All Together Dead

Charlaine Harris’ seventh Sookie Stackhouse novel, All Together Dead, ties up some long running plotlines in a neat little package. For several novels now the reader has been hearing of the impending Vampire Summit. Sookie is required to appear at the summit in order to snoop on other humans. Ensuring that they are not attempting to do anything underhanded in regards to Queen Sophie-Anne.

This event was originally intended to happen in New Orleans, but after Katrina hit it was moved to Rhodes. Along with the loss of the conference Sophie-Anne has lost a lot of power and money due both to Katrina and the death of her husband, the King of Arkansas. In fact at the summit Sophie-Anne is on trial for this death.

To make things even more exciting the security at the conference is exceedingly suspect during the daylight hours. No one but Sookie seems concerned about this, and she has grave misgivings. Also present at the conference are Quinn (he’s managing all the special events) and Barry (the other telepath that Sookie discovered in Living Dead in Dallas).

Since Sookie doesn’t often see Barry she takes this opportunity to practice her telepathic powers with him. Together they discover more about their abilities, and weird people out by having conversations entirely in their minds. Also Sookie finally finds out information about Quinn’s past and figures out why even vampires seem to hold Quinn in high regard.

This seems to be a pivotal moment in the series. Harris brings together several long running story arcs and closes them out. By the end Sookie has a totally different perspective than at any time in previous novels. It will be interesting to see where Harris goes next. Since this novel resolves so many long standing items it is one of the better books in the series. I give it a 4/5.