This is the fourth book of the young adult series about a town run by vampires and the humans who live there. Claire Danvers is a science genius who, along with her friends, finds herself an unwilling participant in an ongoing game between Morganville's founder, the vampire Amelie and Amelie's enemies.
If you have read any of the books in this series, you know that Rachel Caine is fond of throwing cliffhangers into the story. The last book was no different with the unexpected arrival of new vampires to the town of Morganville, lead by Bishop, an ancient, evil vampire who also happens to be Amelie's father. This book spends a lot of time describing what this new twist means to the town, while Claire contines on with her day to day activities like school and working for Amelie on a secret project. Claire's housemates – her boyfriend Shane, goth barrista Eve, and vampire musician Michael all start to feel strain on their relationships caused by the arrival of Bishop and his entourage. One of the biggest strains is the costume ball that is being held to honor Bishop, where every vampire has invited a human date.
Overall: I really feel like Caine does a good job in keeping the scenery changing and the story moving along, but while there are a lot of small scenes between Claire and other characters that occur throughout Claire's day, when I think about the book as a whole I would say only one major thing really happened, and most of the book was a slow set up to that event. In the end I didn't feel very satisfied, and felt like nothing was really resolved, so this book ended up feeling like a filler book within the series, and was there to set the scene for a more significant installment. I found myself putting the book down a lot and checking to see how many pages were left despite the deft scene changes to keep interest.
Claire keeps in character with her sometimes innocent trust of the vampires, but conversely still manages to be one of the smarter characters when it comes to realizing if shes in danger and acting quickly. She seems like the typical teen in her wanting more freedoms from her parents (more apparent in this book where her parents get thrown into the mix) – I could relate to her frustration with dealing with her parents who may not know the whole story, especially with Morganville. The most fascinating parts of this book for me where the scenes with the mercurial vampire Myrnin, and seeing some more facets to other characters (like Oliver, Amelie, and cop Richard Morrell), but I found Eve, Michael and Shane a bit dull in this book. Throughout this series I've found Claire's housemate's responsibility and her boyfriend's willpower in resisting doing anything beyond kissing a bit unbelievable, but I guess this book paints good rolemodels for teen readers there. I think I'll keep reading to see what happens next.
My reviews for:
Book 2 – The Dead Girls Dance (vox / livejournal)
Book 3 – Midnight Alley (vox / livejournal)
specficromantic 