Review: Bitter Blood by Rachel Caine

Title: Bitter Blood

Author: Rachel Caine

Publisher: NAL

Publication Date: 11.6.2012

Pages: 404

Genre: Paranormal, Vampires, Romance

Series: Morganville Vampires #13

Source: Finished copy from publisher

Rating: A-

Summary (from Goodreads):

For years, the human and vampire residents of Morganville, Texas, have managed to co-exist in peace. But now that the threat to the vampires has been defeated, the human residents are learning that the gravest danger they face is the enemy within…

Thanks to the eradication of the parasitic creatures known as the draug, the vampires of Morganville have been freed of their usual constraints. With the vampires indulging their every whim, the town’s human population is determined to hold on to their lives by taking up arms. But college student Claire Danvers isn’t about to take sides, considering she has ties to both the humans and the vampires. 

To make matters worse, a television show comes to Morganville looking for ghosts, just as vampire and human politics collide. Now, Claire and her friends have to figure out how to keep the peace without ending up on the nightly news… or worse.

Review:

Thirteen books into a series you would think the author would show signs of fatigue or plot repetition, but once again Rachel Caine blows me away. Bitter Blood is the most recent in the long-running Morganville Vampires series, and it is a series that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s remarkable to look back of the last thirteen books and see how much character growth everyone has endured under the masterful hand of Caine.

Claire is still our heroine but as the series has progressed we’ve gotten more narrators. It took me a while to adjust (I was happy just hearing Claire’s side of things), but I feel like Bitter Blood is where it finally started clicking for me. This whole book just kept ratcheting up the tension, making it thick and palpable, and setting up a climax that left me stunned and reeling.

13 books later and Caine still surprises the hell out of me.

I’ve always been a fan of Team Glass House (Claire, Michael, Eve, and Shane—oh, God, yes Shane), but this book really delved into Myrnin’s character as well and I loved learning more about him than the emotionally and psychologically damaged but brilliant vampire. Maybe Myrnin isn’t the holy terror I believed him to be.

This far into a series it’s so hard to discuss plot points without giving away a lot of back story that unfolded in previous books and there are a lot of plots twists that would be huge spoilers to people who haven’t read this series. Fans of paranormal novels (especially of the vampire variety) need to get on board with this series.

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