Lord of Misrule by R. Caine

The fifth book in the Morganville Vampire series by Rachel Caine, Lord of Misrule wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.

In the college town of Morganville, vampires and humans coexist in (relatively) bloodless harmony. Then comes Bishop, the master vampire who threatens to abolish all order, revive the forces of the evil dead, and let chaos rule. But Bishop isn’t the only threat.

Violent black cyclone clouds hover, promising a storm of devastating proportions as student Claire Danvers and her friends prepare to defend Morganville against elements both natural and unnatural.

Lord of Misrule wasn’t bad, but let’s just say that it wasn’t like Feast of Fools.  The entire novel is all about the big battle royale between Amelie and Bishop, but the fight was all of 1 page.  Let’s just say that for all that it’s a turning point in the series, I’m more interested in the excerpt that was available for Carpe Corpus than I was for this entire story.  I just finished it a half hour ago and nothing is really sticking in my head.  Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot going on, but it was normal.  Everyone was going about their every day lives, or at least trying to without knowing what was going on with the vampires.  We really didn’t see much of the vampires in the majority of the book (well, except for Michael) and when we did, there wasn’t that much excitement. Now I will say that the last ten pages were probably the most exciting and I’ll be interested in seeing what happens in Carpe Corpus.

However, we do get a lot more development between Shane and Claire and the obvious tension a couple of teenagers can conjure.  I have a feeling that if they both survive what’s coming ahead, then we’re going to get a little more action out of these two.  Especially since Claire turns 17 in Carpe Corpus.

Overall, Lord of Misrule wasn’t the greatest novel in the Morganville series, but it’s definitely one that can’t be missed in the overall story arc.  There’s enough small things going on that if you don’t read it, then you’re going to miss something.  The only problem, or at least what I think the problem is, is that all the small important things were kind of slow and administrative like.  So while I’m not totally psyched about Lord of Misrule, I’ve already requested Carpe Corpus from my library.  So take it how you will.

For this weeks Weekly Geeks, we were told to ask our readers for questions regarding novels we were getting ready to review.  Since Lord of Misrule was one of those novels I threw up, here are the questions that were left and my answers:

Louise from Lou’s Pages asked: The relative co-existing harmony between vamps and humans is the back ground in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series. Lord of Misrule sounds like it is much the same?  To this, I’m going to have to say that no, the harmony between the humans and vamps in Morganville is nothing like Anita’s world.  For one, vampires haven’t come out to the world in Caine’s novels, only in Morganville, TX and even then not everyone who lives in Morganville knows about them.  All of the residents to, but those attending the state college are pretty clueless (most of the time).  As such, the vampires have more of a feudal lord thing going on with the humans who do know and they literally tax your blood.  The two worlds are very different, but that’s not to say that someone who likes the Anita world wouldn’t like this one either.  However, the Morganville Vampires series is young adult and I would not recommend the Anita series to true audiences of the young adult genre.

The Dark asked: About Lord of Misrule, I’m dying to know how the vampires and humans are able to live together peacefully. Are there a lot more humans than vampires? Also, this sounds a little like the Buffy TV series. Is it like that or totally different?  So totally different.  If Buffy was in Morganville, she would already be dead.  The vampires of Morganville have not come out to the world and they are very much the lord masters.  The only reason they are able to live peaceably with the humans is because the humans know if they cause trouble, they’ll be taken out of the equation – literally.  I wouldn’t say that there are more vampires than humans, but the town was “founded” by the vampires and order was established early on.  They’ve been ruthless in their dealings when someone tries to rise against them and they rule the humans mainly through fear.  There are some humans who have made it work for them, but it took a lot of sacrifice.

gautami tripathy asked: Are these romances? How do you rate those? Are those sensual too?  Mmmm… Lord of Misrule could be a romance, but it’s more of a young adult urban fantasy with obvious romantic elements than a love story.  None of the novels have the HEA at the ending and they are so not very sensual.  These novels are aimed at the younger generation and while there are moments when there is some sexual activity, it’s more of the “did you? yeah?” type of conversations.  There’s nothing explicit and I would so totally recommend these to the younger generation.

Read Order:
Glass Houses
the Dead Girls’ Dance
Midnight Alley
Feast of Fools
Lord of Misrule
Carpe Corpus

Also reviewed by:
SciFiGuy
Karin’s Book Nook
Reviewer X

About Jackie 3282 Articles
I am a 30-something SAHM with two adorable boys and a supportive husband who is very tolerant of my reading addiction. I love to read and easily go through about a dozen books a month – well I did before I had kids. Now, not so much. After my first son was born, I began to take my hobby of reviewing a little more serious and started Literary Escapism to help with my sanity. I love to discuss the fabulous novels I’ve read and meeting all the wonderful people in the book blogging community has been amazing.

1 Comment

  1. Sorry you were overly fond of Lord of Misrule. I liked it enough, but I see your point. The whole driving force while I was reading it was the tension.

Comments are closed.