Last Breath by Rachel Caine

Title: Last Breath
Author: Rachel Caine
Publisher: Penguin/NAL
Release Date: November 1, 2011
Pages: 335 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

With her boss preoccupied researching the Founder Houses in Morganville, student Claire Danvers is left to her own devices when she learns that three vampires have vanished without a trace.

She soon discovers that the last person seen with one of the missing vampires is someone who has just moved to town: a mysterious individual named Magnus. After an uneasy encounter with Morganville's newest resident, Claire is certain that magnus isn't merely human. But is Magnus a vampire--or something else entirely?

One thing is clear: Magnus is to blame for the disapperances. And if vampires are turning into victims, what chance does a human like Claire have?

Review:

Michael and Eve are ready to ring the wedding bells, but the rest of the town isn't so ready for their marriage. Neither side is willing to let the two races mix and considering previous precedent of what happens when humans and vampires marry, their worries are almost understandable. As the group fights for the couple's right to marry, Claire is seeing a man no one else can see, a nondescript man that...turns to water? Who is he? What is he? Whoever or whatever he is, his presence has the vampires ready to run away, but the capture of people near and dear to them sends them into the monster's lair.

See how different my summary is from the back cover summary? That's because the "official" summary lied.

Last Breath was a fast-paced thrill ride that could keep a reader glued to their seat. It can be occasionally interrupted by shifts in the point-of-view (there are five narrators this time around, giving the reader a better look at characters they have already come to know well), but it. is generally a straightforward novel. The numerous tension-filled scenes and fights are wonderfully written and fly by in a flash. Funny, shocking (and it really is this time--can you say another main character death?), complex--it's everything a Morganville book should be and just a little bit more.

And there went all the praise. Crit time!

It appears the reader is supposed to be on Claire and co.'s side about the marriage, but I found myself on Amelie's side. It isn't fair for them to be denied their right to marry, but Amelie has never pretended to be fair. She wants to keep Morganville peaceful and letting the two get married would cost the town what small and fragile peace there is. Solid rationale by a person whose decision could either make a small group unhappy or send the entire town into chaos.

The dual plots of Magnus's presence in Morganville connected to the vampires going missing and Michael and Eve's struggle to get married are unevenly balanced--the marriage plot conquers the entire first half of the book with minute appearances from the Magnus plot, then the Magnus plot takes full control and the marriage plot is (understandably) completely forgotten--and I still have questions about it that were never answered. Why could Claire see Magnus when she wasn't supposed to?

Somehow, I have only just now managed to notice the lows of the descriptions. Between all the not-facey faces and the eyes-but-not-eyes, I wanted a decision to be made already about what they were or were not. Then there was a gem in Eve being described as poisonously fierce (that is going to be a memorable example of bad description) and after so many descriptions of Eve's Goth makeup and Goth clothes and totally-not-described-but-totally-there Goth underwear, I wanted the book to stop. She's beautiful. She's Goth. Point made. Describing them so much so many times is a waste of precious words.

And that was the end of our objective segment (and yes, that was my twisted version of objective). Now is where I stop considering the true quality of the book and get down to how I felt about it in my heart of hearts and yadda yadda yadda.

See, I have a longstanding tradition concerning the Morganville Vampires series: I read each book in one sitting during one day. They were just that good (though Bite Club was another story, but that's neither here nor there) and kept me glued to the pages so I could find out where Claire, Shane, Eve, and Michael were going and what they would do.

This time? It took me two days, and the tradition was not broken out of necessity. No, it was broken because I was so disinterested in the book that I procrastinated reading it, mostly by working on my NaNoWriMo novel. A terrible sign indeed. (AND I HAVE SAID NOTHING OF MY DARLING MYRNIN WHEN MY LAST TWO REVIEWS OF MORGANVILLE BOOKS BABBLED ABOUT HIM. Could there be a worse sign?)

Does the book have problems? Absolutely. Is the book terrible? No. Despite my indifference to it this time around, I do recognize the book's quality (why else would it be getting four stars instead of the three I think it deserves?). It is a marked improvement on Bite Club, but it appears I've checked out on the series at this point. Not even a huge cliffhanger promising that the next book Black Dawn will be a dramatic one full of good fight scenes interests me now.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Unleashed by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie

Bite Club by Rachel Caine

Title: Bite Club
Author: Rachel Caine
Publisher: Penguin/NAL Hardcover
Release Date: May 3rd, 2011
Pages: 337 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

After learning that vampires populate Morganville--and surviving a number of adventures with her new night-dwelling friends--college student Claire Danvers has come to realize that for the most part, the undead just want to live their lives.

But someone else wants them to get ready to rumble.

There's a new extreme sport being broadcast over the Internet: bare-knuckle fights pitting captured vampires against one another--or worse, against humans. Tracking the out-of-town signal leads Claire--accompanied by a loyal group of friends and frenemies--to discover that what began as an online brawl will soon threaten everyone in Morganville.

And if they want to survive, they'll have to do a lot more than fight...

Review:

A new gym has opened up in Morganville and Shane, to say the least, is excited that there's now a place where he can learn to kick vampire butt. He soon starts acting strangely and despite Claire's attempts to find out what's wrong, Shane isn't talking. Through her own invesigation brought on by the death of a classmate and the long trail that leads her down, Claire discovers that one of Morganville's greatest threats is still alive--and he's escaped his prison. She then discovers a website that broadcasts fight between vampires and humans in Morganville, something that could expose vampires and Morganville's secret to the world. Amelie wants whoever is involved dead, which is a bad thing when Shane is a regular feature of the videos.

This series is one of my current favorites because of how... unputdownable the books are and Myrnin, most of all. I read this book from the moment I got home until about 7:45 and coming out of it, I'm not really impressed. It wasn't awful, but there were definite problems and it's got me worried.

From the beginning, I felt that something was wrong. The narrative voice felt... off, somehow. Little comments that were strange even for Morganville narration, which gets pretty different for third-person narration. That was soon fixed, but then came little discrepancies. Does anyone ever remember hearing a mention in the last nine books of how Eve used to fence competitively? I don't, but she apparently did. Ten books in, we're told about the glamour, which some female vampires have and can use to influence humans and vampires. This felt a bit like an asspull done to justify the plot. There is no doubt that the plot was only possible because of the newly introduced glamour power. Otherwise, it never would have worked.

I don't think the shifts into Shane's first-person point of view from the usual third-person limited narration worked very well. Most of his narrative segments added nothing to the book and even the ones that did could have been done without. Frankly, they felt like fluff in a series that didn't need it. The last series that pulled that trick is one I went from loving to loathing. It feels like this book needed more editing, some tweaking of story and grammar and such in a few places and cleanup of the sometimes clunky prose and many misplaced commas. Nothing knocks you out of a suspenseful, tense scene like "Harry closed his eyes and sweated, a lot (p. 283)."

Most of all, Claire and Shane acted pretty out-of-character (though much of Shane's behavior is excused by glamour/for the sake of plot). Claire had a bit of information to tell her roommates about her MIT invite and yet she never tells Shane in all the opportunities she had before his mood swings kicked in. So this girl, who could stay up for three days straight (wasn't that it?) when forced to, can't force herself to stay awake a few minutes to finish a conversation and tell her boyfriend about an invitation to MIT? She forgives Shane for all he does in this book far too easily. As he admitted, he came under such control of the glamour because there was something there to work with. She doesn't seem to realize that. Also, Shane learns about his father's fate. His reaction? Not talk to people for a week and then be fine. Something felt off about that reaction.

Despite the rocky road at the beginning that I just ranted about, Bite Club got into the Morganville groove by the half point of the book and became impossible to put down. If anything, this series is a master of suspense, how everything gets tense and the narration will quit fooling around and start flowing smoothly. You always know the main four will live and that Amelie, Oliver, and Myrnin will too, but everyone else is fair game. Despite this surety, there's always the desperate need to keep turning those pages and find out how it's all going to work out. Each time I got a new Morganville book, I finished reading it the day I got it because the book wouldn't let me go. Bite Club was no exception. Only one or two other series are like that for me, and I've read many series!

If you are a fellow Myrnin fan like me, rejoice because he is here and just as much fun as usual! Among other things, he nearly causes many traffic accidents and we find out that his picture ID on Claire's phone is a close-up photo of those famous vampire bunny slippers. When I got irritated, I flipped back to his entertaining moments and it made me feel better again. Bonus if you're a Myrnin/Claire fan: everyone and their mother thinks, 'There's something there...' I'm not a fan of it and even I could see it. Most of what makes me love Morganville is its supporting characters and they are out in spades here to entertain the reader.

This is definitely my least favorite book yet in the series and it makes me worry for the future of the series. I can see where holes are forming in the foundation, threatening to make the entire structure fall apart and become a bad series. However, the two events did not happen at once like multiple series I don't wish to name. With more careful writing, Morganville can be saved. Most Morganville fans will love or at least like Bite Club and anxiously await Last Breath for their next dose of Myrnin (oh, and some other characters, in case they don't like Myrnin).

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: Abandon by Meg Cabot

Ghost Town by Rachel Caine

Title: Ghost Town
Author: Rachel Caine
Publisher: NAL Hardcover
Release Date: October 26, 2010
Pages: 338 pages (hardback)

While developing a new system to maintain the town's defenses, Claire discovers a way to use the vampires' powers to help keep outsiders from spreading news of Morganville's "unique" situation once they've crossed the city limits.

But the new system has an unexpected and possibly deadly consequence: People inside the town start forgetting who and what they are--even the vampires. And when Claire's boyfriend, Shane, and her best friend, Eve, start treating her like a perfect stranger, Claire realizes she has to figure out a way to pull the plug on her experiment--before she forgets how to save herself... and Morganville.

Review:

After the tumultuous events of Fade Out (book seven) and Kiss of Death (book eight), Claire and her insane(ly awesome) vampire boss Myrnin are hard at work, trying to come up with a new system that will keep people from leaving Morganville and wipe the memories of anyone who is lucky enough to be able to leave. Just as they get one working, it appears that it not only affects the people leaving town, but anyone living within Morganville's boundaries. The memory loss seems to strike at random and Claire must find a way to shut down the machine because she might be the next to forget and that will be the end.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year because I love the Morganville Vampires series. It is suspenseful and amazing and everything someone could want from a vampire series. The vamps are even terrifying! I wasn't too happy that the book found its way to me later than it was supposed to, but I got it all the same, read it within the space of about five hours, and my reaction to this entire book can be summed up with this: OH MY GOD! (I would use more exclamation points for emphasis, but that's not my style. Just know I was loud in my exclamation. Ask my mother.)

A lot of things happened in this book and I mean a lot. Morganville practically falls apart at the seams and there is another major change in how it's run. Actually, there two big changes. One doesn't last for long, but the other seems like a lasting change. Despite these changes, the law of Morganville is still in place and even if they have more freedom, there are certain crimes that humans can't get away with, as Claire finds out early in the book.

A little more is revealed about the unusual relationship between Amelie and Oliver. Though not as jaw-dropping as what we'd been subjected to in Kiss of Death (well, I found it jaw-dropping; I don't know about anyone else), it's still something. I find the relationship quite interesting; I would love to read a little more about it in later books and I believe I will. The bigger, more confirming hints didn't start coming until later books, but the way Oliver would always support Amelie even when he didn't like what she was doing spoke volumes. Would that be accurate foreshadowing? Maybe.

The amnesia plot is one that has been well-used and that has almost become banal, but Rachel Caine takes it and make it her own. I never stopped to roll me eyes at almost everyone forgetting the last three years of their lives. It worked well instead of being boring or a cliche and I applaud the author for that.

Myrnin! Good God, Myrnin. He's one of my favorite characters in this series, along with one of my overall favorite fictional characters. I have a soft spot for the eccentric ones and if anyone is eccentric, it's him, Mr. Vampire Bunny Slippers (and yes, fans who might be reading; the slippers make a reappearance, much to Eve and my's delight). In this novel, the machine that causes the rest of the town to lose their memories also makes Myrnin lose his mind and he becomes--le gasp!--the antagonist! And he does such a good job of it! The evil, crazy Myrnin was just as utterly readable as the good, crazy Myrnin.

I swear, Mrs. Caine is trying to kill some of her "sensitive" fans with the ship tease between Myrnin and Claire. Even the densest fan could see that Myrnin and Claire care about each other, but in this book, it's shown just how much they care for one another. It's not romantic caring, but there are so many little things these two do (such as having Claire admit to herself that Myrnin is pretty hot at one point, but that's about as far as it gets on her end) that it's near-impossible not to notice. I haven't seen ship tease like this since Zuko and Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender! I am well aware that Myrnin and Claire would never actually happen, but if there's a crack couple out there that actually has some ground, it's this one.

And the ending! That was where most of the "Oh-my-God" factor came from. I mean, come on! Once you get there and read it for yourself, you will probably react in a similar manner. The implications of that are huge, you hear me? HUGE! There's no chance of me revealing the ending and ruining the surprise, so go see someone else about that.

This book in the series was just as fantastic as all that came before it and may have even taken its place as one of the best entries. I certainly enjoyed it and couldn't put it down. I'm looking forward to Bite Club, which is the next book in the series. The aftermath of what happened can't just be swept under the rug this time and I want to see how the situation will be dealt with. I highly recommend the Morganville Vampires series to anyone who wants a good, suspenseful read. Start with the first book Glass Houses and work your way up to Ghost Town from there.

5 stars!