I’m still enjoying the Harris’ southern vampire series more than enough to keep reading, but in this third entry in the series, the genre-defying elements that appealed to me so much in the first novel are definitely on the wane. Club Dead does not equally blend waitress Sookie Stackhouse dealing with both normal and supernatural life stuff; it’s almost all supernatural. The conflict in Club Dead also arises from the rival gangs mode mode that I found Dead Until Dark such a refreshing departure from (to be fair, there were hints of that even in Dead Until Dark, but it didn’t dominate there to the extent it does here).
Club Dead was fast moving and fun (also sometimes funny), and I still think Harris is fundamentally a better prose stylist/dialogue author than Laurell Hamilton (or her many imitators), but I can’t help being disappointed that the series is moving in a more standard direction.
needs more demons? metaphorically, perhaps.
Needs More Demons Or Not 