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Meet Claire Danvers--16
years old, above average intelligence and has just begun her
first semester at college. True its not MIT, but she made a
compromise with her parents who didn’t want her to travel
halfway across the States to attend school. Its not safe
they said. Unfortunately the college they end up settling
on--other then being in the middle of Nowheresville--is
possibly the least safe place they could have chosen.
I won’t lie, I was a latecomer to Morganville--dropping in
somewhere right before Book 3 was released--but I’m a
convert now. Each book isn’t very long and until the latest
installment, Book 6 Carpe Corpus, tended to pick up within
hours if not minutes of the end of the preceding book. This
gives a sense that we’re not missing any of the action or
important events and because a relatively short amount of
time is covered this way, it doesn’t make the series seem
like Caine is dragging out plots. All told by the end of
Book 6 less then a year has passed since Book 1. The
circumstances and major plot arcs for each book built upon
the last book so that events took a natural turn.
In Book 1, Glass Houses, we’re introduced to Claire and the
residents of Glass House, Michael (the owner), Eve and Shane
(his friends and roommates). Claire had taken refuge at
Glass House after making the leading Wicked Witch of TPU
(Texas Prairie University) look stupid one too many times
and her life being threatened. If only that was her only
problem! Within a very short amount of time Claire makes a
rash declaration that at the time was meant to protect her
friends and herself from the not so secret inhabitants of
Morganville--the vampires, but quickly becomes a race to
find out the truth before someone decides to call their
bluff.
Book 2, Dead Girl’s Dance, picks up minutes after the end of
Glass Houses. Shane’s dad and his biker friends have come
back to Morganville with a vicious plan to rid the town of
the bloodsuckers--and Shane has no choice in whether he can
help out or not. Its either man up and help his dad kill
vamps (sealing his death certificate) or face the emotional
and physical punishment his dad has in store for him.
Claire, who bound herself to Morganville’s founder and Head
Vampire Amelie at the end of Book 1 in return for protection
for herself and her friends, finds that being Amelie’s
errand girl is worse then she imagined. With Shane making
decisions that even silently thought could spell his death,
Michael making a life-altering decision and Shane’s dad
promising to rain hell down on the vampires of
Morganville--could things get worse?
Book 3, Midnight Alley, illustrates the consequences of bad
choices. Though spared and exonerated of the evils his dad
perpetrated in Book 2, Shane has gone from being a tolerated
nobody to persona non grata. Amelie’s protection only
barely protects him and the true price of that protection is
Claire’s to deal with. Amelie has a new assignment for
Claire--she is to help the way less then sane Myrnin (a very
old friend of Amelie’s) with his experiments. What does she
stand to gain? Well she’ll help find a way to destroy the
disease that is slowly driving vampires insane and of course
the continued patronage of Amelie. What does she stand to
lose? Almost everything else.
 Book 4, Feast of Fools, introduces a vampire who acts
outside the laws that govern Morganville. Mr. Bishop is the
worst nightmare that Morganville has ever seen--human and
vampire alike. He doesn’t believe in co-existing with
humans and working to keep vampires safe. Humans are little
better then walking meals to him. He’s come to Morganville
to have his revenge on the person who had nearly killed him
centuries before--his daughter Amelie. Now as Claire
struggles to keep Myrnin sane enough to work with and Amelie
formulates a plan, Bishop makes one thing clear--either you
side with him and offer your unswerving allegiance, or a
very nasty death awaits you.
Book 5, Lord of Misrule has the world that Claire and
everyone else is familiar with burning to ash. After
Amelie’s show of defiance during his Feast Bishop has
declared war on the citizens of Morganville and he’s not
going to play fair. Now humans and vampires must work
together to fight back against Bishop’s encroachment. With
her friends splitting up in four different directions on
four different missions, Claire’s world is shaken. With her
parents in Morganville, Myrnin losing more and more of his
sanity, having to trust that Amelie will not let anyone she
cares about die and her own survival issues all colliding,
will the side of ‘good’ even prevail?
The latest installment, Book 6 Carpe Corpus, picks up a
couple months down the line. Bishop has a firm grip of
control on Morganville--sending Amelie and her sympathizers
to ground to hide and wait for the moment when they can take
back their town. Unfortunately Claire is stuck being
Bishop’s errand girl--through a mark on her skin he’s
forcing his will onto her and making her deliver messages of
Death. Michael, marked by Bishop earlier, is also under his
thumb while Shane and his dad remain his prisoners. Myrnin,
my favorite character of the entire series, is pretty much
acting the fool to curry favor from Bishop.
Or is he?
At the end of Book 5 I had an empty pit where my stomach
should have been--regardless of anything else in the series
I thought for certain that Claire and Co. would win the day
at the last minute. When it became increasingly obvious as
the amount of pages left in the book dwindled that no 11th
hour rescue was forthcoming I got very worried. Its not
that I’m unused to endings where evil wins out or it can be
considered, at best, a bittersweet victory for Team Good,
its more that I’m unused to caring so much. I root for evil
ninety percent of the time (Team Good has enough people
rooting for them, Team Evil needs some props). This time
though I can’t find myself rooting for Bishop.
At his best he is so carelessly cruel its skin-crawling, his
form of amusement is sending Claire off with what amounts to
warrants of death to either the person who will die or to
the person who will help the person die. At his worst…well
his form of punishment to teach Claire and Shane a lesson
was decidedly ironic and nasty (it involved Shane’s dad).
Bishop is like the Chuck Norris facts hyperbole--he is just
that bad and that smart. Unfortunately his arrogance
matches his evil and he makes many common Evil Overlord
mistakes. Leaving enemies alive. Indulging a minion’s
favor. Underestimating one’s enemies. Pushing back the
Grand Plan at a minion’s suggestion. Obviously Bishop never
read that list.
The book does have the resolutions to several plot
threads--the disease effecting old vampires, Bishop, the
tenuous human-vampire alliance and several other plot
threads I won’t mention because it would spoil some
surprises in Book 6. Relationships change and evolve in
what feels like the conclusion to the first story arc of
Morganville Vampires--not just romantic relationships, but
also the very nature of Morganville itself. If nothing else
Bishop’s arrival and subsequent take over the town
galvanizes Amelie into action. For too long did they sit on
their laurels and let themselves become stuck in
complacency. The world was changing, but the vampires of
Morganville were so stuck in what they felt was safe and
working that they lost touch with reality.
The only part I really had objections to in Carpe Corpus was
after climax but before the last chapter. A character
introduced early on in the novel makes various appearances
throughout and then his purpose is finally exposed in a sort
of deus ex machina--while it resolves a plot concerning
Jason (Eve’s brother) and several smaller bits of plot, it
seemed as if it was one thing too far. It seemed tacked on.
From the synopsis given of Book 7, Fade Out (due out in
November 2009), it sounds as if a new story arc will be
starting up. I’m interested to see how ideas and
revelations and relationships change in light of the events
of Book 6. There isn’t a single person (or vampire) in
Morganville not effected by those events and I can only hope
that Book 7 doesn’t pick up too far after the end of this
book. |
