Using the city’s water system to spread, the draug have rapidly multiplied. Things in Morganville look grim, especially since vampire Amelie—the town founder—has been infected by the master draug’s bite.
Now, if Claire and her friends don’t figure out how to cure Amelie and defeat the draug, it looks like Morganville will become little more than a ghost town…
The Morganville Vampire books by Rachel Caine are a great way to lose yourself for an hour or two. They are quick and easy reads, and Caine really knows how to write fast action and make the reader's pulse race with excitement and anticipation.
The plot for the 12th book of this series, I felt, moved in circles. Morganville is being terrorized by a vampire-eating monster called the draug that showed up in the last book (Last Breath), and for some reason Claire, Shane, Eve and Michael are the only (semi)normal people still in town. Morganville Founder Amelie is dying from getting bitten by the Master Draug, Magnus, and no one knows how to fight these water-infesting monsters. The fights between the main characters and the draug got very repetitive very quickly.
The self-hating Shane that we experience for the better half of the book reminds the reader that Shane's character has addressed most of these issues in other books, and I wondered how much those dreams/nightmares really could have messed up his head in such a short time.
The sidelines story with Naomi and Oliver fighting over power that supposedly hasn't been relinquished yet came out of no where. Naomi wasn't really in many of the books, despite Claire meeting (rescuing) her in, like, book 4 or 5. So this sudden run for the title of queen seems random, and a radical change of the character she's been the few times we did hear from her after first meeting her. That demi-plot also went in a wide circle, as well, with Naomi saying she deserves to rule and being shot down, to trying to kill for it -then being shot down again, to thinking she has a little more power than before -to being shot down yet again. To me this just looked like a roundabout way to make a new possible enemy for Claire (and Eve, due to Naomi's weird obsession with Michael) to have to worry about later.
The final twist with Myrnin kidnapping Claire to use her as bait for Magnus came out of no where. I don't understand why Claire couldn't have been forewarned about his plan, if nothing else than for her own safety. What if Magnus had showed up and killed everyone before Claire regained consciousness? Then everything would have been ruined.
The added bit with the teen psychic Miranda read like it was a last minute inclusion. It looked like Caine needed a way for Claire's friends to all get to the Glass house without just "guessing" that's where Myrnin took her. Oh, and she needed someone else to die that wasn't one of the Glass house roommates. I don't like the idea of Miranda being the new ghost/spirit of the Glass house. I personally didn't like Miranda's character and internally groaned whenever I saw her name coming up on the pages throughout the books.
Overall, I still like Caine's writing, and she really has a talent for making me feel the action of what is happening in these stories, but I think Morganville has run its course.
Personally I give this new edition of the Morganville Vampires 2 out of 6 stars.
I think the draug-plot had the potential to be a big Morganville finale, but instead we "found" a new attitude in Amelie to be afraid of. I am still interested in where this story will end up, especially if someone else is influencing Amelie's new attitude and how the town will be rebuilt.
