Audio Friday

Midnight Alley by Rachel Caine

The Morganville Vampires #3

Read by Cynthia Halloway

Claire Danvers’s college town may be run by vampires but a truce between the living and the dead made things relatively safe. For a while. Now people are turning up dead, a psycho is stalking her, and an ancient bloodsucker has proposed private mentoring. To what end, Claire will find out. And it’s giving night school a whole new meaning.

Confession:

Wow, Claire and her friends sure know how to get themselves into trouble, without even trying!  They just keep pissing off vampires and sometimes even humans.  And if the vampires don’t get them, Eve’s psychopath brother will.  What is a girl to do?

Not a whole lot new happens in this third installment of the series.   We do meet a new vampire who may even be older than Amelie.  Myrnin is truly creepy and unstable to say the least, which ties into the main plot point of this book.  When he is lucid he is a very interesting character that can teach Claire a lot about philosophy, alchemy and the sciences, especially as they relate to vampires.  But when he is unstable, I really do fear for Claire’s life.  

Things heat up between Claire and Shane romance wise.  Even though Shane has issues with Michaels new status, he does still care about his roommates and will even do some pretty stupid things to protect them.  I really appreciate that Shane is the one to put the brakes on the physical stuff, even when Claire pushes him.  It is nice to see a guy say no to sex even when he really wants to.   Michael and Eve’s relationship also moves forward, despite some new obstacles.  

As a whole this third installment does a good job of moving the series forward. Although there is not a whole lot of new plot lines and the action was a little lacking there are some interesting developments as far characters maturing and some insights into the vampires and why they live in Morganville.   There is a lot of moral ambiguity on the part of the vampires.  Some of them just see people as food, but many appreciate humans and do try to protect them.  Also some of the humans are not totally against the vampires, but just do what they must to gain power for themselves. 

As Vampires series go, this one has been an interesting one.  There are some interesting vampire lore and characters that will keep me interested in the series for now.  I will be taking a break from the series for awhile, I have some other audiobooks that I would like to listen to before the end of the summer.  I will go back to it when I have a break or need something short to listen to. 

Cynthia Halloway continues to do a super job of narration.  It is very entertaining to listen to her different voices for some of the vampires.