REVIEW - True Blood, Vol. 1: All Together Now

True Blood, Vol. 1: All Together Now by Alan Ball

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I am reviewing this as someone who has seen all of True Blood and read all the novels.

The plot is suppose to take place between the second and third seasons. So some things are meant to hint at third season stuff, but it feels like you should already know about them. It was weird. The rest of the plot is about this demon that traps everybody in Merlotte's until he's heard everyone's deepest darkest secret shame. So besides the usual bar group: Sookie, Sam, Tara, Lafayette, Jason, and a few random townies. Eric also randomly shows up at the bar and Bill after the demon shows up. Typical set up.

First problem. The artwork. Not that the art was bad in an artistic way. My problem with it was that the art went out of its way to make the characters look like the actors which meant Sookie had a grand total of one facial expression the entire book. Mouth half opened.

Second problem. The deep, dark, shameful stories. There could have been so many good possible ways to do this. Or just something else. I didn't count how many times I laughed out loud with this book, except it wasn't supposed to be funny. They were ridiculous for the most part. The only good ones, and I'm stretching the word 'good' here, were Jason's, Lafayette's and 50% of Bill's (if it hadn't been so predictable and unimaginative). Surprisingly this may have been because they were the ones that look less like the actors. I sense a pattern here. Jason's story was the most disturbing It's about him having sex when he was 15 with his teacher. But you don't see Amazon censoring that!

Overall it just felt that they were trying too hard trying to keep the balance between the show perimeters while trying to create something original and it just falls apart at the seams and ends absurd. The writers also decided to include the 'Beel' term that's so rampant in fandom and which I found personally in great distaste. Only 12 year old fangirls use that term when they can't think up proper arguments to rationalize their ship.

Ending and NOVELS spoilers. The kicker is that at the end the demon gives all the 'feelings' he fed on and dumps them on Eric. Which makes the whole book about Eric and do I sense bias? LOL forever. Though that would explain why Eric has become a little bitch in the books that cries after sex. ...Oops, there's that cynicism again. Back off crazy self, back off. Remember that books and show are different universes.

Thank god I got this from the library.



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