Getting disheartened

Cantered through the next Sookie Stackhouse novel -- it isn't really fair to say that the author isn't using her 'Southern' setting as there are lots of references to the War of Northern Aggression, Louisiana humidity, family enmities etc... so I don't know what's wrong, because it's all feeling very thin, somehow, to me. There's lots of slaughter going on but it all seems rather by-the-numbers: I can't help feeling the reader ought to be rather more upset by it than that. And I simply don't find myself caring about Vampire Bill, Vampire Eric etc. -- apparently the heroine is now attracted to Eric after shrinking from him in the previous book, but I really can't see why.

Jean-Claude may be a stereotypical lace-and-long-hair immortal who goes round dropping picturesque tidbits of French and positively oozing sex ("Blue Moon" does, finally, offer a rational explanation of this), but at least he is intelligent, amusing, and sufficiently cynical to give genuine emotional impact to the occasional appearance of his better self -- and Anita's constant rebuffs. Charlaine Harris's characters just don't interest me very much.

Still, I shall not let this omnibus defeat me -- on to the next and final volume!