Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris is the twelfth novel in the Southern Vampire series.  I am a big fan of Sookie, the Southern Vampire series, and True Blood and was eagerly looking forward to this book.  The major plot piece involves the murder of Kym Rowe, a half human/half were animal, on  Eric Northman's property.  For those unfamiliar with the series, Eric is a vampire and Sookie's boyfriend.  Moments before coming to her demise, Sookie caught Eric drinking from Kym.  To make matters more complicated Eric was entertaining Felipe de Castro, the powerful vampire King of Louisiana, Arkansas and Nevada, when Kym was killed.  Aside from  this murder mystery, Sookie is deciding what to wish for.  In the previous novel in this series, Dead Reckoning, Sookie found a magical object called a cluviel dor in an old piece of her grandmother's furniture.  The cluviel dor is a magical object from the fae world that allows the possessor one wish.  Though she has kept her discovery of this object a secret it seems multiple beings have become aware or at least suspect that Sookie has it.  Another concern is Eric's potential marriage to a vampire queen.  Politically the marriage would be the perfect match, benefitting both Eric and his potential wife.  The question then is does Eric love power or Sookie more.

Though Deadlocked is not the best entry in the series I still enjoyed visiting Sookie's world for awhile.  Unlike other novels in this series, I never felt emotionally pulled into the story.  None of the mysteries or problems ever seemed that important, not even to Sookie.  More than anything this book felt like Harris was tying up loose ends left over from previous books, loose ends relating mostly to the fae world and Sookie's fae relatives.  My hope is that Harris was using this book to clear away some of the clutter and that the next book will be bring new changes and bigger mysteries to the series.  Here's hoping!