Early Review: Fall of Night by Rachel Caine
Fall of Night by Rachel Caine
The Morganville Vampires #14
Thanks to its unique combination of human and vampire residents, Morganville, Texas, is a small college town with big-time problems. When student Claire Danvers gets the chance to experience life on the outside, she takes it. But Morganville isn’t the only town with vampire trouble...
Claire never thought she’d leave Morganville, but when she gets accepted into the graduate program at MIT, she can’t pass up the opportunity. Saying good-bye to her friends is bittersweet, especially since things are still raw and unsettled between Claire and her boyfriend, Shane.
Her new life at MIT is scary and exciting, but Morganville is never really far from Claire’s mind. Enrolled in a special advanced study program with Professor Irene Anderson, a former Morganville native, Claire is able to work on her machine, which is designed to cancel the mental abilities of vampires.
But when she begins testing her machine on live subjects, things quickly spiral out of control, and Claire starts to wonder whether leaving Morganville was the last mistake she’ll ever make...
Claire honestly never thought she would be able to leave Morganville, but through a twist of fate, she finally is as she's headed off to MIT. Still it wasn't an easy choice to leave the home she has built with her friends, some of whom surprsiginly enough happen to be vampires. However, all this time she's been living under a shadow, and knows that she needs to have the chance to experience life outside of Morganville to determine what she really wants from life. Only things aren't quite as she expects, as the safety she counted on outside of the vampire's immediate grasp was just a smokescreen. Suddenly things are spinning out of control as she seems to be under attack from multiple sides. Who would have thought vampires would ever become the least of her worries?
I was so incredibly proud of Claire in this book. As the reader, I've seen her strength grow by leaps and bounds from the shy and scared girl we first met, yet her friends have a hard times seeing her as an equal rather than someone who needs to be protected, and Shane is the worst of them all. Don't get me wrong, I love the too of them together, but I think Claire leaving was incredibly important for her to not only learn about herself and what she really wants, but to force Shane (and the others) to see her for who she has become. Shane really messed up in the last book, and while I realize that it wasn't the first time, this time around she knew that she couldn't just let his actions go. He had to learn to see her differently and that she wasn't a pushover any more, or the two of them would never work in the long run. That being said, leaving wasn't easy, and Rachel Caine truly nailed the emotional aspect as my heart really went out to both of them. Still Claire had to figure out what she really wanted in life, and FALL OF NIGHT gave her the opportunity, even if things didn't turn out quite as she had expected.
Prior to this point in the series, things were almost entirely set in Morganville, or at least under a vampire authority's close watch while Claire company were out of the borders. To see the new dynamic with Claire outside of Morganville was both interesting and terrifying at the same time. At least in Morganville, the threat is known, whereas outside of it, the threats' identities are hidden and seem to be coming from all sides. It simply amazed me (and Claire) that she could possibly be in more danger than she ever was before, and yet somehow she was. I really loved how the world view was opened up so much more, especially as it showed Claire that both her action and those of the vampires reached so much further than just Morganville's limits. I think it really upped the ante and ratcheted up the intensity up to eleven.
Sometimes I truly believe authors enjoy torturing readers, and with the way FALL OF NIGHT ended, I have to think Rachel Caine is no exception to that rule. I just cannot even begin to imagine what those events will mean in the next installment. I've said this several times throughout this series whenever she would throw us for a loop, but honestly this time around it's looks to be the game changers of all game changers. Even if the rest of FALL OF NIGHT had not been fantastic, I still would be as desperate to get my hands on the next installment. But lucky for me, FALL OF NIGHT was fantastic, which honestly is incredibly impressive considering just how long run this series is. From what I can see, the next book is potentially the last, but if FALL OF NIGHT is any indication, there's plenty of room for more as there's no sign of this series going stale yet. An absolute treat for fans of the series, FALL OF NIGHT is not to be missed!
(Received a copy from the publisher)
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Previous Books
- Glass Houses
- Dead Girls Dance
- Midnight Alley
- Feast of Fools
- Lord of Misrule
- Carpe Corpus
- Fade Out
- Kiss of Death
- Ghost Town
- Bite Club
- Last Breath
- Black Dawn
- Bitter Blood
