Dead Until Dark/True Blood

When my girlfriend first told me about the new series on HBO called True Blood, she described it as Twilight for adults. The show is the story of Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin), a 25 year old waitress in Bon Temps, a small town in Louisiana. Sookie is a nice girl, but keeps to herself mostly due to her unusual gift (or disability as she tends to think of it). Sookie is telepathic, which makes dating and forming meaningful relationships kind of hard. When the handsome vampire Bill Compton walks into her life, Sookie is attracted to him right away, mostly because unlike everyone else, she can’t read his mind.

Bill, who grew up in Louisiana and was a soldier in the Civil War, has been wandering the earth for over a hundred years. Since vampires have now “come out of the coffin” Bill has decided that he would like to mainstream back into the human world and comes to Bon Temps to do just that. But people are still leary around vampires and when a bunch of murders start taking place in this small town, things become difficult for Bill and Sookie.

The HBO series is pretty interesting. I especially like the interaction and storyline of Sookie and the easy on the eyes Bill (Stephen Moyer). What I don’t really care for is the extreme violence throughout each episode. I suppose that since HBO produces the show, they can do most anything they want. I just don’t feel like it’s really needed. A show like this could have been successful on a national TV station without being so gratuitous. I’m no prude, but it just gets a big overdone after a few episodes. Having said that, I feel like one of those bugs drawn to those bright bug whackers people used to hang in their backyard. Even though I want to look away, I just can’t.

Since I do enjoy the Bill/Sookie storyline, I figured I would pick up the vampire mystery novel that True Blood is based on, Dead until Dark by Charlaine Harris. Even though the book and series differ in some of their storylines, the basic mystery of who is killing off people in Bon Temps and the Bill/Sookie romance is basically the same. While there is plenty of vampire violence and steamy scenes in the book, it’s not over the top. It’s a quick read and ultimately entertaining although in some instances the writing is a a bit dull and overdone. As an example:

The shower felt wonderful. The hot water seemed to steam out some of my misery, and I shampooed my hair and scrubbed every inch of my skin, shaving my legs and armpits. After I climbed out, I plucked my eyebrows and put on skin lotion and deodorant and a spray to untangle my hair and anything else I could lay my hands on. With my hair trailing down my back in a cascade of wet snarls, I pulled on my nightshirt, a white one with Tweety Bird on the front, and I got my comb. I’d sit in front of the television to have something to watch while I got my hair combed out, always a tedious process.

I’ll tell you whats tedious – paragraphs like the one above. A little too descriptive, right? Who needs all those details anyway? The book has more than it’s fair share of run-on paragraphs and I found myself mentally skipping over some of those parts, just to speed things up a bit. I still liked the book, but don’t really need to know every. single. move. a. character. makes.

Just saying.

In the end, the HBO series is a good show, if you have a strong stomach, but the novel is better, if you can get over a few minor writing issues.