As I was impressed by Glass Houses (the first Morganville Vampires book) and it ended on a cliff, The Dead Girls' Dance was always going to be a lock for me.
The cliff that ended Glass Houses is resolved quite early, and the story continues where the last one left off. We find out some more about Eve's background, why she adopted the Goth girl style and about her younger brother. He has potential to become a villain in the future.
Most of this one centres around the death of a Morganville vampire called Brandon, the framing of Shane for the murder and the rather barbaric method of execution the vampires demand for anyone who kills one of them.
Claire, Eve and Michael have to make some hard choices, life changing in the case of Michael, and some less than desirable alliances to save their friend's life.
Claire makes a decision between Michael and Shane, although this may have been because Eve took up with Michael. It still doesn't stop her from considering nearly every boy she meets as a prospective boyfriend. I don't get the impression she was boy crazy before coming to Morganville, but living away from home certainly seems to have brought her out of herself on that front.
The dance mentioned in the title is an actual event that happens in the book. It's a dance held by the Epsilon Epsilon Kappa (EEK, very clever and amusing) fraternity. Again it shows that there are scarier things out there than vampires, and unfortunately they're very real.
The Dead Girls' Dance ties up a few loose ends from Glass Houses, but it leaves you wanting more. I have mentioned how addictive these things are, right? The excerpt from Eve's diary at the end gives hints to what may happen in Midnight Alley. It would be interesting to see a book from Eve's point of view. So far we've mainly got Claire, although interestingly for an urban fantasy the Morganville Vampires books are not done in first person.
Something I liked about this one was that Caine tackled a non-supernatural & quite realistic threat that can happen at social occasions. Shows that not all the bad things that happen are becuase of the vampires.
ReplyDeleteJason is a creepy piece of work, and can defiantely make a bad-guy in later books.
Like I said to you, I was pleased that the potential love triangle/square/multi-sided object was resolved so quickly. I do like a romance in books, but the "which one will he/she choose" gets boring fast.
I'm surprised I'm enjoying them so much, and the love triangle would have been tedious if she'd tried to draw it out over more books.
ReplyDeleteI read one book that came later in the series. I remember thinking it was pretty good, but this series has gotten so long that I don't know if I'll ever find the time to tackle it.
ReplyDeleteYes, I believe it's up to 13 now, but they're such quick reads that they really only take a day or so get through. Maybe they'll release them in omnibus collections which would be a useful option for people.
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