Exciting as ever
In the previous book, sixteen-year-old college freshman Claire Danvers swore allegiance to Amelie, the town Founder of Morganville, Texas. Claire's boyfriend Shane, her best friend Eve, and her friend/landlord Michael don't know about this deal, but she's certain they won't be happy about it, since none of them trust vampires-not even Michael, who is a vampire. But her new servanthood is just part of Claire's busy life. The Fang Report, an underground anti-vampire publication (which has astonishingly avoided being shut down by the town vampire leadership that monitors phone calls, email, etc) is now targeting Michael as the weakest new member of the undead. Monica the murderous rich girl is being ultra-nice to Claire. Police find a body in the garbage cans outside of the Glass House and Eve's mean brother Jason is on the loose. It's safe to say that Morganville book three is as chock-full of action and suspense as anything we've seen so far.
One of the most interesting subplots is Claire's scholarly apprenticeship. Amelie wants her to study under the vampire Myrnin, a manic-depressive fellow who wants her to learn philosophy and alchemy so she can work with him on some bigger project involving the fate of all vampires. Myrnin has mood swings and seems mentally unstable, which isn't good news for Claire, a tiny human who has to work in close quarters with him. He has fits of turning savage, but Claire grows to have sympathy for him and see him as a brilliant man who's losing his mind along with his last shreds of humanity. Her studies with him and her new supplemental courses are actually fun and invigorating, and give her a chance to use her tremendous brainpower, but Myrnin is also incredibly demanding and gives her red crystals, a drug that helps her concentrate and improves her reaction time. It's an interesting way to get an actual drug addiction subplot going, because Claire's not at all the type to try recreational drugs, but if she's given a substance that apparently helps her study better, she'll take it without a second thought.
Shane and Claire are a mostly-happy couple is this book, but I still get the feeling that Claire might end up with Michael. Shane is a great defender of the innocent, and he's got a solid moral center except when it comes to doling out violent payback, but he seems so willing to write people off forever that his helpful ability to make snap decisions could easily become a major flaw before long. Michael, on the other hand, is the responsible one, the one everybody turns to first in a crisis. In fact, the storyline has to keep going out of its way to eliminate him from the pool of people available to help out during the latest traumatic event, because if he's there, he tends to solve problems fairly quickly, especially now that he has some supernatural power. We'll see where all this leads. Whatever happens, all the characters are still three-dimensional and acting according to their established personality traits.
One of the major questions raised in this volume is whether or not the vampire race should be saved.
If they're dying out, should Claire just let them die, or maybe even try to speed up their inevitable end? The answer seems to be "no". Even though most of them are antagonistic at the very least, it's hard to want them wiped off the face of the earth because there seems to be hope for some of them, like Sam, not to mention Michael.
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