Deadlocked

"It was hot as the six shades of Hell even this late in the evening, and I'd had a busy day at work." That is the first line of Deadlocked, and it says plenty about the mood. Sookie Stackhouse is tired, the Louisiana summer is grinding her down, and the supernatural world is about to make everything worse. This is the twelfth of thirteen Sookie Stackhouse novels, published in May 2012 by Ace Books and running 327 pages in hardcover, and it reads like a writer clearing the board before the final round. I picked it up to see what would happen with Eric, and whether the fairies would finally stop eating the plot. Both questions get answers, and a few scenes here are among the best in the back half of the series. One of them, an argument on Sookie's back porch, is the most honest conversation she and Eric ever have, and it hurts in the right way.

Where everyone stands, if you skipped the last decade

Sookie Stackhouse waits tables at Merlotte's, a bar in Bon Temps, Louisiana, and she hears thoughts. The gift makes ordinary life exhausting, which is why she drifts toward people whose minds run quieter. Vampires came out of the coffin before the series began, shifters followed, and small-town Louisiana has never handled either reveal with grace. Her brother Jason is engaged to Michele. Her friend Tara, married to JB du Rone, is pregnant with twins and mostly unavailable. Sam Merlotte is her boss, her closest friend, and a shapeshifter with a talent for disastrous girlfriends.

Then there is Eric Northman, vampire sheriff of Area Five, a thousand-year-old Viking with a long history with Sookie: kidnappings, a fake marriage, genuine feelings, and a blood bond that let each of them feel echoes of the other. In the previous book, her witch friend Amelia dissolved that bond, partly to learn which feelings were actually hers. That decision hangs over Deadlocked, because the answer is less romantic than she hoped.

Two more threads matter. Sookie is part fairy through her grandmother Adele's affair with a fairy named Fintan, which makes her a magnet for trouble. Her great-grandfather Niall Brigant is a fairy prince, her cousin Claude is a vain stripper who lives in her house, and her great-uncle Dermot spent years cursed into madness. She also still has the cluviel dor, a fairy love gift Fintan left Adele, hidden inside furniture she sold to an antiques store. It grants one wish for someone she loves, and she keeps it in her closet like a fire extinguisher, afraid to touch it.

The vampire king comes to Shreveport

The trouble starts with an obligation. Eric and Pam, his second in command, killed Victor Madden, the regent who had been making their lives miserable, and now Victor's boss is in town to look into it. Felipe de Castro, the vampire king of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Nevada, is the closest thing this series has to a summit, and everyone has to smile and pretend nothing happened. Mustapha Khan, Eric's day man, delivers the invitation: Sookie should come to Eric's house in Shreveport and greet the king.

She knows the evening will be ugly, and Bill Compton, waiting outside as a guard, tells her to turn around and drive home. The king has brought human guests, kept for feeding, and Bill cannot protect her inside. Sookie goes in anyway, because she is stubborn and trained to walk toward rooms like this one. In a bedroom, Eric is feeding from a young part-were woman named Kym Rowe, and Kym's blood has been spiked with fairy blood, which is to vampires what fortified wine is to a man who has already had too much. Eric is drunk in a way she has never seen, and he drank from Kym knowing Sookie was on her way.

That timing is the detail that should have tipped everyone off. Sookie had been told to arrive early on purpose, so that she would walk in on this. She swallows her hurt, because Felipe is waiting, and the meeting proceeds with everyone dancing around Victor's death. Eric admits nothing, which is smart, and Felipe makes noises about messages that never reached him, which is theater. Then the police arrive, because there is a body on the front lawn. Kym Rowe is dead, her neck broken, and a mess has just landed in the middle of a king's visit.

The investigation becomes the book's spine. The Shreveport police, led by a detective named Cara Ambroselli, question everyone, and Sookie sits through interviews where she lies by omission about what Eric was doing with Kym and why she was there to see it. A vial with traces of fairy blood turns up near the body. The back gate was unlocked, the stopper for the vial was found inside the house, and a security guard's story falls apart under questioning. Bill, officially the Area Five investigator, works the case with Sookie, and the question becomes who wanted Kym in that house and who wanted her dead.

What nobody says out loud, for a while, is that Eric looks guilty. He was seen with her, she died on his property, and he had every motive to want a witness silenced. Sookie wants to believe him and mostly does, but the book lets her doubt linger, which is one of its better choices. Trust is the theme: whether she can trust Eric, whether she can trust her own feelings without the bond, and whether she can trust the people living under her roof.

Clues, Colton, and a bad night in a parking lot

Bill's investigation is the book's most likable stretch. Colton, a human who was present when Victor was killed, is being held by Felipe's people at a casino in Shreveport. Bill, who had already clouded Colton's memory of that night, wants him out before the king can question him properly, and he talks Sookie into helping. She puts on a cocktail waitress uniform, walks through the casino with a tray, and helps Bill knock out two guards and walk Colton out.

That plan collapses in the parking lot. Werewolves corner them, claiming Alcide sent them and that Warren, a pack member and Mustapha's friend, has been found dead and needs identification. Sookie sends Bill off with Colton before she realizes the men are lying. They are not Alcide's people but rejects he refused to take in, including a rapist and an arsonist, and they plan to use her against the packmaster. She fights until Mustapha appears on his motorcycle, shoots the driver, and hauls her onto the back of his bike. It is one of the book's few uncomplicated action scenes, and a relief.

From there the pieces start clicking. Alcide has discovered that his girlfriend Jannalynn Hopper, his pack enforcer, has been skimming money to buy loyalty and angling to take his place. She has also been meeting with Claude. The truth about Kym comes out in layers: Claude gave her his own fairy blood to make her irresistible to Eric, and Jannalynn arranged to slip her into the party. Mustapha's role explains everything odd about his behavior across the book. Jannalynn had Warren locked in an attic, and she told Mustapha that Warren would live only if Mustapha let Kym into Eric's house. He complied under duress and then hid it, which is why he kept appearing and vanishing all book.

Warren is found, barely alive, in an attic of the family home where Jannalynn stashed him, and Bill's blood pulls him back from the edge of death. Meanwhile, the antiques dealer Donald Callaway shows up at Sookie's house to demand the cluviel dor, having read a letter from Sookie's grandmother. When he pulls a knife, Sookie throws a pot of boiling water in his face and the demon lawyer Mr. Cataliades, who has been dodging hellhounds and worse for weeks, bursts in and breaks the dealer's neck with his bare hands. His dry companion Diantha takes the body away wearing the dead man's face, and Sookie is left with a secret more and more people are dying to learn. Cataliades also offers to teach her to shield her mind, a thread the final book picks up.

Freyda of Oklahoma and the question Sookie cannot dodge

Here is the part that gives the book its title. Eric's maker, Appius Livius Ocella, is dead, but a dead maker's promise still binds. Ocella had an arrangement with Freyda, the vampire queen of Oklahoma, and Freyda now wants Eric as her consort. The marriage would come with a kingdom and the protection of a powerful ally. It would also mean leaving Sookie, Louisiana, and everything he built. Freyda visits Sookie's house, escorted by Bubba, and the scene is a strange interview. She sizes up her rival, asks about the people Sookie has killed, and leaves without a fight. Sookie rescinds the invitation that lets her inside before the visit can turn, using the one piece of vampire law available to her.

Eric's answer is no answer at all, which is the whole problem. He tells Sookie not to worry, he tells her Freyda will not win, and then he stays away, week after week, while she waits and works and fields police questions. Bill, who has opinions, tells her Eric will choose the kingdom because power is what he is. The book wants us to feel Sookie's loneliness, and it succeeds. Part of her birthday goes to writing her will with a lawyer, the most Sookie moment in the novel. Then Sam throws her a party anyway, and her ordinary life proves it still exists.

The real blow comes that night. After the others leave her porch, Eric and Sookie finally talk. She asks the direct questions. Will he leave. Will he marry Freyda. Is there anything he is willing to fight for. He says the thing that should be simple is not, that defying a king and a queen would cost him everything and damage her too, and then he says the line that ends the conversation: "You could stop this if you really wanted to." Sookie does not understand for a beat, and then she does. He knows about the cluviel dor. A single wish for the person she loves could dissolve the dilemma, and he wants her to spend it on him.

That realization is the best writing in the book. Sookie decides, without much drama, that a love story requiring a magic trick is not the story she wants. She could keep him. She is not sure he is asking for her so much as for rescue, and she has spent too many books being the person who fixes supernatural men's problems. The fight is not a blowout. It is two people discovering they want different lives, and it ends with Eric flying off, which is how he handles every argument that frightens him.

Claude, Dermot, and the end of the fairies

The fairy plot, which has been expanding for several books, finally comes to a head, and the resolution is the part I have the most mixed feelings about. It opens at Hooligans, Claude's strip club, where a ladies' night out doubles as a tour of the fae diaspora. Niall shut the portals to Faery after the fairy war, stranding every fairy and elf on the human side when the doors closed, and Claude has been collecting the strays at his club. Sookie sees through their glamour because of her dab of fairy blood, which makes the evening surreal in ways her friends cannot perceive, capped by the discovery that Tara's husband JB has taken a second job dancing on stage.

Niall returns that night, looking for answers. Dermot was cursed into madness years earlier, and everyone has believed Niall did it. Niall takes Claude back to Faery to hunt for the culprit, leaving Dermot with Sookie, and the two settle into an odd domestic friendship. Then the stranded fae start to churn. They hunt on Sookie's land without asking and get bold about wanting things, including the pretty object they can sense in her closet. Two fae stop her car one night, more offended than dangerous, and their bewilderment at human panic is a small, effective scene.

The reveal, when it lands, is that Claude cursed Dermot and let the world blame Niall. He spent the book searching Sookie's house and the antiques store for the cluviel dor, and the mess with Kym was his project too: wreck Sookie's life badly enough and Niall would come running to the human world. The scheme makes a blurry kind of sense, and the book does not examine it much. When Claude returns, Dermot punches him, the other fae pile on, and Niall arrives to sort it out. He forgives Dermot for old crimes committed under the curse, and he does not forgive Claude, whom he takes home for judgment. He blesses Sookie and her house, then takes the entire fairy population of America back through the portal, closing the door behind them for good.

This is a big swing, landing somewhere between satisfying and abrupt. Years of scheming get cleaned up in one morning, and the villains' motives stay fuzzy. One thing for show watchers: the ifrit that torments Terry Bellefleur in HBO's adaptation has no counterpart in this novel, or anywhere in the books. Deadlocked's trouble is vampires, weres, and fae, and the ifrit belongs to the television writers, so do not wait for pages that are not there.

Werewolves, a trial, and the last wish

The final act belongs to the werewolves, and to Sam. Jannalynn Hopper's schemes are exposed, including Kym's murder, which had the useful side effect of clearing Eric, since Jannalynn confessed to the police before things went further. Alcide convenes a pack trial at his grandfather's farm, where Mustapha fights Jannalynn to the death. She loses, but throws her blade at Alcide anyway. He is warned and moves. Sam is standing where the blade lands, and the knife takes him in the chest. Sam Merlotte dies in a field with Sookie crouched over him, and the whole book stops.

Sookie has carried the cluviel dor all novel, afraid of its price, unwilling to spend it on the man who asked. She does not hesitate for Sam. The wish revives him on the ground in front of the pack, and the cost, whatever it will be, is accepted without a second thought. That choice is the cleanest statement the book makes about Sookie's priorities. Eric watches her spend the wish on Sam and takes off without a word, an exit as blunt as anything he does in the series. Sookie loads Sam into her car and puts him in the guest room to recover.

Along the way the book gives her goodbyes worth noting. Quinn calls to say he is going to be a father, one more person moving on. The twins arrive safely, and Tara gives her daughter Sookie's name as a middle name. Sam makes Sookie a part owner of Merlotte's, which she treasures exactly as much as you would expect. She is more embedded in her human town than ever, and the supernatural men in her life have left, been exiled, or been saved at a price she cannot yet see. Then the book is over, one installment early.

What works, and what drags

I want to be fair to this book, because its reputation is worse than it deserves and because I understand why it frustrates people. Kirkus called it a dull, overly complicated entry that feeds fans and starves newcomers. The second half of that verdict is true of every book in this stretch of the series. Publishers Weekly found it intriguing, and I land closer to that. Sookie's refusal to buy her relationship with a wish, the birthday that turns into a reckoning, and the sacrifice for Sam are scenes I will remember. The investigation is competent, and Bill gets his best functional role in years.

The problems are real too. The middle sags under vampire protocol, police interviews, and errands, and the murder resolves through a confession rather than detection. Eric and Sookie share maybe four real conversations, not enough for the weight their breakup carries. The fairy resolution arrives in a burst after hundreds of pages of drifting, and Claude's plan never explains why half of it was necessary. Side characters come and go with little payoff, and after twelve books of build, the climax is quieter than the drama deserves. It is a transition novel, and it bears the marks of one.

So who should read it. If you made it through book eleven, you are reading this one anyway, and you should, because it pays off the cluviel dor, the fae, and Jannalynn at once. If you are new, begin at the beginning. If you came from the show, know the books left it behind long ago, this one especially. Deadlocked is not the best of the series. It might be the truest to what the series was always quietly building toward: a woman deciding whether the extraordinary life she fell into is one she actually wants.