Recently I saw the first episodes of the True Blood series, the TV-adaption of the Southern Vampire Mysteries. I managed to watch only a few episodes, as they differed so much in tone and style from the novels and felt too much like someone tried to emulate the Sopranos mixed with the content of Charlaine Harris’s series. And I can’t stand the Sopranos. But it still made me want to reread the series.
The first book starts very basic with laying out the main concept and a little bit of murder. A telepathic waitress who can’t have relationships with other people because she can’t stop reading their minds meets a vampire for the first time and discovers that her abilities don’t work on him. Like in some other urban fantasy/paranormal romance series supernatural creatures have gone public some years ago (I think a bit similar to the Anita Blake series, where Vampires were the first to go public, but it has been some years since I read those). Albeit only vampires, the rest of the magical world is still hidden to mankind.
Sophie, the telepathic waitress, falls in love with the vampire. Side-by-side with that plot is the murder mystery, where Sophie has to find out who is going after a certain type of women to clear her brother’s name. It’s a very pleasant read, as Sophie is a very-down-to-Earth character, despite her abilities, and manages to be very likeable. The book balances perfectly the different aspects of the genre: romance, action, murder mystery and world building. Nice setup for the whole series.
