_Often times aspiring authors will point at Dan Brown or Stephanie Meyer or whoever the “it” author happens to be at the time and decry the dilemma of writing down to the masses or writing true, powerful, literary prose.

_Personally, I found the first few paragraphs of “Dead until Dark” brutally bad.  But ten books later, I was still caught up in the exploits of Sookie Stackhouse in Charlaine Harris’ world of vampire, werewolf and fairy politics interwoven with the actual historical events affecting the Deep South in the first decade of this century.