It's such a bittersweet moment, the end of a series. Despite the fact that I wouldn't have minded if the Sookie Stackhouse series went on indefinitely, it is now officially over. I received my copy for Mother's Day and wasn't able to put it down until it was finished.
Coming back to finish this story took a bit of memory refreshing. It had been a year since the previous book came out. Then there was a season of True Blood, in which the plot is absolutely different. So I had to really think about which plot line went where. Harris helped out with little refreshers in the book, without making it seem like too much of a review.
So how Bon Temps end up fairing? Do the vampires take over? Do the fairies and the witches have it out? Well of course I'm not going to give any spoilers to that. There are tons of people online making their hatred of this book clear. I don't agree with them in the slightest. I loved this book. I loved how it ended. It made me happy. I need for some other people to read it so that I can talk about it with them!
Oh, and if you plan on reading it and don't want the ending ruined, do NOT google search the book in any way. When I was looking for the cover picture to post, there were all kinds of spoilers abound. So read first, search later.
One thing that I do think this final book was lacking in was more of an ending for all of the characters. I understand that with a dozen books there are going to be a lot of characters that the readers have grown to love and invest in. And while we get an ending for Sookie, Harris leaves us hanging on where some of the other players end up.
You know how at the end of some movies there is a reel that shows each person and underneath is a written blurb about what they ended up doing? I wish there had been an epilogue that shared how everyone ended the series. My guess is that Harris was more leaving this up to the readers' imaginations. I can't say that I blame her - she's gotten death threats over how she mapped out Sookie's future. I can't imagine how angry some of these people would be if she was more specific about the secondary characters!
I am admittedly sad that this series is over. Charlaine Harris has other, shorter series and I have read pieces of those. Sadly, the library's collection is incomplete. I hope that she will continue to write, and I look forward to reading whatever she dreams up next.
