Customer Rating: 
Summary: i read it after watching true blood ...
Comment: ... so this is the perspective my review comes from. I'd recommend that anyone who likes True Blood to read the story. It's pretty simply written, and the story is actually somewhat sweet. If you're expecting the detail of the series, you'll be disappointed. True Blood is pretty faithful to DBD, but Alan Ball took his own creative liberties. Tara is not a character in DBD, so there's no root worker, no histrionics. Lafayette is a bit player (if that), and there's no V-dealing going on. And, Bill doesn't kill Long Shadow, so there's no trial. The book also ends before the series ended, and is taken up again in the 2nd in the series. The book is also written in 1st person, so the only perspective we have is Sookie's, which simplifies the story. We don't see Jason with the dead girls, for example, but only know of it from what Sookie hears. I think it's worthwhile to read books & see their adaptations, to make comparisons.
A number of reviews on DBD compare it to the Anita Blake series and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. This is unfair. I've read the entire Vampire Chronicles, plus half of the Anita Blake books ... and I've read Twilight & a few other vampire sagas. The writers' voices are so different, as are their approaches. I just don't think you can compare a hard-boiled zombie-raiser in St Louis (Anita Blake) to the innocent voice of Sookie Stackhouse, a small-town Louisiana girl. (Sookie's voice is quite authentic; some readers are annoyed by the metaphors used by Harris, but they are very much in line with how Sookie would see things.) And, of course, Rice's vampires are totally in another league to be compared to anything!
I'd recommend to take a read -- while Sookie might not compare to other writers' protaganists, that's what makes reading fun. Who wants to read cookie cutter books, with just the names replaced? When I decided to read DBD, I figured if I didn't like it, I could go back to Anita Blake and all her adoring & scheming vampires, lycanthropes, zombies, voodoo queens, etc., etc.
