[Happy birthday, Miss Em!]

Hard on the heels of Wednesday’s review, here’s another Rachel Caine book. As I’m sure one might guess by the title, this is the newest entry in the Morganville Vampires series. As a matter of fact, it’s so new that it doesn’t come out until June 3rd. (Oh, the perks of having a book review website.) Wednesday’s review has links to all of my previous Rachel Caine reviews, so I won’t reiterate them here. I am still jealous of her car.

These books all end with cliffhangers, and each starts precisely where the last one left off, so I’ll cut plot discussion. When we last left Claire Danvers, her life was going out of control. First, there’s a big, bad new vampire in town — who happens to be the father of the vampire to whom Claire has pledged her life, in exchange for safety. Second, her boyfriend has just been released from the hospital, because he was stabbed by a psycho. Third, her parents have decided to move to Morganville. Can it get worse? Actually, yes. There’s a vampire in the big, bad new vampire’s train who is torturing Shane-the-boyfriend; Monica, the big-haired Texas blonde, has decided to be a bitch again; the work she’s doing with the crystals to help the vampires is getting more dangerous; and there’s a costume ball at the end of the week, to which she has (pointedly) not been invited. Can she survive it?

Well, yes, because there are future Morganville books. There is, actually, a fair amount of action in this book, especially as compared to the previous volume. Claire is almost kidnapped; Shane is attacked in a grocery store; there are fights, flights, car rides, and a lot of different physical locations for Claire and her friends. I quite liked all the action; Ms. Caine is awfully good at pacing, and lots of action shows this off better (for her style). Another pacing issue she does very well is the handling of sexual tension, specifically between Claire and Shane. Claire is only sixteen, and Shane is two or so years older, and he’s holding back for her. Ms. Caine has managed to string this out for at least two books now, but it feels real — and pretty hot.

All the vampires in Morganville, even the ones who are feuding, band together against the intruders. It’s definitely an uneasy truce between Oliver and Amelie, who were previously vying for control of the city. Mr. Bishop (Amelie’s dad) is a pretty scary guy — or so we’re told. He’s described as the worst kind of brutal beast, a murderer and a torturer. In terms of things that actually happen, as opposed to our view of people’s reactions to him, Bishop’s minions are scarier. Shane’s reaction to Ysandre makes it obvious that she is assaulting him, both mentally and physically. Francois (the other minion) threatens people as well, but Mr. Bishop does not, himself, do much. I think in some ways I’m glad about that, because he easily could have pushed the book over a certain line of scary/violent, but I do wish we’d seen him do something before the end.

Many of our favorite characters are back; Monica-the-bitch’s normal brother Richard has some very good scenes, and he’s often a voice of reason. Eve’s psycho brother Jason also has some memorable action in the book; we actually see him cleaned up for a moment, and Claire almost doesn’t recognize him. Claire’s parents are rather blank for the whole book, but her mother gains a little bit of roundness, and we do get to see their horror as they realize where exactly it was that they sent their sixteen-year-old daughter. All in all, I liked it better than book 3, and I’d definitely recommend it to fans of the series. Newbies definitely want to start with book one; each book has a very limited timespace, they follow one right on top of another, and each, including this volume, frustratingly ends with a cliffhanger. 4/5 stars.