I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: the library
After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse
by
Charlaine Harris
It is part of the Sookie Stackhouse #13.5 series and is a urban fantasy in Hardcover edition that was published by Ace Books on October 29, 2013 and has 208 pages.
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Other books in this series include [books_series]
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Night's Edge, Death's Excellent Vacation, Must Love Hellhounds, Dead Reckoning, Bite, A Secret Rage, Home Improvement: Undead Edition, Deadlocked, An Apple for the Creature, Dead Ever After, The Sookie Stackhouse Companion, Games Creatures Play, Indigo, Night Shift, Sleep Like a Baby, The Pretenders, A Longer Fall, An Easy Death, The Russian Cage, Small Kingdoms and Other Stories, Real Murders, A Bone to Pick, Three Bedrooms, One Corpse, Dead Until Dark, The Julius House, Dead Over Heels, A Fool and His Honey, Shakespeare’s Landlord, Last Scene Alive, Shakespeare’s Champion, Poppy Done to Death, Shakespeare’s Christmas, Shakespeare’s Trollop, Shakespeare's Counselor
This collection of alphabetical tidy-ups comes at the very end of the Sookie Stackhouse series, 13.5 to be exact. Harris refers to it as a coda and hopes it satisfies all those readers who wondered What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse.
My Take
This isn’t a collection of short stories, but a tidy-up of what happened to the characters from the Sookie Stackhouse series. Some characters get one line while the more important characters — Sookie, Bill, and Eric come to mind — get several pages.
Not realizing what this book was about, I was incredibly disappointed when I opened it up, and then I enjoyed finding out what everyone got up to afterwards. New businesses, marriages, children, etc. — Tara doesn’t fare too well. Only Harris also included deaths. Some were a result of old age while others…were not. There were a number of funny and unexpected destinies in this that cracked me up.
I did find it rather depressing to know about some of the characters, ones whom I had hoped had found a long and happy life, and then again, there is a bit in here on Eric’s reaction to Sookie getting married which was rather satisfying. There were also a lot of characters in here that I don’t remember reading about…
On the whole, however, After Dead provided a full wrap-up on everyone. Including the Britlingen Collective — I have NO idea how they fit in.
There is a slight promise about Barry the Bellboy.
The Cover and Title
The cover has a cloudy purple sky with Sookie sitting atop a very tall gray tombstone explaining What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse. Above Sookie is a glittery full moon, and Sookie herself, her long hair blowing in the wind, is wearing a short jean skirt and a Grecian-style coral top fitted at the waist with a glittery band of the same fabric as her top.
I found the title humorous with After Dead a take-off on it being after the series “died” and its subtitle an explanation of what came next.
