This, the third entry in the Morganville Vampires series, follows Glass Houses (here) and The Dead Girls’ Dance (here). The books all follow Claire Danvers, age almost seventeen, as she starts college at Texas Prairie University, in Morganville, TX. In the first two books, we learned that the city of Morganville is completely run by vampires, who are generally evil, and their human flunkies. Somehow, while not flunking out of school, Claire manages to get herself into debt to a vampire, and in book 3, the vampire calls in the marker.

That vampire to whom Claire owes quite a bit is named Amelie, and she’s the biggest, baddest, oldest bloodsucker of ‘em all. Claire is almost supernaturally smart, though, so Amelie requires Claire to go study with another vampire named Myrnin, who is very old, very smart, and very unstable. He needs an apprentice to continue his work, and although he laments that Claire doesn’t know anything about alchemy, she starts working with him. On the plus side, they transfer her into honors classes at the university, and she’s finally challenged in some of these classes.

This book reads like the third in a quartet, although I have no idea how long the series is expected to be. Finally, in this book, we discover the overarching plot of the series, from the vampire side. Claire’s goal in life is to remain alive, of course, but the vampires also have a goal, and we readers are finally informed of it. I did like that, a lot. There’s also a fair amount of restructuring of relationships between various secondary characters — Claire’s roommates in the Glass House, some of the lesser vampires, Claire’s archenemy Monica, etc.

Claire’s still a little flat, but I’m happy with her as a character. Although she’s Too Smart To Be Smart (it’s a variation on Too Stupid To Live), she’s gained a fair amount of self-confidence and common sense by now. Claire’s roommates are surprisingly less interesting than they could be, but the vampire characters make up for it. I think insane or schizophrenic characters must be one of the most fun to write, because you don’t really have to make sure they’re constant (although they do have to remain constant with themselves). A crazy old brilliant vampire must be even more fun to write, because he can attain levels of psychopathy that are inhuman.

Yeah, there’s not a lot of plot, and nothing really gets advanced very far except that one crucial piece of information mentioned earlier. There’s enough action to keep the reader satisfied, though, and I certainly enjoyed the book. It held my attention, and since I have not read anything yet by Rachel Caine that didn’t end on a cliffhanger, I’m definitely looking forward to the next book. If you’re terrifically impatient like me, I’d suggest not reading these books. She’s putting them out fairly quickly, but even only a six-month wait is A SIX-MONTH WAIT. I’ll still give it 4/5 stars.