Monday, 20 May 2013

Fall of Night: The Morganville Vampires - Rachel Caine


Pages: 443
Publisher: Allison and Busby
Release date: 2nd May 2013
Edition: UK paperback, purchased


Thanks to its unique mix of human and vampire residents, Morganville is a small college town with big-time problems. But it isn’t the only town with vampire troubles...

Claire never thought she’d leave Morganville, but when she gets accepted into the graduate course at MIT, she can’t pass up the opportunity. Saying goodbye to her friends, especially her boyfriend Shane, is bittersweet, and her new life at MIT is scary and exciting. Enrolled in a special advanced study programme with Professor Irene Anderson, former Morganville native, Claire is able to work on VLAD, her machine designed to cancel the mental abilities of vampires.

But Morganville and its inhabitants are never really far from Claire’s mind. When she begins testing her machine on live subjects, things quickly spiral out of control, and Claire begins to wonder whether leaving Morganville was the last mistake she’ll ever make...

Fall of Night is the second-to-last book in the Morganville Vampires series so I tried to make it last. Naturally, I devoured it in two sittings.

Claire’s shock decision after the (also shocking) events at the end of Bitter Blood took the fourteenth instalment of the series out of Morganville and across the country to Cambridge, Massachusetts and MIT. At first I really didn't like being anywhere but Morganville. I missed the Glass House gang, Myrnin, Amelie and even Oliver; they’ve been such an integral part of Claire’s story that it felt wrong not to have them around. I actually felt a little let down by Fall of Night for the first time in this series, but thankfully, that feeling disappeared about halfway through the novel and with chapters written in Shane’s point of view.

A different setting actually made me realise how brilliantly written and constructed this series is. The vampire world that Caine built in Morganville works inside of itself but I’ve never imagined it stretching any further, but of course it would. Seeing the characters in a place without vampires was shocking and made me realise how much Claire has grown and changed over the series. The shy, bumbling, pushover of Glass Houses has turned into a strong, confident and no-nonsense young woman; I felt very proud of her. The new characters that were introduced, especially her new roommate Liz, showed how strange a place Morganville is and how it changes you.

Though Claire has been a strong heroine from the beginning, I didn’t quite realise how empowering, pro-equality and for healthy, balanced relationships Morganville is until now. With the models of Shane and Claire and Michael and Eve, some of the partnerships of regular humans in Fall of Night struck me as so off because of what we’ve been shown in Morganville. It really stayed with me and I applaud Rachel Caine for such a positive message.

As with the rest of the series, Fall of Night is chock full of deadly situations, lethal enemies, continuous risk and non-stop action against a story of relationships. Not for the first time I was at a loss as to how on earth they were going to get themselves out of trouble in the amount of pages left in the novel. As ever, they did and went home to Morganville, realising that that’s home. What they found there; well, Daylighters is going to be one hell of a showdown.

After the cliffhanger of Fall of Night I can’t wait to read Daylighters but then one of my favourite series’ is going to be over and I really want it to go on forever. I promise I’ll take my time with that one. Maybe.

I purchased my copy from Amazon UK.

Sophie

1 comment:

  1. I gave up with this series ages ago - it's far too long for me. Glad you're still liking it though!

    ReplyDelete

Leave a message, I'd love to hear from you!