As True Blood enthusiasts welcome season four of the hit television series, author Charlaine Harris continues to provide inspiration for the show, churning out her eleventh novel on the adventures of Sookie Stackhouse, and her acquaintances with vampires, werewolves, fairies and shape-shifters.

Harris doesn’t take long to engage her readers in Dead Reckoning. After an attack at Sookie’s workplace, a sleepy bar in Bon Temps, Sookie struggles to identify the strange creature responsible for the fire-bombing, and with that our appetite for this supernatural series is wetted once again.

Vampire politics is a major theme in this instalment with new vampire regent of Louisiana, Victor, ensuring plenty of drama is in store for Sookie and friends. Also Eric Northman and his progeny Pam have something planned, a secret that Sookie mustn't know, which peaks the readers interest.

Dead Reckoning is chock-full of action scenes, mystery, and intrigue, and of course it wouldn’t be a Sookie Stackhouse book without a heavy element of romance. Sookie has quite the tendency of romancing with paranormal folk in the TV series, and it is no different in the books.

Throughout the novel, Sookie has no shortage of love interests. While Sookie tries to sort out her tense and rocky relationship with vampire Eric Northman, former flame Bill Compton as well as the ruggedly handsome Alcide Herveaux, are also keen suitors of the feisty blonde protagonist. And with Sookie, you never know who she’ll end up with next!

Dead Reckoning does go a long way in answering a lot of lingering questions, but Harris leaves in just enough suspense to hold the reader till the end of the book.

However, where Dead Reckoning falters is in the character development of Sookie. At the end of each book it seems as though Sookie has come to terms with her extraordinary life. But still, in the eleventh tome, she struggles to comprehend the world around her and her place within it and unfortunately at times in Dead Reckoning it feels as though a little too much time is devoted to Sookie self-evaluating her situation with that incessant internal dialogue.

Furthermore, Sookie seems to have also lost quite a lot of her trademark sass. She comes across far more subdued in Dead Reckoning, and fans of the book series may be disappointed in the shift.

If you haven’t read the ten books that came before Dead Reckoning you would have missed several key references, terminology and important plot developments, which might make for a difficult first read for those unfamiliar with the series. But I’ve no doubt fans of the television adaptation will persist regardless.

Though Dead Reckoning is not Harris’ best work in the series, nevertheless, it’s all shaping up for one hell of an ending when the series wraps up with book thirteen.

3/5

- Melanie Dinjaski