Before Sookie can drive over the Shreveport, Tara drives up to her house with the unknown supernatural lady from New Year’s. Tara always bugs me whenever she is mentioned. This is not a response to the character, who hasn’t really done anything of importance yet. It’s the fact that Sookie goes to great lengths to talk about how lonely she is as a person and how much she’s grafteful for having Tara as a friend – yet it’s been ‘weeks’ since she’s seen Tara and she has apparently made no effort to see her or to talk to her on the phone. Tara must be such a valued friend.
oh and we have a description of the supernatural woman
She had dark eyes, too, but hers were huge and almond-shaped, almost abnormally large. Her skin was as pale as milk, and her legs were as long as a stepladder. She was quite gifted in the bosom department, and she was wearing fire engine red from head to toe. Her lipstick matched.
That’s a horrible outfit. Why is every woman in these books badly dressed?
Tara pretends to have had her memory wiped about the whole Club Dead incident. I really wish I could have my memory of Club Dead wiped. I’m not sure why she’s doing this, especially seeing as she knows that Sookie is, you know, a mind reader. So is fully aware of what she’s doing and what her thoughts are. Dear god, the people in these books are stupid.
Sookie asks Tara if she knows some witches. Tara asks if a wiccan will do because they are like totally the same thing.
Holly and Danielle, waitresses at Merlotte’s, are Wiccans, so Sookie ought to talk to them.
The woman introduces herself as Claudine. Claudine’s been attracted to Bon Temps because of the ‘important and powerful crossroads’ which is a nice call-back to some traditional mythology so kudos to Ms Harris for that.
Sookie drives to see Holly, a character mentioned in passing in previous books.
For years, her hair has been dyed a dandelion yellow. Now it was matte black and spiked. Her ears had four piercings apiece. And I noticed her hipbones pushing at the thin denim of her aged jeans.
Thankfully Holly explains the difference between a witch and a wiccan. Thank you sensible character. She talks about the Shreveport coven who are absolutely ruthless and run by an evil brother and sister pair. The coven take vampire blood and are also werewolves. They’re been trying to recruit local witches but most of them weren’t impressed with the drug use.
We then get a few pages explaining Drainers, who drain vampires for a living as if you couldn’t guess. Vampire blood is an unpredictable drug, making some people into insane gibbering murderers, and this makes it more expensive… of course. And this adds so much to the narrative right now in talking about dangerous witches.
The peculiar and beautiful Claudine had told me that she was attracted to Bon Temps for its very strangeness. I wondered what else was out there, waiting to reveal itself.
For all that I find irksome about Harris’s writing style most of the time, she knows how to end a chapter enigmatically.
Dottie Smith
