Living Dead In Dallas by Charlaine Harrs *****
This is book two of Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse books. In this one Sookie gets outs of Bon Temps and even Shreveport. Once again, her co-worker is killed. (I get the feeling Sookie’s relationships, the ones she has, will be ending in a lot of death). Sookie gets beat up by a poisonous mythical creature (if you’re like me discovering what this creature is will give you no end of delight so I’m not going to tell you and you’re going to have to deal with it, dear reader.) In come the vamps from Shreveport who save our heroine’s live by licking and sucking out the poison and promptly ask her for a favour.
Sookie ends up in Dallas, Texas using her “disability” to look for a missing vampire. The only condition she puts on helping them out is that the vamps must let the humans go after she interviews them or turn them in to the cops if they are the reason for the problems. Easier said than done of course, and that’s where things get interesting.
There’s a group of humans giving vamps over to Drainers (who sell their blood on the black market as a drug), staking vamps, and generally preaching the “you’re other and should die” method of acceptance. I think it tends to act as a comment on extremism in many forms, though whether that is Harris’ intention or not I can’t say. This book is also a much more solid introduction into the realm of the shifter, weres, and other mythical creatures/people that populate Harris’ modern universe with a twist. This one didn’t take me much longer than the first to read and on I went to the next book.