Fall of Night by Rachel Caine

At the end of the previous book in Morganville Vampires (Bitter Blood) the series' main character; Claire Danvers, was given permission (actually strongly encouraged) to leave the town and go study at MIT.

Fall of Night is the book that details the result. I truly didn't believe that Claire would actually leave the town. In the past the fact that either her parents or her friends, including boyfriend Shane, are there has kept her from doing so even though Amelie has given her permission to do so. I thought this may be the same, but no Claire actually does leave and makes it to MIT.

You'd think this was a strength, taking the girl out of the town and letting her spread her wings, but I think it actually becomes a weakness of the book. Claire is a part of Morganville and you can't just have a cast of characters for 13 books and then drop them out of the story and introduce new ones and make it work.

So to a large extent Morganville follows Claire to MIT. First it's boyfriend Shane. I had major issues with this. Claire specifically asked him not to follow her, so he doesn't tell her, not even when he's in Cambridge, he just hangs around 'keeping an eye' on her. Now no matter how you try to rationalise it, and Shane does, that is stalking.

Then Myrnin escapes and heads for Claire. Michael and Eve follow him and because Oliver was exiled at the end of Bitter Blood you just know he's going to pop up as well.

Things about this one started to become a little too obvious as well. One of the villains of this piece; a scientist called Irene Anderson, was initially Claire's mentor and friend, but honestly she was so obviously a villain that she may have just as well been wearing a t-shirt with Villainous Plot Twist written on it large bright letters.

I did like the introduction of Jesse and Pete; a vampire person crime fighting duo, who work as a bartender and a bouncer when they're not out saving people. Jesse was also one of those actual historical figures like Oliver and Ada that Rachel Caine sometimes likes to introduce in this. Exactly how she escaped the axe I don't know, but apparently she did. If Rachel Caine wanted to continue the vampire concept and maybe turn it into a more adult pitched series then books starring Jesse and Pete could definitely work.

I thought the storyline concerning Claire's old school friend and roommate Liz and her stalker Derrick kind of went nowhere as did the storyline concerning Liz's sleazy professor Dr Davis, he was another very obvious villain.

For the first time there's a pretty evil cliffhanger at the end of this one, which will definitely keep people reading.

In more than one way I'm pleased that she series is being brought to a close with the next book. I think the idea has run it's course and it's time to wind it up. I like to see Fall of Night as a bit of a blip in what has overall been a highly entertaining series of vampire books for a YA audience.

Bitter Blood by Rachel Caine

At book 13 of a planned 15 book series I'm definitely in the home stretch of Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires with Bitter Blood.

The previous book in the series (Black Dawn) had a lot going on and while it wrapped up the draug storyline it also had a number of loose ends that needed to be tied up. Bitter Blood was the pay off for some of those.

Bitter Blood has a lot of issues to cover and I feel it may have had more story lines than it really needed. We had to deal with the growing animosity between Morganville's vampire and human populations. The fall out from the marriage between vampire Michael Glass and his human girlfriend Eve Rosser. The growing instability of the computer that controls a lot of Morganville's infrastructure because of the brain of the former vampire that controls it; Frank Collins. The fact that unbeknownst to Morganville founder Amelie, her evil sister Naomi is still alive and capable of controlling both humans and vampires alike to to do her bidding.  There's also the relationship between Claire Danvers and Shane Collins, which was damaged at the end of Black Dawn. The deaths of Morganville mayor Richard Morrell and teenage seer Miranda also had to be dealt with.

As if all that weren't enough a couple of side stories came into this one: the crew of a ghost hunting reality TV show blow into town and there's a race to see who can become the new mayor. In one of Claire's sillier moments she actually got her sworn enemy mean girl Monica Morrell to run for mayor. Myrnin's pet spider Bob would have been a better candidate. In fact I think more people would have voted for Bob than Monica.

The technique of using various characters to narrate the book, rather than all from Claire's third person perspective, continues, although the amount of narrators is cut down (I think Black Dawn suffers from a bit of overload on that front) and most of it is seen from Claire's eyes.

With all this happening the mayor storyline, the reality show and even Miranda to a lesser extent kind of fell by the wayside. I think Bitter Blood is actually the longest Morganville book thus far and dropping a storyline or two may have tightened it up and improved it was a whole. It was the first time through the series I've ever found myself wishing one part of the story would be resolved so I could move onto something more interesting.

One thing Rachel Caine has done very well at various times throughout the series is draw realistic and frightening scenes of bullying or mob mentality. This happens again when Eve suffers at beating at the hands of a hate and fear filled gang of vampire hating teens. What makes this scarier than an attack by a vampire is that it is very real. Both Eve and her attackers are human, the injuries she suffers make sense (she wound up having her appendix removed due to the attack) and you could imagine this happening in real life.

I felt the escape from the cage scene stretched credibility to breaking point. I fail to see how a pair of shoelaces and the metal rod from a hairband can actually bend the metal bars of a cage constructed to hold vampires enough that it's occupants can escape. As my wife commented: "they 'MacGyvered' it." I guess it's similar to the fairly flimsy equipment cage in Buffy the Vampire Slayer being able to hold werewolves and vampires when they wanted it to and other times not being sturdy enough to do this, depending on what the storyline called for. It's a minor nit to pick, but it just bugged me.

The ramifications for the actions taken in Bitter Blood (Claire is basically ordered by Amelie to go study at MIT, Michael and Eve's relationship is badly damaged, Oliver is exiled) will resonate through book 14 (Fall of Night) and are setting the blocks for the series final end in book 15.

Although I did feel that certain things in Bitter Blood 'jumped the shark' I'm pretty hooked on these and there's not long to go, so I will see it through to the end and don't think I'll have too many regrets about it. It's largely been a fun ride thus far.

Black Dawn by Rachel Caine

Black Dawn is the twelfth book of Rachel Caine's highly successful YA vampire series Morganville Vampires. I have to say that these are highly addictive. I started reading them late last year and have ripped through the last few in record time for me. I don't generally read things like this back to back, but I've made an exception with the Morganvilles, reading chunks of them before bed each evening (yes, in hindsight reading a vampire book just before trying to sleep is probably not the best plan). I had to go straight onto to Black Dawn because the previous instalment (Last Breath) was left on a pretty sizeable cliff.

Black Dawn is probably the most all action, all the time book in the series since Carpe Corpus in the middle of the Bishop storyline. In Last Breath Rachel Caine introduced the concept of the draug, a water affiliate vampire that is anathema to their land bound cousins. Before going on here I have to say that the concept of the draug is one of the coolest and newest ideas I've seen for a long time in vampire fiction, especially what could probably be termed as YA paranormal.

With the town under lockdown because of the invasion of the draugs, and Amelie infected and close to death it's up to Claire and her friends and allies to come up with a way to save the town and themselves in doing so.

As she had in Last Breath Rachel Caine continues the multiple PoV concept, expanding her first person cast, and continuing to write Claire in third person. I don't think she gets it right all the time. She's pretty down with Claire's gang, and she's been doing Shane for the last two books anyway, but the vampires' Oliver and Amelie, in particular just don't sound right.

Shane's dream sequence when he is held captive by the draug was particularly moving and effective, very well written. You're well into the chapter before you realise exactly what is happening here. Hats off to the author for that one.

This book also ends of the draug storyline, and while you're never really overly worried about the leads, some of the peripherals do get killed. Not many YA authors will do that, so I was both shocked and impressed, not to mention sad, because a personal favourite didn't make it.

The books have grown progressively darker as the characters have matured and situation altered, but it was dialled up in Black Dawn. It may have reached a peak, although the ending does tend to indicate that maybe this is not the case and there is more misery ahead for Morganville.

Last Breath by Rachel Caine

The events of Bite Club (the previous book in the series) wrapped up the long running Bishop arc in this series, so Last Breath would be the start of a new crisis in Morganville.

Initially that could be seen as the marriage of new vampire Michael Glass to his human girlfriend Eve. The engagement party pits the humans and the vampires against each other and when the head of Morganville's ruling vampire community hands down the edict that she will not permit the marriage to go ahead Eve slaps the French vampire's face. I actually thought Eve was rather lucky to get away with that. As Amelie herself said only two people had ever done that before, they were vampires and they were both dead.

Thoughts of impending nuptials were however driven away by the arrival of a messenger from Blacke. Blacke is a nearby town that appeared in Kiss of Death (the eighth book in the series). It is also ruled by vampires and the messenger carries a message from Amelie's Blacke based equivalent; Morley. It says one thing only: RUN.

Soon after vampires start going missing and Claire Danvers notices a mysterious newcomer. It transpires that the reason Amelie set up a vampire friendly town in Morganville wasn't just because it was out of the way, it had to do with it being in an arid environment. Apparently what vampires fear most are the draug. In this particular mythology the draug are water based vampires. Rachel Caine ties mermaids and sirens into this (she doesn't mention the nixies, the poor nixies are always forgotten about). A draug or draugr is from Norse mythology and they are a kind of vampire. The sea-draugr definitely do have an affinity with water, hence the name.

The land vampires have fought the draugr before and failed, so they decide to run. It is Claire and her friends who convince them that the humans and vampires of Morganville should stand and fight for their town.

One very interesting thing happens in this installment. Claire dies. One of the draugr, a leader called Magnus, snaps her neck. She spends time as a ghost (I have the distinct impression the Last Breath of the title is Claire's) and meets Hiram Glass, one of Michael's ancestors, largely the reason the house itself is alive and has power, but he was a very nasty old ghost. Myrnin does manage to restore Claire to her body again. It didn't really make a lot of sense, but I find with books like the Morganvilles it's probably best not to dwell too long on the logic behind some of the 'science'.

Because Claire is 'dead' for a good part of the narrative and also stuck in the house (she spends a lot of it hiding from Hiram in the attic), she can't always be where the action is. Rachel Caine used this technique in Bite Club to tell the story from Shane's point of view and she does it again in Last Breath. This time she actually included an explanatory note at the start of the book to let readers know that characters other than Claire would tell some of the story and this could be recognised by the characters name at the start of the chapter. I thought that was a bit of overkill, but maybe there were complaints that she kind of sprung the Shane thing on them. I also have to keep in mind that Morganville's target audience is between 13 and 20.

I do find it interesting that Claire's point of view is third person, but the other characters are all first person. Aside from Claire, the author seems to have the best handle on Shane. The other characters, especially Amelie, don't have very convincing voices.

Last Breath ends on a cliffhanger and is clearly the beginning of a new story arc. It's quite a fun entry. Kiss of Death remains my favourite, but this one sets up a very juicy continuation that promises plenty of action.

Bite Club by Rachel Caine

I think it's fair to say that I thought Ghost Town (the 9th Morganville Vampires book) was becoming a little formulaic. This is probably a natural consequence of writing a YA multi book series set in and around the same small Texas town. Even the titles tend to follow a pattern. They're mostly about death or blood. Bite Club is probably the most openly groanable play on words that they've done, though.

As the title may indicate the story is largely about an underground online viewable fighting ring that pits vampires up against steroided human opponents. Unsurprisingly it is Shane Collins from the little gang that readers follow who winds up in the middle of all this.

The story is pretty complicated for a Morganville. As Claire fights to keep her boyfriend out of the ring, and possibly getting killed she uncovers all sorts of things, including bad guy Bishop and another former villainess in the form of Kim, who at one stage nearly upset the apple cart by trying to turn Morganville into a reality show.

Bite Club is full of revelations, both big and small. The reintroduction of Bishop and Kim are two of the big ones. Another is Michael, Eve and Shane finding out that Myrnin is using Frank Collins brain to control the computer that runs Morganville and of course that Claire knew this, yet chose to keep it from her friends. Yet another is when Eve drops the bombshell that she and Michael are engaged to be married. This particular storyline will have ramifications moving forward and is viewed badly by both sides of society in Morganville. The humans can't understand why anyone would marry someone who is effectively dead and feeds on human blood. The vampires on the other hand don't like the idea of one of their own marrying someone who is considered by them as cattle and food and clearly inferior.

There are some smaller ones. Apparently Eve is a gun fencer. That was fun finding that out. Claire gets offered a position by MIT. This I found interesting and I'm not really sure why the author did it. Any long time reader (if you're 10 books in you're pretty invested) knows that Claire won't accept the position, even if Amelie does let her go, she's not going to let Shane, Eve and Michael leave and Claire won't go if they don't, especially Shane. So she keeps this poor MIT recruiter hanging on for most of the book, yet we as readers know full well she's going to knock it back. It just seemed to be an unnecessary side plot.

One interesting thing Rachel Caine tried in this was the altering of perspective. Generally the books are told from Claire's point of view in third person. This one had sections labelled Shane where we got his point of view in first person. I think next to Myrnin, Shane is probably the character that Rachel Caine most enjoys writing, so this made sense. It was necessary as Shane spends a lot of time away from the others and often in his own head, so we needed that. It was just how it was done. I found it a little clumsy and at times jarring. It broke up the story's usual smooth flow.

The teenage seeress Miranda also reappeared. I really like her and hope she comes back. She's rather painful to read, because she knows what is going to happen and feels that she needs to do this, because the consequences may be worse. I almost felt like crying when she let Monica's psychotic violent friend Gina break her nose, because to not do so would have meant Claire died at Gina's hands. To make things a little better Gina did get in a serious car accident soon after, which she could have avoided if she hadn't been hell bent on hurting Miranda. I feel so sorry for Miranda, she seems like a nice kid, but has been dealt a wretched hand by life and cursed at the same time. Despite that I hope she comes back, because she's compelling to read about and I don't think her story is done by any means.

I have to say I loved Myrnin in this. His driving or lack of ability is wonderful to read about. As was the fact that despite him having a mobile phone and knowing how to text he still feels the need to pass notes wrapped around rocks through the portals to let Claire know what is going on.

This one also ended a major story arc and leaves the way clear to start a new one as well as deal with the aftermath of some of the things that happened in Bite Club.

Ghost Town by Rachel Caine

I'll start this by saying that I really loved Kiss of Death. I think of the nine Morganville books I've read so far Kiss of Death is my favourite. It may have been the fact that Rachel Caine shook it up a little by taking the gang on a road trip, thereby taking them and herself out of a comfort zone without having the  safety net of Morganville.

Early on I was feeling a bit Morganvilled out by Ghost Town. It seemed rather formulaic, and I guess books like this that become a bit of a franchise of their own do get that way after a few books, it's hard not to, when you're dealing with the same characters book after book. Morganville is unlike other long running series that I like, such as the Dresden Files, in that because the main characters are stuck in the town and it's rare for people to come to Morganville, it doesn't get to develop a large cast of supporting characters in the way that Jim Butcher has been able to do with his wizard for hire.

Things changed significantly about halfway through when the real hook for this book became apparent. The magical computer that keeps people in Morganville and causes those that are able to leave to forget the place was broken when the force that kept it alive died.

Teenage genius Claire Danvers is tasked with fixing it. Claire does manage to get it fixed, but then weird things start happening. People begin to lose memories. They lose about three years. That's bad enough when it's people, but when it starts to affect the vampire population as well it becomes downright scary.

The only people that seem to escape the 'amnesia' are Claire and one of Morganville's vampire mover and shakers Oliver, as well as Claire's boyfriend's father Frank Collins. Claire and Oliver can be explained by the fact that neither of them was in Morganville three years ago. Frank Collins has a hatred for the place that somehow manages to keep his mind in the here and now.

It's up to that unlikely trio of allies to try and put things right, but to turn the computer off they have to get past Myrnin.

For most of the books Myrnin is portrayed as a fairly quirky and cuddly kind of character with his fanged bunny slippers and pet spider named Bob. Prior to Claire's arrival and her becoming his lab assistant Myrnin was both devious and dangerous. This is the Myrnin readers see for most of Ghost Town. Kudos to Rachel Caine for doing that, because it's not easy taking both an author favourite and an audience favourite and altering them so that they see the less pleasant side of them.

Another thing I thought was done very effectively and was also extremely clever. Taking most of the major players back three years in their lives showed their backgrounds and the background of the town wonderfully well, and doing it this way meant there was no clumsy and lengthy exposition, it was done as part of the storyline.

Things, as generally in Morganville, are wrapped up fairly happily at the end, but there are a couple of loose ends that are very deliberately left untied to move into the next book in the series (Bite Club). One is a history book that Claire manages to find, a history of Morganville, it gives facts and details about the town's founder Amelie that she would rather be kept private. Claire knows she has the book and she knows that Amelie if she knew about it, would prefer that it did not come to light. The other was something that Myrnin did at the end of the book. It's rather chilling and again highlights no matter how much Myrnin likes to play the absent minded mad professor he is still an old and ruthless vampire who will do whatever it takes to keep things running the way he wants them to.

Kiss of Death by Rachel Caine

Morganville goes on a road trip!

In a nutshell that is pretty much what Kiss of Death is. I have to confess that this is one of my favourites in the series now.

New vampire Michael Glass gets given a shot at a recording studio in Dallas and his friends Claire, Eve and Shane get to accompany him on the trip. As both Michael and Eve were born and bred in Morganville they've never left the town, so heading off to Dallas with their two best friends is a big deal. Before allowing them out of the town the head vampire; Amelie, insists that they take her 2IC Oliver as a chaperone. None of the quartet are particularly happy about this stipulation, but as they either take him or don't get to go at all they can't do a lot else.

The fun really starts when Oliver detours via a small town. The kids have a run in with some locals and this leads to them torching Eve's car. She replaces it with a hearse, which I think survived the book, and  being a Goth Eve loves her new mode of transport. The reason for Oliver going off course was never explained in this book and I hope it's covered down the track, because otherwise it's a giant plot hole.

Other escapees from Morganville lead by Morley, take some of the locals prisoner and the gang go after them. They eventually wind up in the even smaller town of Blacke. Dangerous vampire Bishop has visited Blacke with his crew and turned most of the town into vampires. They've also been infected with the disease that Bishop carries, which causes vampires to lose their mental facilities.

Claire and her friends do manage to save themselves and come up with a compromise that allows Morley and his fellow escapees, including Patience and Jacob Goldman, to live in Blacke and basically create another Morganville there.

While it looks like nice neat bow I can see the Blacke deal creating some problems. Morganville was planned, it has infrastructure and the nearby university helps to support the local economy, plus Amelie and Oliver are smart operators. Blacke wasn't planned, it doesn't have Morganville's infrastructure, nor does it have outside economic support. Most of it's vampires are young and the town was both destroyed and decimated following Bishop's visit, plus the fact that Morley is while competent, not as strong or smart as either Amelie and Oliver, nor is he anywhere near as stable.

Another thing that may have future ramifications is Amelie's hardness at the end when she lays down the law to Michael, Claire, Eve and Shane and tells them that they will not be allowed to leave Morganville unless she says so and even then it won't be for long. She has Claire and Eve's families as insurance and if the girls won't leave then neither will the boys.

Rachel Caine has got another 7 books to wrap this up (she believes it will end with 15) and it's going to be fun to see how she does so.

Fade Out by Rachel Caine

I promised in my review of the 6th Morganville Vampires book Carpe Corpus that I would try and get to the next book quicker and I am as good as my word.

A story arc finished in Carpe Corpus and as result the opening of Fade Out has a much more relaxed feel to it than the predecessors. It concerns Eve getting a leading role in a local production of A Streetcar Named Desire. What I found interesting about this is that it's directed by a vampire and one of the town's leading vampire power brokers Oliver has a role in it too.

Claire spends a lot of the early part of this book being an annoying teenager (because of her importance to the story, her kid genius status and the fact that she's attending university you tend to forget that she's only 17) because of Eve's friend Kim. She's right to worry about Kim, because the girl does have the potential to destroy the town, but Claire had it in for her before that was discovered.

This one works a lot more with the development of the characters and their relationships and it's a welcome change from the full on action of the previous few books. I read that in another review and like that reviewer I'm not the target market.

There was a lot of Myrnin and I really like him. It's hard not to like a vampire who keeps a pet spider he names Bob and wears bunny slippers with fangs around the place. There's also a lot of the homicidal Claire hating computer Ada and her attempts to kill Claire. I think it's the relationship with Myrnin that sets Ada off, she's never actively stalked anyone before, but she sees Myrnin as 'hers' and she is very jealous.

In order to get out of one bad situation Shane makes a pretty bad deal with another bunch of vampires and it's going to come back to bite (sorry couldn't resist) him and the rest of the non vampire gang in the future.

There were a couple of interesting revelations in this one about the background of the town and the characters. Richard Morrell (current mayor and brother of mean girl Monica) is one of two Morganville residents to have killed a vampire and not been executed for it. I like Richard and was hoping we'd find out more about that after it was dangled tantalisingly out there, but Richard didn't even appear. Sigh. Maybe in Kiss of Death.

The other one was exactly who Oliver is historically. The hints are his first name, the place he lived, the time he lived in and the age he was when he became a vampire. I know he's not described this way, but I keep seeing him as Eric Stonestreet (Cameron in Modern Family), so never picked up on his real identity before. Ada's also based on a real historical person, and it's entirely fitting and very clever.

I do hope there's some investigation of Richard's past in Kiss of Death and I've already started reading it.

Carpe Corpus by Rachel Caine

Despite the fact that I find Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires books a bit of a guilty pleasure and that Carpe Corpus follows on immediately from Feast of Fools & Lord of Misrule I took a while to get around to it, in a vain effort to whittle down the TBR pile, damn thing just keeps on expanding.

Even though I hadn't been back to Morganville for a few months this one was like slipping on a comfortable pair of jeans or a favourite t-shirt. The books are kind of like that; familiar.

If you haven't read at least up until Book 6 Carpe Corpus be warned that you are now entering spoiler country.

When we last left our heroes in Morganville things looked bad. The old and brutal vampire Bishop had taken over the town and ruled with an iron fist.

When the vampires under the rule of Amelie, Bishop's daughter, ruled the roost in Morganville, they took it fairly easily with the human inhabitants, and the university in the town; TPU, was largely off limits. Amelie's vampires, including her 2IC; Oliver, didn't take blood, they asked for it. Admittedly they asked quite forcefully and it was a form of tax or tribute, but people weren't just killed off hand in the way Bishop and his people did it.

As the story unfolds Claire and her allies who prove to be the slightly off centre Mrynin and recent vampire Michael Glass, have to find a way to fool Bishop and his cadre of like minded vampires to take their town back.

Bishop is chased from the town, but he isn't dead and I'm sure until he is completely killed off he will continue to be a threat to Morganville.

A few things were resolved in this. I think Claire has finally decided once and for all between Shane and Michael. She's with Shane, her best friend Eve is with Michael, despite his now undead status. Amelie is going to take the death of her boyfriend Michael's undead grandfather Sam hard. Myrnin seems to have found a cure for the affliction that the vampires suffer from, although he himself is still extremely quirky, I'm trying to decide whether he's been permanently affected by the disease or he puts a lot of it on for show.

Some problems remain. One is that Claire's parents live in Morganville now. I mentioned in the review of Feast for Fools and Lord of Misrule the problems this causes for Claire and how it gives enemies a lever to force her into things, but I think it also creates narrative issues. She's expected to live with them and they'll be mentioned regularly, it just kind of breaks up the story unnecessarily for mine. It would be okay if they'd always lived there, but they haven't, and the author having moved them in for the Bishop story arc, can't just move them out again. Monica Morrell and her Monicettes are still around and they'll always be looking for ways to put Claire off her game. Back to the narrative: for someone who has been shown as a survivor and meant to be pretty bright, Claire is remarkably clueless and naive at times. She almost veers into TSTL (too stupid to live) territory.

I liked the introduction of Myrnin's bloodsucking computer Ada, she definitely doesn't like Claire and this is going to make things difficult for the teenage genius in the future as well. Ada is however suitably quirky and it doesn't surprise that she was Myrnin's brainchild.

All said and done they are damn addictive books and I won't wait so long between installments next time.

An Evening with Rachel Caine

My first encounter with Rachel Caine was many years ago when I read the first of her Weather Warden books. I never continued with that particular series, but then not all that long ago I started seeing the Morganville Vampires books pop up. The premise intrigued me and I bought the first one. I got my wife hooked on them, and she read them all. I’m only getting around to them now and have read the first five of the thirteen that are currently out.

I’ve never been to an author signing. The closest I came was getting George Martin to sign a copy of A Dance with Dragons at Worldcon in 2011, but Worldcon, while it has signings, is about a lot more than getting copies of books signed by the author.

When the Rachel Caine signing was announced my wife and I decided to meet up after work and attend. My wife had been to a signing before (Terry Pratchett), but this one was a little different because it featured a Q & A with the author.

It’s always an interesting experience seeing and hearing an author live. You tend to build up an image of how they look and sound from reading their work, and they’re often very different in person. I had seen what Rachel Caine looked like, and she didn’t resemble my mental image, so that wasn’t a surprise, but when she opened her mouth and a broad Texas accent flowed out that did throw me. It shouldn’t have, considering that the Morganville books are set in Texas, but when I read, unless I have another frame of reference, everyone sounds like an Australian to me.

One thing I was worried about with the Q & A was being spoiled. I’m only five books into a thirteen book series (there are at least fifteen planned), and a lot of the other attendees, judging by the piles of books they brought with them, were a lot further on than me.

The first part of the session was Rachel telling us the story of how she came to be called that and how she was published eventually leading to someone suggesting she write YA. The idea for Morganville was inspired by a rather mundane observation that the streetlights in one town were spaced wide apart.

Rachel has done the really BIG conventions, like San Diego and New York comic cons, and she came to Australia this time for SuperNova, but she said she prefers smaller gatherings like this bookstore one, largely because she can interact with the readers better.

After the Q & A which included questions such as the music she listens to when writing and how the bunny slippers worn by a character came about, she settled down to do the signing.

As I said I’d never been to a signing, but I’ve heard plenty of stories about how authors will only do book limits and won’t do dedications, personalized messages, etc… They had said Rachel would sign anything, but she has over 20 books out, what if someone brought their entire collection?

As it turned out they were telling the truth. Rachel was happy to sign everything, no one brought the whole twenty plus books, but there were a few complete Morganville collections there, and I was pleased to see that not everyone confined themselves to Morganville as well. Not only was she happy to sign books, she did dedications and would do personalisations as well. If anyone wanted a photograph she was more than accommodating there too. She also wanted to chat to people, which was great.

If all authors are like Rachel I’ll be going to more signings, and hopefully she’ll also tour Australia next year by which time all the Morganvilles will be out and I’ll have read them all and understand the bunny slippers reference.

Feast of Fools & Lord of Misrule by Rachel Caine

I think this review may actually be a first for the blog. I don't think I've ever done two books in the one review before. Feast of Fools and Lord of Misrule are the 4th and 5th volumes of Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires series. Although they are two separate books and were published months apart they're really one continuing story. Feast of Fools ends on a major cliffhanger and I had to run to our library to pull out Lord of Misrule and start it right away (when I'm reading a series, I usually take a break in between books).

The 3rd book in the series (Midnight Alley) ended with new arrivals into the sleepy little vampire controlled town of Morganville, Texas. One were main character's Claire Danvers' protective parents moving into the town to keep an eye on their daughter and the other was an old, imperious vampire who went by the name of Bishop and claimed to be the father of Morganville's head vampire; Amelie.

I'm heading into SPOILERLAND here, so if you haven't read at least Feast of Fools and don't want to be spoiled you may want to quit right now. As it turned out Bishop actually is Amelie's father, both biologically and as a vampire, which is seriously icky.

Bishop wants control of the town, exactly why is never made clear, although it may be in later books. The vampires do have a good deal in Morganville, they own the town and the people in it, and they're protected. They are however suffering from a mysterious disease which seems to affect their sanity and they're not creating many new members. Claire's friend Michael Glass is the first newly created vampire in nearly 70 years, the one before that was his grandfather Sam.

Claire and her friends; Shane Collins and Eve Rosser, along with Michael aren't about to let their town go without a fight, and a fight of huge proportions in what ensues throughout the two books. Lord of Misrule never lets up for a second, that one is all action, all the time.

Claire's parents moving in (clueless as they are) creates two problems for Claire. One is that they want her to move in with them, and while they're in town she has no reason not to, the other is that they give Claire's enemies leverage against her. Although it looks like Claire is protected and favoured by Amelie, she can turn depending on what the situation demands and if she requires the lives of Claire's parents to bend Claire to her will then so be it.

It's a fast moving, engaging series with heroes to cheer for and villains to hiss at. It also has shades of grey characters. Amelie is one. Myrnin is another. Myrnin is a fan favourite, because of how quirky he is. Rachel Caine said she likes writing him too, because he's unpredictable, but this unpredictability makes him dangerous. He's very old, even by vampire terms, he has a fairly tenuous grip on sanity, and he does often regard humans as 'pets'.

Lord of Misrule also introduced another character I grew to like; former marine and current mechanic Hannah Moses. I hope we see more of her.

While mean girl Monica Morrell is hateful, I do admit to feeling sorry for her for the way she was treated in Lord of Misrule. She deserved most of it, but it was brutal. Rachel Caine writes the teenage bullying scenes so well that it makes me wonder if she herself wasn't the victim of it growing up. They do serve to remind that there are things in this world more dangerous than vampires, largely because they're real and they do exist.

I've really come to like Monica's brother Richard. He's a genuine good guy, not sure how he managed it growing up in that family, but there you have it. I'm conflicted about Shane. He has issues with Michael being a vampire, and still a friend. It's understandable, but it's becoming a bit tedious and we don't need to be battered over the head with it in every book.

While Lord of Misrule doesn't end on the same sort of cliffhanger as Feast of Fools it does also lead into the next book; Carpe Corpus. I'm going to make some inroads on the ever growing TBR pile, but as soon as I have I'll be pulling Carpe Corpus off the shelf and heading back to Morganville.

Midnight Alley by Rachel Caine

Not a lot seems to happen in Midnight Alley (the 3rd of Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires series), but that doesn't mean it's at all boring or doesn't move the story forward.

There is a really cool party at the house of series bad girl Monica Morrell, which gets totally out of hand, and results in one of the book's main characters being stabbed, but for the most part more about Morganville is slowly revealed and the series gets a new villain in the person of Jason, delinquent brother of Eve. This book also introduces a character that will no doubt be a favourite with readers. I know I like him.

This is where Myrnin makes his entrance. Myrnin is an old Welsh vampire, and as well as possessing a great deal of knowledge he's also dangerously unstable. There's a definite connection between he and the series' main character; Claire Danvers. There is a lot of Myrnin's story to be told, and given his origins and age it's hard not to connect him with the character of Merlin from Arthurian legend.

Because of Myrnin's instability and the fact that he can turn on people, even those like Claire who are helping him out, Claire becomes aware that her 'patron'; Amelie, is not as nice as she seems and sees her as a possession, rather than a person.

The books are strangely addictive, and I know that I'll be reading 4 in very short order.

The Dead Girls' Dance by Rachel Caine

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.

Glass Houses by Rachel Caine

To be totally honest Glass Houses (the first volume of Rachel Caine’s highly successful Morganville Vampires series) is not normally the sort of thing I’d read. I can’t remember why I actually even purchased the first of them. I know my wife ripped through the whole series and found it compulsively readable.

On the surface of it the book and the series sound like so many others that are popular amongst urban fantasy and young adult readers.

Claire Danvers is an accelerated learning student who is attending Texas Prairie University located in the sleepy town of Morganville at the age of 16 before transferring to a more respected college like MIT or Caltech . After one too many beat downs and humiliation at the hands of the mean girls in her dorm, lead by the psychopathic Monica, Claire applies for a spot in the Glass House; a gothic mansion in town, inhabited by 3 local 18 year olds who are looking for a 4^th to share expenses.

Once she’s in the Glass House, Claire learns Morganville’s secret. The town is run by vampires and largely exists to provide them with a haven and a food source. Of equal and possibly greater interest are the residents of the Glass House. On the surface Shane is a video game playing, womanising slacker with more than a touch of the bad boy about him, but there are secrets in his past. Eve looks like a perky Goth girl, but readers, and Claire, don’t find out much more than that, then there’s Michael. He sleeps all day, only appears at night and seems to be unwilling or unable to actually leave the house.

In the course of the book Claire will learn about herself and her new friends as well as the town and manage to make a friend of one of the town’s leading vampires and an enemy of another.

This wasn’t the first Rachel Caine book I’d read. I read the first of her Weather Warden books some years ago, but didn’t continue with the series. She was known to me, and she’s a decent writer. I think that’s one of the things that sets the Morganville books apart from many of the others, they are very well written, and written by someone who really knows her craft. The premise is interesting. Unlike a number of other urban fantasy and paranormal romance writers, Caine has set Morganville in a world that is not aware of vampires, and would see them as a threat if they were. In some ways Claire’s human antagonists were far more dangerous than any supernatural fiend. There’s a great rapport between Claire, Shane, Michael and Eve. We learn enough about them to make them interesting, but it’s clear that their stories are far from complete.

Claire’s indecision about who out of Shane and Michael she’s more interested in does become a bit wearing, hopefully she’ll get over this as the series continues. The girl is regularly described as being quite smart, but this is occasionally inconsistent as she has gaps in her knowledge I wouldn’t expect of a 16 year old bright enough to attend college, and she also does some pretty silly things to suit the story. Eve was another one that threw me at times. I like the character, but I don’t buy her as a Goth. She has the black hair and the white face as well as the black clothes and accessories, but she’s generally bright and perky. I saw her as rather like Harley Quinn or the Goth lab tech from NCIS.

The book moved fast and was well paced, it’s also compulsively readable. I ripped through it in a day and as it ends of a cliff I’ll be strapping in for Dead Girl’s Dance in the near future.