Sookie Stackhouse returns in the 11th installment of Charlaine Harris’s “Southern Vampire Chronicles” in “Dead Reckoning.”

This is the book series HBO’s hit television show, “True Blood,” is based on.

In “Dead Reckoning,” Sookie finds her life threatened at every turn, just like in every other book so far.

Sookie spends much of the book alternating between being a quick-thinking, resourceful woman and a whiny, naïve girl.

It’s amazing how some realizations creep up on her like they do, while she somehow manages to work out problems with solutions that even centuries-old vampires can’t grasp.

This book doesn’t seem as believable as earlier books in the series.

It’s a mad dash from crisis to crisis. The moments in the book that are intended to paint Sookie as a ‘normal’ person are disjointed.

Between the various fairy plots cropping up and the vampire posturing Sookie is in the middle of, there is just really too much in this book for a reader to follow and enjoy as in Harris’s older writing.

Especially disappointing is the fact that once you’ve read it, you may not remember much about the book an hour after you’re done.

The plotlines have potential, but they seem rushed, not fully developed at times.

If you’re a devoted Sookie Stackhouse fan, then you should at least borrow the book. Otherwise, it may not be worth your time.

Rating: C

—Holly Davis Walker

Editor