I have, of course, read a few books about vampires. You cannot read YA fiction without stumbling across it - from L.J Smith's novel-turned-TV-show The Vampire Diaries (which I profess to love, by the way), P.C and Kristen Cast's joint effort, the House of Night Series and of course, the series that was once described to me as 'classic'; Twilight. I had, perhaps (okay, no definitely) grow tired of vampire fiction and decided to find something else. I tried werewolves, angels, ghosts, dystopia's, soulfinders, mutant bird kids, aliens, kick butt female warriors... the list is endless. And then, after vehemently refusing to pick up another book about vampires, and vampires at college, for that matter, I found myself sitting down with the first Morganville Vampire's book. This little back story here is important, because I feel I must make the public understand; these are the first YA books that do vampires and do them well.
I quickly fell in love with Morganville. Caine has written no fewer than ten books in this series, with a least one more to come, and has not resorted to using any of the following to keep the books entertaining: the main character becoming a vampire, werewolves, wimpy females that constantly need saving (all of the main females characters in these books are powerhouses. Strong, independent women, lets hear it for them!), weird half vamp-half-human babies, love triangles... yep, you heard it right. Morganville is a completely original take on vampires, that won't leave you cringing or rolling your eyes. Vampires are back to being the bad guys we expected them to be, but Caine shows us that, like humans, there are all kinds of vampires. In this series, humans are living in vampire world, but that doesn't mean they're all awful.
In the tenth instalment, Claire faces yet another challenge; her boyfriend Shane goes a little crazy (thanks to his major daddy issues) while her boss, Myrnin, fights with Shane's dad's brain, whom he placed in the computer that stops people from escaping Morganville. Sound confusing? Well, there are ten books to catch up on!
This series has just got better and better for me. However, I didn't really like what happened to Shane; I always found him to be a very steadfast character, one that you could always rely on to be a good person and stick up for his friends. He said and did some awful things in this book - partly under another character's influence, but some of it did come from inside of him. I think, however, it was necessary for him to face these demons inside of him some way or another; the storyline with his father has been running since the very first book. My crush on Michael doubled and there is a tiny little part of me that ships Claire and Michael, although I suspect I am a minority!
I was a little disappointed in Claire deciding not to go to MIT, simply because it was her dream; I didn't actually want her to leave Morganville (I know there's been ten books, but it doesn't feel like we've spent enough time there at all!) and I'm interested to find out how the Amelie-Oliver dynamic is going to change the town now. I'm looking forward to Last Breath, of course - the cast of characters is so fantastic and I can't wait to visit them all again. I'd love go back to Michael, Eve, Claire and Shane in the Glass House again, just hanging out together and facing whatever they have to.
So, if you haven't already guessed, I love these books and award Bite Club 4/5 stars.
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