
Eric asked Sookie to tell him the truth in exchange for the favor, so she did. Sookie, however, does tell him what happened between them in the fifth book, Dead as a Doornail, when she asked Eric for a favor to help Tara. After appearing to develop an affection for Sookie in the third book in the series, Club Dead, Eric has a brief romance with her in Dead to the World, the fourth book, though, due to a curse, he lost all his memories of their time together until book eight, From Dead to Worse. In the later books, she has also saved his life several times.

Eric then appears in all the subsequent novels and has either saved or attempted to save Sookie's life in every book. The author introduces Sookie to Eric in her first novel, Dead Until Dark. This makes Eric immensely powerful, much more so than Bill, Pam, Chow, and especially werewolves and shapeshifters. When Sookie sees him naked for the first time in the fourth novel, Dead to the World, she thinks that “if there were an international butt competition, Eric would win, hands down – or cheeks up.” Eric is depicted as over a thousand years old in both the novels and television show (due to his Viking roots).


Kind of like the guys on the cover of romance books.” He’s approximately six-foot-five. Sookie describes him as “handsome, in fact, radiant blond and blue-eyed, tall and broad shouldered. In the first novel, Dead Until Dark, Sookie Stackhouse thinks Eric is a "hunk".
