Sookie......

As a True Blood fan, the HBO show that Charlain Harris' novel Dead Until Dark, as well as the other Sookie Stackhouse novels are based on, I just have to do a comparison. I can't help it. There are many parallels between the book and the show, but there are also many differences, which I feel all in all make the show better than the book.
First, there are many characters in the show that are not in the book, and vice versa, and also the book fails to make those characters that are both in the book and the show as dynamic as they appear in True Blood.
The characters that are in both the book and on the show that lack character development in Dead until Dark are Eric Northman and Lafayette Reynolds. First, Eric, who I must admit is played by an incredibly hot Alexander Skarsgard, has many sides, which fail to be well described in Dead Until Dark. He comes off as just being a bad-guy vamp in the book, but as his character develops over the seasons of the show, you discover that he also has very good reasons for his vengeful personality, which I don't want to go into because I might ruin it for others. Basically, Eric is a thousand-year-old vampire whose family, prior to his being turned, was destroyed by another supernatural force, and he has been planning his vengeance against said antagonist since before he became a vampire. He was also turned by a vampire who is now twice his age, and he is deeply connected to his maker, Godric, who is a highly benevolent, caring person, and appears as almost Christ-like in the show.
Lafayette Reynolds is by far one of my favorite characters in True Blood, and is extremely well developed character on the show. In Dead Until Dark, he is barely mentioned. Lafayette is gay and effeminate, wears makeup and shoots his own porn to make extra money, as well as selling drugs, including "V", or vampire blood, which to humans is a stimulant, euphoric and healing elixir along with giving the user temporary supernatural strength. The thing is, Lafayette, despite being an out-of-the-closet homosexual, is still very powerful and outspoken. In other words: homophobes, don't piss him off-he has no qualms about beating the crap out of people who wrong him. I know my description thus far draws him as a 'bad guy', but he is much deeper than that. Lafayette's mother is in a mental hospital, he is constantly being hounded by vampires, and even at one point is taken prisoner by Eric Northman, who beats him, feeds off of him, and for all terms and purposes is severely neglectful.
This brings me to Tara Thornton, who doesn't even exist in Dead Until Dark. I feel that she is integral in balancing out Sookie. Sookie is blond, voluptuous and doesn't always come off as the brightest light bulb in the chandelier. Tara is black, extremely muscular, and very outspoken, and she is Sookie's best friend, as well as Lafayette's cousin on the show. Tara is one of the first characters presented in True Blood, shown in an altercation with a customer at a WalMart type store. She is fired on the spot for arguing with the rude customer, and as she walks out of the store in a huff, punches the manager who has fired her in the face. True Blood does an amazing job of coloring Tara as a character-and also helps to make Sookie more dynamic.
One thing that surprised me about Dead Until Dark was Sookie's temporary protector while Bill is out of town, a vampire named Bubba. They refuse to speak his true name, because he is already crazy - they say that this is due to the amount of drugs in his system when he died, and that if his real name is mentioned, he might go MORE crazy. He prefers eating animals to humans, and is generally dangerous, although Bill has forbid him to harm Sookie in any way while he watches over her. It took me a rather long time to figure out who it was even with the hints they gave about his physical description, accent, and the clothes he wears. Finally, laughing out loud while reading the book, I realized that this character was Elvis Presley turned vamp.
As you can already tell, I feel that True Blood is a much more dynamic, creative version of the stories put forth in Charlain Harris' novels. True Blood does a much better job of coloring the sexuality of all the characters, and takes the focus of of Sookie, while describing the more minor characters in much higher detail.