Review: Fall of Night (The Morganville Vampires #14) – Rachel Caine

Fall of Night by Rachel Caine
Series: Morganville Vampires #14
Published by New American Library on 7 May 2013
Genres: Contemporary, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy
Pages: 352
Source: Kindle Purchase
Buy on Amazon |

Another wild ride in the Morganville Vampires universe, where Claire is able to leave Morganville behind, and do a research project at MIT instead. She feels so safe being away from vampires, only to learn quickly that people can be as bad as vampires, and that it is always safe to watch her own back, and that being in shape and knowing how to fight can always come in handy!

 

Fall of Night is the 14th book in The Morganville Vampires series, and though I love this series, I didn’t think it could surprise me anymore… But I was blown away completely, and could have never seen the impact coming! The ending was so awesome I wish I could now be a fly on the wall in Rachel Caine’s office (or wherever it is she’s writing) so that I could know sooner what will happen next!

Fall of Night starts with the almost-rising sun over the horizon, just outside the city-limits of Morganville, where Claire is waiting for her dad to come and pick her up. She has snuck out of the Glass house to avoid a teary goodbye with her friends, but they are arriving with squeaking tires just before her dad does. So, a teary goodbye it is – even if Claire is very happy to be going to the university of her dreams MIT is only a few hours away by plane before she can start living in a place where things don’t go bump in the night – or do they?

Claire finds out soon enough that life away from Morganville isn’t as simple as she had thought it would be – she misses Shane and her other friends – and when someone follows her home late one night, she wishes she was still carrying some kind of weapon. Claire’s roommate has a stalker, and so Claire quickly realizes that humans can be just as mean and dangerous as vampires are. A little disheartened by this, she sometimes wishes Shane had come with here – so much so that she thinks she sees him in a bar where she is delivering a message to her scientific supervisor’s friend.

Fall of Night is a quick and twisting tale, where there are quite a few new characters being introduced to the readers. The Daylight Foundation is present around MIT, and it surprises Claire when she understands that people far away from Morganville are convinced that vampires are indeed real. As the story moves along, Eve calls Claire to let her know she and Michael are coming to town, as they are chasing after Myrnin who has run away from Morganville. Another complication Claire really doesn’t want to deal with, but she soon understands that she has no choice in the matter.

This fast-moving story has a new surprise for the readers at every turn- Claire has no idea who to trust, even among her friends, and neither does the reader for a while. When things get bad, they get really bad, and several vampires as well as humans are captured by the Daylight Foundation – who really don’t care who they have to hurt to prove the existence of vampires – as they try to find a way to make vampires submit to their will. Claire is an unwilling participant in this whole scheme, both because she is being blackmailed, and because it’s her invention that is being used to mesmerize vampires.

I have to warn you – there isn’t a single dull moment in Fall of Night – it is impossible to put the book down, and you need to make sure you can be somewhere you can read undisturbed so that you can enjoy all of it. I would have never guessed who the culprit was, and that was not even the biggest surprise during this wild ride. Coming home to Morganville at the end of Fall of Night, both the vampires and the human friends arriving think that finally things will be back to normal – but will they?

The writing is excellent – I know I say this with all of Rachel Caine’s books, but it’s true! Claire continues to grow as a character, and maybe some of her naiveté is going to disappear now. Shane also makes progress in Fall of Night, he understands that he needs to give Claire the space she feels that she has to get in order to sort through her feelings, and be independent. At the same time, Claire gets some pretty harsh wake-up calls when she meets with lots of students her own age – who are just as smart as she is. And that helps her thinking of problems in yet different ways. The point of view shifts between Claire’s and Shane’s and there’s a kind of nice familiarity in that.

I can’t really write a Morganville Vampires review without mentioning the humor I love so much! And so I have included a few quotes underneath, since they tell the story so much better than I could.

 “Be careful,” he said. “Not all dangers have a vampire’s fangs. Or a vampire’s predictability.”

“You watch your back Shane. I mean it.” Her voice was muffled against my shoulder, and it sounded unsteady. “You come back to us or I swear, I’ll find you, dig up your stinky corpse , and kick its ass until it freaking disintegrates.”

“She needs you for more than just protection. It’s how it works. You want the strong girl, you understand that she’s with you because she wants to be. Not because she has to be. you know that, right?”

“Please, Shane – don’t get cocky, okay?” “Oh, now you want to do sexy talk?”

Oh God, he was lovely; even with the bruises, which made her ache inside, he was so incredibly gorgeous. It made her breath catch in her throat.

Cirque du Soleil, only with vampires, Claire thought. Then again, how could anyone be sure those bouncy people weren’t vampires already?

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