Midnight Alley (Morganville Vampires) [Paperback]

Claire has signed the contract with Amelie and is trying to keep it hidden from her friends. However this gets harder as she is ordered to work with Myrnin, a brilliant but insane scientist. Meanwhile bodies kept turning up around the Glass house and Eve's crazy brother has just got out of prison. This is an action-packed book with excellent characters such as Myrnin, Claire and Shane. I would recommend Midnight Alley to people who like the first two books.

I hadn't bothered to refresh my memory of the first two Morganville books before I picked this one up, but fortunately it wasn't that much of a problem. I think it may have been slightly better if I had, but I soon remembered the events of Glass Houses and Dead Girl's Dance. Luckily, Rachel Caine is fairly good at recapping - it's terrible when the next in a series doesn't gently poke your memory back into action. I thought Insurgent was a good example of that - the lack of recapping the first novel spoilt this book a little for me. That said, I definitely wouldn't start the series with Midnight Alley, as I'm pretty sure it'd make absolutely no sense.

For me, this series wouldn't be half what it is if it wasn't for Claire, the protagonist. She kind of reminds me of myself, and not necessarily in a good way. She's a tiny bit useless, but at least she knows it and she's academically clever. She's polite 100% of the time, even when it's more than justified not to be, and tends to just... flail, when problems turn up. Maybe it's because of her slightly flawed (but not overly so) personality, but she does seem like a believable character.

It's a shame the rest of the characters aren't as well rounded though.They seem to be somewhat plastic - characters that have a mold (the Goth one, the manly man, the artistic nice guy) but unfortunately just aren't filled out enough. However, the introduction of Myrnin (whose name has wormed its way into my head as 'Miffin,' unfortunately) is wonderful. He's a gifted vampire holed away in a dusty laboratory, trying to uncover the secrets of vampire lore. I hope he features in the rest of the series, as he's a fascinating new character. I also liked learning more about the creation of Morganville itself - it's an aspect that needed rounding out, and Rachel Caine has started along that line with this book.

Midnight Alley ends on a cliff-hanger, but not one that really makes me want to read on. Instead of frantically grabbing the fourth Morganville book, I don't really want to touch it ever. It's not a bad plot development at all, it just the story headed in a direction I personally didn't want it to. I've been assured that it's worthwhile, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

I read this in just a few hours as I was so engrossed I just didn't want to leave it alone. It's just that much better written than normal YA and there's no inappropriate content for teens. The author makes a point of there being no sex because Claire's under-age and no drugs feature either. There's a little violence, but nothing inappropriate for over 13s. Hell, I'm 22 and even I appreciate a young adult book where the main character lives with her boyfriend and there's still no sexual content.

Although I didn't like the ending, I'll definitely be reading on. The introduction of Myrnin and more explanation about Morganville's existence hooked me - I can't understand why it took me this long to pick up the third book.

Below is a list of all of the books in order that are in the series so far

Glass House
The Dead Girls' Dance
Midnight Alley
Feast of Fools
Lord of Misrule
Carpe Corpus
Fade Out
Kiss of Death
Ghost Town

Let me just begin by saying that I am a huge fan of this series and If you haven't started reading it, do so right now. I read the complete thing (books 1-9) in less than a week. It was that addicting. Anyways, like the other books, Ghost Town was beautifully written and included all of the elements that I love about this series. There is tons of mystery, excitement, romance and humor.I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical going into book 9, I mean usually by this point, a series starts to go off the deep end. Honestly, how far can you take the same set of characters? And how exactly do you follow up a villian like Bishop? But somehow Caine managed to keep things going strong, by pulling out all the stops. Tell me what is more frightening than having everyone you know and love forget you? Claire is as feisty and determined as ever. She, once again, gets herself in an undesirable predicament. As a punishment, she is forced to fix the machine that wipes the memories of those who leave Morganville. Well, of course, something goes wrong and people (and vampires) start loosing their memories. Those who are infected are taken back mentally to three years ago. Let's just say that chaos ensues. Soon, Claire has no choice but to try and fix the machine and she is forced to make some unlikely alliances along the way. There is plenty of excitement within the book, just like you would come to expect from this series. There are also a number of twists throughout the plot, I don't want to give too much away, but they certainly keep you on your toes. All of your favorite characters are back and ready for action, Eve, Michael, Shane, Mrynin, Amelie and Oliver are all featured throughout the book. I think what makes this series so great is the relationships between the characters. Not only are there great romantic relationships, but there are also a number of awesome friendships. I love the fab four - Claire, Shane, Eve and Michael; I just think they mesh well together. They always have each others back and each one of them would put themselves on the line for the other three. The connection these characters have is really a focus in this book - especially when people start loosing their memories. Caine really does a beautiful job showing how they all sort of gravitate towards each other. All in all, Ghost Town was a great addition to the series. Everything that you love about this series continues in book 9, including the sarcasm, humor, excitement, danger, romance and superb storytelling. I'll say it again, if you haven't read this series yet, you really, really, need to. It is never to late to dive into a series, in fact I prefer it because you don't have to wait as long to see what happens next!