Carpe Corpus by R. Caine

The latest novel in Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampires series, Carpe Corpus is another great novel that completely sucked me in.

In the small college town of Morganville, vampires and humans lived in (relative) peace—until all the rules got rewritten when the evil vampire Bishop arrived, looking for the lost book of vampire secrets. He’s kept a death grip on the town ever since. Now an underground resistance is brewing, and in order to contain it, Bishop must go to even greater lengths. He vows to obliterate the town and all its inhabitants—the living and the undead. Claire Danvers and her friends are the only ones who stand in his way. But even if they defeat Bishop, will the vampires ever be content to go back to the old rules, after having such a taste of power?

I have to say, I’m thinking Carpe Corpus is the end of a beautiful thing.  Not that I’m saying Caine is trying to end the seires, oh now, the seventh book, Fade Out, is due November 3rd, but you can tell that she was trying to tie up some things.  Carpe Corpus brings to head a lot of the issues that the residents of Morganville have and we’re going to see some changes in future novels.  That’s one thing that really impresses me on a series – when the author doesn’t try to make a bazillion novels involving the same story arc but will end and start new ones.  Quite honestly, once you get to a certain point, you need to either finish or make a drastic change becase otherwise the story becomes stale (which I’ve been noticing a lot of lately with the Stephenie Plum series by Janet Evanovich and the Queen Betsy series by MaryJanice Davidson).

For being such a climatic change in the story, there wasn’t a lot of action that went down and I’m not upset about that.  When you write a story about vampires, you have to include the action or it just doesn’t seem right; but this time, it was more strategic maneuvering that worked better than it had in the past.  I never once felt like the story dragged or lost any interest and since the monkey was gone, I was able to read it in one day.  In fact, everything that was going on completely sucked me in and I didn’t realize how much time had past while I was reading it.  That speaks of a great novel to me.

There are also some great character developments for Shane and Claire.  Oh yeah, you know what I’m talking about if you’ve been reading the series.  At the opening of Carpe Corpus, we celebrate Claire’s seventeeth birthday and that’s big news for Shane, or I should say for their relationship.  I do have to admit, I really liked the part with Hannah, Claire and her parents in the last third of the book.  Either way, the character dynamic between Claire and Shane has changed and it’s only going to get more interesting in Fade Out.

Overall, I really enjoyed Carpe Corpus and I can’t wait to see what is going to transpire in Fade Out.  I haven’t seen any blurbs out about it yet, but with all the changes that happened at the end, we’re going to see some new action and maybe more changes in the various characters.  Either way, if you haven’t checked out the Morganville Vampires series yet, you really should try and get caught up for Fade Out.

Read Order:
Glass Houses
the Dead Girls’ Dance
Midnight Alley
Feast of Fools
Lord of Misrule
Carpe Corpus
Fade Out (September 2009)

Also reviewed by:
Bitten by Books
Amberkatze’s Book Blog
Reading Fanatic
Book Central

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 Trackback / Pingback

  1. A Bibliophile's Bookshelf » Bookworms Carnival: 34th Edition – Young Adult Fantasy

Comments are closed.