Book #64: Ghost Town

Title: Ghost Town (Book #9 of The Morganville Vampires series)

Author: Rachel Caine

Date started reading: April 29, 2012
Date finished reading:  May 1, 2012

Publish date: October 2010
ISBN: 978-0451231611
Number of pages: 352

Official summary: "While developing a new system to maintain Morganville's defenses, student Claire Danvers discovers a way to amplify vampire mental powers. Through this, she's able to re-establish the field around this vampire-infested Texas college town that protects it from outsiders. But the new upgrades have an unexpected consequence: people inside the town begin to slowly forget who they are -- even the vampires. Soon, the town's little memory problem has turned into a full-on epidemic. Now Claire needs to figure out a way to pull the plug on her experiment -- before she forgets how to save Morganville ..." (http://www.morganvilletexas.com)

How I obtained the book: Checked out of library (currently trying to buy a copy via eBay, but the auction ends after the time I wanted to start reading it, so I got it from the library)

Memorable quotes:

• "Vampires were nothing if not practical." ~ Claire
• "You have an awfully large scale of weird." ~ Eve to Claire
• "Killer computers. Like we didn't have enough trouble in Morganville already." ~ Eve
• "I love arguing with you, Claire. You always surprise me. And occasionally, you even make sense." ~ Myrnin
• "You're not a ninja, Shane." ~ Claire
  "I've watched all the movies. I just haven't gotten the certificate from the correspondence course yet." ~ Shane
• "I am the queen of careful. Also, princess of punk fabulousness." ~ Eve
• "You look like a Goth factory exploded all over you!" ~ Shane to Eve
• "Nobody's cut out for this town. Nobody sane, anyway."  ~ Shane
• "Who didn't like hamburgers? Vegetarians, Claire supposed. But she didn't think there were any vegetarian vampires. That would be like an atheist priest." (Is that a shot at the "Twilight" series? Haha...)
• "If you love me, you'll give me a taco." ~ Claire
  "Seriously? That all you got? What about you'll do sexy, illegal things to me for a taco?" ~ Shane
  "Not for a taco. I'm not cheap." ~ Claire
  "They're brisket tacos." ~ Shane
  "Now you're talking." ~ Claire
• "It's Morganville. Not like anybody here is ever far from the borders of Psychoville. I mean, I want to go nuts about twelve times a day." ~ Eve
• "When you were going into a war zone, you didn't go unarmed." ~ Claire
• "You can be Glammera the vampire hunter. I'll stick with being manly and heavily armed." ~ Shane to Eve
• "Even in an apocalypse like this, surely running out of Coke qualified as a disaster." ~ Claire
• "You look like a strong wind will snap you off at the knees, but you're a tough little thing, aren't you?" ~ Shane to Claire
• "Morganville's always running on Standard Insane Time." ~ Eve
• "Don't expect me to go all Romeo on you or anything." ~ Shane to Claire
• "I think your friend has a hero complex." ~ Myrnin to Claire about Shane
• "Promise me, Amelie, that you'll crucify me with silver before you allow me to fall in love." ~ Oliver

My commentary:

• I solved the mystery of the pink hair on the book before this one. Claire is going through her closet in this book and mentions the pink wig she bought in Dallas, so yeah it was her with the wig on for the cover of the last book. I just don't get why the last book didn't say the wig was pink.
• Eve and Claire start calling Shane "Mr. McStabby" in this book because of his stabbing of meat at the barbecue restaurant he works at. I love it!
• I'm very glad that Rachel Caine has decided to stay away from the typical love triangles from most paranormal books. I love that Claire and Shane's relationship is untainted by a third party. Caine has said in interviews that she wanted to stay away from love triangles, but that hasn't stopped some fans from thinking Myrnin and Claire are meant to be. I so don't get that concept. Myrnin wants to take Claire's brain and put it in a computer. How is that love? 

Buy on Amazon.com: Ghost Town (Morganville Vampires, Book 9)

Book #63: Kiss of Death

Title: Kiss of Death (Book #8 of The Morganville Vampires series)

Author: Rachel Caine

Date started reading: April 26, 2012
Date finished reading: April 28, 2012

Publish date: April 2010
ISBN: 978-0451229731
Number of pages: 256

Official summary: Vampire musician Michael Glass has attracted the attention of a big-time producer who wants to cut a demo and play some gigs -- which means Michael will have to enter the human world. For this, he's been assigned escorts that include both a dangerous immortal as well as Michael's all-too-human friends. And with that mix of personalities, this is going to be a road trip from hell... (http://www.morganvilletexas.com)

How I obtained the book: Checked out of library
Update: I ended up buying a new copy of the book via eBay for $1.47. Must have a copy as a trophy on my bookshelf, after all...

Memorable quotes:

• "The Goth look usually didn't go well with hysterical giggles, unless they were evil giggles, but somehow Eve managed to pull it off." ~ Claire
• "You taste like tacos." ~ Shane
  "You taste like barbecue." ~ Claire
  "And that's a win-win! How about some brisket tacos?" ~ Shane
  "That is so wrong, you know. Brisket does not go in tacos." ~ Claire
  "Twisted, yet delicious." ~ Shane
• "Jason is not some stray mutt you can take in and feed, okay? He's psycho." ~ Shane
• "Jason's done his time in jail. Sitting at the same table isn't like swearing eternal brotherhood. ... Unless he uses a taco as a deadly weapon, he hasn't got much of a shot." ~ Claire to Shane
•  "You do crazy crap, you know. And it's contagious." ~ Shane to Claire
• "The universe explodes, hell freezes, and Shane does something reasonable." ~ Michael
• "In Morganville, when you're not one of the sheep, and you're not one of the wolves, you'd better be one mean-ass junkyard dog." ~ Jason
• "Morley speaks fluent threat." ~ Shane
• "Brute force. It's what I do." ~ Shane
• "You've got this chick flick hit-by-the-romance-hammer look. Stop it." ~ Shane to Claire
• "You couldn't be romantic if your life depended on it." ~ Claire to Shane
• "One of these days, you're going to be too clever for your own good, Claire. You do realize that." ~ Oliver
• "Giving up is always easy. It's the peace that follows that sucks." ~ Shane
• "(Claire had) manipulated the second most powerful vampire in town into taking her side against a psycho bitch-queen sorority girl. She'd talked rationally about putting people's brains into computers. This was a normal day. No wonder she was screwed up." 
•  "I know it's a disguise, but you even suck at being a hippie." ~ Eve to Oliver
• "Even for a vampire, you're a ray of sunshine." ~ Shane (sarcastically) to Oliver
• "Wow. Who got up on the wrong side of the coffin this evening?" ~ Eve about Oliver
• "Damn. That was stupid, wasn't it? We nearly got killed over ice cream." ~ Eve
  "Another thing I don't want on my tombstone." ~ Shane
• "I knew no self-respecting small Texas town would shut down ice cream service at night." ~ Eve
• "Eve, horror movies are not documentaries." ~ Michael
• "Why does everybody think we're so insane? Honestly, we're nice. Not everybody our age rolls with anarchy." ~ Eve
  "You would, if anarchy offered free ice cream." ~ Michael
• "Scared people do stupid things. Drunk, scared bullies do even stupider things." ~ Michael
• "If an old woman can't make her own grandson get out of bed before dawn to do her a favor, there's no point in living." ~ Linda
• "You don't get fired in Duram; you get embarrassed." ~ Linda 
• "You're just Little Miss Optimist, aren't you? Do you come with accessories, like a glass half full and lemons to make into lemonade, too?" ~ Eve to Claire
• "My dad used to say that life's a journey, but somebody screwed up and lost the map." ~ Shane
• "I've never been in love, and more and more, I'm glad I haven't. It seems to make you foolish, as well as very tiresome." ~ Oliver
• "My army consists of one unreliable criminal, one girl with a disability, and one incredibly foolish young vampire with a tanning issue. I am not confident." ~ Oliver
• "Thanks to a thorough education in Morganville -- Survival 101 -- she always assumed there were bad guys around every corner." ~ Claire
• "Use your superpowers or something!" ~ Shane
  "I'm a vampire, idiot. I don't have X-ray vision." ~ Michael
• "You staked a vampire with a number two pencil." ~ Shane
  "I didn't actually check the number." ~ Claire
  "Have I told you lately how freaking awesome you are?" ~ Shane
• "We're in the middle of a three-sided vampire war. Which would be an awesome video game, but I'm not really interested in playing for real. I like my reset buttons." ~ Shane
• "Claire, if I didn't love you, you'd share me." ~ Michael
• "Of course I'm a killer, girl. Don't be stupid. It's my nature. We're predators, no matter what Amelie likes to pretend in her little artificial hothouse of Morganville. We kill to survive." ~ Morley 

My commentary:

•  This book has my favorite of the book covers, at least so far. But I can't figure out who the chick is supposed to be. I can't figure out who supposedly has pink hair. Pink is mentioned a couple times in the book, so maybe it's just reminiscing on that instead of being a direct representation of a character. The official website for the book series says it's supposed to be Claire, but I don't get it. She doesn't have pink hair. She tries a wig on at a store in this book, but it didn't say that the wig was pink. The wig was just "streaked." I don't get why this bothers me so much. I gotta let it go...
• This is the last of the smaller books in the series. The first 8 books are all fairly small. The books after this one, starting with the ninth book, begin getting bigger. I'm excited for the larger books.
• I absolutely love how tacos and barbecue keep coming up throughout the series. It's definitely fitting for Texas (or Oklahoma, where I'm from), and it provides for a few humorous scenes in the books. There's also a funny bunch of interactions in this book when Eve decides she wants ice cream.
• As with the seventh book, this one didn't really have a cliffhanger... unless you count Amelie calling to threaten them about coming back to Morganville. I don't count that. I mean, it was always obvious that they were going to go back no matter what. I don't think she needed to call and demand they go back.

Buy on Amazon.com: Kiss of Death (Morganville Vampires, Book 8)

My Top 10 favorite book characters

(I hadn't planned on doing any of these weekly memes on this blog, but this one was too perfect of a topic for me not to do it. The characters are pretty much in the exact order of how much I love them, but there are three characters from "Blue Bloods" that are tied, so I'm taking creative license and technically doing 12 characters overall)
 

It’s Top 10 Tuesday (hosted at The Broke and the Bookish) and the topic is:

 Top 10 All-Time Favorite Characters in Books

1) Dimitri Belkov in the "Vampire Academy" series by Richelle Mead

2) Damon Salvatore in "The Vampire Diaries" series by L.J. Smith

3) Aria Montgomery in the "Pretty Little Liars" series by Sara Shepard

4) Aphrodite in the "House of Night" series by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

5) Rashel Jordan in the "Night World" series by L.J. Smith

Tied for 6) Mimi Force in the "Blue Bloods" series by Melissa de la Cruz

Tied for 6) Bliss Llewellyn in the "Blue Bloods" series by Melissa de la Cruz

Tied for 6) Schuyler Van Alen in the "Blue Bloods" series by Melissa de la Cruz

7) Rosemarie Hathaway in the "Vampire Academy" series by Richelle Mead

8) Emily Fields in the "Pretty Little Liars" series by Sara Shepard

9) Shane Collins in "The Morganville Vampires" series by Rachel Caine

10) Myrnin in "The Morganville Vampires" series by Rachel Caine

Book #62: Fade Out

Title: Fade Out (Book #7 of The Morganville Vampires series)

Author: Rachel Caine

Date started reading: April 24, 2012
Date finished reading:  April 26, 2012

Publish date: November 2009
ISBN: 978-0451228666
Number of pages: 256

Official summary: "Without the evil vampire Bishop ruling over the town of Morganville, the resident vampires have made major concessions to the human population. With their newfound freedoms, Claire Danvers and her friends are almost starting to feel comfortable again ... Now Claire can actually concentrate on her studies, and her friend Eve joins the local theatre company. But when one of Eve’s castmates goes missing after starting work on a short documentary, Eve suspects the worst. Claire and Eve soon realize that this film project, whose subject is the vampires themselves, is a whole lot bigger -- and way more dangerous—than anyone suspected." (http://www.morganvilletexas.com)

How I obtained the book: Checked out of library.
Update: I ended up buying a new copy of the book for $3.29 via eBay. That's cheaper than the copy I had my eye on at the local used book store. That was a used copy for $3.40, so I'm happy to have found a new copy for cheaper than that. Yay for me!

Memorable quotes:

• "Eternal youth doesn't mean you don't get tired of the constant struggles." ~ Myrnin
• "You ever feel like your life is kind of out of control?" ~ Michael
  "I just went to work for a vampire, was scared by a spider, and got knocked down by a tanning bomb. And that's just my day, not my week." ~ Claire
• "You're confusing vampires with Spider-Man." ~ Michael 
• "You bite me, and it is on, bitch. ... I don't mean you're a bitch; it's just an expression. You know?" ~ Eve to Amelie
• "There's romantic, then there's dramatic, and then there's moronic. Guess which this would be." ~ Eve to Amelie
• "Homie don't play that." ~ Shane
  "I wonder, sometimes, if your generation speaks English at all" ~ Amelie
• "I'd say you suck, but why state the obvious?" ~ Shane to Michael
• "There is a boundary between bold and foolhardy, and I think that if you look, you'll find it's just behind you." ~ Morley to Amelie
• "I'd like the blue-plate special of you thrown out of Morganville, with a side order of dead, but I'll settle for a mocha for my friend." ~ Eve to Oliver
• "I've met Kim. She's like a black hole; she just pulls people right out of their orbits. Eve's still your friend. She's just crushing on Kim because Kim never wanted to hang with her before. ... Kim's a force of nature, but like a storm, she moves on." ~ Michael to Claire
• "Barbecue really was kind of a magic cure for the mopeys." ~ Claire
• "It's a good thing I've got to live with the two of you, or I'd be putting this on YouTube later. And mocking you." ~ Michael to Claire and Shane as they squabble then kiss and make up
• "A supersmart apprentice to a bipolar vampire, not to mention just about the only person in town Amelie listens to these days? Yeah. You're dead boring." ~ Shane to Claire
• "You know, daring women used to smoke." ~ Myrnin
  "Cancer isn't sexy." ~ Claire
  "You all die of something. And we all pay for our pleasures, one way or another." ~ Myrnin
• "An all-night drive-through! I could murder a cheeseburger. Don't you just love this century?" ~ Myrnin
• "Any fool can kill. It takes genius to create." ~ Myrnin
• "I write my own history. I see no reason to entrust it to a human with a video camera. Paper and ink, girl. Paper and ink will always survive, when electronic storage becomes random impulses lost to the ages." ~ Myrnin to Claire
• "Economics is really game theory, only with money." ~ Claire to Monica
• "The rules of Morganville existed for a reason. They were meant to protect the strong few from the fragile many. Even a giant may be destroyed by the stings of insects, if there are enough of them." ~ Amelie
• "(Claire) finally got up around ten o'clock, feeling happy and humming with energy. It might have been the sleep, but Claire knew it wasn't. She was running on pure Shane sunlight."
• "Claire considered running (away from Monica), but not if Kim was planning on gleefully filming the whole thing. She could live with the same. She just didn't think she could live with the reruns on YouTube. ... (Monica) strode up to Claire and came to a halt a couple of feet away, surrounded by her fashion army. It was like being menaced by a gang of Barbie and Ken dolls." 
•  "So tell me about you and Monica. Secret love affair? Mortal enemies? Are you each other's evil twins? Come on, you can tell me; I won't tell anybody!" ~ Kim
  "Except everybody on Facebook?" ~ Claire
  "Well, obviously, yeah..." ~ Kim
  "I have two words for you, and the second on is off. Fill in the blank." ~ Claire
• "Claire decided she liked her normal arrangement of eyes, ears, and nose -- she liked Picasso okay, but she didn't want to become one of his paintings."
• "I have to feed spiders and put up with a bitchy, homicidal computer. My job really does suck." ~ Claire
• "No exploring on your own, Dora." ~ Michael to Claire
• "All science requires sacrifice. ... Sentimentality has no place in science." ~ Myrnin
• "If you get me killed, I'm haunting you." ~ Michael
  "Wouldn't be the first time." ~ Claire
• "I'm a predator. Weakness is seductive." ~ Myrnin
• "Some people come to Morganville and collapse. I've seen it a dozen times. But there are a few who come here and just -- bloom. You're one of those." ~ Michael
  "So you're saying I thrive on chaos." ~ Claire
  "No. I'm saying you thrive on challenge." ~ Michael
• "Morganville was a dangerous place. Every good-bye could be the last." ~ Claire
• "If you make me a vampire, I'll make you eat those fangs." ~ Eve to Morley
• "Vampires are not caretakers of humanity." ~ Patience
• "As far as Moganville is concerned, I am its goddess." ~ Ada
  "Word of advice, it's time for a change of religion." ~ Eve
• "Myrnin was like a thrill ride, one of those dark carnival tracks where scary things swooped in close but never quite touched." ~ Claire

My commentary:

• There is a new character mentioned toward the beginning of the book named Klaus. My initial reaction is: Geez just what I need ... another "Klaus" to keep track of. I'm already having problems sometimes keeping "The Vampire Diaries" character Klaus straight in my head because there are three versions of the same character: 1) in the original "Vampire Diaries" book series, 2) in the TV show, and 3) in the "Stefan's Diaries" books which are supposed to be based on the TV show but have been written faster than the show so the background on Klaus and the other original vampires differ. I'm going to have to keep my focus on not getting Morganville's Klaus mixed up in my head with VD's Klaus.
• My favorite character in the series, at least so far, is Shane. It is so weird for me. The series is full of vampires (a town full, to be exact), and somehow a human becomes my favorite character. I normally pick out the male vampire character who is torn between the "evil" vampire nature and remaining human to be my favorite. That's the type I normally just gravitate to -- like Angel and Spike (later on in the series for him) on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Damon and Stefan on "Vampire Diaries," Dimitri in the "Vampire Academy" book series (I somehow liked him even as a Strigoi), and Stark in the "House of Night" book series -- but here I am loving human Shane. I think it's his snarky attitude that appeals to me most. He's sexy and snarky ... and he doesn't have that cold-as-ice vampire skin. Love him...
• Even though he's not my favorite character, I really love Myrnin. A mad scientist vampire. That's a fun spin on a vampire. Of course, if I was a super intelligent scientist and got turned into a vampire, I'd probably be a little "mad" myself after all those years of immortality. After so many years, I think everyone would go crazy. Along with the character Myrnin comes the mention of some crazy vampire bunny slippers. I almost want a pair myself. Click here to check them out on Amazon.

Buy on Amazon.com: Fade Out (Morganville Vampires, Book 7)

Book #61: Carpe Corpus

Title: Carpe Corpus (Book #6 of The Morganville Vampires series)

Author: Rachel Caine

Date started reading: April 23, 2012
Date finished reading:  April 24, 2012

Publish date: June 2009
ISBN: 978-0451227195
Number of pages: 256

Official summary: "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?" (http://www.morganvilletexas.com)

How I obtained the book: Bought for $2.96 at used book store

Memorable quotes:

• Tagline on the cover: "They never covered this in biology."
•  "What was the use of being a main evil minion if you couldn't even enjoy it -- or save your own friends?" ~ Claire
• "Being in love with any boy in this town in dangerous. Being in love with that boy is suicidal." ~ Claire's dad about Shane
• "For people who lived here, the real residents, Morganville was a prison camp, and they were all inmates." ~ Claire
• "Morganville didn't look all that different now from when Claire had first come to town, and she found that really, really odd. After all, when the evil overlords took over, you'd think it would have made some kind of visible difference, at least." 
• "It felt weird, being the person other people were scared to see coming." ~ Claire
• "It was one thing to be forced to be the devil's foot soldier. It was another thing to choose to do it." ~ Claire
• "I hate kissing you through prison bars. I'm all for restraint, but self-restraint is so much more fun." ~ Shane to Claire
• "Secrets are best kept cold." ~ Myrnin
• "There is no drama so great as that of a teenage girl." ~ Myrnin
• "Life is pain, child." ~ Myrnin to Claire 
• "Claire had seen a lot of weird stuff since moving to Morganville, but a living, steam-operated Frankenstein of a computer, built out of wood and scraps? That was just too much." 
• "Morganville: Come for the education, stay for the terrifying drama." ~ Claire 
• "What you know about vampires could fit into a mosquito's ass. All you know is what you grew up seeing on TV." ~ Eve to Dean 
• "That, Claire thought, was a pretty good definition of love: needing someone even after you got what you thought you wanted."
• "Even in Morganville, making people stick to rules -- whatever the rules were -- was like herding cats." ~ Claire
• "Myrnin's computer was such a bitch." ~ Claire 
• "Drinking blood doesn't make me a lie detector." ~ Michael

My commentary:

• I'm very glad that the mystery of who kept killing teenage girls was solved at the end of this book. I wasn't too surprised really by who it turned out to be, but that's ok. That storyline needed to be wrapped up.
• This book was the first to end without a real cliffhanger. There were a few things left up in the air, but no new storylines were blown open by the ending, as the past books had done. 
• Ada (Mynin's computer) is such an odd character. It's almost too strange to be believable for me, but I liked the idea enough to accept that the spirit of a vampire could've been put into a computer and could be used to run the entire town through magical means. It provides some creepy factors to the series because I've always wondered what would happen if computers decided to turn on humans and try to take over the world, and Ada definitely could do that.

Buy on Amazon.com: Carpe Corpus (Morganville Vampires, Book 6)

Book #60: Lord of Misrule

Title: Lord of Misrule (Book #5 of The Morganville Vampires series)

Author: Rachel Caine

Date started reading: April 22, 2012
Date finished reading:   April 23, 2012

Publish date: January 2009
ISBN: 978-0451225726
Number of pages: 256

Official summary: "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." (http://www.morganvilletexas.com)

How I obtained the book: Bought for $1.70 at used book store

Memorable quotes:

• "You don't want to make yourself too available for snack attacks. Remember, we're vending machines with legs." ~ Hannah to Claire
• "You should meet my boyfriend. You two are both masters of understatement." ~ Claire to Hannah
• "I've learned through my life ... sometime, somewhere, life always comes to a fight, and peace always comes to an end." ~ Amelie
• "(Claire) went to rescue a crazy vampire from an evil one." 
• "Vampires fought in silence."
• "You look like you escape from a Victorian brothel. One that ... specialized." ~ Oliver to Myrnin about his clothing
• "Terror Aerobics. Just wait until they get it at the gym. It'll be bigger than Pilates." ~ Eve
• "Living in Morganville really is combat training." ~ Eve
• "That's Gramma. God forbid we should mess up her house while the war's going on." ~ Hannah about Gramma Day
• "(Oliver's) named you heir apparent to the Apocolypse. Congratulations." ~ Dean Wallace
  "Yeah, it's one hell of a field promotion." ~ Richard
• "It was the storybook kind of love, the kind that ignored things like practicality and danger, and never changed or died." ~ Claire about the love between Sam and Amelie
• "Be grateful I'm not leaving you as an after-dinner mint on (Myrnin's) pillow" ~ Shane to Monica
• "Even riots don't like rain." ~ Richard
• "Myrnin? Oh yeah. He did a Batman and took off into the night. What is with that guy, Claire? If he was a superhero, he'd be Bipolar Man." ~ Eve
• "I think Bishop's willing to let humans do his dirty work for him, and then sweep in to make himself lord and master on the ashes." ~ Richard 
• "You're a vamp. In case you haven't checked the mirror lately." ~ Shane to Michael 
• "Life is a work in progress. My mom used to say that. I'm kind of a fixer-upper." ~ Shane 
• "Silence, or be silenced. When I want to know your opinion, I'll consult your entrails." ~ Bishop to Eve

My commentary:

• "Lord of Misrule" is definitely an appropriate way to describe Bishop. It's perfect actually. 
• There was an episode of the TV show "Friends" in which the character of Joey was reading a book and got so scared that he put the book in his freezer. It is completely ridiculous and illogical, but reading this series, I suddenly understand the feeling. I love the books... totally love them... but some part of me is terrified of what's happening and what's ahead. It's freaky. I want to put the books in my freezer so I can be safe from them

Buy on Amazon.com: Lord of Misrule (Morganville Vampires, Book 5)

Book #59: Feast of Fools

Title: Feast of Fools (Book #4 of The Morganville Vampire series, second book in the second omnibus edition)

Author: Rachel Caine

Date started reading: April 20, 2012
Date finished reading:  April 21, 2012

Publish date: Originally June 2008 (omnibus edition published in September 2010)
ISBN: 978-0451232892
Number of pages: 217 in this book, 464 total in the full omnibus edition

Official summary: "Claire Danvers' 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." (http://www.morganvilletexas.com)

How I obtained the book: Bought for $4.24 at used book store (it was a publisher's remainder, so it wasn't really a used book)

Memorable quotes:

•  "Just when she thinks things can't get any worse... they have. Amelie's vampire father has come to town, and he's not happy. When Daddy's not happy... nobody's happy." ~ Claire
• "It was hard to imagine how Claire's day -- even by Morganville standards -- could get any worse ... and then the vampires holding her hostage wanted breakfast."
• "Look, if they were going to kill us, I don't think they'd ask for eggs first. Not to mention biscuits. If you ask for biscuits, clearly, you think you're some kind of a guest." ~ Shane
• "I like my ladies with a pulse." ~ Shane
• "I think if the house had teeth, it'd be chomping down right now." ~ Eve
• "Morganville looked just like any other dusty, sleepy town in the daylight. ... The casual visitor never knew, at least during the daytime, that this place was so vastly screwed up." ~ Claire
• "This is Morganville -- we invented the concept of the secret around here." ~ Dr. Mills
• "That boy can make a paper cut seem like a mortal wound." ~ Eve about Shane
• "That was basically what friends were for ... to be there to keep you from doing the crazy." ~ Claire
• "I may be a bitch, but I'm not your property." ~ Claire to Myrnin
• "My dark side dresses better than I do." ~ Myrnin
• "Amelie and I are modern predators, tigers in the jungle. Bishop is from a far colder, harder time. A Tyrannosaurus rex, if you will." ~ Myrnin
• "I'm not letting any vamp eat me, not even by remote control." ~ Shane
• "When you were more theatrical than Eve, you definitely had issues." ~ Claire
• "You have to learn to schedule your epiphanies." ~ Claire to Myrnin
• "(Claire) was on nodding terms with scary bodyguard dudes. Great. She really was moving up in the social ladder of Morganville."
• "I'm going to kill him. Stake him right in the heart shove garlic up his ass, and -- and --" ~ Eve
  "And what?" ~ Michael
  "When did you get home?" ~ Claire
  "Apparently just in time to hear my funeral plans. I especially like the garlic up the ass. It's ... different." ~ Michael
• "There was one comforting thing about the theory of complete apocalypse: at least it meant she wouldn't have to fail any classes." ~ Claire
• "I'm a science nerd, not a cheerleader." ~ Claire 
• "The Glass House was on what Claire had come to think of as the Impossible Travel Network." 
• "Breathe. I'm not much for it myself, but I hear it's quite good for humans." ~ Myrnin to Claire

My commentary:

• This book starts out with a situation that is so hilarious, but scary at the same time -- Claire, her roommates, and her (very clueless) parents being trapped in the house with Bishop who may be the most evil and oldest vampire in the world and some of his followers. The mere idea of how absurd that situation would be is awesome.
• I said with the previous book that I was extremely impressed with the author's ability to write cliffhangers, but that was only the tip of the iceberg because this book's cliffhanger blew the last out of the water. So many emotions. This is basically my train of thought immediately after reading the last sentence of the book: "NOOOOOOO ... You bitch!!!! God, she didn’t do that ... Oh God, she did do it ... I hate you, Amelie ... You can’t do that to Shane. I love Shane ... I want to hunt you down, Rachel Caine, and punch you in the face for writing that ... I hate you, Rachel ... *uncontrollable laughter* ... Rachel, you deserve a reward for that ending ... I love these books!"

Buy on Amazon.com: The Morganville Vampires, Vol. 2 (Midnight Alley / Feast of Fools)