The conclusion of the sleeper series discussion: the Grave edition

Hey! Happy Saturday and welcome to the thrilling conclusion of Renee (Renee's Book Addiction!) and my fawning discussion of An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris, and the Harper Connelly/Grave series in general, with cameo contrasts with other faves: Kat Richardson’s Greywalker/Harper Blaine books and Harris's Southern Vampire (SV) series.

First off, I’ve taken the liberty of blending the synopsis from Barnes and Noble with the PW synopsis to give you a general synopsis of the Harper Connelly/Grave series:

Ever since Harper Connelly survived a zap from a lightning bolt, she's been able to find dead people, a skill that makes the protagonist in the first installment of Harris's new series a tad more bizarre than the mind-reading heroine of the author's Sookie Stackhouse books. She can sense the final location of a person who's passed, and share their very last moment.

The way Harper sees it, she's providing a service to the dead while bringing some closure to the living-but she's used to most people treating her like a blood-sucking leech. She travels with her step-brother Tolliver, who acts as her manager and bodyguard and with whom she shares a thinly disguised physical attraction that they manage to keep at bay by engaging in casual sex with various partners. She's become an expert at getting in, getting paid, and getting out fast. Because for the living it's always urgent-even if the dead can wait forever.

Find part ONE of this discussion is at Renee's Book Addiction.

Part TWO now begins.

Carolyn: You mentioned Kat Richardson’s Greywalker/Harper Blaine books a while back, as a series comparison. I read the first in that series and really loved it and plan to get onto book #2, but you read, I think, all of them! Can you talk about that a little? Compare and contrast?

Renee: I love how the setting of An Ice Cold Grave (AICG) (a harsh winter in a small rural town) was as much an element of threat as was the serial killer.

Kat Richardson’s Harper Blaine series is similar in that she, too, is learning how to negotiate the “otherworld” that she’s aware of, while trying to solve crimes. Like Harris’ Harper Connelly, she’s gained her abilities through a life threatening experience. Both of them are no-nonsense types and loners. And neither of them are kick-ass heroines.

However, what is a really big difference between the 2 series is that Richardson’s Harper is set in a Seattle that is as much a character as any other in the series. Often, the story incorporates details of historic Seattle events or location. And, Richardson does a great job of really bringing Seattle to life. While in Harris’ Grave series, Harper and Tolliver are itinerants, moving from town to town in each book in the series. Setting is also important to each individual story in the Grave series, but that setting is constantly shifting.

Carolyn: That is so true about the settings in both books. I remember that about Richardson’s series so well. The old time Seattle was pervasive, and even claustrophobic. And that’s my experience of the settings in the Grave series. It’s a wonderful effect. I think part of it is that Harper and Tolliver are outsiders wherever they are, and Harper in Richardson’s Harper Blaine series is an outsider to old time Seattle. But I think it’s also a case of great place writing with both of these authors.

Renee: Now, while the Grave series isn’t filled with sexy shifters and vamps like the Southern Vampire series, there is definitely some sexual chemistry floating around. Yet, it’s much more angsty chemistry, imo. What do you think?

Carolyn: How did it take us this long to come around to the sex? LOL. Angsty is a really good way of putting it. Harper and Tolliver are angsty, and I think readers can get angsty about their relationship.

To recap for readers not in the know, Harper and Tolliver were thrown together into a blended family as teens, so there’s a sexual chemistry between them, but also a taboo at work, since they are technically siblings, even though they’re not related by blood, and met as teens. So they are attracted to one another, but one of the questions of the series is if they’ll act on it.

Renee: Yes, I had read somewhere that there was a bit of a squick factor when it came to the potential of their being siblings and possibly being together, but I don’t feel that way. In a lot of ways, they really don’t have anyone else that they could be with. This is partly because they are always moving around, but also I think it’s due the their shared history.

Carolyn: So true! It’s those two against the whole world.

Renee: However, when it came to their relationship, there was such a awkwardness to their emotional and personal dynamics, and IDK if that’s was a deliberate decision on the part of the author or not.

Carolyn: I had zero problem with the potential of them getting together, since they aren’t siblings in any real way. As for physical romance, Charlaine Harris is definitely a “less is more” writer here. Even in the SV series, it’s sexually charged, but there is little sex. I remember feeling like there was a really powerful sex scene in the Sookie/SV books (her and Eric in the shower, then bed) but it was super short. Yet it seemed long because it was so dizzily built up to.

There’s a “less is more” thing in operation here, too. I’m always focused on what will happen between these two, but it’s different from the Sookie-Eric thing because Harper and Tolliver are both more beta than alpha. So, that creates something of a different dynamic. They work so well as characters being oppressed by townspeople, and you root for them, but….ooh, we’ll stop there!

This was so fun, Renee! Another great sleeper series. I’m excited to get the next book, but so sad that it will be the last—we are both mourning that. But, oh well. It’s a quartet, then. A lovely quartet.

INFO:

• First part of this discussion is at Renee's Book Addiction, here.
• If you so totally enjoyed this discussion and are despairing that it is over, check out our rambling discussion about Marta Acosta's Casa Dracula series here.
• Renee reviews Kat Richardson's Underground here.
• Grave Sight, pictured above, is book #1 of the Grave series.

Another sleeper series Renee and I love: Harris' Harper Connelly!

Did you ever wonder about that other Charlaine Harris series, the Harper Connelly series? Do you wonder what it's all about? If people like it? If you should try it?

Or if you have read it, do you wonder why other people aren't crazy about it, too? (Or do you not like it? *gasp*)

Head on over to Renee's book addiction, where Renee and I carry on a fun, rambling, and completely spoiler-free discussion of the Harper Connelly series in general, and specifically the last book, An Ice Cold Grave. Plus we manage to bring a few other series into it for comparison.

Of course, as you may or may not know, the final book in this fine quartet, Grave Secret, was released last month. Yay! Neither of us have read it yet, but we're both quite excited.

It's another installment in our Sleeper Series Discussions, where we talk about series that don't quite get enough of the spotlight as far as we're concerned. (Other sleeper series we've embraced: Kelley Armstrong's Nadia Stafford series, and Marta Acosta's Casa Dracula series!)

Come join the fun! The first part is at Renee's today. Tomorrow, the exciting conclusion here.

True Blood cast photos

Okay, I'm still worried that the series, based on Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels, will be more silly & goofy than exciting and romantic.  That is, more Gilligan's Island than Buffy.

Please, no!  But anyways, being in a time wasterly mood, I found these cast pictures interesting. Here up top you see Tara and Sam Merlotte.  They seem like good picks. 

And below Sam and Tara we have Eric. I'm not so sure. He seems like a pretty good pick, but not perfect. It would be hard to approximate the Platonic Ideal of Eric that I have in my mind, though. And by that, I definitely don't mean platonic as in Three's Company. Anyway, this guy, I don't know. But maybe he has great screen presence! 

And below, Jason and Sookie.  Bill in the sports coat.  See more here.

True Blood pilot pre-review location, and I tell an arcane insect fact

True Blood Pre-pilot review!

Oh, I am such a lame poster!  But for those of my buddies who are excited about True Blood series, Voxy over at Suburban Trash has mysteriously been able to view the pilot, and has a very thoughtful review here.

And she has pictures!  Very intesting--and a fine blog, too. 

Late breaking update: Okay, Marta Acosta at Vampire Wire weighs in on this troubling tidbit: Alan Ball has never been a big fan of vampire mythology, hasn't seen an episode of Buffy, and has never read Anne Rice.  Whaaa?  Read about it here. 

Wasp in my kitchen

A wasp was in my kitchen tonight as I was trying to make dinner and really unnerving me. Further, I have actually never been stung by a bee or wasp, so I could be horribly allergic! Anyway, after watching it warily for 10 minutes, because I don't like to kill them but I have to be in a certain mood to catch and evict them, a duty usually reserved for DH, who was not present, I thought, I wish it would just magically disappear.  

And then it went on a window behind a blind and it disappeared!!  

But then I looked out the window and saw other wasps flying around outside the window, and also, a baby wasp was on the window, and I realized, shit, wasps can get in and out of the kitchen and there is a nest outside of it.  And then I ate dinner.  If it continues to escalate, I know that it will be very easy to fix this wasp's nest hole-in-window frame problem.  In fact, the only tool I will need is a telephone.  One of the great beauties of renting vs. owning. 

Bee and wasp fact taken from a dubious but delightful source

I'm actually not sure if the following is true, because it's taken from the body of amateur entomological literature created in the early 1900's which I was sort of fascinated with at one time. Basically, it was guys who would spend all this time watching the behavior of ants and bees and bugs and write these highly entertaining essays on insect toils and habits and lives and sometimes draw serious philosophical conclusions.  

Actually, it's really delightful stuff, specifically authors like playwright Maurice Maeterlinck, (Life of the Bee is his best work, but Life of the White Ant is kind of interesting, where he makes the case of the superiority of termites to humans) and The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre is one of my personal favorites. 

Anyways, in The Life of the Bee, Maeterlinck talks about how he and his buddy would have these long arguments on whether bees or flies were superior beings.  Maeterlinck's friend, solidly in the fly corner, would point to how, if you trap a fly in an open bottle that is laying on its side, the fly can fly right out, because it follows air currents, but the bee will always try to fly upwards toward the light and never get out.  Maeterlinck took the position that this merely proves that the bee is a more pure and spiritual being. 

So when a bee or wasp is trapped in my place, I always think about that. 

Cracking the code of the Sookie covers

Part 1: Covers 1-3

It's Sookie Stackhouse week here at the THRILLIONTH PAGE as we wait for our friend lisabea to stop drooling over the photos on her own blog long enough finish reading #8, From Dead to Worse so our joint review can finally happen.

While we're waiting, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the mysterious code of the covers in this fabulous series.

Much has been said about the relationship of the cover art to the romance plots. Non-Bill fans are known to fret over the appearance of Bill on the covers. Eric fans rejoiced when #4, Dead to the World, came out.

Many people assume - I myself did at one time - that the covers are a kind of preview for the plot of the book. However, I now suspect that these covers illustrate something more essential and abstract about Sookie's journey and her relationship with men.

Speculation about the significance of the covers started, obviously with book #1, Dead until Dark. Because clearly, Sookie and Bill are together on the cover, as they are in the plot. Sookie floats with Bill. Bill even seems to comfort or protect her, or at least warm her, because it is his cape that is around them both. In the story, however they both protected each other and in fact it was Sookie who first saved Bill's life, though he later saved hers. So why is it Bill warming and protecting Sookie? Does the cover say simply, Sookie is with Bill here, or does it suggest that Bill has an overblown sense of agency, of being the one in control? Or does it say something more sinister? Because why is he looking at her like that?

Living Dead in Dallas #2 This is one of the better Sookie books. Here, Sookie is with Bill, but he is trapped in a casket. One could see it as a fanciful rendering of the plane ride to Dallas (Bill has to ride in his coffin), but I think the meaning goes much deeper than that.

This is where Bill lost some of his standing with Sookie, and certainly this reader. Bill is present, but he is trapped in his vampireness. For example, Bill's riding in a coffin sort of emasculated him, and it certainly robbed him of the ability to protect Sookie from a minor incident at the airport. This would never happen with Eric. Eric's vampireness never seems to slow him down or diminish his power.

Club Dead, #3 - This is one of my favorites, because it's the major Alcide book, and Eric is great in it, too. Why, then, is Bill featured on the cover? An excellent question!

Please, allow me to draw your attention to the drawing of Sookie herself. Look how well she's drawn, and how hot she looks compared to her image on the other two books (and certainly later books!) where she just looks somewhat plain and even childish. The hot Sookie dances with Bill, wreathed in stars, which typically says 'dream imagery.'

To me, this cover is the first that truly bypasses the plot of the book and goes to the abstract heart. I look at this cover and it says to me, Bill waltzing lovely Sookie, showing her a good time for once...that is a dream. Because the reality is that Sookie is down there in that bar having a good time with Alcide. Maybe Sookie is at her best and most mature and beautiful when she is not with Bill. Alcide is pictured as a wolf, down below, howling. With his keen wolf instincts, he knows what he sees in the sky is not right, and it can never be real.

What do you think? Further observations welcome!

Next Sookie post: Covers 4-8

After that: Observations on Sookie's wardrobe

The men of Sookie Stackhouse: the case for Alcide Herveaux!

I read all the Sookie Stackhouse a.k.a. Southern Vampire Novels before I started this blog, so I don’t talk about them, but they hold a major place in my pantheon of fun and exciting books to read. And now the new one, From Dead to Worse, has come out! I’m not going to talk about that yet, except to say all the men of Sookie make a significant appearance: Alcide Herveaux, Tiger fella, Eric Northman and Vampire Bill Compton.

It is a little like Bachelorette in this way. I mean that as a compliment. Also, like Bachelorette, this series brings out the total girl in me. (While I don’t have time these days to watch Bachelorette, I’m glad to see that this time around it’s a woman choosing from men instead of one man choosing from a group of women. I always enjoy those so much better. In fact, I most enjoy the parts where it’s just the guys in the house, relating to each other. It’s sort of like an anthropological study.)

Anyway, I find myself fascinated by Sookie’s clothes, and her men. In fact, I angstfully yearn for her to be with one of them. Any one of them! I just have this drive to see Sookie paired up. Unlike other people, I would settle for Sookie to get back with Bill, and even Tiger guy. Of course, I would most prefer Eric for her. But I have been thinking lately about werewolf Alcide Herveaux, and wondering if he could be the one.

I have always really liked Alcide for Sookie; he makes a spectacular first appearance in Club Dead. Or actually, it’s not spectacular. It’s very toned down and gruff and direct, like Alcide. He’s a guy’s guy. He’s in surveying and construction. And she has a bit of a thing for him. In the first scene he’s in, he comes by because he’s being forced to chaperone her on this mission, and she makes him breakfast:

This was the way life was supposed to be, for normal people. It was morning, time to get up and work, time for a woman to cook breakfast for a a man, if he had to go out and earn. This big rough man was eating real food. He almost certainly had a pickup truck sitting out in front of my house.

Sookie is into that sort of thing. She even considers Calvin Norris at one point because he has a good job with benefits. I love that about Sookie. Back to Alcide.

Alcide Herveaux looked plenty tough. He was big as a boulder, with biceps that I could do pull-ups on. He would have to shave a second time if he planned on going out in the evening. He would fit right in on a construction site or a wharf.

He was a proper man.

Charlaine Harris has such incredible control over readers, and she describes guys in such a precise way that they can make short appearances, but they are set in stone in the readers’ minds, or at least my mind. Like, this:

He sat beside me and put his arm around me. He was so big and warm. He smelled like Tide detergent, and Irish Spring soap, and man.

I had a friend from India who was in an arranged marriage, and she really loved it. She was like, our socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds are perfectly suited, and we have grown to love each other. Oddly, my husband’s family lived an eerily parallel existence to ours in another state. My point here is that...hmmm, am I overanalyzing? My point anyway is that Alcide and Sookie actually, I think, are best suited for each other in that way.

Furthermore, when you inspect the books with the level attention that I do, I think there is evidence - scant, but it exists - that Alcide has a thing for Sookie. Will Charlaine Harris surprise us soon? I would be very happy to see this union.

Update: How could I have forgotten Sam?  Ames, thanks for  pointing this out. Sam is very much in the running! Opinions are divided on his desirability.

Heroines who remind me of girls I knew in high school, Part ONE

I recently made a list of heroines I identify with in a comfortingly seamless way during the act of reading--like they’re an other me.

This made me think about heroines I love reading about just as much, but don’t identify with as completely. I have decided this happens when the heroine isn’t A) vulnerable enough in a way that resonates with me, or B) she is vulnerable enough, but way too different than me, like a different animal.

Sometimes I prefer that. Reading about heroines like these is like having an adventure with a friend who is fascinating or admirable in some way, rather than a comforting proxy self. Reading should take a person to new places and new realities.

On my heroines I totally identify with list, some people mentioned Sookie as a heroine they identify with, and I really thought about putting her on that list, because I am CRAZY about those books, and I love her and I enjoy being in that wonderful world she inhabits. Especially if Eric is hanging around. (I may even splurge on the new book coming out in May, even though it’s in hardcover. Please, don’t ask me why I can’t show my face in the library anymore. That’s a topic for another day.) However, while I identify with Sookie often, she is often an othergirl to me—in a good way.

Anyway, thinking about all this, I realized this weird thing: when I think about heroines I love reading about but don’t 100% identify with, I think about girls I knew in high school and I put them in categories from high school. I don’t know why, as I am MANY years past high school. Maybe I’m just not over it. Without further ado:

Sookie: (Southern Vampire mysteries by Charlaine Harris)
I had a best friend like Sookie - sweet, sexy, blonde, smart, her own easy fashion sense, all the boys loved her. (I know supposedly boys don’t like Sookie because of her telepathy, but you know. I think they sort of would.) Sookie is also vulnerable and her world is delightful to dwell in, but she is so the opposite of my high school self—I was not pretty, smart but not a high performer, and a total moron when it came to boys, hair and fashion. So while I identify with Sookie in a pleasurable way while reading, I identify with her as a best friend rather than a proxy self.

Phedre: (Kushiel’s Series by Jacqueline Carey)
Phedre is the mysterious girl I would’ve admired from afar and been in awe of. I would’ve wanted to be friends with her, but she would’ve run with a cooler group and taken more obscure classes. Her cleverness with guys would’ve mystified me, too. And if I’d ever talked to her, like at parties, I would’ve said stupid things, being so in awe of her. I would’ve wished desperately to be her, just for one day. Though I frequently identify with her during the act of reading, Phedre is very othergirl.

Riley Jensen: (Riley Jensen Guardian Series by Keri Arthur)
Riley’s kind of a wild girl, and she loves to have fun. I had groups of friends that contained wild girls like her, and every once in a while, a Riley would befriend me for some inexplicable reason, and we would drive with the music too loud, and she would rampage around at the Walgreen’s, maybe get us kicked out of the A & W and it would seem like an incredible adventure to me. Eventually our friendship would fizzle, because I could never keep up with a Riley. Not that I didn’t long to.

Tomorrow: Anita Blake, Margrit Knight, Jezebel, Savi Murray

Identifying with heroines

Well, I must say that Three to Get Deadly, the third Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich, is really doing the trick for an escapist comfort read. I am just a sucker for that world. Mom has been making pot roast. Faithful Rex the hamster is always running in his little wheel. Last night Joe Morelli even brought over a pizza from Pino’s. He was there when I ordered it, and decided to surprise me.

Don’t worry, I know that I’m not Stephanie, but I have to say that my experience of identification with Stephanie is scarily complete when I’m reading one of these books, and I’ve been thinking, what’s that all about? A lot of it is obviously about her vulnerability - she's not that great a bounty hunter, and she's even scared a lot, and checks her closets when she gets home.

Of course I’ve read heroines who are so vulnerable and needy that I want to slap them. You have to have something on the plus side, too. For Stephanie’s it’s her resourcefulness, and the fact that she never gives up. Plus, she has this intense desire to be a good bounty hunter.

I don’t have to identify with a hero or heroine to love them or love a book, but when I want a comfort read, I do. So what the hell, I have decided to make a list.

Heroines I have the highest and most gratifying identification experience with during reading:

1. Stephanie Plum.
2. Harper from the Grave Surprise series. Sorry, I have a kitty on my lap, so I won't be getting up to see what the official name of the series is, but it's the other one by Charlaine Harris. I sure love this heroine. Every town she goes to, everybody thinks she’s a freak because they’re sort of scared of her, and because she makes them uncomfortable. Then she ends up helping them, because she believes in what she’s doing. And the assholes end up feeling or at least looking like real assholes. It’s an unusually satisfying series in this way. She is so easy to identify with, though.
3. Georgina from Succubus Blues. I haven’t read the new one, so maybe she gets downgraded or upgraded in relate-ability, but she has a tragic vulnerability in the first book in that she will destroy any man she loves, but she wants to love! Her wanting something badly and never getting it, and the internal struggle of that somehow makes her really easy to identify with.
4. No, this isn't a book, but how could I not put Buffy on this list?

Tomorrow: Heroines who I admire and/or am of in awe or fascinated by, but don’t fully identify with.

Christmas gift exchange in Romancelandia

Welcome to the Christmas Advent Tour edition of my blog.

For my contribution, I thought it might be interesting to see what our favorite characters (or at least my favorite characters) are giving each other for the holidays.