers more insight into cross-cultural relationships. Humans and vampires have very different conceptions of dating, and in general operate in the world based on a very different set of rules. As Bill repeatedly points out to Sookie, vampires are creatures of intense violence and cruelty. From a human perspective, Bill tends to overreact to any threats, real or perceived, to his beloved.

And Sookie really is Bill’s beloved. The novel excels in building a strong emotional relationship between the two main characters. A large and colorful supporting cast of humans, vampires, and even a shapeshifter allows for endles permutations of, in turns, amusing and poignant interaction.

I really can find few intrinsic faults in Dead Until Dark. Harris is a powerful writer, and the southern accent of the narrator who read the Audible.com version that I listened to imbued the story with even more charm. Having said that, the book didn’t succeed in converting me into a real fan of the vampire sub-genre. For die-hard vampire fans and groupies, “fangbangers” as they’re dubbed in Harris’s universe, Dead Until Dark dishes out equal parts action, romance, and mystery, with a Southern flair.

When I get a chance to watch the HBO series True Blood, I’ll let you know how it measures up.