Drink Deep: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES) [Paperback]

I'm at a loss how this book currently has a four star rating.

Let me say I am a huge fan of Chloe Neil and books one to four of the Chicagoland series are amazing, each and every one worth a five star rating on their own. Merit is a fabulous character and the universe Chloe has created is one I couldn't wait to return to. I didn't even mind the end of 'Hard Bitten' which a lot of fans didn't like for obvious reasons.

What I cannot understand is why this book falls so far short of the previous ones. Gone are the wonderful sarcastic one liners, the laugh out loud moments, the great interplay between the other memorable characters that populate Merit's world. Instead we have a book where the first 90% is effectively Merit investigating several mysterious supernatural events with the plot unravelling at such a slow and pedestrian pace that, for the first time ever, I was tempted to start skipping pages. Nothing much happens, characters are seemingly introduced at random and yet with no bearing on the outcome. Merit does little more than go from place to place and talk to different people. However that is still not the greatest crime of this book. Momentous events finally happen in the last part of the book but scenes that deserve entire chapters to themselves are skipped over in a single sentence. Emotional events are either treated in the same slapdash way or glossed over entirely and a previously good character effectively turns bad overnight. Suddenly it feels like I am reading a young adult novel. This alone has almost ruined my appreciation of the entire series. The ending also sets up the next book but I cannot say I am looking forward to a road trip and time spent away from most of the supporting cast that are such an important part of this series.

I know that this is the second Chicagoland book that Chloe has released this year and I can only assume that she was under pressure from the publisher. Unfortunately it has been at the cost of the high quality writing we have come to expect from her. I only hope she takes the time before book six is released to return to the levels she is so obviously capable of. To be honest I wish there was some way she could delete this book from the series and write it again in the manner it deserves. I still love Merit but another book of this quality and I will be lost as a reader.

I thought this would be a difficult review to write but in fact it is one of the easiest I have ever written because I am so passionate about this series. So where shall I start. First I suppose I should say a little bit about the Chicagoland Vampire series. It is as you can probably guess set in Chicago and is primarily about the vampires that live there. The stories are written in the first person from Merit's point of view. Merit was an English student who was turned vampire against her will by the Master vampire Ethan in order to save her life. Now if you haven't read the previous 4 Chicagoland books then why not they are awesome in my opinion and if you want to read them you may want to turn away now because there will be spoilers on those books.

I was so excited when I received my copy of Drink Deep that I started reading straightaway. I had waited 6 tortuous months for this moment and nothing was going to stop me from reading it, in fact I didn't stop until I finished it late last night. I was apprehensive when I started with how Ms Neill was going to deal with Ethan's death in the previous book Hard Bitten. I had read that some people were giving up on the series because of how the last book ended. But I applauded Ms Neill for the brave decision she made with killing Ethan. No I didn't want Ethan dead but like in real life bad unpleasant things happen and we just have to accept it and move on. Plus it got everyone talking about Hard Bitten and craving Drink Deep, well played Ms Neill. So before I turned the first page I thought to myself. Did I want Ethan to be brought back to life? Yes of course I did I absolutely love and adore Ethan and I was heart broken when he died. Did I want Ethan to stay dead? Yes I also wanted this too. I didn't want a cheesy way in which he could be resurrected like the whole waking up from a dream thing with Bobby Ewing in Dallas. I also wanted to see how the series would be taken forward without Ethan.

Right so lets get down to the nitty gritty of Drink Deep. You probably have read the blurb but basically strange things are happening in Chicago. Lake Michigan has turned black and is sucking all the magic from the city. The GP has put Franklin Cabot a GP representative into Cadogan House to try and get it in order and Merit is trying to get her life as Sentinel back on track without Ethan. Merit is ordered to get to the bottom of Lake Michigan turning black and to assist her she enlists the help of Grey House guard Jonah.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It is quite a slow story with all the action taking place in the last quarter of the book. In fact I got a little bored at times with the first three quarters of the book. I don't know if this is because I just wanted to get the Ethan issue resolved or not. There are the usual characters in this installment but they tend to take a back seat and Jonah is very much a main character. I really liked Jonah I haven't been too keen on him in the previous books but he really started to shine for me in this. He isn't an Ethan replacement, no one ever could be, but I did like him. There is a main theme running through the book in that Merit and her vampires are getting unfairly treated. The humans are blaming them for everything and Franklin is giving them orders and setting tests that they will inevitably fail. This really got to me in the end I was fed up with everyone picking on the vampires and nobody doing anything about it. I wanted Merit to stand up and do something instead of just taking it on the chin every time. I also felt that the last quarter of the book was rushed. I did like the pace of it because it fitted with the events that happen but some of the scenes could have been longer for me. We are left with an exciting ending that once again has me begging for more but thankfully it is not on the scale of Hard Bitten. I really don't know what rating to give this book, I want to give the first bit 3 stars and the last bit 5 stars. Well that's all isn't it? Oh right you want to know if Ethan comes back, well let me tell you......you will just have to read and find out for yourself.

** The order for the series is Some Girls Bite, Friday Nights Bites, Twice Bitten, Hard Bitten and Drink Deep **

I have to be honest and admit that I was a bit disappointed by DRINK DEEP. The series up until this point has been pretty solid, the previous book in particular was extremely enjoyable and had a surprising ending. So I was consequently expecting this Chicagoland Vampires entry to hit the ground running and keep on throwing twists at me.

Once again Merit partners up with Jonah [the Guard Captain of Gray House] as she goes undercover for the main plotline. In the last book I thought that this partnering up and cross House cooperation was a exciting glimpse of the future directions in the series, but in all honesty I find Jonah's character dull now we've got to 'meet' him and know him a bit more fully. And the fact that the author has pushed the other secondary characters to the sidelines in order to feature him more prominently, has lead to me coming to suspect that he's going to serve the author in another round of 'all these hot men want me, but I just can't make up my mind' fun and games. In short; I began to dread seeing his name pop up in the book, as he could derail the way all of the plotlines so far are running and building, which could make me lose interest in the series.

For the first third of DRINK DEEP the plot doesn't really seem to be going anywhere as the vampires have nothing to do with the problem of the blackened lake and, since they aren't magical, they don't know the answers to the who, how and/or why; Oh look, the lake is black. Oh, yeah, did group A do it? No, how about group B? No? Shrug, what should we do? There has to be a group C somewhere to pin the blame on. Sure, I suppose that it shows a realistic investigation, but it just brings to mind a group of kids trying to assign blame for a broken vase on each other.

Another problem I had is that I don't think that the receivership on Cadogan House is such a big shock. In fact, in some places, I can see things from the Greenwich Presidium's view, so I don't actually disagree with them on all of their grievances; as well as the issue of the new mayor [and her proposed supernatural register] there are other consequences to Merit's and Ethan's actions - which I won't go into here - that have spectacularly backfired and made life for all vampires harder. I don't think that the GP can honestly be made out to be the Big Bads - they're cleaning up and protecting ALL of the vampires, rather then just looking out for Cadogan House. So I do think Merit comes off as a bit whiny and self-absorbed in places. Sure, the person left in the house to check everything out doesn't like Merit and is trying to find a way to get rid of her, but she has shown no regard for the Greenwich Presidium's rules and is once again actively breaking them by disobeying a direct order.

But the biggest letdown, for me, in DRINK DEEP is that almost immediately I could tell who the culprit was and once I realised err, who the who is, the question of why they did it was easy to guess at. So I was impatient [and a bit bored] whilst I waited for the characters to catch up to what was pretty obvious to me.

Once I finally fully got into the story, I realized that there are still good bits to be found in DRINK DEEP, I just had to look a bit harder to see them...

We meet other supernatural races. Up until now we have only really seen the vampires interacting with shape-shifters and met a few sorcerers, so it is refreshing to get to see more interaction with some of the other supernaturals that share this series' version of Chicago. The humans only know about the existence of the vampires and shapeshifters, so we haven't really had the opportunity to explore the other species of supernatural beings before and I hope that the author finds a way to do it again. To be honest the whole vampires and werewolf mix is old and tired - every other fantasy book seems to d the same old thing.

Speaking of other species; the questions surrounding mayor Tate are very intriguing to me. I had thought his character was just a secondary one, who just served to stir up trouble, but now we see that he is the Big Bad. I can't wait to learn what exactly he is - I'll have to go back and read the earlier books, to try to spot any clues.

There are fur full-time guards working in Cadogan House alongside Merit, but up until now we have only gotten to know Luc and Lindsay. But now that Guard Captain Luc has now moved up in position and isn't involved in this book as much, we have more space and time to get to know Juliet and Lindsay as characters, not just as names tossed into the occasional conversation. Both characters have several scenes, when before they'd have one scene per book at most, which would add up to little more then "hi".

This is still an important entry into the series, but it is also the only book in the series where I found the pacing to be uneven, it's only after the first third of the book that I felt drawn into the story and from there everything speeds up madly - it reads as though the author realised she had almost reached her word-count limit, so threw everything together in a mad rush. Unfortunately the final few scenes are the most emotional and are meant to be shocking, but due to the sped-up pace and the fact that I already figured out the reveal, means that I failed to be saddened, overjoyed and/or shocked by the events.

For now I'm going to class DRINK DEEP as a one-off bump in the road and I still plan on getting the next book in the Chicagoland Vampires series, but I won't expect the same highs the earlier books delivered.

** Book six in the Chicagoland Vampires is titled Biting Cold [released in August 2012] **