Publication date: May 3rd, 2011
Published by: NAL
Genre: YA Paranormal, Vampires
Rating: 3,5/5
After discovering that vampires populate her town, college student Claire Danvers knows that the undead just want to live their lives. But someone else wants them to get ready to rumble.
There's a new extreme sport getting picked up on the Internet: bare- knuckle fights pitting captured vampires against each other-or humans. Tracking the remote signal leads Claire- accompanied by her friends and frenemies-to discover that what started as an online brawl will soon threaten everyone in Morganville...
With Bite Club, Morganville Vampire series reached its 10th installment. The big arch story of the series, the whole Bishop thing, ended 4 books back in Carper Corpus. It's also where the awesomeness of the books ended, I'm afraid.
The way I see it, books reached their peak with Carpe Corpus and then Caine decided to give the characters their much needed rest, a term used freely here since the guys wouldn't recognize peace and quite if it danced naked in from of them, until she came up with a new arch.
Although she didn't. At least she hasn't yet and honestly, with 2 books to go till the end of the series I don't think she will.
Stand-alones are OK I guess but after the Bishop story, which let's face it was pure awesomeness, I guess I wanted something similar. I also think an arch story gives characters a purpose, a goal, thus more development and interaction, as you see them struggling to fight the impending doom book by book together along with the effects it has on them and their relationship with others.
Also, me wishing Caine to write a bad-ass arch story again does by no means imply that past arch-storys should be recycled. Don't get me wrong, the concept was exciting. Only thing is, by the time I wrapped my head around it, accepted it, liked it even, it was gone. Just like that. Just like the story in Ghost Town when everyone lost their memory. Just like the story in Kiss Of Death with the guy that wanted to leave Morganville. See a pattern here?
Bite Club was more Shane-centered than the previous MV books. I always thought Shane was an interesting character with an equally interesting and intriguing background. We all know about his Frank issues (can you blame him?) and Caine used all the anger he had pent up inside to create this "monster" that vampires could use to their advantage. I liked that I got to see a lot of Shane and for the first time in MV series history, some parts of the book was from his POV.
The part that arose my curiosity more however, was Michael and Eve's relationship and its future. I don't wanna reveal any spoilers but I was bit taken aback by Michael's reaction. Really. It was very subtle but it was definitely there. I think we'll learn more about it in book #11 Last Breath, coming out November 1st 2011. Yay! We don't have to wait long!
It's not that Bite Club was a bad book, quite the contrary. But I found no difference between the 3 previous books and Bite Club. No much development character-wise and the plot is good while it lasts, confined in 350, 400 pages tops.
I hope the last ones have some kind of a continuing story. It'd be so cool for a series to end like that.
I keep meaning to read a Rachel Caine book, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
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